It’s a simple story, this clash between a small rural community living close to nature and a corporation that wants to construct a site for tourist “glamping,” but it’s symbolic of something larger, and beautifully told. The cinematography is gorgeous from the very beginning, with those shots upwards into the trees, and Hamaguchi takes his time to let us feel the quiet rhythms of this place before getting to the conflict.
What becomes apparent during a public meeting the company…
It’s ironic that this film was made in 1939, because it occurred to me that it is to Native Americans as Gone with the Wind is to African-Americans; both were made in that year by talented filmmakers; both told dramatic stories with high production value; both were racist and amplified the whitewashing of the original sins of America, genocide in the former case, slavery in the latter. The parallels run deeper in the gentlemen/scoundrels (John Wayne and Clark Gable) and…
This film had a premise that reminded me of the short stories by George Saunders, those showing technology being used in dehumanizing ways by people at the top of the dog eat dog capitalist pyramid but at the bottom of having basic empathy for others, and I loved that about it. Mark Ruffalo’s character is a wealthy racist who babbles empty faith to his acolytes, has no social awareness, and craves constant attention, obviously modeled after Trump/Musk and a reminder…
An homage to coffee and cigarettes, performed over eleven vignettes, and with a wide range of actors. It’s not earthshaking but it is often very amusing, and I liked the feeling of it. Maybe the best way to describe it is through a quote from each episode:
- “I drink a lot of coffee before I go to sleep so I can dream faster. I can dream like when they put a camera on the Indy 500, when they put…
Lee Chang-dong’s debut film reflects a changing Korea, one where apartment high rises have sprung up in the outskirts of Seoul while a young man has been away for his compulsory military service. He’s as powerless to stop it as he is to stop the assault of woman on the train he comes in on, and that’s one of the themes here, powerlessness coming along with the loss of innocence in a Korea that dehumanizes as it modernizes. He can’t…
Seeing baby faced Anna May Wong, just one year out of high school at 17 and in her breakout role, is enough to make this film worth checking out. The film was shot in two-color Technicolor (red and green), which I found added to the images, rather than awkwardly detracting from them as I feared it might. Unfortunately, the plot is typical of the period, a variation of the popular Madame Butterfly story of 1898, and it’s pretty maddening. At…
