"Imagination is God's greatest gift... Even a hungry flea on a toy dog may be happy – with imagination!"

For a film with a talking horse and a pair of dancing flies Suds presents a rather bleak perspective on life, (and I watched one of the "happy" endings filmed to appease the audiences unsatisfied with the original one). Interpreted by an almost unrecognizable Mary Pickford, the protagonist Amanda uses creativity as her last resource, and even then cruelty seeps in…

Despite dwelling in the yellow peril territory in its depiction of an evil asian man, the subtle development of Sessue Hayakawa's character gradually embracing his inner darkness and the actor's own emotional control gave nuance to his Burmese villain I thought was quite gripping. There's a quiet fascination about the way Hayakawa moves and express himself, a magnetism that kept me interested to the very end. As another colleague reviewer put it this is especially noteworthy when you compare Hayakawa's…

I feel sick.

Embargo is a short movie full of monolithic objects and no human presence, there's no narrative, no conscience. The repetitive structure of the movie with its soundtrack of looping synths, mechanical camera movements and sterile buildings symbolically repel the exercise of freedom. Much like Roquentin, the protagonist of Sartre's novel Nausea, the viewer is trapped in a barren world, the scenario is constantly moving, but there is no palpable meaning anywhere, alienation creeps in. Artificial landscapes are…

Nakamura combines sexual deviance and playfulness without hiding the sinister connotations of the human behavior. The Room is voyeuristic and occasionally disturbing to watch for its pedophile subtext, bringing to mind the kind of blunt provocation that John Waters' movies use to stir, but there's something off, like you were given a puzzle with pieces missing. Nakamura's experiments are effective tools to subvert the themes he addresses like family and the safety of one's home. He uses blurred scenes to…