Recent reviews

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  Ten Lives of a Cat: A Film about Chris Marker 2023

  ★★★★ Watched 12 Dec 2023

  This is a thorough and discerning review of Chris Marker's sui generis career, done in eerie and (for Marker fans) thrilling imitation of Marker's own style. Highs like La Jetée, lows like Sunday in Beijing, and efforts beyond easy assessment like the CD-ROM Immemory and a Second Life island each receive patient and persuasive treatment. This essay about cinema's greatest essayist, using Marker's preferred second-person voice, is gratifyingly well-informed about the "petite planète" of Marker's century as well as current…

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  Immemory 1997

  ★★★ Watched 26 Jul 2023

  In 2023 you can watch a complete-as-feasible 4-hour playthrough of this on YouTube. In case it's less available in your era: Marker tries to upload his consciousness to a 1997 CD-ROM, organizing the themes he feels define him into lightly-interconnected sections. The material on his uncle Anton is the newest and most compelling, essential for the Marker biographer, and the photo slideshows of his travels in Asia are worthy accompaniments to his Asian films. A portion in which Marker discovers…

Popular reviews

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  History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess 1970

  ★★★★ Watched 26 May 2021

  This documentary from the peak of the Japanese New Wave is a well-structured and valuable resource for people looking to understand Japan in the years 1945-1970. Imamura progresses chronologically through the political highlights of those years, emphasizing the events that raised or frustrated the hopes of Japanese leftist and student groups. The timeline begins with the surrender in 1945 and progresses through 1952's Bloody May Day, the Ampo protests of 1960, and the troubling presence of American spy submarines and…

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