Popular reviews

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★ 10

  Action! - The Way of the Yakuza: Suzuki's Irreverent, Jarring and Illogical Brand

  As I've pointed out a few times, a number of incredibly original directors, many of whom are considered auteurs, have been impacted by Suzuki's work. One of them is reportedly Park Chan-wook, and I can kind of see it; nonetheless, it is only in this film that any similarities between the two become evident. There's some of the almost nihilistic, provocative attitude that distinguishes the South Korean director in this picture, especially when the film leans less into the silly and more into the psychological and ominous which is when it really shines for me. The absurd humor works at moments, and there are a few sequences…

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  Review by Jerry ★★★ 11

  Film as free-flowing expression. Painting prose, penning pictures, drifting between dreams and realms, time and space. Bodies and their spirits sway as leaves turn and memories gently mesh with the present, sculpted by the intermingling of truth and fiction. Everything seems temporal. We write our own stories, rough sketch our own designs; we make worlds within our minds, and though they’re sure to collapse, at least we had a chance to create them first. Artifice crumbles under the weight of reality.

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★ 2

  In pursuit of Beauty: the art of sexuality and the sexuality of art

  In his Taisho Trilogy, Seijun Suzuki interrogates various aspects of the normative cultural storytelling edifice and his own part within that structure, and here he examines the intersection of beauty as an artistic ideal and sexuality both as a blissful conjoining of two beings and as an objectifying, masturbatory fetishism. While perhaps best known in his early career for violent yakuza pictures, Suzuki certainly never shied away from depictions of sexuality, even particularly exploitative ones, and here he reckons with that reputation.

  Takehisa Yumeji, our title character and apparent stand-in for Suzuki himself, is an artist and a pervert. He's ostensibly betrothed to a refined, upper-class lady,…

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  Review by gregs1999 ★★★½

  Every frame could easily be put on display in the Louvre. It’s such a well orchestrated vision. The story is where it lacks the oomf, a little confusing at times, and the performances of everyone involved helped sell the weirdness.

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  Review by nrh ★★★★★ 3

  convinced this is suzuki's strongest film; so much of this is in a peculiar kind of internal energy entirely tied to texture and tone that it's a sin this isn't available in a quality that even hints at how beautiful this thing is.

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  Review by Jesse Snoddon ★★★

  "How pitiful, yet loveable it is to live"

  Poet and artist Yumeji Takehisa (Kenji Sawada) finds himself entangled with a mysterious widow. Their liaison becomes complicated when it comes to light that her husband may not be as dead as believed - and he may be dangerous. 

  The final film in Suzuke's sexually charged period piece trilogy is the weakest offering of the three. There are still moments of striking visual beauty and the theme of how erotic fixation clouds the mind and warps perception is interesting. The continued exploration of the line between the imagination of the artist and reality is intriguing. But there isn't anything here that wasn't already examined in the first two films. The lead here…

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  Review by Irreversible ★★★★★

  In Kazuo Inoue's 1983 documentary I Lived, But..., covering the life and works of artisan director Yasujirô Ozu, one of the interviewees dwelled upon Ozu's need for perfection in terms of shot framing. Nothing was left at random and the example discussed was Ozu leaving the main door open in one of the scenes, exposing the back yard and a wall, and furthermore how he would spend considerable effort setting up the surroundings outside the immediate focal point of the camera.

  To say that most viewers remain oblivious to such details would be an understatement, as their main focus is directed towards the explicit story unfolding at the hands of the part of the director and/or writer that could best…

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  Review by louferrigno ★★★★ 7

  It took Seijun Suzuki one year to follow-up Zigeunerweisen with another story inspired by the Taisho era, whereas it took one decade to follow-up Kagero-za with a finale to the thematic trilogy. What caused this extended delay is unknown, though I do have two theories as to why that sort of bleed into each other. The first theory is that Suzuki wanted to return to the convenience of the studio system, as well as commit to his brief involvement with the Lupin III series while his health still allowed him (respectively, this can be seen in the Shochiku-produced Capone Cries a Lot and the troubled production that pushed him into co-direction duties for Lupin III: Legend of the Gold of…

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  Review by Daniel ★★★★½

  "Poetry has declined”. One of the most bewildering things about Seijun Suzuki's career is how the Taishō Trilogy could become so popular in Japan. These films – of which Yumeji is the last, released a decade after the first two – are not only weird, but almost impenetrable in their abstract narratives. If there is a logic to these films, it’s a kind of fever dream logic where it’s best to not overthink and just let the surreal images and sounds wash over you. I found this immensely impressive in the ghostly moods and ominous images it conjures. Almost every shot has marvelous things going. The compositions, mise-en-scène and colors are amazing, you could pause it at any moment and…

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  Review by Ford H ★★½

  Immediately recognized the “Yumeji’s Theme” that we all know from In the Mood for Love, and for that brief moment, this film held my attention. Maybe I have to be in the right mindset, but this was not for me.

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  Review by Avirup

  Little lost with this one. Scene to scene there's lot going on but the abstract, fantastical approach made it feel like more style over substance and there's probably not much substance to this anyways, the style we have here is absolutely brilliant though. Fever dream thing it has is quite entrancing and it looks marvelous, one stunning image after another — that's what matters probably, not thinking much about it thematically, just appreciating it's fantastic imagery and it's surreal nature.

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  Review by Will ★★★★★ 2

  The final film in Seijun Suzuki's Taisho Trilogy, following Zigeunerweisen and Kagero-za. Just as Kagero-za was a response to Zigeunerweisen, Yumeji is a response to Kagero-za.

  Kagero-za celebrated art's potential to inspire empathy in those who make it and those who experience it. Its artist protagonist, Matsuzaki, avoided the sinister fate of Zigeunerweisen's Aochi by intuiting the anguish of his lover, Shinako, and giving up his soul to console her in the afterlife. Yumeji's titular protagonist, another artist (a painter instead of a playwright, based on a real life figure), strives to capture beauty in his work to the extent that he is detached from the world around him, always an observer, barely cognizant of his effect on others. He…