This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Decision to Leave is the story of the mountain and the sea.
First, there's the mountain. The mountain is benevolent. It's lawful. Upright. Stalwart. Immovable. The mountain is good.
Then there's the sea. The sea is fickle, and mercurial, and changing, and deep. The sea is wise.
Hae-joon enters this tale as the mountain. A sturdy policeman, renowned for his reputation as once being the youngest ever inspector in the nation, Hae-joon stands as a shining testament to the bulwark…
With his mischievous puppy-dog eyes alone, Alain Delon presents Tom Ripley as a man of deep and unfettered wanting. He's assailed on all fronts by a fullness of life that doesn't belong to him, enviously coveting to take the place of Maurice Ronet's detestable Philippe Greenleaf. His odyssey is one drenched in a heat haze of jealous bitterness, with gorgeous sun-bathed Italian locales further illiciting a sumptuous allure for Ripley's already mouth-watering yearning. And watching this yearning manifest into cunning…
Describing a film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa – the master behind the thrilling Cure and Pulse – as "contrived," feels like a defamation against works often lauded for their careful and naturalistic suspense. But "contrived" is unfortunately the most accurate description for Kurosawa's Creepy.
Too much between the storytelling and presentation of Creepy feels artificial. A majority of the dialogue in the opening third of the film is extremely expository – not just for establishing setting and characters, but more…
The Conversation is a jazz session of paranoia, tech fetishism, and peaking gazes, where every discordant feeling and misplaced note is assembled with the highest level of precision to create a resounding musical whole. A sound of rewinding tapes, ripped floorboards, vocal distortions, Catholic guilt, and muffled screams. The passions and horrors of humanity played in time to the cold beeps and rigid clicks of suit-wearing bureaucracy. A saxophone competing with a phone call.
My biggest problem with A Taxi Driver is that it's so blatantly a movie.
It's an admirable endeavor to tackle The Gwangju Uprising, an event so pivotal to the identity of South Korea. But the way that the event is presented serves no justice to its profound reality.
A Taxi Driver takes the story of South Korea's struggle against authoritarianism, and distills it through a filter of Hollywood tropes and dramatizations. Our protagonist is given a basic "struggling single dad"…
Suspiria feels like a surrealist panic attack.
From the vibrant colours to the puzzling environments, Suspiria is permeated with a wonderfully anxious ambience. There is a constant kaleidoscope of creeping concern, punctuated with horrific moments of visceral violence. It's an absolute delight.
For better or worse, this impeccable aesthetic takes complete precedence over actual plot elements. The events of the movie act as more of a mood, rather than an actuality. Instead, it's the style of the film that's responsible…
