Seen at Berlin Film Festival.
Very much a film of two halves. The first half being one that shows both the trials and tribulations, and the lengths a mother goes to to help her child.
This is where the film is at it's best, it has drive, it has a purpose, and it gets to explore a character.
Fast forward to the second half and any sense of focus goes out of the window. At first I felt like the…
For the most part it's a par for the course coming of age film. Girl rebels against her parents as she tries to find herself. It's fine for what it is.
It really becomes problematic in the final third. And when I say problematic, I mean it effectively legitimises and justifies coercion and and (implied) sexual assault as a necessary means to an end. It's like all it takes for someone to make amends with their family is a good raping. I don't know about anyone else, but in my book that's not cool. At all.
I'm going to be controversial here and say that I was actually slightly disappointed. There are undoubtedly a number of factors that I think contribute to that.
Firstly I think expectations were incredibly high. Both Kurosawa as a director and Ran as a film seem worshipped the world over by film fans with the sort of reverence usually reserved for a deity.
I'm not particularly well versed in the story behind King Lear, nor the other Japanese stories that apparently…
Also known as Pickup Alley, though I feel Interpol is probably the more apt title.
I feel like this definitely straddles two movements in film. Kind of coming at the back end of noir, it has striking black and white cinematography with shadows and backlit people running down alleyways, it has a Femme Fatale, and it has Third Man-esque jaunty camera angles. But at the same time it feels like it kind of foreshadows the likes of James Bond/euro spy…
I think I was mostly apathetic towards this. It wasn't a bad film, but I just couldn't get invested in it.
I just think it was a bit too on the nose with its message at times, I thought the entire involvement of the Wayne family was superfluous, and the film ran far too long. I think on all three counts, sometimes less is more.
I think the central character study was just interesting enough to hold my attention, and the acting itself being a big part of that.
I'm not sure I understand the hype, but if it makes people happy, then so be it.
What I love about the Hong Kong films I've seen is it's effortless ability to meld physical slapstick comedy and stylish choreographed action.
This film is no exception. From the very start there's always something interesting happening on screen. I particularly liked the fight in the flat where the use of Mise en scene and props was masterful as the actors almost dance from room to room.
The two female leads were great, and I enjoyed the contrast with the…
I feel like I might have just seen something quite profound, but am completely unable to articulate why.
I think it's definitely a film I'm going to have to see again, and think about before writing anything substantial.
It's quite a simple film with very little happening, and yet it feels like once you scratch the surface there are a whole multitude of ideas explored. The observer effect/anticipation, unrequited love, obsession, coming of age in the sense of a sexual…
It's definitely the kind of film that demands you give it some thought after the fact. It feels like a film that is very much about examining the emotions and social conventions of the time, and the conflict that causes. Not that I should be surprised but I was really impressed by the pacing. Fundamentally it's a slow film, but it never drags. For example I paused it for a drink quite early on and was really surprised to find…
I seemingly have two ways of deciding if a film is good or not. One comes from a more technical approach, how strong the image, how lovely the cinematography and lighting, how it's framed and edited, that sort of thing; the other is far less quantifiable and pretty much comes down to how much a film resonates with me on an emotional level (be the sad, happy, cool, nostalgia, longing, excited etc).
This film definitely comes under the second category.…
A Faust-esque take on the doppelganger. Essentially a man sells his reflection to a mysterious evil character, who whist not having his true identity ever revealed, we assume is evil/the devil/mesphito etc. All is well until in an unfortunate turn of events the reflection ruins the students life.
There is a lot to like, when Scapinelli commands the hunt from the top of the hill, or when he casts an ominous shadow across the the house below the balcony the…
Whilst I absolutely appreciated the vision and the craft of the film, the end product left me a little cold. I just don't feel like Noir and Comedy are natural bedfellows. I think one of the things about noir that I enjoy so much is the melodrama and how straight down the line it plays it. And whilst I guess you could say that kind style leaves itself open to parody, I'm just not sure I appreciated it. Still, it was pretty cool to see how the various films were assembled and has definitely given me ideas for a few of the films I haven't seen.
Of all the films in the Hitchcock box set I was working through, this was the one I was least looking forward to. As a premise it never grabbed me, and all the out of context scenes of bird attacks I've seen previously made the effects look really bad. But, I'm nothing if not a completionist so I decided to just dive in.
As it turns out I quite enjoyed it. There was enough intrigue with the characters and their…