Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  The Web of Death 1976

  ★★★½ Watched 02 Jan 2021

  Only major disappointment was not seeing the centipede guy use his centipede weapon in a fight.

• 

  Tokyo Days 1988

  ★★½ Rewatched 12 Dec 2020

  rudely filming b-roll of grocery store workers

Popular reviews

• 

  Magino Village: A Tale 1987

  ★★★★★ Added

  Ogawa Productions' attempt to synthesize a documentation of Magino Village with a record of their activities during their long residency in this rural village in Yamagata province. Rice farming, weather patterns, landscapes and their use, local history, archaeology, folk tales and the lives of individual villagers all feature. The product of a long term commitment to this place and intense, emotionally and physically taxing collaborative practice.

  Abé Mark Nornes' book "Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese Documentary" provides excellent additional context to this film.

• 

  P. P. Rider 1983

  ★★½ Watched 11 Jan 2020

  I feel as if I've made a terrible mistake by watching this as my first Sōmai film. Interesting cinematography- the first shot/sequence in particular sets expectations for formal experimentation. There are some narrative devices of repetition/doubling that feel intended undermine genre conventions of both coming of age films and of the yakuza films.

  Despite these ingredients, the film feels strangely leaden. There is never any real sense of stake or purpose to the actions of our socially and emotionally alienated…

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