A personal journal of film and documentary reviews, and reviews of anything else that intrigues me.
Takashi Miike, “Over Your Dead Body” (2014) From the incredibly prolific director Takashi Miike, who never met a film genre he couldn’t make an insanely extreme…
Fred Haines, “Steppenwolf” (1974) There was a period in the 1960s when this 1927 novel was the darling of the psychedelic counter-culture in the United States,…
Pongsa Kornsri, Gun Phansuwon, Nat Yoswatananont, “The Legend of Muay Thai: 9 Satra” (2018) Not known for its animation industry, Thailand nevertheless seems to be pinning…
Makoto Shinkai, “5 Centimetres per Second” (2007) As with his “Your Name”, Makoto Shinkai’s earlier “5 Centimetres per Second” is a teenage romance based around desire,…
Chinese and Chinese-language Films
Jia Zhangke, “The World” (2004) In future years, this film, long and meandering though it is, may well be regarded as an early masterpiece in Jia…
Vahid Jalilvand, “No Date, No Signature” (2017) A chance encounter between two characters who would never have met otherwise becomes an examination of class conflict in…
French and French-language Films
Cedric Klapisch, “Back to Burgundy / Ce qui nous lie” (2017) An otherwise rather ho-hum family melodrama of sibling jealousies featuring some rather obvious narrative cliches…
Makoto Shinkai, “Your Name” (2016) At first this teenage romance drama seems to be just as sappy and sentimental as any other such film – especially…
Samuel Maoz, “Foxtrot” (2017) Divided into three parts, with the first and third parts dominated by the same actors and sharing the same setting (an apartment),…
Alexander Korobko, “NYC to Donetsk & back” (Russian Hour, 2018) Made in 2017 or 2018, or some time after the death of Mikhail Tolstykh aka Givi…