A personal journal of film and documentary reviews, and reviews of anything else that intrigues me.
Mitsuyo Seo, “Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors” (1945) Japan’s first full-length animated movie is a World War II propaganda film aimed at children and centred around a…
Joel Coen, “Fargo” (1996) A kidnap plot cooked up to save a car salesman’s hide going awry through sheer bad luck, incompetence and stupidity is the…
Chinese and Chinese-language Films
Wan Guchan and Wan Laiming, “Princess Iron Fan” / “Tian Shan Gong Zhu” (1941) This retelling of a Chinese folk tale “Journey to the West” featuring…
Yevgeny Sherstobitov, “The Andromeda Nebula” (1967) Based on a novel “Andromeda: a Space-Age Tale” by Ivan Efremov, this is a very visually striking film about the…
Alan J Pakula, “Klute” (1971) Ostensibly a crime thriller about a prostitute who assists a small-town private investigator in a missing-person case, this film is better…
Jindrích Polák, “Ikarie XB-1” (1963) A compelling early 1960’s science fiction gem from the old Czechoslovakia is this lavish effort by Polák that details the day-to-day…
French and French-language Films
René Clair, “Paris qui dort” (1925) An amusing and light-hearted moral fable about what would happen if individuals suddenly had unfettered freedom to do what they…
Chinese and Chinese-language Films
Johnnie To, “Exiled” aka “Fong Juk” (2006) Set in Macau territory just before its return by Portugal to China in 1998, this gangster film is a…
French and French-language Films
Chris Marker, “La Jetée” aka “The Jetty’ (1962) Unusual in its use of still black-and-white photography to tell its story of time travel, this short movie…
Pavel Klushantsev, “Planeta Bur’ ” aka “The Planet of Storms” (1962) In the early 1960’s Soviet space exploration was focussed on sending probes and eventually manned…