A personal journal of film and documentary reviews, and reviews of anything else that intrigues me.
Toshiya Fujita, “Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance / Shurayukihime: Urami Renga” (1974) At the end of the first eponymous film, main character Yuki (Meiko Kaji)…
Mark Devries, “Speciesism: the Movie” (2013) As home movies go, few possibly extend very far into the realms of journeys of self-discovery and self-awakening as this…
Francis Ford Coppola, “Apocalypse Now (Redux)” (2001) The actual plot is very basic: sometime during the Vietnam War – a newspaper clipping on Charles Manson’s trial…
Ethan and Joel Coen, “Inside Llewyn Davis” (2013) Inspired by and based loosely on the life of Dave van Ronk, “Inside Llewyn Davis” follows a week…
Yasujiro Ozu, “Floating Weeds” (1959) In the hands of a lesser director, the soap opera plot of this film would have become sensationalist drama, soon to…
Stephen Frears, “Philomena” (2013) A gentle film about an elderly woman searching for the son she was coerced into putting up for adoption half a century…
Seijun Suzuki, “Tokyo Drifter / Tokyo nagaremono” (1966) A tale of larger-than-life characters grappling with their consciences and their loyalty to their superiors and the life…
Ingmar Bergman, “The Seventh Seal / Det Sjunde Inseglet” (1957) Set in Sweden during the Black Death (1347 – 1350), this famous film examines a man’s…
Ingmar Bergman, “Smultronstället / Wild Strawberries” (1957) Few movies feature 80 or 70-something actors as lead characters so to see Bergman’s “Wild Strawberries” with Viktor Sjöström in…
Terry Gilliam, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (1998) From that period of Johnny Depp’s acting career when the films he was making were actually quite…