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An incredible lineup of participants in this underseen film - Yasuzo Masumura, Ayako Wakao, Machiko Kyo, Yasunari Kawabata, Kaneto Shindo, Hikaru Hayashi, and consulting by head of the Urasenke tea ceremony school Sen Soushitsu - but the result is unfortunately a bit undercooked.
The poignancy and delicate poetry of Kawabata's work doesn't often translate well to the screen - my personal favorite film adaptations of his novels are Masahiro Shinoda's With Beauty and Sorrow, and Mikio Naruse's The Sound of the Mountain - and for this adaptation I was expecting Masumura to hone in on and accentuate the sensuality inherent in the original story, but it still feels too restrained for Masumura, and yet not restrained enough to be faithful to Kawabata's aesthetic. Ayako Wakao is enthralling as usual for the short time she's featured, and Machiko Kyo's meddlesome spinster is appropriately uncomfortable, but it feels like the film doesn't fully know or understand what it wants to do with the source material, and is unconvincing as a result.
Which is a shame because setting aside The Naked Island, this is one of Hikaru Hayashi's most incredible musical scores, and the film is worth watching simply for that.

Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Jane Birkin and Michel Legrand on the bill had me so sure this was going to hit me where I wanted it to, but it ended up being too much of a slog. The first hour and twenty minutes are just short of the right amount of tension that entices you to keep watching, and all that's left is Alain, Romy, and Jane dappled in Côte d'Azur sunlight brooding and not doing much at all - which is a shame because there's some great shots and it's bursting with color, too.
With one startingly uncomfortable pool scene, though, the film emerges from the waters of tedium and really starts sinking its teeth in, but then ends shortly after - though with a pretty memorable final few minutes.
I couldn't get over how much the film's quietness got to me, too - I'm one of the biggest advocates of silence in cinema, but in this case it just made it feel empty and lifeless. There's hardly any of Michel's music, and the best cue is right at the end!
Perhaps it's in need of a revisit further down the line, but in the meantime I'd probably only recommend just listening to the soundtrack instead.

Terrence Malick is so good at showing you how to celebrate life - it's mostly all in the details, and his making you watch little life events like looking out the window in the afternoon or running through a field of grass almost feels akin to guided meditation, breathing in and out.
When I got around to watching The Tree of Life, though, I came to the sudden realisation that he's not great at showing the ugliness, the dirt beneath the 'good things' in life here, which I felt balances his other films like The Thin Red Line, Badlands and even The New World out a little better. It gets a little too spiritual, too holy for me to really be floored by, but it's still such a deeply beautiful film.

I am one of the sorry people that only recently found out that there was a truly horrible moment in history at Gwangju in the 80s after reading Han Kang's excellent Human Acts, and I picked up this movie to hear more of the story from another perspective.
And what a perspective it is...I am simply in awe at Song Kang-ho's mastery of his craft - he has made me feel so many things, and his range in A Taxi Driver reaches from some of the funniest interactions I've ever seen to some of the most devastating. The stark contrast between light (hijinks abound between an eccentric taxi driver and his foreigner enger!) and dark (many innocent people are murdered en masse in cold blood by the military!) tones in this movie sounds disatrous but somehow works, and serves to remind us that it happened amidst mundane daily life.
The film falters a bit in its last climactic act due to an overabundance of melodrama and slow motion, but thankfully finishes on an atypical, powerful ending.

Romanticizing Japan as a haven of tranquility and adoration of the simple things in life is a hard sell when you know the reality, and I must it no small amount of that trepidation kept me from watching this movie despite the mountains of praise it was getting. Thankfully it's devoid of pretension and contrivance, and instead manages to be a beautiful, sincere portrait of an unmarried older Japanese gentleman in Tokyo doing things a typical unmarried older Japanese gentleman in Tokyo would do.
The remarkable thing about the film is how balanced it is: anything less than how minimal Wenders tells this story wouldn't have been enough, and any more detail or explanation would be too much - and it is enough to simply see Koji Yakusho's Hirayama live almost wordlessly through what he sees and hears. The whole time I watched Hirayama interact with the world, all I could feel was that I was watching someone that has lived through a lot of pain - it can be very difficult to have such a low threshold for contentment if you haven't long dealt with its polar opposite - and the brief encounter we see with his sister was more than enough to establish that for certain.
It doesn't quite get the perfect 5 from me largely because of the awkward Haruki Murakami-isms - like Takashi's "(9) out 10!" motif, and the young mysterious pixie dreamgirl character - that took me right out of the trance it had me under.

A fun, easy-to-digest Mission Impossible-like that feels like playing secret agents with your friends in the playground. The stakes are a bit too low and everyone in the movie seems a little too close to snickering and breaking character that it's hard to take it too seriously, but it features some genuinely great espionage sequences - the recreation of a kidnapping through sonic information being the standout one for me, which is also incidentally how I found out about the film in the first place.

One of Cassavetes's best and truly a wonderful watch. His films feel so visceral, present and intimate, it's easy to get wrapped up in the events that unfold onscreen as if you were there. While there were a little too many moments of tedium in the extended cut of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, watching Gena Rowlands's performance of Myrtle is nothing short of spectacular. I found the sparing use of a clearly stated, piano-based musical score to be incredibly effective as well, more so than any overexplanatory underscoring.
The only thing that takes it off a 5-star rating for me is how the improv feels at times. there are a few instances where some lines feel artificial, or one actor might go to make a statement just as another one does and there's that awkward pause when you wait for the other person to keep talking. What might have been easily remedied by throwing out the poorer take and going with a different one is shunned in favor of keeping a take for its good moments, warts and all - which is a reasoning that I can entirely understand given how many exceptional performances there are in the film.

A stunningly beautiful film that I watched most of in a half-dream state which I think was probably appropriate. I could probably keep watching a film like this for hours on end - there are numerous instances of practical effects that look a dozen times more picturesque than CGI, and the way it sounds and how the lights and shadows look are nothing short of poetry.
I thought it was great adaptation of the Orpheus and Eurydice tale, but at times too obfuscated for me to really emotionally resonate with - I think it's something I'll keep coming back to, however.

Not a bad update on the revenge exploitation genre, and really gets going at about the halfway mark. It's hyperreal in the way that The Substance is, and while that kind of tone isn't really my cup of tea it gives it the advantage of getting away with some pretty ridiculous sequences. Of the three confrontations the last standoff in particular stood out to me the most, but I was left feeling like Coralie could have gone even further with the other two - particularly the main perpetrator, whose sequence felt undeservedly uncathartic.

I saw an excerpt of this many years ago - I think it was of the first part of the film - in a class on sound design, and it was beautiful for a while but I kind of got my fill after about 10 minutes or so. I had always meant to sit down and watch the whole thing but there was always this irrational fear in my mind that there might not be anything more to the film than the few minutes I had already seen.
Anyway I finally sat down and watched it and while I'm glad I did, it didn't end up being a memorable Wenders experience for me, and I think the "angels hearing the thoughts of everyday life and seeing time flow in to eternity" does outstay its welcome a bit too much. I thoroughly enjoyed Peter Falk - it just so happens I'd also been watching episodes of Columbo at the time - and Solveig Dommartin's character, though, and the film itself looks and sounds beautiful.

A very grimy, gritty thriller that almost feels like found footage analog horror thanks to its use of real life locations and digital HD video. Outside Peter Mullan's excellent lead performance the acting feels a little too flimsy (I can't ever take David Caruso too seriously for some reason) and the film never feels convincing in how it spins its narrative, but there are several sequences that are incredibly effective in evoking terror that make it worth a look.

Great concept and executed relatively well, but suffers from subpar writing, acting, and puzzling audio decisions. Watching how some scenes unfolded with such artificial conversation often felt like sitting through pseudo-realistic, clickbaity, obviously scripted 10-minute content creator video slop.
The way they mixed the dialogue was somewhat confounding - regardless of where the viewer's POV is, the dialogue always seemed to be right up front in the mix, with no audible depth related to how the camera moved around the characters save for a little panning. Unless there was very specific intent to create this kind of spatial disconnect between the viewer/ghost POV and the characters that move around the house it inhabits, why rely so heavily on the lavalier recordings? Assuming they had a boom mic following the camera, why didn't they mix more of that in to get more immersive sound that matched the visuals? Lemme hear some more of how these room reverbs respond to the words that are being spoken!

In any case, with this and In A Violent Nature being made/released in close proximity to one another, I'm sensing a new trend in POV films - so please allow me to use this space to propose some other ideas for films made from a POV perspective.

- courtroom drama: from the POV of either a prosecution attorney, defendant, stenographer, or judge - all would be interesting!
- heist thriller: from the POV of a bank vault
- POV from a sand worm in Dune 3.
- a quirky Wes Anderson-like dramedy from the POV of a grandfather clock
- a dramatic portrait of a figure in music, a lá TAR, but from the perspective of a sheet music stand

p.s.: unintentional but Presence and A Ghost Story one after another looks great in my recent activity! would probably work as a double feature but A Ghost Story ought to go second.

I can't help but feel like this movie might have hit me much harder at a different point in my life - like I'm just a little bit too old or too young to be on its exact wavelength - but I still had the feeling that I was watching something incredibly sincere and beautiful. There was lots I loved about it - in particular the way it sounds and the way it moves/its sense of scale - but the last half or so didn't reel me in as much as I hoped. Volume 2 of Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix is kind of the benchmark for me for "person retains consciousness after death and can only watch time progress long past humanity ceases to exist". I'll come back to this one i think!

The act of watching, distilled down into its purest form. It may be criticized as boring and yet some of the most popular short- and long-form video content consumed today is mukbangs, "POV" daily routine videos, ASMR, and other voyeuristic material, all of which feature some way or another in Jeanne Dielman - yet unlike the slop that permeates modern social media, this film is freed from the capitalistic content-for-content's-sake formula and instead gives us a multitude of meanings and narratives to chew over as we watch through the window onto this "little life".

MiniDemyFest 2025 film #2. A natural progression from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg - although this time the film works as a more traditional musical with dialogue and dance interspered with song - and a similarly wonderful watch. There's a lot to love about Rochefort, from its dazzingly charming leads to the use of color and set design, and it goes without saying that Michel Legrand's music shines here as well.
And yet, for me it doesn't quite overtake Cherbourg in of depth. There's certainly a lot of spectacle, but ultimately not much in the way of stakes plotwise - the resplendent, lighthearted tone that the movie opens with stays constant throughout the entire 2 hour runtime, and whatever tension there is trivial at best, with resolutions that are delayed only by frivolous circumstance. For those reasons I was ultimately left feeling frustrated as I watched the story unfold, and it's only barely saved by terrific choreography and Legrand's arrangements - though again, ittedly less memorable numbers than Cherbourg (for me the music peaks right at the beginning with the sisters' introductory song).
In any case it's a fantastic double feature when put with Cherbourg, and does a lot to offset the heartbreak that the former leaves you with.

Whenever I hear works that use operatic recitative, including when it's used more sparingly in musical theatre, I'm always amazed at how well composers translate the subtle nuances of rhythms and phrasing in speech to genuinely good music - it should make sense, I guess, because while they've evolved over millennia to be rather different things, music and speaking are intrinsically related. Nevertheless recitative to me has always felt like a balancing act between the music of language, and the language of music - when it hits, it's enchanting, but the sheer amount of it in an average opera could mean that there's a lot of dreary material on average to sit through during the work - and as a result it's a little harder for me than song to feel truly invested in its use. What's more, in our modern age opera/recitative is a listening experience that's generally further away in familiarity to the common ear than musical theatre, and theatre songs have had the unfortunate experience of being lampooned in many ways over the years (likely thanks in no small part to the swathe of subpar musical theatre). For me it's taken hearing Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw, and to a further extent Sunday in the Park with George and other Stephen Sondheim musicals to finally appreciate recitative in not just a formulaic way, but an emotional and artistic one as well.
Which is all to say, Jacques Demy/Michel Legrand opting to use recitative throughout the entirety of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg was a decision that took me quite a long while to warm to, but ultimately left me feeling moved and musically nurtured. If I could pinpoint what I liked so much about this film, I'd probably mention how deftly Legrand manages to suddenly pluck the most incredibly beautiful melodic phrase out of nowhere for a nothing line like "Oh, I see", or how he effortlessly inserts meter and tempo changes here and there like it's the most natural thing in the world. Natural speech patterns don't often utilize repetition or motivic development - which is one of the ways it branches away from musical expression, as in music repetition and development helps to ground sounds in a familiar structure - but there are moments in Cherbourg's score that capitalize on those delicious little motifs ("Bonjour, Guy!" "Bonjour, Madeleine!"), and for me it holds the whole thing together so much better than adhering simply to through-composed recitative.
It bears mention that there's a lot to be missed out on when you're not a native speaker of the language being sung - whether the use of recitative is effective or not has a lot to do with that music/language balancing act, and so if you're not aware of how the natural rhythms of a certain language ought to be, the quality of the recitative can be hard to gauge. I'm not fluent in French, and so I'm essentially in the dark listening to this score, placing my trust in Legrand's grasp of the language - but to my ears it sounds like he's done a great job balancing his own sound with more formulaic French recitative, in a situation he hadn't been very familiar with before being assigned the task.

With all that said: when the strains of "I Will Wait For You" ("Je ne pourrai jamais vivre sans toi") kick in, and the full scope of Legrand's mastery of heart-rending melody, harmony and orchestration is on display, it is difficult for even the coldest of hearts to remain unmoved. By the end of the film we've heard the song's main motif numerous times, and yet it is such a beautiful collection of notes that it stills pack a punch by the finale - a musical quality which is, in my opinion, largely thanks to Legrand's heavy reliance on using suspensions/approach notes to delay resolutions on cadences. You can hear how comfortable he is threading melodies through II-V-Is in that kind of chanson-esque, heart-rending way, and yet despite how a lot of his scores exhibit the same kind of navigation of these cadences, they're just so gosh darn beautiful that I feel like I could listen to them on end for days (and i have!).
That's enough gushing for now but other things I liked about this wonderful movie: the colors, the outfits, and the way it doesn't have a storybook ending. Demy/Legrand 4eva!!

Incredible commitment to being unsettling, with just the right amount of vagueness that makes it hard to tear your eyes away even if you're not really sure what's happening. If the flesh of the self feels alien, then there must be some pleasure had in its destruction.
Alexander Skarsgård and Mia Goth are great leads to watch and there's a lovely, restrained Tim Hecker score to boot. Brandon Cronenberg's playful insertions of abstracted, ambiguous imagery, which also worked beautifully in Possessor, were some of my favorite parts of the film.

A lean road thriller that hinges on fears of stranger danger in wide open spaces. Once the wheels start turning not an ounce of tension goes to waste which makes for an incredibly enjoyable time at the movies.
Ultimately the villains of the story didn't strike me as either particularly terrifying or convincing in their motives, which lowered the stakes for me a bit - but Kurt Russell plays the desparate savior husband character very well.

Watching this feels like living through an entire lifetime dappled in countryside sunlight, feeling the entire spectrum of human emotions. it's such a resonant, beautiful film that it even makes you completely forget about the fact that there's a scene where Clint's character tells a dubious story about copulating with a gorilla!

A sunset-tinged 80s neo noir/cop procedural that's a bit of a beautiful mess. Features some incredible action sequences (the car chase was my personal favorite), a slick performance from Willem Dafoe and then the rest is just vibes - which is great if you're into that sort of thing.
A lot of people rave about the Wang Chung soundtrack but outside of a few tracks, it didn't stand out that much to me.

An incredibly beautiful film full of warm, earthy imagery, Tuscan soundscapes, and arrestingly tender moments. You can feel Apitchatpong's influence in how time is represented, and Fellini's in how the characters interact with one another and their surroundings.
Also most of the English blurbs for this film use the word "crumpled" to describe Josh O'Connor's character, and I could not think of a more apt adjective.

Pretty impressive on a technical level. It looks stunning, is played to near perfection by its cast (between this, Good Time and The Curse, I'm still finding pleasant surprise in Benny Safdie's incredible acting range??), and showcases Ludwig Goransson's deftness in taking Hans Zimmerisms and making them sound much better than Hans himself. However I still couldn't shake the feeling that it feels like a soulless superhero film. You're not going to please everyone with this kind of subject matter, and if that's the case then you need to go all in on whatever it is you're trying to say. The film shines in those echoes of stamping feet, ghostly hallucinations of wanton violence, and afterimages of blinding light, but for me it still reeks too much of a glossy, capitalist "biopic" and there's just not enough commitment to the "humans are doomed to the cycle of self-destruction" bit, in the way that something like Killers of the Flower Moon did.

I'm showing a lot of restraint not including in my review that I thought this film was a "hoot". It was a fun watch though! Hunter Schafer is great, and I like premises about sinister resorts and fucked up ancient human bird people. It ended up being too convoluted to really stick the landing, and I just didn't find it (particularly the design of the 'monster') satisfyingly creepy, but it's got a lot going for it.

I love Ursula with many fibers of my being and while it was great seeing all this archival footage and beautiful hand-drawn animated renditions of some of her more popular works, she's deserving of a better documentary. Especially when a lot of this one is taken up by talking heads footage of known ab Neil Gaiman, which now just feels like a bad jumpscare.

On a surface level I did rather enjoy this, but the longer you sit with it the more you realise it's nothing terribly special. Everything is pretty good in this - good photography & lighting, good acting, good sound - and that's about it. The thing is just that it's Nosferatu, and there's already two exceptional Nosferatu films. Eggers played it pretty straight here, and I'm not sure it worked out for him...I still yearn for more of whatever batshit secret sauce Eggers was cooking with in The Witch and The Lighthouse.
Included in my generously high rating are the following matters of concern:
- Willem Dafoe spraying a cloud of dust from his back when he suddenly gets up out of his armchair
- Count Orlok's dialogue production and blocking during his first meeting with Sam

Must have hit so hard in Showa era Japan - and by "hit so hard", I mean largely disregarded due to its overtly feminist overtones. In any case any Ayako Wakao/Yasuzo Masumura cinema is good cinema, and Love and Greed is no exception - its only shortcomings are that Wakao isn't utilized quite enough, and the narrative itself isn't particularly thrilling. Just lots of awful men doing silly little patriarchal things and women suffering from it, sometimes paying for it with their own lives. There's a running theme in this film around the idea of a "box" - namely the ones women are confined to in Japanese society - and Masumura does an excellent job of conveying it through masterful use of confined spaces and exquisite framing.

A little on the hamfisted side with its themes, and much too long for its own good, but I had a lot of fun with it, all things considered. It's straight up ridiculous and I think a lot works in its favor when it leans into that ridiculousness. Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid are all excellent. Looking forward to sitting through more highly acclaimed body horror flicks as Very Much Not A Body Horror Guy.

I thought this was a pretty fine, enjoyable flick as long as you don't get to caught up in its shortcomings. With films that posit heavy lore like the creation of mankind, I've found that as long as you meet it where it's at, you're likely not going to feel cheated. imparting a sense of wonder is one of the best things a film could bestow upon you, and it's worth ing that it doesn't always owe you a watertight, plausible explanation - in fact a film is better off without one if the wonder is enough.
Prometheus is basically plane movie fodder, only it looks really good so you kinda do need a decent setup to get the most out of it. I felt it would've done better without such a large cast of characters and a better script.

Vale David Lynch. The last time I saw the theatrical cut of FWWM was over ten years ago, and over the past month or two I've been watching a 35mm-emulated version of the Extended Blue Rose cut. While there are a few scenes whose lengths don't seem completely essential, seeing the characters interact with one another in a more slower-paced, languid way makes the film settle into itself a little more, and make it feel more like The Return.
Anyway I finally reached the end of this nearly 3 and a half hour cut as I was at home alone, a few days after David Lynch's ing, anxiously waiting by the phone to hear news of when my daughter will be born. I watched as she arrived, dewey-eyed, serene and endlessly curious at the world, the following morning.
Thank you David for sharing your art and being such an incredible role model for how to lead a beautiful life.

A beautiful but bittersweet and painful movie for a few reasons - Ryuichi Sakamoto's last, Kore-eda's return to form, and the fact that a story like this wouldn't be as real and believable if it took place in a country where people actually feel that they are able to communicate their feelings clearly, even when it might open you up to vulnerability.

Wasn't sure what Wim Wenders would do with the whole Ripley thing so I put this off for ages. anyway I finally watched it and sure enough the Ripley side of the film - especially Dennis Hopper's wildly uncharismatic portrayal - isn't what works in its favor. What does though is Bruno Ganz's beautiful performance, Jürgen Knieper's incredible score, and how beautiful Wenders made everything look.

An understated & heartfelt portrayal of things felt that are not easy to talk about. there's no real manufactured, dramatic story of grief and closure, nor is there any contrived lessons learned from a little trip abroad - just pretty real stuff! and to be totally honest that real stuff isn't very cinematic. it's quiet and often unknowable, which i think this film does a good job of capturing - you only really have to look at Kieran Culkin's eyes, or Jesse Eisenberg's body language to feel it.
opening with a run-of-the-mill Chopin number initially made me wary but I was won over upon realizing the move was to make the whole score Chopin...very shrewd of you Eisenberg!

I haven't seen Alive so this wasn't really a 'comparitive' watch for me, but while it does have that 'sheen' you see all over Netflix, i thought it was a beautiful, sensitive portrayal of such a horrific event. With so many survivors involved it's hard to have a distinct attachment to most of them over its 2 and a half hour runtime, but excellent writing and moving performances help save it from being too convoluted or contrived.

First film of 2025. Rolled my eyes when I saw the trailer for this last year, but it was on a couple of 2024 top ten lists so i took a look and yeah it's not terrible! For a film with a villain whose motive is to 'own Mormons and other religious fanatics with atheism', there's not a whole lot of cringe and is played very well by Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East. I loved Mr. Reed's dinky, weird house that verges on impossible architecture, with all its dark spaces and steampunk contraptions.

Weird side note, I was watching Silicon Valley around the same time as this and it happened to coincide with the episode about the patent troll. anyway I ended up getting confused and thinking that the plotline of using a fictional country song called "I'm Crying (With My Eyes)" was used as a rebuttal to Mr. Reed's points about music copyright appeared in this film. period!

Last film of 2024. Look i've always felt a bit icky about Clint acting in his own movies as the "old white racist" character, but he is just inarguably good at what he does. The Mule is on the better end of the spectrum, in large part thanks to how watchable he is as a withered old man - his raspy voice muttering cheeky witticisms, his droopy skeletal hands hanging from his massive truck's steering wheel. Beneath whatever cheesy crust the story has is a genuinely warm tale, that hits all the right points at the right times and never really outstays its welcome.
It's a little Breaking Bad-esque with its "mostly straight-ahead guy does crimes for a good cause", but to be honest if Breaking Bad had Clint's kinda humor it might have actually been a decent show & people might have noticed!

A taut & well-made little horror film, with a great score and sound design. It veers a little too much into tropey tongue-in-cheek-dom with the kooky mental patients and the unnecessarily irritating "evil new woman", but there are plenty of effective scenes that make it worth a watch.

To be honest I was expecting more actual chimes, but maybe there were more in there than I thought? I guess チャイム could also be used for the sound of the doorbell. In any case, lots to like here. as with other KK masterpieces he manages to make things seem just a little too unsettling: that first 'outburst' in the class perfectly captures how quickly the air turns ice cold when you stand your ground here and get just a little too negative. are these kinds of characters in Kurosawa's films ways to elicit fear, or is it some kind of criticism against these social constructions that refuse to allow outlets for those that fall just outside the criteria imposed on everyone?
And the cans! Can collection is like once a week, but even then. no one's drinking that much from cans.
This is one of the bluest films I'd seen recently for sure - that first shot of Matsuoka leaving the classroom building, and the blue sign, the blue vending machine...wow! Score was a little too Threnody towards the end.

Incredibly beautiful & powerful portrayal of gender dysphoria and transitioning. Feeling like you don't have anywhere you can be comfortable, and unexpectedly finding the one person that knows about some niche thing you do and you end up being your most vulnerable around as a result are two parts of this film that found their way deep inside me, but as a whole I felt it wasn't really a film for me personally. I can only imagine what it must be like to feel this seen, though, and to have something this beautifully made speak to you i think is a very special thing.

Affecting and genuine. perfectly captures the quiet joy, discomfort, and curiosity of childhood that tends to warp memories and place strange heaviness on certain small details, and the encroaching dread of parenthood (i imagine). beautiful, restrained Oliver Coates score.

Pastoral films with an ample amount of mythos, textural & abstract imagery, an electroacoustic sonic atmosphere, and striking colors are a super easy sell for me, so I was pretty transfixed from the opening recorder cue. I like how the film leans in to its mysticism, and opts for weirdness over a clear cut morality tale.

Soul shattering in a relatively quiet way, especially if you are placing a lot of stock in the existence of something that is intangible.
My personal takeaway upon watching Winter Light is that although there is always the possibility that the love and comion you give will be met with a blank void, if you look out a window on a winter's day, you at least get to feel the sun’s warmth on your face - even if you're alone.

A whole lot of marketing sound and fury signifying essentially nothing. I went in in somewhat of a brace position expecting to see something that fetishizes the ever-increasing divides and rifts in American society, but came out of it feeling like it never really committed to anything. There's a lot of good performances in it, and a couple of inspired moments that have oft been praised in reviews - Kirsten Dunst peacefully napping amongst flowers while under sniper fire, the Jesse Plemons scene, the final White House sequence - but it seems too preoccupied with being apolitical to be truly memorable, and no slow-motion montages put to ironic Americana needle drops can save it.
Perhaps it's still a little too early to deal with this subject matter? It may get better with age - that awful gut feeling of how these social rifts may tear us apart in the very near future if we don't do something might be preventing us from making measured responses to media such as this, which almost seems to capitalize on misery.

Uniquely sinister and uncomfortable in a way that is hard to describe. Bette Davis is unreal, and this film is worth watching for her portrayal of the crumbling Baby Jane, but aside from a few standout moments - rat food, voice imitations over the phone to the liquor store, Baby Jane's rehearsals, and the tense final act - it didn't leave a huge impression on me.

In all honesty I don't find that drama films whose subject matter primarily concerns rich people/people that are obviously well off elicit much of an emotional response from me, but the wealth of the family in Ordinary People is more or less on the periphery, and more time is devoted to awkward social interactions, tender & heartfelt conversations, and a sensitive portrayal of the impacts of mental illness on, well, ordinary people. It's a moving watch any way you look at it, and the performances by Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, and in particular Timothy Hutton are undeniably affecting.
A personal critique I had was the score - the sparing use of Pachelbel's Canon using mostly just solo piano was effective to an extent, but I needed a little more musical development at certain times.

A very good, still very engaging courtroom drama for many reasons: men with names like Polly, Parnell, and Dancer; Duke Ellington's rampant score (& cameo playing piano with James Stewart); and being a depressing reminder that we have been putting up with old men arguing with each other about consent and female bodily autonomy, in the interest of male reputation and integrity, for a ridiculous amount of time and still haven't made much progress.

A weird watch in these times as it's very easy to find yourself rooting for Cillian's character's assassination plan, and ending up disappointed with the "happy ending".
Nevertheless it's a harmless, run-of-the-mill thriller for when you're on a plane and would like to reminisce about what dating was like in 2005 and when Brian Cox still had his natural hair color.

Perfectly captures the fear of meeting people that seem like they have everything figured out.
As a horror film it basically ticks all the right boxes, and twists the screw just enough at certain points to make it difficult to look away - and then pummels you with an overly brutal payoff at the end. I thought the way it was acted, particularly the father and mother characters Bjorn and Louise, was exceptional too, as was the score, and for these reasons i feel like it's a good film overall - just not an easy watch at all, and hard to recommend as a result.

My first Hamaguchi after hearing almost nothing but praise, but a lot of mixed feelings after finally devoting 3 hours to watching it. I don't think there's much 'bad' moviemaking going on in it - it's obviously lovingly crafted, and it looks and sounds great (obligatory shout out to Eiko san and her great score). I've been trying to figure out why it didn't rub me in any way like it seemed to rub many other people, and I think it comes down to how it is acted, i.e. incredibly detached and flat (particularly Nishijima who is one of the most wooden, boring actors I've seen in contemporary Japanese cinema, although there is one certain scene in this where he manages to break through that a little), and how the story is told.
Murakami has a lot of interesting ideas - even if he keeps reverting to the same symbolism and motifs - but the affectatious nature of his writing wore off on me pretty early on, and has only seemed to worsen (I couldn't make it through IQ84 and haven't touched anything of his since then). I felt i understood his writing a little better once I tried reading it in its native Japanese, but in the interest of avoiding a long-winded literature-oriented essay here, the best way to put it would be that Drive My Car resonates the most with those that resonate with Murakami's writing as a whole. for those that aren't attuned to whatever frequency Murakami is broadcasting on, whatever magic that existed for us in his early prose has only really translated well to film in one instance, and that instance is Lee Chang-dong's Burning.

When you learn to speak another language you realise how much of your personality and ideology leans on how your first language works, both systematically and culturally, for better or worse. There are certainly cases where someone might feel more like themselves in a language other than their own, but the most terrifying thing about knowing a 'foreign' tongue is how it comes to represent who you are for a certain number of people that come to know you through that language. There are a lot of people I come into with on a day to day basis, with whom I communicate in my second language - expressing my feelings, saying things that are both positive and negative, and knowing when not to speak - and every now and then I am overcome with the awful thought that they have no idea how I "usually" speak. Personalities are very hard to translate. For all I know, in a way the people I interact with in my second language most likely have the "wrong" idea about me and who i am.
I understand that European languages might be a little more fluid with one another, but I still can't imagine being on the witness stand and having to be honest and personable in a language that isn't my own. The moments where this film hit the hardest for me were when Sandra chose English over French, and when difference in "comfortable" languages fueled her arguments with her husband. If i could opt for the option to just not speak I probably would.

A more playful take on a small town serial killer murder mystery with horror elements, The Wolf of Snow Hollow doesn't take much time to dwell on the tension of its narrative - it's a snappy film that zips through the terror it portrays, but somehow the oddly unserious, mismatched tone works to its advantage. There are a number of scenes where pieces of dialogue string together past and present events, and the film uses well-timed cuts to blend the two timeframes together - it's a neat little way of relaying plot points, the way it takes a single simple sequence but shows it jumping backward and forward in time. With its offbeat tone and at the pace it moves at it's hard to feel too emotionally invested in a lot of the characters - possibly one of the most pivotal points for Jim Cummings' character in the last act seems to just come and go - but a lot is still felt through body language and facial expressions, thanks to both the direction and incredible acting from Cummings, Riki Lindhome and Robert Forster. The film's shortcomings (shortcummings?) aren't enough to stop it from being a rollicking good time, and it's one i'd probably recommend to anyone looking for an easily digestible mystery thriller.

Movies mentioned in "Music in Cinema" by Michel Chion (2021). chronological order.

• The Assassination of the Duke de Guise
• Cabiria
• The Birth of a Nation
• La Roue
• Cœur fidèle
• Entr'acte
• Greed
• L'Inhumaine
• The Last Laugh
• Don Juan

...plus 277 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Japanese films I have written English subtitles for.
List ordered in chronological order of when the subs were released.

translation notes etc. are on my tumblr: ohakosubs.tumblr.com/

• Amagi
• The Whispering Star
• Bitterness of Youth
• The Japanese Belly Button
• The Freezing Point
• Closed Vagina
• Before Spring
• Mosh Pit
• Death at an Old Mansion
• Vixen

...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The humble Pool: a place of reflection, of restoration, of learning, of enlightenment, of death, of birth, of eroticism.
Where does man's obsession with the lowly pool come from? is owning a pool akin to having power over the oceans that surround us, the chance to become a household Poseidon?
perhaps these films hold the answer, or at the very least give you ideas about: (1) how to use a pool, (2) how not to use a pool, (3) what owning a pool could entail, and (4) what your pool can do for you.

• Cat People
• It's a Wonderful Life
• Sunset Boulevard
• Million Dollar Mermaid
• Diabolique
• Taste of Fear
• The Terrace
• Alphaville
• The Graduate
• The Swimmer

...plus 36 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I’ve always enjoyed seeing how the process of creating and working with sound is portrayed in (fictional) film, so I made a list of movies that have characters whose professions are in the sound industry. Features & biopics about musicians, composers, documentaries etc are largely omitted.

• The Stone Tape
• What's Up, Doc?
• The Conversation
• The Shout
• Blow Out
• White of the Eye
• Lisbon Story
• Soundman
• Séance

...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A comprehensive list of the film adaptations of the work of Japanese man mystery author Rampo Edogawa 江戸川乱歩 (1894–1965), who dreamt of human chairs, murderers in the ceiling, grasshopper ladies, mirror fetishes and other sexy Taisho-era nightmares, and the creator of famed detective extraordinare Kogoro Akechi.
chronological order.

Not listed:
Issun-boshi (一寸法師), dr. Sanjugo Naoki, Seika Shiba (1927)
Issun-boshi (一寸法師), dr. Tetsuo Ichikawa (1948)
Kaijin Nijumensou (怪人二十面相), dr. Susumu Yumizuri (1954) (in 3 parts)
some of the Boy Detectives series 1956-59: #5, #6,
Kumo-otoko no Gyakushuu (蜘蛛男の逆襲), dr. Hiroyuki Yamamoto (1958)
Yaneura no Sanposha (屋根裏の散歩者), dr. Akitaka Kimata (1970)
Meitantei Akechi Kogoro TV movie series 1994-99
Ningen-isu (人間椅子), dr. Keisaku Satô (2007)
Yaneura no sanposha (屋根裏の散歩社), dr. Mitsuhiro Mihara (2007)
D-zaka no satsujin jiken (D-坂の殺人事件), dr. Shoji Kubota (2015)

• Palette knife no satsujin
• Ghost Tower
• White-haired Demon
• Hyōchū no Bijo
• The Bronze Monster
• Mysterious Pygmy
• Crossroad
• The Boy Detectives Club – Doctor Phantom
• The Boy Detectives Club – The Devil with Twenty Faces
• Shonen Tanteidan: Kabu to Mushi no Yoki

...plus 30 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I put together a two-semester film music/sound design study program for students of my graduate sound studies class at Senzoku Gakuen entitled インターメディア表現研究. The curated films are required viewing from week to week, and a 15 to 20 minute discussion on the chosen film (in particular its music/sound design) is held at the beginning of every weekly 90 minute class. I wrote down some of the students' responses during this weekly discussion time here - open the notes to read them.

1. Vertigo

   Class of 2024:

   - "The score was really expansive - it had a huge scale."

   - "Almost blinding use of color - reds and greens - that were also kind of audible in the score."

   - "A lot of the music sounded 'geometrical' - like the shapes during the title sequence. Felt like looking down from somewhere up high."

   - "I feel like there's some correlation between the music and the image of a spiral staircase."

   - "The music really illustrates what is happening on screen - maybe too much."

2. Arrival

   Class of 2024:

   - "Like its central theme, the story is basically elliptical - you could watch it backwards, or forwards. Made me think about the 'direction' of film narratives." (me: 'did you try watching it backwards?') "...yes."

   - "I like how it made the idea of chronology ambiguous. The music shared some of that idea too."

   - "There wasn't much differentiation between sound effects and sounds from the score. The music 'belongs' to this film - it doesn't work anywhere else."

   - "Lots of low sounds in the score."

   - "Finding out that some of the sounds were a tape loop made me think that thought had gone into playing around with 'time' when making the music."

3. Mon Oncle

   Class of 2024:

   - "So much of the sound was dubbed - it was pretty weird."

   - "There were many cases where the 'proper' sound didn't happen, and in its place was a different, more surreal sound."

   - "Such sprightly music! Like watching an animated Disney film, only live-action."

   - "I didn't think the music was that interesting. It just seemed to be there - it didn't really match what was on screen."

   - "Sound quality was pretty bad. There were a lot of strange electrical sounds. I can't get the music out of my head - not sure if that's good or bad."

4. 2001: A Space Odyssey

   Class of 2024:

   - "A lot of the music - the choral music especially - was traumatic for me."
   - "Weird that classical waltzes work so well in space."
   - "This film's use of famous pieces of classical music is so renowned that it's impossible to separate the two - or ignore our biases - these days. I do like that those pieces are used to punctuate and drive the narrative forward."
   - "Some of the best uses of complete silence in film."
   - "What was with the music that kept playing until long after the credits finished?"

5. Band of Outsiders

   (no discussion held due to mid)

6. Woman in the Dunes

   (no discussion held due to mid)

7. Chinatown

   Class of 2024:

   - "The ending was so tragic, I'm still feeling pretty mad about it. Great score."

   - "A lot of emphasis placed on environmental sounds - the water flowing, and so on."

   - "Noir films like these make you feel like you are the detective, and so finding out about certain things in the same way that the protagonist does is a great way of telling the story. It seemed as if the music was used to highlight when certain pieces of the puzzle came together."

   - "It felt appropriate to not use music (where possible) during conversation scenes."

8. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

   (no discussion due to assignment submission)

9. Blade Runner

   (no discussion due to assignment submission)

10. Thief

    Class of 2024:

    - "Different to other mainstream film music in that it is very minimal/repetitive - lots of repeated motifs."

    - "The music doesn't necessarily portray characterization - it's more concerned with creating a 'vibe'."

    - "Using sound effects 'in the music' was pretty wild. I particularly liked the car horns during the chase scene."

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

the films/short series that made the biggest impression on me in 2024.

• Sleep Has Her House
• The Zone of Interest
• The Holdovers
• Anatomy of a Fall
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• Birth
• The Green Knight
• Kinds of Kindness
• Longlegs
• Aftersun

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

the films/short series that made the biggest impression on me in 2023.

• Memoria
• TÁR
• The Banshees of Inisherin
• Poor Things
• Dream Scenario
• Barbarian
• Triangle of Sadness
• BEEF
• Leave the World Behind

the films/short series that made the biggest impression on me in 2022.

• Nope
• Séance
• Station Eleven
• Next of Kin
• Dead of Night
• The Ear
• Häxan
• Italianamerican
• Scanners

I'm (supposed to be) writing a Masters thesis on Toshi Ichiyanagi's work with different filmmakers, so this list helps me keep track of what I've seen (that's on Letterboxd at least).
Chronological order.

• Pitfall
• Sculptures by Sofu - Vita
• Closed Vagina
• The Solar Thread
• A Story Written with Water
• Kachi Kachi Yama
• The River - Poem of Wrath
• The Room
• Farewell to the Summer Light
• Tragedy on the G Line

...plus 17 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

films of Yule that are worth a look. happy holidays!

• Fanny and Alexander
• The Signalman
• The Muppet Christmas Carol
• The Holdovers
• Black Christmas
• The Nightmare Before Christmas
• Whistle and I'll Come to You
• Home Alone
• Robbie the Reindeer: Hooves of Fire
• Blast of Silence

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I'll probably never get to see these films, and heck does that make me sigh.
Records of traces of the film's viewability will be written in the notes.

• The Abalone Gals

  Found a record of a screening at Jimbocho Theater back in 2012, as part of an "Aesthetics of Eroticism" retrospective, and at Cinema Vera in 2010.

• Night Ladies

  Old pinku retrospective screenings are probably the best bet.

• Secret Agent 101
• Ejima and Ikushima
• The Love Robots
• Mermaids and Sea Robbers
• Interpol Code 8
• The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty
• 17-Year-Old Free Love Tribe
• Lady with Seven Faces

• Dead & Buried
• From Beyond
• I Saw the TV Glow
• Watcher
• Session 9
• Messiah of Evil
• Infinity Pool
• Significant Other
• The Exorcist III

Films that opt for quiet sound design during climactic or tense sequences, as opposed to loudness.
Inspired by this NPR article by Linda Holmes:

• The Third Man
• Stray Dog
• The Wages of Fear
• Diabolique
• Rififi
• Harakiri
• The Great Silence
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• The Conversation
• The Parallax View

...plus 8 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Really great film scores & soundtracks.
in no order of note.

• Rikyu
• Hotarubi no Mori e
• The Revenant
• The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
• Kwaidan
• Under the Skin
• Chinatown
• Harakiri
• I ♥ Huckabees
• Me, Natalie

...plus 17 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

i am approaching my thirdest decade in the world, and of the three decades i have lived through the decade of 2010～2019 is the decade that i probably the best. these are the movies that i dug the most from the decade and there are still lots I haven't seen so i will likely keep adding to it.

1. The Witch
2. Hereditary
3. Under the Skin
4. Raw
5. Before Midnight
6. The Master
7. First Reformed
8. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda
9. Nebraska
10. Arrival

...plus 18 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Films featuring or set in Japan's subtropical inland sea, Setouchi, and the islands peppering it (including Shikoku).

to add to letterboxd: 愛の讃歌（1964）山田洋次
瀬戸はよいとこ 花嫁観光船（1976）瀬川昌治

• Spring on Leper's Island
• Twenty-Four Eyes
• Five Sisters
• The Maiden Courtesan
• Times of Joy and Sorrow
• Island of Fury
• The Naked Island
• The Pirates
• Hadashi no hanayome
• Eyes, the Sea and a Ball

...plus 31 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Films featuring imagery, subtext, or themes relating to Shintoism, either contextually, explicitly or metaphorically.

• The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
• The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon
• The Tale of Genji
• Fire Festival
• The Tale of Genji
• The Tale of Genji
• Inuyasha the Movie: Affections Touching Across Time
• Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters
• Miko Girl
• Your Name.

...plus 24 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Films set in or concerned with Yoshiwara, Edo-period red-light district in Tokyo.

• Yoshiwara
• Street of Shame
• A Sun-Tribe Myth from the Bakumatsu Era
• A Lustful Man
• Raised in a Palace
• The Geisha
• Tokyo Bordello
• Heat Wave
• Midwinter Camellia
• Sharaku

...plus 8 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

when the drizzle outside never ceases, but you gotta keep the aircon on anyway. air so wet you could quench your thirst by yawning. early summer rain. the australian cool change. monsoon season.

• Fires on the Plain
• The Vertical Ray of the Sun
• Escape to Burma
• Monsoon
• Isle of Forgotten Sins
• Typhoon Club
• Monsoon
• A Snake of June
• Look Both Ways
• Still the Water

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Ambient music is a very broad term that breeds difficult definition, but for the sake of simplicity this list is intended to list films that predominantly feature atmospheric, largely 'beatless' scores (or instances within the score thereof), i.e. music that lacks a clear tempo, and rather relies on timbre and texture to create dramatic tension (or lack thereof) and create certain sonic spaces. This also includes experimental scores that utilise non-diagetic sounds and improvisation. Semi-chronological order. Suggestions encouraged.

• Forbidden Planet
• Jigoku
• Pitfall
• Harakiri
• Kwaidan
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
• This Transient Life
• Solaris
• The Petrified Forest

...plus 48 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The happy, the sad, the abrupt, the open-ended - ten of the most unforgettable film endings, ever. No particular order. (Spoilers, of course.)
(see notes.)

1. Another Earth

   Abrupt? Maybe, but in the best way. The ending to Another Earth leaves it open just enough to promote speculation without total confusion - all without a single word of dialogue. The most memorable.

2. Before Sunset

   Famous for its somewhat abrupt fade to black, what most people often miss on their first viewing of Before Sunset is that the ending really starts roughly twenty minutes before the fade. The most beautifully open-ended.

3. An Autumn Afternoon

   In actuality, the endings of An Autumn Afternoon and Late Spring can be considered one and the same, as they share the same plot - yet the resolution of all that has come before in An Autumn Afternoon (and in Yasujiro Ozu's long, illustrious filmmaking career) places a greater emotional weight on that final glimpse of Chishu Ryu's fragile figure in that darkened house. The most resonant.

4. Annie Hall

   '...because, uh, most of us...need the eggs.'
   All of us have had an Annie Hall ending at one point in our lives. The most bittersweet.

5. Love Exposure

   Love Exposure might be the first film in Sono's 'Hate' trilogy, but it punctuates its frenetic 4 hour running time with a resounding punch from the opposite emotion. The most triumphant.

6. Synecdoche, New York

   'Die.'
   The end of everything.

7. No Country for Old Men

   '...and then I woke up.'
   Potentially the most abrupt cut to black, but also the most enigmatic and beautiful.

8. Cure

   Similar to No Country For Old Men in its abruptness, but with none of the beauty. As enigmatic as the film itself, it serves as a symbolic clicking of the fingers in order to end a deep hypnosis. One of the most unexpected.

9. Rocket Science

   'It shouldn't be rocket science, right?'
   A refreshing change to the tired formula of outcast-gets-the-girl. A happy ending wrapped in an unhappy one.

10. Hotarubi no Mori e

    The greatest film about endings. A 45 minute celebration about the futility of permanence. The most beautiful.

Films that feature traditional Nō theatre masks - or depictions of them.

• A Page of Madness
• Ugetsu
• Sound of the Mountain
• Throne of Blood

  Does not contain any Nō masks per se, but references them through the facial makeup on many key characters.

• The Mansion of Intrigue
• Voice Without a Shadow
• The Mysterious Cape
• Onibaba
• Prison Walls of Abashiri, Part 2
• Sleepy Eyes of Death 7: The Mask of the Princess

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A list of movies covered in the Japanese MOOK special edition book "Japanese Anarchy Movies, 1959-1979". Both a comprehensive list & beginner's guide to the outrageous, bizarre, and taboo-breaking cult cinema that ran rampant through two decades in late 20th century Japan.

to add to letterboxd:
狙撃 1968
首 1968
女生きてます　盛り場渡り鳥 1972
やくざ残酷秘録　片腕切断 1976
若妻日記　　悶える 1977

• Desperado Outpost
• The Beast Shall Die
• The Ghost of Yotsuya
• Jigoku
• Yellow Line
• The Horizon Glitters
• Ten Dark Women
• Elegant Beast
• Only on Mondays
• The Sun's Burial

...plus 85 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

a list of films whose sound design and score is written about in Junichi Konuma's wonderful book 映画に耳を ("Listening to Films")

• The Assassination of the Duke de Guise
• 8½
• Eternity and a Day
• Theorem
• The Legend of 1900
• The Talented Mr. Ripley
• The Lives of Others
• Field of Dreams
• Dekalog
• Marquise

...plus 47 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

ever-changing

1. Hiroshima Mon Amour
2. Harold and Maude
3. Sans Soleil
4. Before Sunset
5. Twenty-Four Eyes
6. Blade Runner
7. Cléo from 5 to 7
8. The Music Room
9. I ♥ Huckabees
10. Kwaidan

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
• Brazil
• 2046
• In the Mood for Love
• Floating Weeds
• Branded to Kill
• The Whispering Star
• Mirror
• Solaris
• Inherent Vice

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.