Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Anne of Green Gables: Road to Green Gables 1979

  ★★★½ Watched 11 Apr 2023

  Wonderful series; the results of trying to fit the first six episodes into a feature are a bit awkward at times, though many of the virtues are present or at least hinted at. Better just to watch the full series if you can, though.

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  Love Letter 1959

  ★★★★ Rewatched 08 Apr 2023

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  First time seeing this in about five years. What strikes me now is how much this anticipates some of Suzuki’s later work, especially the Taisho trilogy, with doppelgängers and a flashback structure that deliberately makes it difficult to know which one you’re seeing in many scenes (the fact that one of the two characters is dead makes it all the more like Zigeunerweisen). I also love the tracking shot when Kozue is walking up the stairs to her apartment and…

Popular reviews

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  Occult Bolshevism 2018

  ★★★★½ Rewatched 16 Jul 2021 2

  Recently, there's been a trend in independent Japanese cinema towards a much more improvisation and actor-centered approach to filmmaking in the vein of Jacques Rivette or John Cassavettes. Probably the filmmaker most closely associated with this trend is Ryusuke Hamaguchi, a onetime student of Hiroshi Takahashi's who wrote his thesis on the films of John Cassavettes.

  On the surface, at least, this would seem to be the antithesis of the stylistic tendencies previously associated with Hiroshi Takahashi and the J-horror…

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  Welcome Home 1995

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 19 May 2019 2

  OKAERI is a film with something of a legendary status among aficionados of recent Japanese cinema. The film was self-funded by a projectionist and freelance film-critic-turned-filmmaker, and shot on leftover film stock from other independent productions. Its cast ranges from VERY seasoned veterans (Tomio Aoki, the former child-star of Ozu's I WAS BORN, BUT..., who appears as a talkative old man in a park) to recognizable character actors (Susumu Terajima, a frequent supporting cast member of Kitano and Miike films,…