Quickies: Three Outlaw Samurai, Joint Security Area, Spiral, The Book Thief, One Day, In the Heights

It’s another week of movies at home and we had a John Hughes movie-thon and these other movies that I will say more… Three Outlaw Samurai (1964) is a chanbara (sword fighting) film. I didn’t read the synopsis and just pressed play. It turned out to be immensely enjoyable and a brilliant setup for three […]

Quickies: Happiness, Caught in Time, The Gunfighter, The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice, The Wind Will Carry Us, Where is the Friend’s Home

We saw many movies this week but I will just choose the good ones to say something… The Korean movie, Happiness (2007), is a love story about two very sick people who meet in a convalescing home. The ever reliable Hwang Jung-min plays Young-Su, the guy. Hwang is a very versatile actor, adept with nice […]

Japanese Classics XI: Tokyo Olympiad (1965)

This being the season of the Olympics, we saw this remarkable 168-minute film last night. Kon Ichikawa examines the beauty and rich drama on display at the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo, creating a record of observations that range from the expansive to the intimate. His eye never judged, capturing rich vignettes of human aspiration […]

Japanese Classics X: A Story of Floating Weeds (1934) & Floating Weeds (1959)

One of the silver linings of this dreaded worldwide lockdown is the opportunity to watch the movies I have amassed through the years. I took Yasujiro Ozu’s A Story of Floating Weeds (1934) and Floating Weeds (1959) Criterion DVD off my shelf and put it on a pile of movies to be watched. Even by […]

Japanese Classics IX

My last Kenji Mizoguchi’s films… The Life of Oharu (1952) follows a woman’s fight and survival amid the vicissitudes of life and the cruelty of the society. It is about a fifty-year-old prostitute, no longer able to attract men, who looks back on her sad life. Once a lady-in-waiting at the imperial court at Kyoto, Oharu […]

Japanese Classics VIII

I decided to have myself a Kenji Mizoguchi film festival… Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu Monogatari (1953) [Tales of the Rain and Moon, aka Ugetsu] is a highly acclaimed masterwork of Japanese cinema. Based on a pair of 18th century ghost stories by Ueda Akinari, the film’s release continued Mizoguchi’s introduction to the West, where it was nominated […]

Japanese Classics VII

Continuing my journey of Japanese classic films… Mikio Naruse’s When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960) is a story about a middle-aged bar hostess, constantly in debt, who is faced with numerous social constraints and challenges posed to her by her family, customers and friends. The movie has a strong sense of place and time. […]

Japanese Classics VI

Continuing my movie journey of Japanese classics… I love these films. There is something about the simple framing, the subtle storytelling, the obviousness of the plot-points that is so captivating. Sometimes I wonder did storytelling in cinema even improve since then. With the following three films I hit 18/30 of the list. Pale Flower (1964) […]

Japanese Classics V

I didn’t know there are two versions of this and proceeded to watch the 1958 one first. The Ballad of Narayama is a period drama directed by Keisuke Kinoshita. The feature film explores the practice of obasute. The story is heartrending – a mother, who will be turning 71 in the coming year, prepares to […]

Japanese Classics IV

Instead of musing about Tokyo Story, one of best films in the world, I decided to watch the remake and muse about that. Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953) is a masterpiece of ponderous simplicity and it tells one of the simplest of stories – an old couple visits their children who have set up homes […]

Reel Thoughts

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Japanese Classic Films