Distant (2002)

I associate Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan with long takes of expansive landscape from the couple of movies I’ve seen of his. And the opening shot of Distant (2002; aka Uzak) fulfils that association, as a solitary figure trudges across a field, a small town in the distance and a road in the foreground from […]

Despiser (2002)

We look back on practical effects that might have been cheap, but they become appreciated for their aesthetic value and effort, in contrast to CGI now. So it will be with dated CGI, particularly as the decades pass and what was once the new thing becomes ossified into a time-stamped style. Directed by Phillip J. […]

Deadly Outlaw: Rekka (2002)

Yakuza movies are very macho, often mainly about male gangsters either meeting in board rooms or fighting each other in the street. The best Yakuza movies interrogate the codes of honour and loyalty that are merely lip service to the criminal drive to make money and grab power. Takashi Miike has a hundred plus movies […]

The Intruder (2004)

As a filmmaker, Claire Denis offers elliptical narrative experiences, introducing us to a few characters, observing their faces and their movements, and only gradually revealing the connections and histories between them. The Intruder (2004) is even more elliptical than her other films, complicating our understanding with the inclusion of dreams and recurring figures who may be more […]

Doppelganger (2003)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s The Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis version). Collaborating with his favourite leading man, Koji Yakusho, writer-director Kurosawa opens Doppelganger (2003) in the existential dread familiar from something like Cure. A scientist, who is working on robotic wheelchair that would help disabled people through concentration and muscular impulses, sees himself in public, a person who […]