Category: Drama
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Battles Without Honor And Humanity (1973)
Taking up Lewis Rice O’Donnell’s strong recommendation, I was looking forward to experiencing the Yakuza Papers series of films. Directed by Kinji Fukasaku (of Battle Royale and Doberman Cop), Battles Without Honor And Humanity (1973; Jingi Naki Tatakai) is the first film, which follows the journey of ex-soldier Shozo Hirono (played by Bunta Sugawara) and… Read.
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Red Desert (1964)
Michelangelo Antonioni is a divisive auteur and I can understand why some people don’t like him – wealthy people being bored in slow narratives where nothing much happens. But I really like L’Eclisse and The Passenger as absorbing portraits of alienation. Red Desert (1964; Il deserto rosso) was advertised as Antonioni’s first film in colour,… Read.
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La Caza (1966)
I took another chance on a film screening on The Cinephobe TV website. La Caza (1966) aka The Hunt was directed by Carlos Saura, a major Spanish director whose work I was generally not familiar with except for seeing one of his late-1980s flamenco movies (El Amor Brujo), which are gorgeously visual with bold colours.… Read.
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Local Hero (1983)
After rave reviews from a Year in Cinema: 1983 book I would read in the high school library and growing up with my parents owning the Mark Knopfler soundtrack on CD, I finally watched Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero (1983) on a DVD I purchased, the prototypical ‘business man charmed by small town’/’fish out of water’… Read.
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Sonatine (1993)
When violence occurs in Sonatine (1993), directed, written and starring Takeshi Kitano, it is sudden and shocking. Yet there’s also a blankness to it – gangsters fire their guns without emotion and react impassively to the blood. For a crime movie about the Yakuza, the lifestyle is not presented with any excitement or flashiness. Kitano… Read.
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