License To Live (1998)

There’s a shot in License To Live (1998), directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, where the main character’s father sits in a chair at the foot of his bed. Cast in shadows, the father is telling his son that he’s leaving after their brief reunion, and he resembles a ghost drained of colour. Kurosawa is best known […]

Boiling Point (1990)

Takeshi Kitano treats violence with the same structural impact as building a gag in comedy. Boiling Point (1990) veers between violence as a joke – a call back, or a punchline, like when a young kid refuses a helmet on his first motorcycle, and then cut to him sitting stunned with a bloody face – […]

The Wild Pear Tree (2018)

Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan uses the three-hour running time of The Wild Pear Tree (2018) to give considerable scope to individual encounters. Sinan (Dogu Demirkol) spends a lot of the movie walking, often wandering around deep in thought, and a recurring pattern within the narrative is Sinan bumping into someone, and beginning to chat with […]

Chime (2024)

After I watched Chime (2024) at home, I started washing up dishes in the kitchen and felt a rising pressure in my head. At 45 minutes length and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Chime builds tension with no release. Obviously its short length might preclude a fuller narrative experience, more time given to understand what’s going […]

Glass Chin (2014)

A friend, Adriane, first made me aware of director Noah Buschel by recommending his sports melodrama, The Phenom. Catching up with Buschel’s earlier films, I’ve been really taken by his application of neo-noir conventions and tropes within a low budget indie vision. From mannered dialogue to clearly intentionally framing and lighting, to the use of […]