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 […]

A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence (2014)

It’s sad that it’s taken me this long to watch a Roy Andersson film – I’d always been intrigued by Songs From The Second Floor when it came out. But life is sad, y’know, and why not start with the last of the ‘trilogy’ that includes Songs and You, The Living. From what I gather, […]

Pather Panchali (1955)

The images in Pather Panchali (1955) directed by Satyajit Ray, have a quality like classic silent cinema – there’s something so luminescent and glowing about them, helped by the remastering and restoration of the film in 2015. A beautiful and quietly devastating movie, it focuses on a family living in rural Bengal during 1910. The […]

Stray Dog (1949)

In Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog (1949; Nora inu), a young Toshiro Mifune plays a rookie detective named Murakami who feels shame and twists himself in knots over losing his newly acquired Colt pistol to a pick-pocket on a tram. This is both a film noir and a police procedural, which seems to have influences on […]

Miami Vice (2006)

For a film version that didn’t give the 1980s pastel aesthetic that fans of the TV series grew up with, switching it up for intense drug enforcement research and grainy digital cameras, I’m always heartened by the cult love that Michael Mann’s Miami Vice (2006) generates for film lovers and Michael Mann fans. I completely […]