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 […]

Vengeance Is Mine (1984)

Typing Vengeance Is Mine as a movie title produces a few results including the Shōhei Imamura movie from 1979 and a direct to video Steven Seagal action flick from 2010. For Michael Roemer’s film, Vengeance Is Mine (1984), which he wrote and directed, the title might give the wrong impression. It is not a revenge […]