Tony Takitani first published by Film4 in 2004 Summary: Issei Ogata finds loneliness, love, loss, and then loneliness again, in Jun Ichikawa’s stylish adaptation of a Haruki Murakami short story. Review: In the writings of Haruki Murakami, style is every bit as important as content. The events may be somewhat surreal, the characters eccentric, but the prose…
The Stylist first published by VODzilla.co “I guess we all want what we don’t have,” says Claire (Najarra Townsend), admiring her hair in the mirror near the beginning of The Stylist. Except that it is not really her hair, and these are not even her words. For so damaged, so empty, is Claire”s sense of…
Aloners screened at the London Korean Film Festival 2021. Below is a rough transcript of my live introduction to the festival screening, and also my programme note. Welcome to this evening’s screening of writer/director Hong Seong-eun’s Aloners (Honja saneun saramdeul), which has already won its lead Gong Seung-yeon best actress prizes at Jeonju Film Festival…
Our Meal For Tomorrow (Bokura no Gohan wa Ashita de Matteru) fist published in the programme for The Japan Foundation Touring Programme 2020 “Everything in this world is cumbersome and complicated. It’s not easy to get what you really want.” These words addressed by Ryota Hayama (Yuto Nakajima) to his on-again off-again girlfriend Koharu Uemaru…
A Family first published by EyeforFilm at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2019 To watch Jayden Stevens’ feature debut, you would never know where the director comes from. For like Ariel Kleiman’s Partisan (2015) and Steven Kastrissios’ Bloodlands (2017), A Family is an Australian film unfolding in Eastern Europe – in this case Ukraine, with…
2 Days In Paris first published by Film4 Summary: Julie Delpy’s second feature as director is a risqué post-romantic comedy set in the City of Love. Review: In 2004, acclaimed actress Julie Delpy was nominated for an Academy Award for co-writing Richard Linklater’s wonderful Before Sunset (in which she also starred). In the meantime, Delpy had been…
Late Spring (Banshun) first published by Little White Lies Yasujiro Ozu‘s Late Spring opens just outside the Kita-Kamakura Station, a place of (locomotive) stasis and motion marked by a signpost written in both the local Japanese and the English of the recent occupiers, as a breeze stirs through the surrounding trees. This wind of change will bring with…