Onna no Issho / A Woman’s Life (d. Yasuzo Masamura) Incredible. It’s probably a masterpiece. I watched it without subtitles so I’m holding off making a definitive declaration. It’s about this poor woman, beaten like a dog right from the first scene by her aunt, who goes on to mosey into a grand estate and …
Author Archives: orpheusfx28
Time travels
Ash is Purest White (d. Jia Zhang-ke) The Long Day’s Journey into the Night (d. Bi Gan) An Elephant Sitting Still (d. Bo Hu) Is this what state approved and film festival approved quasi-art quasi-commercial cinema looks like? Ash is well-lighted and bland. Is this the only story they could come up with, where the …
Grindr values
The Ornithologist (d. Joao Pedro Rodrigues) What it wants to be: a fantastical voyage of gay self-discovery cast with shadows of Christian faith and art. (Note the deliberate postures which are meant to echo Christ’s body in religious paintings.) Beautifully told and it has a bunch of neat ideas that produces much interest and entertainment …
Dis-indegenous
Why is yellow middle of rainbow? (d. Kidlat Tahimik) This is one of the stronger works by Tahimik and the key to understanding his latest film (Balikbayan Box) except that the latter is still a mess unlike this one which is essentially a video diary of the 80s decade. It’s joyous, witty, observant, and, as …
Aging Europe
Elle (d. Paul Verhoeven) It’s bullshit, especially when it comes to what Verhoeven thinks is feminism, but there are other things in the film worth examining, like patriarchy, specifically the European kind with its (mass) violence, and a more multicultural Europe even though it’s an all-white neighborhood/ workplace/city—except for the baby and, as the camera …
Foreign funding
Yang Ki: Made in Hong Kong (d. Kidlat Tahimik) Japanese Summers of a Filipino Fundoshi (d. Kidlat Tahimik) What does it mean for a filmmaker from the Philippines making a documentary about a young family and their baby daughter (Yang Ki) in Hong Kong with German sponsorship? is a question that isn’t asked in the …
Wanda, lost and found
Wanda (d. Barbara Loden) It’s interesting that the newly restored film feels like a missing link to the era and 70s American cinema. Though it plays out like a low-key low budget Bonnie and Clyde, Loden isn’t interested in that kind of Hollywood glamour or violent spectacle even though the protagonist tries her best to …
In your name
Your Name (d. Makoto Shinkai) Clearly made with Tohoku/Fukushima in mind, the film is a way of dealing with both the natural and man-made disasters as an engaging fantasy love story. What’s unresolved narratively in the film is what interests me and that’s how the young woman was able to persuade her father, the town …
The devil wears Lacoste
Personal Shopper (d. Olivier Assayas) Assayas has the ability (and privilege too perhaps?) to pick and anoint the latest “it girl” of French Cinema, and this is round 2 with Kristen Stewart. What does he envision this girl to be? A tomboyish gal who masturbates in her employer’s bed. Is this what he thinks what …
Faux folksy
Perfumed Nightmare (d. Kidlat Tahimik) It’s an accomplished docu-fiction that joyfully mocks western standards of progress while envying them too. What differentiates the Kidlat Tahimik of this film, his first one, I believe, from his latest, viewed and reviewed a few days ago, is that he mixes mock naïveté with an open curiosity of where …
Orpheus in Hell: Unlicensed Film Reviews 