Even more so than Hitchcock, although not quite in the same psychoanalytical terms, Naruse Mikio had a penchant for doubling his characters, especially women. As Chris Fujiwara has rightly pointed out, it is fairly common for a Naruse heroine to have a "rival or mirror image, whom she finds waiting when she turns a new corner, who legitimately possesses the man to whom the heroine has at best a moral or sentimental claim, or who stands as a living reproach…
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Shuddh Desi Romance 2013
Unlike most major mainstream film industries, Bollywood has never quite experienced a phase where neorealism became the primary aesthetic and ideological model. On the other hand, it has normally served as the foundation for the various waves of alternative/parallel cinema that have come and gone.
Maneesh Sharma’s Shudh Desi Romance is part of an ever-expanding group of recent popular Indian movies that espouse many of the key tenets of neorealism, especially focusing on working-class individuals and location work. Sharma’s own…
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Jackie Brown 1997
"What the fuck happened to you, man? Your ass used to be beautiful."
Whenever great Robert De Niro performances are discussed, his work in Jackie Brown rarely comes up. It’s understandable: his role is a supporting turn; this relatively low-key, leisurely paced character study about aging and ambition didn’t generate the kind of buzz and box office expected from a Quentin Tarantino film after Pulp Fiction (1994); and there are, arguably, four other equally great performances in the film (by…
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Rebels of the Neon God 1992
Unlike the desolate, depopulated Taipei featured in most of Tsai Ming-liang’s remarkable oeuvre, Rebels of the Neon God (Qingshaonian Nezha), the Malaysian-born Taiwanese master’s first full-length feature, introduces us to a bustling, neon-lit, more volatile metropolis one tends to encounter in the films of Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang. But there is no mistaking the fact that it is Tsai’s work, in which his key, interconnected motifs of communication, sexual frustration, spiritual malaise, and modern urban alienation…