There’s a good reason this movie is called “To Live” even though it is about a man who is dying of stomach cancer. For it is in that short period of time between bureaucracy and death that Kanji Watanabe is able to truly experience what his whole life could have been like. The sadness is real and unyielding— he has wasted away thirty years in civil service busily doing absolutely nothing, his son (in his eyes) resents his existence, and…
Favorite films
Recent activity
AllRecent reviews
More-
-
A Fistful of Dollars 1964
The first scene of A Fistful of Dollars sets up this tale with remarkable efficiency. Enter the Man with No Name, his face hidden as he comes upon a well in the dry heat of the desert. He looks upon a boy acting strangely outside of an adobe house. The boy pokes his head into the house and at once a man emerges, brandishing a pistol, threatening to kill the boy if he ever intrudes again. The street erupts with…
Popular reviews
More-
Inside Llewyn Davis 2013
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you would not have set out. She has nothing left to give you now.
-C.P. Cavafy, "Ithaka"Echoing (and far surpassing) O Brother, Where Art Thou, in Inside Llewyn Davis the Coen Brothers embark upon another musical Odyssey of the spirit. It's much darker this time, full of broken hopes and the constant butting in of reality, but also brimming with the dark and delightful humor that makes the Coen Brothers so…
-
Alien³ 1992
The third installment of the Alien franchise (strangely stylized "Alien-cubed") begins with a promising visual tableau. The escape-pod of a ship comes crashing down onto a desolate wasteland. Out of the smoke and haze a lone man emerges, dour faced and intense. The camera lingers upon his surroundings, the remnants of some forgotten industry. The isolation of this world is palpable; abandonment abounds. And then he spots the wreckage. His eyes widen and he lifts from the beach the nimble…