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The Master 2012
KING LEAR: What art thou?
KENT A very honest-hearted fellow, and as poor as the king.
KING LEAR If thou be as poor for a subject as he is for a
king, thou art poor enough. What wouldst thou?
KENT Service.
KING LEAR Who wouldst thou serve?
KENT You.
KING LEAR Dost thou know me, fellow?
KENT No, sir; but you have that in your countenance
which I would fain call master.
KING LEAR What's that?
KENT Authority. -
All In This Tea
I will say this, I really wanted a cup of fucking tea when this was over, and as a tea drinker converted to coffee I think it's time I look at my life and rethink my decisions.
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Sansho the Bailiff 1955
I can't review this movie in any less than full analysis. Painfully and tragically beautiful. Mizoguchi is a reverent master of film and hopefully Janus/Criterion can bring him back into the wider conversation of cinema. Another in a long line of movies that I want to rewatch and do some serious writing about.
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Kill! 1968
A steady balance of Nihilistic Samurai with Goofy Samurai is keeping me on an even keel. I keep telling myself I need to watch something else, catch up on my backlog, maybe watch Hunger or The Master tonight but why would I bother when the Samurai genre presents me with so much. By the 60s the Samurai genre encompassed everything, noir, realism, gangster, western, jidaigeki, social commentary, joy, darkness, nihilism. It's all there.
And by this point, 1968, I imagine…
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New Tale of Zatoichi 1963
1. I like Shintaro Katsu so much more here as the struggling underdog Ichi than the penis smashing rape-torturer Hanzo. That man has range.
2. There are 26 of these? 26?! I don't have that kind of time Japan. Do I really need to devote almost 39 hours to the whole thing... well I guess I do.
3. I can see why Takeshi Kitano got a lot of blowback for his 2003 try at the character. It's sort of like…
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Side Effects 2013
Alright, a bit more calmer approach this time, and a two star bump for the quality of film-making, but the reactionary premise/screenplay loses at least 3.
Ok, so I get it. Soderbergh wanted to make a Hitchcockian throwback, but did we need the mid-century sexist sensibilities to go with it? Did we also need the thinly veiled anti-psychiatry theme? I understand that it is something pervasive around us, this idea that Big Pharma is a cold mechanical business that preys…
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Side Effects 2013
Trying to hold off until I can make an unbiased reaction to this... you know, quality of performances and film-making and all that but nuts to that. Fuck this piece of paternalistic anti-medicine anti-science anti metal health tripe. Not in a long time have I had such an urge to walk out of a movie or throw my shoes at the screen.
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Ran 1985
I have trouble not falling in love with bleak tragedies of the human condition. It is pessimistic, it is grim, it presents a never-ending cycle of human violence. It is unromantic, unsentimental. It is baroque, it is asymmetrical, it is chaotic. It transforms the Shakespearean tragedy of Lear, more than just a story of plot and intrigue, but a deeply demonic view of our souls. The entire movie feels otherworldly, filled with brooding intensity. It is unsurprising that Kurosawa saw…
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Hanzo the Razor: Sword of Justice 1972
I really have no idea how to rate this... was this a well made movie? Yes, it was visually inventive and playful, and had a fairly interesting structure. Is it for everyone... no. Its rebelliously paternalistic, horribly misogynistic, and comically vulgar. It works as sort of a commentary, yes, but it still fits neatly into the genre that it is commenting on, he who fights monsters becomes a monster and all that. so I dunno. One star, five stars, I liked it I hated it does it really matter? I'm not sure.
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Warm Bodies 2013
INT. THEATER - MID AFTERNOON
(We open on a movie screen showing an advertisement masked as a making of featurette of Nicholas Sparks’ Safe Haven, intercutting press interviews with Julianne Howeff and Josh Duhmall making it seem like the making of this movie was something akin to Citizen Kane. Reverse cut to the stadium seating where a lone bald, unshaven, mustached man sits in the very middle with a giant popcorn bucket, munching seriously. He wears glasses and the glare…
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Harakiri 1962
Holy hell I’m still reeling from this, sort of wondering if I’ll ever get to see Miike’s 3D remake of it from 2011 or if I should even consider it. It would be certainly something I would go out of my way of to see in 3D, especially considering how well Miike did with 13 Assassins.
Anyway, the movie itself, is a movie of distances. From the opening titles through the empty hallways of a great clan’s estate that will…
