The blurred line between what is real, and what is not. A theme explored in movies such as: Repulsion, Belle de Jour, Triangle and Black Swan. A film aspect that's never been a favorite of mine. However, I found the outlier. Perfect Blue hooked me from the opening, and I was on the edge of my seat until the final credits rolled. 

Perfect Blue is batshit crazy in an eat your heart out Darren Aronofsky type of way. It's the movie Black Swan only wished it could be. It's simply a badass flick with a lot of social commentary on the media, fame and internet usage for dummies circa 1997. At least in my mind it is.

Part Giallo. (Fun…

Film #100 of Make me watch your favourite.
Recommended by James Haves.

After having seen most of Kon's filmography now, I can only conclude he was one of the most gifted storytellers to ever work in film.

Perfect Blue is yet another intriguing and powerful exploration of the human psyche, this time in the guise of a complex thriller. Kon weaves a tale around a superbly written female protagonist that not only serves as a vessel for some social commentary about Japanese teen pop culture but also as our eyes and ears into a young girl's faltering mind as pressure, expectations and self doubt take over her world.

The layered and complex narrative bobs and weaves through reality and fantasy…

There has been a fair amount of talk on my activity stream recently about the work of the late Satoshi Kon, so ahead of watching some of his films I decided to revisit the one film of his that I have seen, albeit about 12 years ago now.

In fact, my first viewing of Perfect Blue was done towards the end of a major anime craze of mine, when I was just starting to tire of the genre as a whole. I was pretty taken aback by this film. No giant tentacle cocks. No stupid big tears appearing besides characters' faces when they're perplexed by something. No ridiculously overdone ultra-violence. This can't be right?

To me, it seemed like a…

One of the great masters of Japanese animation, the career of Satoshi Kon would be tragically cut short when he lost his battle with pancreatic cancer, but it would be a stunning body of work he would leave us with, if perhaps sadly also one of the most overlooked.

Here he makes his directorial debut with a Hitchcock-esq thriller and which I frequently like to use as reference point when it comes to arguing the fact that anime is more than cutsy characters, tentacle porn and schoolgirl fan service which frequently seems to the opinion shared by those not familiar with the genre outside of the parts which regularly gain mainstream exposure. True this film is not without its shocking…