"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must…
Favorite films
Recent activity
AllPinned reviews
More-
Woman in the Dunes 1964
-
Night Is Short, Walk on Girl 2017
"While embarrassing, at this time I wanted to plunge into the adult world by myself. In other words, I wanted to drink my own way... without regard for my senpai."
The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl really bowled me over in a way that I wasn't expecting. I knew almost nothing about it going in (I certainly hadn't seen The Tatami Galaxy, although I am watching it now), but I wasn't totally sold on its unique visual style from…
Recent reviews
More-
Underworld Beauty 1958
"Everybody's hurting these days."
The noir-shadowed crossroads of morality and money, sexuality and solidarity
Underworld Beauty's premise follows similar lines to the later Cruel Gun Story, a common story structure for this time period of Japanese cinema not because it was rote or clichéd but because it reached towards a certain salient cultural anxiety. The honorable gangster Miyamoto gets out of jail and returns to his boss eager to make good on a deal gone bad only to be informed…
-
The Seventh Curse 1986
"A good story starts with a good glass of wine."
The Seventh Curse opens and closes with bookend scenes of a cocktail party with gentlemen in fancy suits and ladies in fancy dresses sitting around drinking wine and talking about the books that the host has written. Everyone asks him where he finds the inspiration for his fantastical themes and whether the stories are real or not. "This is a stupid question," he says, because if you dig deep enough…
Popular reviews
More-
Mulholland Drive 2001
"Hey pretty girl, time to wake up."
There was a time not too long ago when if you asked me what my favorite movie was I might have told you Mulholland Drive. There's a lot going on in the film and I certainly won't claim to understand all of it (something I might have done when it was my "favorite movie"), but I do have a reading of it that seems to answer a lot of the questions it poses,…
-
Ferris Bueller's Day Off 1986
In a selfish attempt to cope with his separation anxiety, a sociopathic student abuses his relationship with his mentally unstable best friend in order to throw his future away on a single day of raucous debauchery.
