December 2011
7 posts
2 tags
Park and Love Hotel (2007)
I enjoyed this.
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The Road I Travel with You (1936)
Boring. Bizarre. I think there’s supposed to be some kind of commentary about class/family differences (it’s a tragedy a la Romeo and Juliet), but it’s lost in the weak drama and uninteresting characters.
I find Naruse’s early films most curious: sometimes they are amusingly inept (as here), sometimes unpretentiously wonderful. Naruse’s is a mysterious filmography.
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The Magic Hour (2008)
Silly.
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After School (2008)
Immensely entertaining. There are still details I don’t understand, which means the plot is probably too convoluted and misleading, but I don’t care. I had too much fun to criticize it.
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Oyuki the Virigin (1935)
I recently read Maupassant’s “Boule de suif” and thought, “Surely this has been made into a movie.” I was surprised to discover Mizoguchi had directed such an adaptation, and furthermore that adaptation is Oyuki the Virgin, a film I have been meaning to watch.
Of all the changes the film makes to the original story, the most dramatic and most bizarre is the...
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The Dancing Girl of Izu (1933)
A wordy silent (apparently it was planned as a sound film?). Dull story. Some pretty scenes. According to the internet, this film is interesting for a number of historical reasons.
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The Boys from Fengkuei (1983)
Hou’s breakout film. I enjoyed it.