My Review of Nosferatu (1922) directed by F. W. Murnau

 Of all the many movie adaptations of the Dracula by Bram Stoker that I have seen, this is supposedly the most faithful to Stoker's novel when it comes to the characterization of the vampire. This is of course ironic given that this adaptation changed the names of all the characters and locations from the book in a failed effort to beat the copyright. Still this movie is one of the most enduring example of German Expressionism and one of the few legit scary adaptations of Dracula. 

As far as silent movies go, this one is a spooky one. Though labeled "black and white," the film is actually tinted in several different colors based-on location and mood. Max Shreck as Count Orlock (the name-changed Dracula) gives as creepy a performance that you would see in a silent horror film in 1922. The expressionist use of shadow, camera angles, and overall cinematography is amazing and the stand-out scene for me is the one of Orlock entering Thomas Hutter's room to attack him the first time—no one has ever walked through a door with that much menace before or since in the history of film.

My Goodreads Review of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Vol. 17: Successors by Koyoharu Gotouge

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Vol. 17: Successors by Koyoharu Gotouge
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Happy Halloween folks!! (To think that the actual scariest day of this year is actual three days from now.)

No better book to read on this day than one of the best horror manga of the new century. We are in the middle of the final battle and as usual no easy victories are allowed to come here. We lead this volume off with a devastating lost for the demon slayers, but we don't linger on it for to long because we are actually visiting multiple fronts of the battle and getting in more back-story on the different participants. Zenitsu (my least favorite of the protagonists) shows off a new weapon and we get some more of Tanjuro's history with his father. The pacing of this manga is definitely a "writing for the trades" situation so I it is obvious this battle won't be over know time soon and this volume is just a segment of the story with no beginning or conclusion. Because I came to this manga from the beautifully-made anime, Gotouge's art will always feel off to me though he is the one who created all these characters. Can't wait to read the next volume.

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Castle in the Sky (1986) directed by Hayao Miyazaki

 The film is the technical first film of Studio Ghibli film by the legendary Hayao Miyazaki. It is not taking the man vs nature theme in quite the way Miyazaki usually does. We have a more complex debate on technology and ambition. The movie is almost like two films harmonized in perfect sync. A combination of fantasy and sci-fi (of the steampunk variety) and one where the character are all the more complex than we are initially led to believe. The strong female character are featured here as is usual for a Miyazaki movie.

The movie ask if people really deserve paradise. The protagonists and antagonists are searching for a secret floating city called Laputa and when they find it are presented with a hard choice. The ideas and aesthetics of the movie brought steampunk into the mainstream of anime and directly influenced Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water by Miyazki's acolyte Hideaki Anno. It is a sharpening of the design of the animation from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) (though the plots are similarly strong). I am very torn between Castle in the Sky and Princess Mononoke (1997) for my favorite Miyazaki film.

Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996) directed by Elia Suleiman

 I never had been a big fan of the silent, physical comic movies growing-up. Though I knew of Chaplain, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Jacques Tati but I didn't really watch them until I started watching and being interested in films as art. I first got wind of Elia Suleiman during the promotion of The Time That Remains (2009). I became interested in his other films and I managed to see first Divine Intervention (2002) and then TTtR. It took me awhile at the time, but I eventually got to see his first feature film and was amazed by it.

In each of the three films in Suleiman's "Palestinian" trilogy, we follow the silent Suleiman as he observes and interacts with life in apartheid and statelessness. The first and third movies are autobiographical treatments of Suleiman and his parents while the second is a then-contemporary allegory of life in the Holy Land during the Second Intifada. Chronicle of a Disappearance sees Suleiman as he comes back to the region after a 12 year exile in New York City. He examines life for Palestinians in Nazareth and Jerusalem. It is him trying to adjust to life and others are not allowed to adjust even to the apartheid system. The film style of Jacques Tati is very present and the satirical spirit of Tati is used as a framework to examine life for Palestinians in the years between the First and Second Intifadas when the idea of peace was at it's closes for Israelis and Palestinians before the door of peace slammed shut. We principally observes what Suleiman observes in the Palestinian peoples of Nazareth and Jerusalem and in himself.

The introduction of the Jerusalem section and the film's end are what really endears the film to me. When we go to the "Jerusalem Political Diary" we are treated to a lengthy phantom ride through East Jerusalem that ends in the most random way imaginable. At the movie's end we have a powerfully moving tribute to his parents and a rebuke of what the Israeli state as tried to do to them in one of the most controversial scenes in Middle Eastern Cinema (ironically controversial with other Arabs) that ends with the simple dedication: "To my mother and father, the last homeland." 

Taxi Driver (1976) directed by Martin Scorsese

 Where do you begin with this one? This is a film with a lot to tell about the way certain folks think today and the impact of folks taking for granted or misinterpretation of them have done to the world in the last few years. A semi-autobiographical screenplay by Paul Schrader of a white, dispossessed, Vietnam War veteran that wanders New York City aimlessly, while we see his mind collapse under the weight of his insecurities, obsessions and paranoia. So many fools have come to this with some naïve worship of the protagonist as the public at the end of the movie and miss the point Scorsese and Schrader was trying to make. But lets get into this film…

We see Travis Bickle (played by Robert De Niro) aimlessly passing time and we hear his neurotic musings to himself.  After awhile, he decides to become a taxi driver and takes any route he's given—even picking-up black passengers (shocking behavior for a New York City cab driver). He works almost all hours and hangs around an equal assortment of co-workers and develops a crush on a campaign worker for a presidential candidate That ends poorly, but around the same time he meets an underage prostitute (played by Jody Foster) who he becomes convinced he must save from the evils of the world…and the movie really goes wild.

The editing of this film is incredible and really takes us into this world along with the cinematography of Michael Chapman. This film takes us inside the heart of Manhattan in the mid-1970s with no recognizable landmarks. The camera-work also takes us into the heart of Travis. Despite him saying that he will work "anywhere, any time", when he speaks about wiping away the filth and sleaze of the city, he's usually looking at black people. Whenever we see him looking at black people he has a paranoid, threatened reaction and a sense of dread. Travis has to conversations with white supremacists in this movie (one notably played by Scorsese himself) and one of the first people he kills is black. This always fascinates me with the film because usually when American cinema wants to show a white supremacist, they show a loud, boisterous almost ogre-like character or a faux-affable neo-nazi. This movie shows a much more quiet and unusual example of one who's entire mental state is in free-fall. 

This movie is an amazing character-study and example of existentialism on film. Scorsese, Schrader, and De Niro created a strong snapshot of post-Vietnam/Watergate New York City—the kind of place where a psychopath living among assholes somehow ends up a hero who does not have to answer to no one because no one is smart or competent-enough to hold him to account.

My Review of Pulp Fiction (1994) directed by Quentin Tarentino

 Being born 10 years before the 21st century, few films dominated the pop-culture landscape of my childhood like Pulp Fiction (1994). This film was one of the defining cinematic achievement of Generation X, and the definitive post-modern film. Many of the defining traits of Tarentino's film-style would be codified here and possibly one of the best film roles of Samuel L. Jackson. Three simple morality tales told out-of-order and with no film score of its own, but using the film's soundtrack to layer the atmosphere of the film. The movie told a story about America that Hollywood was not quite sure it wanted to hear at the time. 

For all the violence in this film, it is amazing that the majority of the movie is gangsters contemplating the world and their navels. Though at its heart it is a gangster/noir film, much of Tarentino's love for 70s film culture (e.g. blaxploitation, Japanese New Wave, 70s horror) is the body of the film. Like a certain other indie film-maker on the other side of the country, the influence of Martin Scorsese is apparent throughout. I'm not sure this film is as good as Django Unchained (2012), but it is a masterpiece. And yes, in a movie with so much murder and a rape scene, the n-word scene is the overkill, the film rises above that flaw. Also, this film lost the Best Picture Academy Award to Forrest Gump (1994)—how folks still take the Oscars seriously I'll never know.

My Review of Harakiri (1962) directed by Masaki Kobayashi

 You take an artsy idealist leftist that wants to make movies and you force him to fight for a fascist military dictatorship and you get a guy who has an axe to grind with the society that made him suffer. Masaki Kobayashi's ordeal in WWII made him the Japanese film-maker with the most cynical view of Japanese history, culture, and society. Coming off his contemporary social films and his magnum opus The Human Condition (1959-1961), he decided to do a brutal interrogation of the samurai ideology of Bushido and ask the question: "What do you think really happened during the Edo Period, given what we know about human nature?" He attempts to answer that question with one of the bleakest and existential samurai films of all time. Donald Richie calls this the "anti-samurai" film.

We start with a ronin named Tsugumo Hanshirō showing up at the doorstep of the Iyi clan House in Edo (aka Tokyo).asking if he can commit harakiri–ritual suicide–in their courthouse and the clan is baffled that another samurai from Hiroshima would come to them with this request. As this ronin–played by Tatsuya Nakadai–begins to speak, we learn that something is very off about what is going on here. The film shows how absurd the logic of Bushido is in peacetime and how the hardcore, selective application of it leads to disaster. While a few samurai clans at the top had a clean transition to the Edo Period, for many the end of the Sengoku period was more tumultuous than the strife of the warring states period they had just emerged out of. The moodiness of Toru Takemitsu's music score and the cinematography by Yoshio Miyajima makes the film feel to us the audience the doomed atmosphere of the protagonists being toyed with by the system.

Kobayashi was on a hot-streak during this time with all of his films engaging in social realism and holding institutions accountable for the mistreatment of people during the way years and the modern day. This was his first venture into period films, but he manages to interrogate recent Japanese history and contemporary society all the same. Nakadai may not have been as highly celebrated at this time as Toshiro Mifune, but he was just as commanding in his star roles―and his star never shined brighter than with Masaki Kobayashi. Kobayashi is the anti-weebo of of cinema, he uses his knowledge of Japanese art and culture against all who would try to romanticize Japan without taking into account its dark side. Every inconsistency of the code of Bushido is when presented against practical reality is presented here, but the hypocrisy and ruthlessness of the state is shown in full display at the end when it is able to brush-off all this by virtue of being able to write the history books.

My Review of The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962) directed by Robert Bresson

 I can't remember the exact day I watched this film for the first time. All I remember was that it was late at night I was thinking of going to bed and I started doing some last minute channel surfing on the TV, when I ended-up on the TCM channel just as this movie was starting. An hour later I was stunned by what I had seen. I was a Joan of Arc fan for the next 24 hours and a Robert Bresson fan for life.

This movie was my introduction to Robert Bresson and a form of art film I call "grown folk cinema." It was clear that Bresson is not messing around with the standard theatrics of most movies and went for a minimal approach to how his "models" (his name for the actors in his films) went about their roles. There is a quiet aggression that is spell-binding to watch. The script for the movie is adapted directly from the transcript of the actual trial of Joan of Arc as well as her posthumous rehabilitation trial 25 years later after the 100 Years War had turned decisively in favor of France. Along with the obvious religious themes of the movie, this film is a study judicial corruption and kangaroo courts/show trials; this film came on the eve of the Women's Liberation Movement in the West and right after France lost the Algerian War (literally 2 months, a lot of themes of this movie about the military's over-reach had real-life parallels in that war). The memorable performance of Florence Delay really draws you into the movie and the character of Joan and makes you really consider the person who could be a teenager and yet command an army.

I can't say whether this movie is the best introduction to the films of Robert Bresson, but it was my introduction to and it is the shortest of his major films. This film shows you how am unjust criminal justice system or an overzealous wartime tribunal acts regarding the rights of anyone they insist on putting to death. This film revealed to me a whole new way of films. Also, note that the only "music" heard in the film are drum and horns at the beginning and drum rolls at the end.

My Review of Trances (1981) directed by Ahmed El Maânouni

 This is one of the most underrated music documentary of all time. I first saw this movie randomly on the TCM (Turner Classic Movies) channel in the United States and it blew me away. I knew a little about Moroccan music and gnawa, but this group Nass El Ghiwane is something special. They are the forerunners of interpreting Moroccan folk music in the post-independence era. This documentary tracks this group in 1981 and gives an overview of their history and influences. The film balances the narratives of their background with their musical selections. 

Nass El Ghiwane broke with traditional Arabic music popular at the time in North Africa and went for a combination of more traditional Moroccan music which is based in Berber and Sub-Saharan African culture and they symbolized this by using all Moroccan instruments and replacing that key Arab instrument–the oud–with that key African instrument: the banjo. They also included Sufism in their music in a big way that contemporary groups at that time rarely did. Their shows also were a way for folks to vent their grievances with Moroccan society and the government at that time and their lyrics summed up the general mood very matter-of-factly. If Moroccan or African music is not your thing than, you don't have a reason to watch this. But if you like those genres, this movie is required viewing.

My Goodreads Review of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Vol. 16: Undying

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Vol. 16: Undying by Koyoharu Gotouge
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well, we resolved the last training-arc of the series and the final battle is upon us. The original Japanese publication of this series finished this year, but the last Japanese volume of this is not until December 2020, and the official English translation won't be done until the middle of next year (hopefully we'll have a functioning COVID-19 vaccine by then). Tanjiro get's his last training by the Stone Hashira and just in time, because Muzan makes his move and the whole Demon Slayer Corps is now fighting in total war against him and his lieutenants.

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My Review of Taste of Cherry (1997) طعم گيلاس directed by Abbas Kiarostami

 Depending on who you ask, this film or Close-Up (1990) is thought to be the magnum opus of Abbas Kiarostami. I can't say, but like all of the films of the Iranian New Wave it is something that humbles you and really make you consider what it is to walk upon this Earth. Right now I am dealing with the back to back losses of my grandmother and my aunt so I may be foggy in my perspective, but I'll try to get this right. The plot of this film is not the important part, but the details of how the plot plays out.

Bahdii is the man who goes to different people with the macabre favor of burying him if his plan to take his life goes forward successfully and collect the payment he has left behind for them. Most people turn him down flatly, but he finds an old man who is willing to it–but trying to convince him not to take his life. He uses the analogy of being in a dark night of the soul himself and almost killing himself until he eats a cherry from the tree he had planned to hang himself with–hence the title. I'll leave the ending up to the viewer.

This film in the hands of a lesser or less sophisticated film-maker would have been a disaster, especially given how easy the plot could be given over to pretentious grand-standing. But we have one of the greatest humanist film-makers of all time and the top-dog of the Iranian New Wave working this project so it becomes a transcendent masterpiece. It is a quite masterpiece compared to Close-Up, but it does make one fell a certain lightness and thoughtfulness (at least that's how I felt). The featuring of so many ethnic minorities in this film was noted throughout this movie. Also, this may be the darkest Range Rover commercial ever created (some comedy for you in these sad times). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMbRV5d7TeY 

Donnie Darko (Director's Cut) (2001) directed by Richard Kelly

 This film is one of those 2000s classic films of the hipster canon. I can't lie, I saw this over 12 years ago and I got caught-up in the weirdness of it. It's that James Joyce effect of something being attractive because of how obscure it is and I wasted more time than I care to admit trying to figure out what was going on. Those were more innocent times. Now after watching this after maybe 10 years of forgetting I owned it, the basic way I would sum this film-up is that it gives the opposite answer of the question asked in It's A Wonderful Life (1946): maybe folks would be better off if you did not survive. Interesting piece of sci-fi suspense, but I've outgrown it. Still  the best use of Tears for Fears music in any movie. 

Godzilla (1954) directed by Ishiro Honda

In 1954-55, two films were released in Japan that commented on the fear and paranoia of nuclear annihilation in Japan. One was I Live in Fear (1955) directed by Akira Kurosawa about a Japanese business owner who goes insane by the threat of nuclear war. The other film was by Kurosawa's frequent assistant director Ishiro Honda and deals with a creature spawned by nuclear fallout taking revenge on humanity. Godzilla (1954) was not the first "kaiju" or giant monster film, but its impact has been the most long-lasting. It has used the threat of these un-natural beings as direct allegories of man's appetite for destruction alive in the public consciousness since 1954. 

The nuclear testing on the Bikini Atoll and the nuclear fallout that affected the Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon No. 5 were the immediate catalyst for this film, but the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are obviously the event shadowing the whole film. One may be surprised at how much of the codifiers of the Godzilla franchise was established in this film. Despite the very 1950s special effects, the narrative and seriousness of the this film is still the best of the franchise. Of course, the longest lasting aspect of this film is Godzilla's iconic roar. Also the political commentary has also remained a feature of the franchise, more or less. I'd guess that the Cold War balancing at Japan was engaged in and public opinion to the Luck Dragon Incident deeply informed this film. This movie is the cornerstone of the idea of a man-made apocalypse; if you take Godzilla out, a lot of the devastation you see in this movie still have real-life analogues–that's what makes this movie endure to me.

Some afterthoughs: It is interesting to think the Takeshi Shimura had starring roles in the two biggest Japanese movies of 1954: this and Seven Samurai. Half the crew of this film (especially the special effects crew) were war criminals associated with the wartime ministry of propaganda. The Godzilla suit was by all accounts the most hellish thing on Earth to work-in at that time (this was before Toho Studios has air-condition).

Some Further Thoughts on the movie Us directed by Jordan Peele

 Spoiler Alert if you have not seen this movie as I talk very directly about a key plot point of the movie.

I will bring on them a disaster they cannot escape. Although they cry out to me, I will not listen to them.

How do you follow-up one of the most celebrated horror films of the decade? By making another film that is hotly anticipated. We saw a horror film meditating on race relations with Get Out (2017), but with Us (2019) Jordan Peele turns his focus to class inequality and the division of American society between the haves and have-nots. This movie can also be seen  as a commentary on what Generation X thinks about American society in the new century–their anxieties about it, but I want more to focus on the class allegory. Like Peele's previous feature, this film rewards repeat viewings; Peele has really learned well from the Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg movies.

The using of the Tethered as the underclass (they literally are forced to live underground) and "regular" people as the privileged ruling class was brilliant enough. Peele really outdoes himself by showing what he thinks would happen if two members of these classes found themselves in each other's shoes–a kind of warped version of The Prince and the Pauper or Trading Places (1983) as horror instead of comedy. In Peele's mind, the member of the underclass who schemed her way to the surface is able to more or less "pass." The member of the surface world that is kidnapped and forced to live among the underclass does not accept her supposed fate. She gathers a following among the underclass–the Tethered–and decides to launch a violent invasion/revolution on the privileged surface world. The idea that Peele postulates how one rises out of the underclass and if the closing of the inequality gap can be done without massive loss-of-life is something the movie gives a very pessimistic answer to. We aren't led to believe in the end that the real Tethered Adelaide was even a little bit remorseful for what her actions kicked-off. We know that the leader of the Tethereds' revolution is killed before the event is completed and the movie ends without "us" (the audience) knowing the aftermath.

The confirmation of what happened in the house of mirrors that we see at the end served more to make me feel conflicted than anything else. Does the film mean to tell us that a revolution against inequality is not worth the cost? Is it saying that only select talented people can lead it? When watching the whole film, the characters of Adelaide and Red come-off more tragic and frustrating than anything else. In the end we are forced into the same predicament as the son Jason of reckoning with the truth and our complicity in the inequality and suffering of the world around...us. 

My Review of The Haunting (1963) directed by Robert Wise

 It is amazing to think one of the greatest psychological horror films of all time was directed by the same guy who directed The Sound of Music and West Side Story. The Haunting was one of the few books I read in grade school that I didn't feel was a chore and this movie adaptation is just as a good. The idea of what you don't see  being scarier than what you do see is always an interesting idea. This film comes at what can be considered the end of the black and white movie era in the West and used black and white filming techniques superbly.

A swf named Eleanor living unhappily with her asshole-sister's family is chosen to stay with other specially chosen people at a strange mansion called Hill House with a paranormal researcher for his project. Eleanor is not the most socially-trained person (she spends the whole movie having a mental breakdown), but luckily for her her haunted-housemates are all assholes so it all balances out. Meanwhile we learn that Hill House is basically a slaughterhouse for all the people who have ever lived in it and the two caretakers who work there won't go anywhere near the property after sundown. As the gang stay at the house, strange things do indeed start happening and Eleanor and the others debate whether the house is haunted or not. It all comes to a head when an unexpected visitor arrives.

It's a testament that the screenplay is so good given how painfully sixties the acting is. That can be credited to it being co-written by the author of the novel the movie was based on: Shirley Jackson. Claire Bloom was the best of the bunch for me. What makes this movie work is the set-design and cinematography combining to give the film such a terrifying atmosphere. The crowning achievement of this film is the refusal to use any visual special effects (compared to the disastrous 1999 adaptation that tried to cram as many special effects in it as possible).  It would be interesting to compare this to the Roger Corman adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher.

My Review of Get Out (2017) directed by Jordan Peele

 I've never been a big horror movie fan, but I got my horror-movie go-to list. This movie and any other with Jordan Peele's name on it is on that list. As soon as the previews for this film came out I was curious and seeing this film when it was released was an experience. This is one of the few movies that gets scarier when you see it the second time and you are in on it. From what I understand, this movie and Us (2019) are part of a larger story of a sinister conspiracy.

Chris and his girlfriend Rose plan a weekend at Rose's parents' house. Chris is nervous because he's black and Rose and her parents are white, but she reassures him that it's fine. On first meeting the parents are overly-friendly, but the black workers at the house are noticeably uncanny in their speech and mannerisms. After a run-in with Rose's hypnotist mom, things go down-hill for Chris.

This film being the commentary that it was on the dawning of the Trump-era has been talked about. The look at racism among white leftists that this film meditates on has been talked about. I want to focus on the idea of being in a situation where there is no sanctuary. Where those who you thought were friendly allies were actually not only enemies, but in some cases the masterminds. One wonders what a Denmark Vesey or Toussaint L'Ouveture would have thought about this film. For me, the most agonizing part of this movie was when Chris thought he was with a friend and we know that was not the case.

I should also comment briefly on the hero of the film: Lil' Rel Howery playing the role of Chris' best friend Rod. Rod is the character every horror movie needs. Yes he's funny, but the fact that remains that while the antagonists were one step ahead of Chris, Rod was one step ahead of everybody! Howery gave that star-turn performance here.

This movie holds up so well because despite the fantastical elements, so much of it is rooted in the bitter truth that people carry in their hearts due to the myth of white supremacy. Peele originally conceived of this movie as a meta-commentary of the treatment of black horror film-fan by mainstream horror cinema generally. But of course, if you've read James Baldwin's review of The Exorcist in his book The Devil Finds Work then you know that the ideas of Get Out had a long relevance before Peele wrote the script and as long as the dual ideologies of whiteness and anti-blackness exist, not simply Chris but the whole country is doomed to be trapped in the sunken place. Oh, and the ending was geniusly subversive allusion to Othello. 

My Review of To Sleep with Anger (1990) directed by Charles Burnett

 After false starts with both Killer of Sheep (1977) and My Brother's Wedding (1983), Charles Burnett once again was making a feature film and third time was the charm. No blocking the full distribution of the film because of music rights like in 1977. No botched editing of the film by the studio like  in 1983. In 1990 Burnett's reputation as an auteur was enough to get him producers for another feature,  at a major studio, with the backing of Danny Glover (who would play the film's larger-than-life antagonist). This would be Burnett's first feature to be released and distributed without incident. I suspect that the breakthrough success of Spike Lee in the years between My Brother's Wedding and To Sleep With Anger (1990) made Hollywood temporarily more willing to work with more black film-makers.

This film is the story of a family that is having some struggles with each other when the patriarch looses his good-luck charm and a mysterious old-friend named Harry appears. Harry's presence starts leading to strange occurrences and disasters that get the family to start putting two and two together.

This a classic folk tale of the protagonists versus the trickster character and Harry is an especially crafty and almost-demonic one. Harry represents a warped sense of African-American culture and tradition that opposes the family that he terrorizes. As those around him are weak in their knowledge of self or in-conflict, he comes in and takes over almost pushing the family to the brink. We see the conjure tradition that has it's roots in traditional African practices come up against African-American Christianity. There is Harry's sinister greed and self-centeredness versus the selflessness of the family matriarch and then there are kids who refuse to clean-up after themselves. The fish fry gathering was a vintage Burnett show-piece and the performance of See See Rider is a nice call back to the opening of My Brother's Wedding. It is interesting to see Burnett working with professional actors for the first time as oppose to his neorealist preference for amateurs and non-actors. It is interesting to hear Harry say that he doesn't have enemies because he doesn't hold on to the past despite him being a twisted embodiment of the past itself. Though the family nearly falls apart, they mange to realize Harry's hold on them and mange to break it not through rational means...but with Chekhov's marbles.

This movie is a great parable of the crossroads of culture and history. Harry forces the family to reconcile the conflicts they had before his arrival in order to overcome him with a trial by fire. When the family survives him they come out stronger than before. This story fits into the tradition of Charles W. Chesnutt, but brings it to 1990 South Central Los Angeles. And the boy did learn how to play the trumpet after all.

My Review of Early Summer (1951) directed by Yasujiro Ozu

 I am careful about how I talk about Yasujiro Ozu because he is prime hipster/weebo-bait. His "strangeness" and his adoration by Western critics make it hard to properly critique his films. It's even worse if you are a big fan of one of his contemporaries like myself😉. His static seat-level shots, his post-war near-elimination of tracking and panning shots in his films, and his full on framing of actors, places, and his use of transition shots as temporal ellipses have been analyzed to death–so I will skip it here. That gives me the chance to talk about the story which like most of Ozu's filmography deals with generational conflict and drama in a changing (Japanese) society.

Most folks might think that Ozu only dealt with domestic drama, but that's not true. What is true is that regardless if it is pre- or post-1945, Ozu's dramas tend to carry very similar themes (this is especially the case after Late Spring (1949)). Having watched Late Spring, Tokyo Story (1953), and An Autumn Afternoon (1962) for example have shown that when he found a story he liked–he used it and Early Summer does not break this trend. In his 1930s dramas it was The Great Depression that became the underlying catalyst for conflict; in his post-WWII films it was the Westernization of Japan that spurred conflict between the younger and older generations.

The plot of the film is one of the numerous variations on the plot of Late Spring. A woman named Noriko (played by Setsuko Hara) is unmarried and living with her best life with her family when a visiting uncle suggests that it is time for her to get married and drama ensues from there. One big issue that comes up is the changing status of women in postwar Japan. This is something that one would expect with Kenji Mizoguchi more than the more traditional-minded Ozu. The "debate" (in the Ozu sense of the word) is whether the family playing match-maker for Noriko is acceptable for her as a modern Japanese woman. In 1949's Late Spring, the unmarried woman is forced to marry her family's choice of husband against her wishes and has little say in the matter. In Early Summer (made just  two years later), not only does the daughter not marry the man the family has picked for her, but she ends up marrying a man they don't approve of. During the course of these events we learn a good deal about the goings on about middle-class Japanese society at this time. I think the theme in this and others of Ozu's films about family separation has to do with the  trauma of the war years.

One interesting thing about this movie was seeing Chishu Ryu playing a character (Noriko's brother) that was his actual age. Ozu always had Ryu play older male characters–even when he was in his early 20s. So it is uncanny to see Ryu in his 40s, playing someone in their 40s (just two years later, he was playing the elderly patriarch in Tokyo Story). Setsuko Hara would age less dramatically in Ozu's films, but by the late 1950s she would be playing the matriarch roles herself.

As with all his films, Ozu's Zen belief informs the narrative and technical aspects of the film. He uses temporal ellipses to such great narrative-effect that it almost creates an atmosphere of suspense since you don't know where the story is going to pick up after a scene has concluded. His insistence on stressing the impermanence of all things also connects all his films. You can argue that this was one of the most relatively optimistic of his dramatic films–a far cry from the sorrow that loomed over the ending of Late Spring. Early Summer has some optimism for Noriko and her family and Japan's future. It's also interesting to note that the most optimistic of Ozu's dramas has the woman making her own choice. 

My Review of Kwaidan (1965) directed by Masaki Kobayashi

 After the success of such a gritty masterpiece like Harakiri (1962), Masaki Kobayashi  got the greenlight to make one of the most ambitious movies in Japanese history. He took his clear-eyed revolutionary critique of power, Japanese national mythology and history and applies it to the horror genre. The anthology-format and the stunning set-design and cinematography make Kobayashi's first color film a resounding success. This also sees him go from his social realism style of his previous films to a surrealism influenced by traditional Japanese art-aesthetic (something had only previously done in Thick-Walled Room (1956)). 

The film adopts four stories from Lufcadio Hearn's horror anthology collection Kwaidan. Kobayashi takes these stories and adds his own social commentary to them. Story one centers on greed. Story two centers on betrayal and the surveillance-state of wartime Japan. Story four deals with arrogance and Japanese culture. But for this review I want to talk about story 3 "Hoichi the Earless." This story is about a blind biwa player that lives in a Buddhist temple and gained renown for his performances of passages from The Tale of the Heike. Hoichi starts being forcibly-summoned to play for a mysterious aristocratic clan. It turns out that the dead Heike clan has been forcing him to play manically in a cemetery for them about there past glories despite it undermining his health. This keeps going on until the Buddhist priest figure out what's going on and intervene. This is the longest of the episodes in this movie and was Kobayashi's commentary on how the nationalist glorification of figures of like the Heike was so twisted and helped lead to the destruction of a generation during WWII. Kobayashi's interpretation of the Battle of Dan-no-Ura  and the story overall was meant to make folks question the glorification of these suicidal-militaristic values in the Heike story. Kobayashi certainly did not believe in honoring any aspect of the past that senselessly harmed people in the present. Anything dealing with the military and rigid duty was the enemy of Masaki Kobayashi.

Though I am not a big fan of horror movies, I do appreciate horror films with a message or a point (though I have my exceptions like Zombie comedies or John Carptenter's Halloween) like this one or the Jordan Peele movies for example. This movie is showing you the uncanny, but also making you think of some real-world scary things like militarism, fascism, and nationalism–very 2020 type of horror.

My Review of Solaris (1972) directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

 Snaut: "We have no interest in conquering any cosmos. We want to extend the Earth to the borders of the cosmos. We don't know what to do with other worlds. We don't need other worlds. We need a mirror. We struggle for contact, but we'll never find it. We're in the foolish human predicament of striving for a goal that he fears, that he has no need for. Man needs man."

*Spoilers if you have not seen it*

I don't if it was this film or Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan (1966) that got me interested in ghost stories that are not about or not just about scaring you, but about teaching you something about life. Solaris (1972) is about a lot of things, but I think the theme of being thankful for what you got is very prominent. This is the first–though not the last–of Tarkovsky's "anti-science fiction" films. Though a lot of the action this film takes place away  from the Earth, Earth is the key place of this movie. Of course, this is also a ghost story featuring a lost love...and a sentient alien planet.

We find a cosmonaut-scientist named Kris Kelvin who  is a widower and is estranged from his family–particularly his father. He is given the assignment to assess the strange happenings on the a space station orbiting the mysterious alien planet Solaris. He spends his last day on Earth with his father, aunt, and father's friend Berton who was a part of an early exploratory mission to Solaris, but had a mental breakdown during the course of that mission and retired soon-afterwards. When Kelvin makes it to the station, he finds it in disarray and then things take a turn on him...

[Spoiler-stuff now]

So lets just get into the big twist. The ideas of alien ghosts is genius to me. The alien planet reads your subconscious make people based on who or what you desired most based on your memories of that person. Kelvin's buried love and remorse of his dead wife Hari makes her the "guest" that shows up after he arrives on Solaris. The longer she exist, the more "Solaris-Hari" becomes her own person separate from the one that existed on Earth and more human than the other folks on the space station. We also have to other scientist at Solaris station who have gone half-mad by the "guests" Solaris has forced upon them they offer very different opinions on everything that is happening in the movie.

The film also goes out of its way in criticizing the obsession with Outer Space and the neglect of the Earth. This movie is Tarkovsky's direct response to 2001: A Space Odyssey and movies like it. He felt  that the obsession (even at that time) with human colonization of Space was an attempt to not deal with the human-made problems on Earth. The ending of the movie shows Tarkovsky's opinions on this. The use of rain should be mentioned as well. It has been suggested that the use of rain (or snow) in his films suggested a holy or spiritual presence. Tarkovsky never gave a definitive answer on this, but I tend to believe it.

Reconciling with one's past in order to have a future is not an original theme in films, it's certainly not an original theme in ghost stories, but few films have done it more beautifully than this one. When I watch this movie I feel the pain of lost, but the peace of having reconciled something. Andrei Tarkovsky and his troupe took the best of the Russian literary tradition and translated it to film. The two themes I have just wrote about are just a few that this film goes over and I could talk about more things if I choose. I like movies that give you a lot to think-on.

My Review of The Sacrifice (1986) directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

 It's the end of the world and I don't feel too good myself. I'm not talking about 2020, but I am talking about Andrei Tarkovsky's final film before he left this Earth. The Sacrifice (1986) is about a man named Alexander who has, like Ivan Ilyich, wasted his life and now realizes that world may be coming to an end soon as the Cold War has taken a turn for the worst and a nuclear holocaust may be imminent. He tells God (who he says he has long had a non-existent relationship with) that he's willing to give-up everything he loves--and his family--to stop this from coming. Luckily for him, he has two associates who can possibly help. This movie is a very meditative parable about life at the "beginning of the end" of the Cold War. 

The fact that this movie has a coherent plot distinguishes it from Tarkovsky's other feature film made in exile: Nostalghia (1983). This film also acts as a response or call-back to 2 earlier films of his: Andrei Rublev (1966) & Mirror (1977). While the use of rain/snow is the most recognizable motif of Tarkovsky, fire is a strong secondary one. The previously-mentioned films and The Sacrifice all use fire in a very pronounced and important way to symbolize a change or significant act. While this this film is more comprehensible than Nostalghia (though that film has a much stronger ending–possibly Tarkovsky's best), Tarkovsky wears his influences of Bergman and Kurosawa in very un-characteristically sloppy form here. It was quaint to watch this film of Europeans pining for an imagined past while living in an unbearable present. Maybe it's just me, but I prefer Tarkovsky's monologues/soliloquies in Russian rather than Swedish.

What trying times that this world (and myself) has been going through as of late! This movie puts it all in that kind of context that only Tarkovsky can offer. I compared this movie to The Death of Ivan Ilyich earlier, but I could also compare it to The Cherry Orchard by the fact that it is asking us what we would be willing to do to survive the end of the world. As I am still in mourning even as I write this, I can only imagine what sacrifice I would offer to stave-off disaster...