O'GRADY FILM

Ventured out to Metrograph to catch a screening of the gorgeous new 4K restoration of Fruit Chan’s Made in Hong Kong. This stylish, anarchic, nihilistic neo-...

Shot/reverse shot is about as basic as film language gets: one character speaks; a second responds, back and forth in perfectly matched medium close-ups unti...

As has become my custom of late, I would like to elaborate on my favorite scene in Ride Your Wave. Unfortunately, because it occurs near the very end of the ...

[Despite my best efforts, the following review contains MINOR SPOILERS (though most of them are only by implication); consider yourself duly warned!] Caught ...

Ventured out to Japan Society to catch a screening of Poem, the third and final installment in director Akio Jissoji’s Buddhist Trilogy (newly digitally-rema...

Although I’m still recovering from a severe cold, I ventured out to Village East Cinema to catch a screening of Keiichi Hara’s The Wonderland (alternatively ...

My brother gifted me a one-year subscription to the Criterion Channel for Christmas, and since I was stuck in bed with a nasty cold all day, I decided to fin...

Characters created by H. P. Lovecraft tend to be driven irrevocably mad by incomprehensible cosmic knowledge. Nicolas Cage excels at portraying balls-to-the-w...

My initial review of Tora-san was already a bit too bloated and unfocused for my standards, but I simply had to rectify my failure to mention the cameo appea...

I’ve decided to revisit my House of Bamboo review because I somehow forgot to mention that it features one of the most realistically abrupt and brutal moment...

Following Rutger Hauer’s death earlier this year, I bought several of his more obscure films, and tonight, I finally got around to watching one of them: Fles...

“Tokyo Stories”, Japan Society’s special showcase of Japanese movies made by foreigners, has entered its final weekend. Despite my exhaustion following a par...

For the past three weeks, Film Forum has been running a special program of rare (and, in many cases, never before imported) Japanese classics… and, thanks to...

Many classic “midnight movies” inhabit the gray area between art and schlock, and Glass Eye Pix’s Depraved is no exception; indeed, this imaginative reinterp...

I first became aware of Yoji Yamada back in college, when I discovered his three critically acclaimed revisionist samurai dramas—The Twilight Samurai, The Hi...

[The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; please proceed with caution!] Takashi Miike has always had a penchant for bending, subverting, and outright br...

I’ve been meaning to watch Tony Scott’s The Hunger for quite some time now (ever since his untimely death, at the very least), and as luck would have it, IFC...

[Minor SPOILERS below; you have been warned!] The tropes and conventions of that distinctly Japanese flavor of sci-fi/action are fairly well established afte...

As I stated in my review, One Cut of the Dead is a whole bucket of fun… but it also spoke to me on an extremely personal level. Since it belongs to that rare...

The best Japanese filmmakers have always exhibited a talent for putting unique spins on familiar storytelling structures. The Zatoichi series was formulaic a...