Review: Ken (The Sword)
[The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Kenji Misumi’s Ken (or The Sword, if you prefer translated titles)...
The ramblings of a wannabe cineaste. Join me as I dissect the art of storytelling in films, comics, TV shows, and video games.
[The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Kenji Misumi’s Ken (or The Sword, if you prefer translated titles)...
[The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Yotsuya Kaidan is Japan’s most popular and frequently adapted ghost...
[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] At times, Masahiro Shinoda’s Demon Pond feels like two different...
Perfect Days is a film about cherishing small pleasures. It’s about ordinary people living ordinary lives. It’s about the soothing...
Winchester ‘73 features an intriguing narrative gimmick. While the overarching plot is a bog-standard revenge thriller—with Jimmy...
[The following review contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (an extremely loose adaptation of a...
[The following review contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is all about the inexorable march...
The Zone of Interest is a horror film. That isn’t a “genre” classification, by the way; the movie lacks the “traditional” tropes and...
Having just belatedly watched Allen Baron’s Blast of Silence, I need to reevaluate my perception of an entire subgenre. Although the...
Every cinephile has at least one Holy Grail. It's a common story: interest in said rare movie is piqued by a fleeting allusion in the...
Above all else, Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis is a triumph of production design. From the intricately detailed miniature models and matte...
[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] It would be reductive to describe Dogra Magra as a film about...
In Water—the most recent exercise in minimalism from South Korean indie auteur Hong Sang-soo—is intentionally shot entirely out-of-focus....
[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Silent Night represents something of a stylistic departure for John...
[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] In Godzilla Minus One, the eponymous prehistoric reptile is largely...
Like Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster revolves around the theme of conflicting perspectives, adopting a triptych...
Several critics have asserted that The Boy and the Heron is Hayao Miyazaki’s most “personal” film to date. There may be some merit to...
As a 100th anniversary celebration, Disney’s Wish is rather lackluster. While the studio certainly makes an effort to pay tribute to its...
The visual style of David Fincher’s The Killer resembles the personality of its protagonist: meticulous, methodical, and relentlessly...
If Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji was director Tomu Uchida’s homage to the socially conscious period dramas produced by Sadao Yamanaka...