A young woman named Ciao Ciao returns from Guangzhou to her rural home in southern China. She has enjoyed a more sophisticated lifestyle, and now chafes against her parents and her former neighbors. With nothing to do, and craving the … Continue reading REVIEW: Ciao Ciao (2017)
Sunada (Kaho) is a director of television commercials – just past thirty-years-old, drinking a little too much, and hiding an unenthused lover from a happy but sexless husband. Once the pressures of a sexist industry and celebrity egos grow too … Continue reading REVIEW: Blue Hour (2019)
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So too, sadly, is the road to bad movies. I honestly do not believe anybody sets out to make a bad movie. Even deliberately silly direct-to-streaming efforts made famous … Continue reading REVIEW: The Almond and the Seahorse (2022)
Guei (Cui Lin) travels to Beijing from the Chinese countryside to find work. He is hired as a bicycle courier, and for the first few weeks must sacrifice most of his pay to purchase outright the bike that has been … Continue reading REVIEW: Beijing Bicycle (2001)
It is sometimes difficult, for we children of the 1980s, to fully express the extent to which we all believed we would die in some global nuclear holocaust. We never planned for our futures like earlier generations did, because there … Continue reading REVIEW: Testament (1983)
Nobuko (Meiko Takamine) arrives at her new job, teaching at an exclusive girl’s academy in Tokyo. Once there she finds herself mocked for her rural accent, and criticised for staying with her aunt (Chōko Iida) who runs a geisha house. … Continue reading REVIEW: Nobuko (1940)
World War II veteran Harry Stoner (Jack Lemmon) is co-owner of Los Angeles fashion label. Business is struggling, and he and his partner Phil Greene (Jack Gilford) keep the wolves at bay with a combination of creative accounting and outright … Continue reading REVIEW: Save the Tiger (1973)
Perhaps it is chance, and perhaps there really is a trend going on. In the past month or so I have seen three great 2022 feature films. Each of them has featured outstanding lead performances by a number of women. … Continue reading REVIEW: Dive (2022)
Reiko (Hideko Takamine) married into the Morita family as a 19 year-old during the war, with her husband killed in action shortly afterwards. While American bombs destroyed the Morita store, and the family fled for safety, Reiko alone remained behind … Continue reading REVIEW: Yearning (1964)
Hiroki Tachibana (Tetsuji Tamayama) was a popular nature photographer with a successful television series, but the collapse of Japan’s bubble economy caused the end of his career. Years later, a request from his mother to photograph her friend triggers in … Continue reading REVIEW: Once Hit the Bottom (2022)
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