Kino Oyasumi
late night reviews and rants about film and other media
review · Berlinale
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die
Entertaining and pretty much what I had hoped Mickey 17 would have been, even if it's at times just a modern reimagining of Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys.
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Living
This remake of Kurosawa's 1952 Ikiru had to be set in a fictonalized, historical post-war London because at its core, more so than a timeless and contemplative exploration of finding meaning in one's live, I find this story to be one of hope and the power of ordinary people to change society for the better--even when bureaucracy and middle-management labor might reduce one's own personhood.
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Kokuho
Narratively doesn't reach uncharted territory and definitely has some flaws in its plot progression but I'm just a sucker for these types of stories and it more or less hit the same notes for me as Shōwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjū did. Could have definitely benefited from developing its female characters though.
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Art College 1994
The big dreams and endless philosophical meandering of an early 20s student.
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Cloud
The premise of a guy attempting to find freedom through capitalism and hustle his way into wealth as an alternative to the hopelessness felt by the iceberg generation in Japan's stalling economy, yet only to be cornered into inevitable violence is in itself fine, even if not particularly original, but the practical execution is embarrassing for a director of this standing.
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Sirāt
Ambitious in its bleak, oppressive portrayal of decisions gone wrong and a group of tortured souls in way over their head as the whole world around them keeps falling apart.
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Die My Love
Ostensibly deals with postpartum depression from a grounded female gaze but instead repeats old tropes of manic pixie female hysteria with an embarrassing amount of feral Lawrence crawling on the ground but make it sexy scenes? Postpartum depression but actually she still really loves and cares for the baby, it's the dog that overstimulates her really.
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The Smashing Machine
It's by no means Raging Bull or The Wrestler, but Safdie's directorial vision and Belgian composer Sinephro's soundtrack elevates what otherwise could have been another overly dramatized run-of-the-mill biopic.
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The Long Walk
While the plot twists are mostly predictable, and this Mark Hamell / Stephen King joint project is also, unexpectedly, rather liberal in its understanding of contemporary politics in terms of individual evils over systems and structures, I really did enjoy this quite a bit.
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Materialists
Supposedly an elevated melancholic take on the 2000s era romcom/drama genre, Materialists is a pretentious, tonally inconsistent 'Sofia Coppola from Wish' production that constantly attempts to hide its lacking understanding of basic human emotions by hammering the audience on the head with poetic platitudes about the power of love in an era of superficial, transactional dating culture--backed, of course, by a generic dreamy soundtrack and visuals both as vapid as the film and the themes it presents themselves.