A timely narrative that highlights the inert quality of a societal field structured by capitalism and right-wing nationalism.
Category: Social critique
Desert of Namibia (2024) review [Japannual 2024]
Yoko Yamanaka delivers a cinematic masterpiece of subjectivity.
Snowdrop (2024) review [OAFF 2024]
A complex character portrait that touchingly illustrates how easy it is to misrecognize the logic of the subject-supposed-to-be-in-need.
Wash Away (2024) review [OAFF 2024]
A pleasant narrative that offers a fresh but familiar exploration of the subject’s fundamental desire for recognition/love and the problematic yet medicative function of consumption.
Monster (2023) review
Kore-eda succeeds in delivering an utterly engaging narrative about the fundamental misunderstanding that underpins our fabrication of our truth.
A Far Shore (2022) review
A highly engaging story that explores the destructive effects of a societal field that fails to reach out to subjects-in-need.
Halloween Special Review: Shinshaku Yotsuya Kaidan part 1 & part 2 (1949) review
Kinoshita offers an incredibly engaging psychological exploration of Iemon’s faltering ego and the dramatic shift this faltering causes in his relationship to Oiwa.
Revenge (1964) review
A classic – a jidai-geki that every cinephile should see.
Conflagration (1958) review
A narrative that serenely depicts the possible outcome of a subject’s failure to find, in a post-war landscape, someone to carry the Name-Of-The-Father.
I Am What I Am (2022) review [Nippon Connection 2023]
Toko Miura, with her layered performance, gives the emotional struggle of her character its genuine flavour.
Journey (2022) review [Skip-City International D-Cinema Festival]
Shogo offers an evocative and bleak experience that forces us to question the current state of our societal field.
Plan 75 (2022) review
Hayakawa hauntingly confronts the spectator with what would happen if the existence of the subject was radically reduced by the government to how much he/she financially contributes to the society.
Distant Thunder (2022) review [Skip City International D-Cinema Festival]
A strangely mesmerizing sci-fi slice-of-life narrative
GO (2001) review
An exquisite structured exploration of how fictions of nationality fracture and shape they societal field as well as the subjects subject to it and the relational dynamics they establish.
People Who Talk to Plushies Are Kind (2023) review [OAFF 2023]
Kaneko convincingly shows that the symptomatic usage of the plushie attempts to repair the tensive bond with the Other or subdue its overbearing presence.