Warning: spoilers throughout! People all over the world recognize Rashōmon as an important film for many reasons. They acknowledge that it introduced legendary director Akira Kurosawa and his work to the West, that it was the first Japanese film to win the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and, most famously, that it popularized… Read more »
Who exactly was Anthony Asquith? A British cinema pioneer, a reluctant aristocrat, a Hitchcock imitator, a repressed homosexual – Asquith has been subjected to all of these nondescript labels and more by various commentators, and yet today he remains a shadowy figure within the annals of film history. Despite his prolific output, which spans from… Read more »
The last few years have seen more attention being paid to female directors. Whether it’s multiple theaters having retrospectives honoring Dorothy Arzner, the latest triumph from Ava DuVernay, or exciting debuts from artists such as Nia DaCosta and Mati Diop, women in the film industry are slowly but surely getting some of the recognition… Read more »
There are many things that make the animated films of legendary writer/director Hayao Miyazaki beloved. They include his penchant for narratives that focus more on relationships than conflict, complex three-dimensional female characters, and beautiful imagery. But if I had to pick one thing that made his films truly unique, it would have to be the… Read more »
Although the great Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu (1903-1963) now enjoys a kind of central position in the mainstream canon of film history, his work was not seen in its totality in the United States until the 1970s – and at that time, his work was subjected to some of the most inept and derogatory criticism… Read more »
Fantasy and science fiction have always offered an incredible amount of possibility to storytelling. When you have rules and worlds you can make up and change at the whim of a keystroke it can be easy to get lost in the nuts and bolts. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course. Some very good films… Read more »