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...
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....
Like Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster revolves around the theme of conflicting perspectives, adopting a triptych...
If Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji was director Tomu Uchida’s homage to the socially conscious period dramas produced by Sadao Yamanaka...
[The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Recently, I had the pleasure of revisiting Daiei’s Daimajin. In...
[The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] With The Timekeepers of Eternity, Aristotelis Maragkos accomplishes...
[The following review contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Daiei’s 100 Monsters (currently available on one of the discs in Arrow...
[The following review contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] When I first discovered the existence of Banmei Takahashi’s Door earlier...
[The following review contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Contrary to what the sequels might lead you to believe, Pinhead and his...
[The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] There’s an old Japanese proverb that goes, “The nail that sticks...
[The following review contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] After finally seeing Violence Voyager for myself (having learned of its...
In the 1980s and 1990s, a lot of anime was produced exclusively for the booming home video market. Freed from the more stringent...
[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] The Town That Dreaded Sundown is essentially two different movies...