9/3/25 (Wed), plane
French director Jacques Audiard’s much-discussed flick about a transgender mob boss, played by a male-to-female transgender performer, didn’t immediately appeal to me despite all its awards and critical praise. I figured it would be a finger-wagging love-thy-trans-neighbor lecture. But a friend gave it such an enthusiastic review that I decided to give it a chance. I’m glad I did.
8/11/25 (Mon)
This biographical film by Brazilian master Walter Salles about one of the “disappearances” under the nation’s military dictatorship caught my interest right away after the fascinating They Shot the Piano Player, which dealt with the same phenomenon under the contemporaneous Argentine military dictatorship. (Now we need a Chilean film to complete the trilogy.) The movie is based on a memoir by the protagonist’s son.
The film unflinchingly depicts the horrors of the regime, not only the violence but the psychological trauma of the unknown. Still, the real theme is Eunice’s incredible resilience in the face of the ordeal, especially her determination to give her children a normal life as she works against all odds to learn her husband’s fate.
8/2/25 (Sat)
Writer/director Jacques Becker’s acclaimed 1954 film, which has different English titles but translates as “Don’t Touch the Loot”, was apparently a landmark in France. It brings a more introspective take to film noir, giving new life to that genre as well as reviving the career of the aging former heartthrob Jean Gabin.
7/5/25 (Sat)
David Lean’s 1955 rom-com, based on Arthur Laurents’ stage play The Time of the Cuckoo of three years earlier (which was also adapted by the writer in 1965 into a flop musical Do I Hear a Waltz?), comes just before he turned to the huge epics that we generally associate him with. Jane (Katharine Hepburn) is a cautious middle-aged spinster on a dream trip to Venice. Pleasant and intelligent, she is also conservative, conventional (down to her name), and unable or unwilling to let her emotions out. She’s determined to like the city: “I’ve got to! I’ve come such a long way!” But she views most everything through her camera lens. While she meets numerous couples along the way, she always refrains from joining them, afraid of being a “fifth wheel”, despite her longing to do so. Upon an encounter with the Italian owner of an antiques shop, she is wary at first, almost allowing him to get away. She finally gets her courage up and gradually gives in to his passion for her, opening herself up to the possibility of love. Then she discovers, not unsurprisingly, that he is married…
7/11/25 (Fri)
DA Pennebaker’s 1967 documentary of Bob Dylan’s tour in England two years earlier is said to be a landmark in rockumentary filmmaking. (The title’s first word is actually spelled for some reason without the apostrophe, but I’m going with the real thing.) It follows the Nobel laureate and others in cars, hotel rooms, offices, the streets, and the concert stage, where he performs some of his numbers. He also plays snatches of songs backstage along with Donovan, Joan Baez (who he was dating) and others.
It’s a very curious film in that Dylan, who we would expect to be portrayed with reverence, comes off as a condescending jerk. Continue reading
I learned after watching Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s wild and starry movie version of Tennessee Williams’ one-act play, filmed only a year after its off Broadway debut, that the stage show itself was presented more or less unchanged on the BBC many years later. That comparison was too tempting to pass up.
6/27/25 (Fri)
Fernando Trueba’s 1993 Oscar-winning comedy was leaving Criterion at the end of this month, and having enjoyed his innovative They Shot the Piano Player, I decided on a whim to check it out.
The light-hearted film is set in the Spanish countryside in the early 1930s when the nation is tottering on revolution. The title refers to the director’s vision of the brief interlude between the toppling of the monarchy and the start of the Franco regime. Fernando, a handsome soldier and wide-eyed innocent, has gone AWOL after an unsuccessful uprising and is wandering the countryside. He is befriended by an old bohemian painter living alone in a sprawling house. They become close, helped by the boy’s cooking skills and companionship. When the man’s family is set to visit, Fernando decides to move on to Madrid to seek a future. As he is about to board the train, however, he gets a look at the man’s four nubile daughters just alighting – and decides to hang around a bit longer.
It’s pretty clear right away where this is going, but the fun is in getting there. Continue reading
Having seen the stage versions of these shows in the past days, I was eager to catch the films. The Japanese titles, literally Living With Mother and Living With Father, make the connection clearer; they are set respectively in Nagasaki and Hiroshima just after the war and are considered part of a trilogy alongside Okinawa-based Army on a Tree.
Yamada Yoji’s 2015 Nagasaki actually preceded the stage show and I suppose is considered the original. However, it takes the material in a direction that veers significantly from Inoue’s vision as seen in the other two parts of the trilogy. Continue reading
7/7/25 (Mon)
Two soldiers in wartime Okinawa remain hiding in a tree Onoda-like for two years after the war without knowing that the hostilities have ended – the setting would seem ridiculous if it weren’t based on a true story. Okinawa-born Taira Kazuhiro’s film is adapted from a highly regarded stage play that the prolific Inoue Hisashi had been preparing to write at his death (only the title, copious notes, and reportedly two lines of dialogue remained). Having learned about the story in a newspaper article, Inoue had been working on it since 1985 and had finally scheduled a production in 2010, but passed away just three months before the show was to debut. Veteran Kuriyama Tamiya was tapped to take over the script, and the production, staged by Inoue’s troupe Komatsu-za, was finally staged in 2013. It has taken yet another dozen years for that to reach the screen.
It helps to know that Okinawans experienced a significantly different war than the rest of Japan, a brutal campaign in which their unspeakably callous treatment by mainland Japanese made them wonder which side was the real enemy. The Ryukyu Islands, which include Okinawa, do not share the same history and culture as the rest of Japan, analogous to Hawaii vs. the continental US, and there is a strong sense that they were essentially fed to the wolves, as amply recorded in museums in the prefecture. The film was significantly expanded from the three-character stage show.
6/21/25 (Sat)
Lee Sang-il’s story of a Kabuki rivalry, based on a best-selling novel, examines a world where blood is thicker than talent, as two onnagata (female-role specialists) vie for National Treasure (kokuho) status: one has the bloodline but not the innate skill, the other is the opposite. Some critics have seen similarities with the Chinese opera world in Farewell, My Concubine, but that’s only in the use of onnagata, which is just skin deep. The film has proven an unlikely success despite its three-hour running time, drawing in nearly 4 million viewers and over ¥5 billion (figures updated as of mid July).（Update: As of November 25, those figures have grown to 12.3 million viewers and nearly ¥17.4bn in revenues, making it Japan’s highest-grossing live action film ever. That’s before its debut in the US and other major markets.)
6/19/25 (Thurs)
John Farrow’s 1948 film, based on a novel of two years earlier, straddles the line between screwball comedy and noir thriller, not always successfully.
A tyrannical media mogul spots someone slipping out of his mistress’s apartment just as he arrives, and unwittingly kills her in the brawl that follows. He confesses the crime to his right-hand man and intends to give himself in, but the latter convinces him that they can pin it on the man before him since no one saw the mogul enter. Though he didn’t get a clear look at the man’s face, the boss calls his ace crime reporter George to find the culprit – not realizing that George is in fact the man he’s looking for. Continue reading
6/13/25 (Fri)
A light-hearted dramedy of 1961 by Kawashima Yuzo. The English title is deceptive, as “geisha” here is clearly a euphemism for prostitute. (The film is also known as Women Are Born Twice, a direct translation of the Japanese title, which makes sense in the film’s final seconds. A better rendering might be “A Woman Reborn”.) The main character doesn’t play shamisen, dance or sing, so she’s not remotely a geisha. She is simply a kimono-clad hostess who entertains customers by chatting, pouring their drinks and feeding their egos, then sleeping with them afterwards. And apparently enjoying it. The Happy Hooker is probably closer to the point. Continue reading
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