Category Archives: Film

The Big Clock

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  • The Big Clock

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 →

A Geisha’s Tale (女は二度生まれる)

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  • 女は二度生まれる (A Geisha’s Tale)

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 →

The Mad Fox (恋や恋やすな恋)

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  • 恋や恋やすな恋 (The Mad Fox)

6/6/25 (Fri), home, 7:15-9:00p

Uchida’s 1962 surrealistic film is based on the popular Bunraku and Kabuki classic commonly known as Kuzunoha. The entire movie is as shape shifting as the foxes within it, moving from semi-realistic to otherworldly to a Kabuki stage. Continue reading →

Bloody Spear at Mt. Fuji (血槍富士)

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  • 血槍富士 (Bloody Spear at Mt. Fuji)

6/3/25 (Tues)

Uchida Tomu’s 1955 film was his comeback after a 13-year absence from Japanese film. He had reportedly raised suspicions in the movie world for his long stay in China and reported enthusiasm for the Mao regime (despite his active support for the Japanese military during the war – his convictions don’t seem very deep). But he had some big hitters behind him, including explicit support in the opening credits from superstar directors Ozu Yasujiro, Shimizu Hiroshi, and Ito Daisuke (the poster also throws in Mizoguchi Kenji). He supposedly promised to behave in crafting this film, and the content is largely innocuous on the surface. It is based on a popular silent film, Dochu Hiki (now lost), by his mentor Inoue Kintaro. The two leads in that film were happily given roles in the remake: Tsukigata Ryunosuke in a great turn as the suspected thief and Watanabe Atsushi as an official in the comic tea party scene.

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Chikamatsu’s Love in Osaka (浪花の恋の物語)

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  • 浪花の恋の物語 (Chikamatsu’s Love in Osaka)

5/27/25 (Tues)

Uchida Tomu’s 1959 film, based loosely on playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s 18th-century puppet classic Courier from Hell (冥途の飛脚 ). The English title is misleading: it is not a love affair involving Chikamatsu, but a play devised by Chikamatsu about a doomed love affair in Osaka. (The Japanese title is a more straightforward The Story of a Naniwa Love Affair, using the old name for the city.) As with the similarly title-challenged The Chikamatsu Story, the marketers seem to think that the Chikamatsu name is going to be an attraction for foreigners, who in fact are unlikely to have heard the name at all. The film needs better marketers.

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Fallen Blossoms (花ちりぬ)

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  • 花ちりぬ (Fallen Blossoms)

5/23/25 (Fri)

I learned of Ishida Tamizo’s little known 1938 film through a Japanese film blog and was intrigued enough to check it out. The only names I knew in the credits were future director Ichikawa Kon, who served here as one of the assistant directors, and co-writer Morimoto Kaoru, best known for the much-revived stage drama Life of a Woman. (Some sources claim that Morimoto adapted this film from a stage version, but I can’t confirm that anywhere.)

A unique feature of this film is that the entire cast is female, though male voices can be heard from time to time, and the action takes place wholly within the confines of a geisha house in Gion. The time is specified as a roughly 24-hour period from the evening of July 17, 1864, which we now know is just before an anti-government assault by rebel forces known to history as the Kinmon Gate Incident. The rebels suffered a disastrous defeat against the Shogun’s elite Shinsengumi forces with significant loss of life.

But the geisha don’t know that yet. Continue reading →

RRR

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  • RRR

4/12/25 (Sat)

This Telugu-language film was a massive hit in Japan on its initial run in autumn 2022, quickly becoming the largest-grossing Indian film ever released in the country. It had the distinction of inspiring a stage version by the inimitable all-female Takarazuka troupe, which seems odd under the group’s star system given that the film has two male leads of equal importance. But there was no way to find out since those tickets were impossible to get. Still, it piqued my interest in the film, so I was keen to catch it when it returned for a second run. The theater was impressively full for an old flick. RRR, though never explained in the film, was apparently intended only as a working title using the initials of the producer and two main actors. The producer evidently came to like it and found words that fit, rendered in English as “Rise Roar Revolt”.

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The Stepford Wives (2004)

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  • The Stepford Wives (2004)

3/30/25 (Sun)

I had thought this was a horror story and was surprised to see Paul Rudnick listed as the writer. I discovered that this was a significantly reconceived remake by Frank Oz done in a more lighthearted tone. A comic approach is not a bad idea in theory given the social satire in the story. Shame about the reality.

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Frontline (フロントライン)

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  • フロントライン (Frontline)

6/14/25 (Sat)

This film grabbed my interest immediately when I learned it was about the ill-fated Diamond Princess cruise ship. This was the ship that docked in Yokohama Harbor in February 2020 when a Hong Kong man was found suffering from an unknown coronavirus, which soon spread rapidly through the ship and ignited worldwide panic. I was fixated with the incident at the time and remember having arguments with foreign friends who bashed Japan for keeping all passengers and crew quarantined on the ship rather than bring them into the country for treatment. While we felt sorry for the 3,700 victims, no one here was keen on allowing those infected with or exposed to an unknown communicative disease to come into the country and put 120 million at risk. As a result, the quarantine, for better or worse, made the ship a virtual Petri dish among people of varying age, racial and ethnic groups, giving us a good picture of how the virus behaved. In the end, no more than 14 people (if that many) died from the virus, 2% of confirmed cases, all of whom other than the initial Hong Kong victim were in their 70s and 80s. That suggested that the virus, which was already known as Covid, wasn’t nearly as deadly as feared. An objective accounting of that fact could have changed the entire trajectory of the global crisis. But the hysteria, amplified by the media, took its own course.

Continue reading →