Ramblings on Cinematic Matters
I kick off my Beatles retrospective by looking at the movie that started it all, A Hard's Day Night. Expressions such as “one of a kind,” “sui generis,” and “lightning in a bottle” exist to describe A Hard Day’s Night (1964). Directed by Richard Lester and written by Alun Owen, the movie is pure, concentrated …
Continue reading "Making Us Feel All Right: A Hard Day’s Night Review"
The next installment in my Zhang Yimou retrospective requires actually going back in time to fill in a gap in the series. Better late than never... Earlier in my tour through Zhang Yimou’s movies, I had to skip Keep Cool (1997), because I could not then find a copy. I have since been able watch …
Continue reading "Hijinks, Indie-Style: Keep Cool Review"
Along with my love for movies, my enthusiasms include a no-less-intense love for the greatest rock band of all time, the one and only Fab Four, the Beatles. For Beatles fans, the past few years have been something of a new golden age. In 2021, Peter Jackson’s epic Get Back documentary gave us a fascinating, …
Continue reading "Announcing a New (Gear! Fab!) Cameraman Retrospective"
The next installment in my Zhang Yimou retrospective also involves looking back at the inaugural work of the Coen brothers. For his sixteenth feature, Zhang Yimou did something new: remaking another movie. Zhang’s movie A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop (2009) is a transplant to a Chinese milieu of Blood Simple (1984), the …
Continue reading "Murder Most Foul: Blood Simple and A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop Review"
Here I review the long-awaited new movie from Hayao Miyazaki, The Boy and the Heron. Returning from the longest of his many pseudo-retirements, Hayao Miyazaki has made his first movie in 10 years, The Boy and the Heron (2023). The much-anticipated movie is a lovely work, boasting all the beauty, grotesqueness, and poignancy we have …
Continue reading "Life, Death, and Life: The Boy and the Heron Review"
Returning to reviewing after a little hiatus, I look at the next movie in my Zhang Yimou retrospective, Curse of the Golden Flower. Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) is Zhang Yimou’s third foray into the wuxia genre. The movie differs from its predecessors in two notable respects, though. First, it reunites Zhang, for the …
Continue reading "Domestic Disharmony: Curse of the Golden Flower Review"
I continue my Zhang Yimou retrospective with Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles. Following his two wuxia movies of the early 2000s, Zhang Yimou returned to contemporary China and more naturalistic filmmaking with Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (2005). The basic story is the stuff of tear-jerking melodrama, but the movie is subtler and …
Continue reading "Starting under One’s Feet: Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles Review"
Here I look at one of the most talked-about movies of the year, Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. The life and career of J. Robert Oppenheimer seem tailor-made for dramatization. A brilliant theoretical physicist who taught at the University of California-Berkeley (he helped infer the existence of black holes decades before they were discovered), Oppenheimer is best …
Next in my Zhang Yimou retrospective, I look at House of Flying Daggers. House of Flying Daggers (2004) is Zhang Yimou’s second wuxia movie, and it raises the pressing question: “Does the movie live up to that title?” The answer is no, not quite (could any movie?). It comes close, though. Co-written by Zhang with …
Continue reading "Stabbed in the Back: House of Flying Daggers Review"
Two movies, made almost 30 years apart, offer two different interpretations of the same fanciful, melancholy book. In this review, I look at Night on the Galactic Railroad and Giovanni's Island. Night on the Galactic Railroad, sometimes also translated as Milky Way Railroad, is a book by schoolteacher, poet, and children’s author Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933). …
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