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“When you came here that first day, I fell flat on my face over your suitcase. I never really got up.” – Joan Leslie as Donna Born to Be Bad is not high-grade stuff. Its trashy exploitive title says as much, but it’s also worthwhile for exactly these reasons. Nicholas Ray wo read more

Added to the landscape of The Third Man, Germany Year Zero, and A Foreign Affair, Berlin Express is a fascinating portrait in the rubble-film genre. These are the pictures on the cutting edge of filmic history, shooting on-location in the post-war world that was still licking its wounds and putting read more

“Like a rat, I want to be beautiful. Because you have a beauty that can’t be reflected in pictures” -sung by Linda, Linda, Linda During the grainy opening scene of Linda, Linda, Linda there’s some time spent figuring out how these characters relate to our story as two AV nerd read more

“There are two kind of people in the world. Those who swing and those who don’t.” I’ve already talked about this phenomenon ad nauseam, but having lived abroad in Japan, worked at a school, and interacted with many Japanese people, it fascinates me to learn about their cultur read more

There’s an immediate aesthetic artifice to His Motorbike, Her Island. Our hero is cool and simultaneously cruel representing a husky-voiced, brusque masculinity that feels no doubt appealing and equally toxic. He recounts his life’s observations through voiceover — the monochrome read more

Lonely Heart is a film bathed in the golden hues of nostalgia (“natsukashii” in Japanese). It also boasts a rural landscape with a topography that’s the utter antithesis of Tokyo’s urban skyline. This in itself already evokes a certain quaintness, regardless of the story bei read more

Sometimes you start a film and there’s such a specific sense of place, rhythm, and tone you perk up in anticipation. I felt that sensation from the opening credits of this new film starring Daisy Ridley. The score is replete with a few murmuring voices and a harp, and there’s the muted c read more

From watching one of director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s interviews, it’s made clear he started Evil Does Not Exist by using the music of Eiko Ishibashi as inspiration. There’s a swelling breadth to it augmenting everything it touches. At times doleful and then evolving into a plinking read more

A version of this article was published in Film Inquiry. “I am always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it is very shocking to the system.” – Flannery O’Connor As someone fascinated by story s read more

A version of this article was published in Film Inquiry.  If Spider-Man was the template for what the modern superhero movie would become, its sequel feels like the standard bearer all future successors were asked to eclipse. I had never seen the movie before as I was young during its initial run, read more

The modern superhero genre as we know it began with Richard Donner’s Superman (1978) starring Christopher Reeve. Then, there were subsequent releases like Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) with Michael Keaton or even Wesley Snipes’s Blade (1998). Also, the first X-Men in 2000 has seen many sub read more

On a superficial even subliminal level, La Piscine (The Swimming Pool in English) shares some nominal similarities with The Swimmer and The Graduate. Certainly, drawing the connections isn’t too difficult. It’s a mood and a feeling as much as it is subject matter. We open on a rural vill read more

The introduction of the main character Jerry Mitchell (Casey Siemaszko ) feels fairly standard and in line with Ferris Bueller, Say Anything, or any of its brethren from the ’80s. Late for school. Dirty shirts strewn about. Simultaneously zapping pop tarts and wet clothes in the microwave. Fla read more

I must have learned about Ritchie Valens through Don McLean’s “American Pie.” Because there was a time when I was fascinated by all the musical references that seemed so oblique to my young mind. Eventually, the songwriter’s ode leads you to “The Day The Music Died̶ read more

I hold an immediate affinity for the images at the core of Mystery Train: A Japanese couple (Youki Kudo and Masatoshi Nagase) riding a train. This is the ’80s so they’ve got a walkman with an audiocassette tape, and it’s blaring Elvis! It becomes apparent they are making a pilgrim read more

Before he became a caricature of his former self, even before the days of Captain Kirk and pop culture canonization, The Intruder is a reminder of something else in William Shatner. He still feels ripe and almost dangerous with a charisma that has yet to be calcified or even corroded by time. The s read more

Keir Dullea is an actor who will always be most prominently remembered for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. He’s Dave of pod door fame. However, part of me wants to promote him as the lead in David and Lisa because this film from Frank Perry, in its quiet empathy and emerging re read more

The aesthetic of The Little Fugitive is made plain thanks to chalk drawing credits playing over “Home on The Range.” We are about to enter a little boy’s world with all the joys and menial problems an adolescent life engenders. The key is giving these problems credence. Because in read more

Nobuhiko Obayashi is known to a pocket of western moviegoers for his crazy, unhinged haunted house flick Hausu (1977), but as I’ve gotten more familiar with at least some of his filmography, I’ve come to appreciate his more grounded works. Using this phrase has the danger of giving the w read more

This is my entry in the Spring CMBA Blogathon Debuts and Last Hurrahs. In the isolated occasions when I had to debate in high school history classes those who did this kind of thing for fun and seemed most destined for politics , were all people I would never want to vote for regardless of affiliati read more