Years after watching Sonatine, here we finally get around to Hana-bi which is arguably director Takeshi Kitano’s magnum opus. This one has many of the same thematic elements as the earlier film including the director himself playing a jaded, violent character but is far more refined and coherent. Featuring music by Joe Hisaishi and artwork by the director himself, it leans fully into the anime aesthetic to fantastic effect.
Continue reading Hana-bi (1997)
After writing about The Wandering Inn earlier, I realized that I’ve never written anything about With This Ring either and I’ve been reading this for a far longer period of time. This is of course not an original work but a piece of fan-fiction based on the Young Justice television series that is set in a version of the DC universe. I’ve massively cut down on my reading of fan-fiction these days and most of them aren’t worth talking about. I make an exception for this not because it is particularly well written but because of its sheer massiveness and the consistency with which the author has been able to churn out updates every day almost without fail.
Continue reading With This Ring
This is of course the film whose real world inspiration was the Harvey Weinstein affair though none of that is mentioned within the film itself. In fact, the film delicately deals with the controversial subject matter by side-stepping the boss entirely so that he is never seen and the main character here is his assistant. This brilliant move ensures that the film doesn’t feel exploitative in the least and refocuses the issue on the complicity of the industry as a whole in his wrongdoings.
Continue reading The Assistant (2019)
This is a lesser Alfred Hitchcock film that I added to my list originally because the director mentioned in various interviews that it is one of his favorites. I think this was probably because it is one of his earliest Hollywood films that was a great success and clearly establishes his signature style. Watching this now, it feels too straightforward to be truly great but there are perhaps some interesting insights to be had in its themes.
Continue reading Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
This is a Nigerian film that made headlines a couple of years ago and given the growing prominence of Nigerian cinema, it seemed appropriate to watch one of them. It has been lauded as a film about female empowerment but I think this applies more to real life more than the in-story events. Lead actress Genevieve Nnaji is also the director and main scriptwriter so it’s very much her show.
Continue reading Lionheart (2018)
I haven’t been so diligent as to buy anything close to every edition of this annual anthology of the year’s best science-fiction stories but this has indeed been a semi-regular fixture of my life ever since I started reading fiction from way back during my school days. This particular edition however is the very last one as editor Gardner Dozois died in 2018. This truly marks the passing of an era for although he is not well known for his own writing, his editing work has been influential in the field for decades and as this volume illustrates, he does invaluable work in documenting what happens in the field of science-fiction every year.
Continue reading The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection
This is one of those based on a real story films about events that took place in the early 2000s. In some ways, it’s a fairly straightforward recounting of the story and doesn’t boast of anything especially dazzling. But I rather appreciate how it is clear and informative with only very minimal embellishment of the facts. Also, the film highlights the role of student reporter Rebekah Rombom in breaking the story though her name is changed for the purpose of this film but doesn’t mention that its scriptwriter Mike Makowsky was also a student in the same school during that time.
Continue reading Bad Education (2019)