The romance genre goes art house in Chungking Express, Wong Kar Wai’s two part riff on loneliness, yearning, and the comforts of late night take-out, featuring the talented Tony Leung, Faye Wong, Brigette Lin, and Takeshi Kaneshiro.
Intro & News (00:00)
Review (30:41)
Twitter Questions (1:47:59)
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The orderly, rigid code of bushido smashes up against human feeling in Masaki Kobayashi’s Harakiri(1962), a stunningly trenchant piece of subversive film-making — written by Rashoman and Seven Samurai scribe Shinobu Hashimoto, and starring the great Tatsuya Nakadai — that threatens to demolish the foundational ethos all of samurai cinema is built upon.
What We’ve Been Watching + News (00:00)
Review (31:25)
Twitter Questions (1:46:05)
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Grant talks about the Winter 2017 season, while I talk mostly about the Spring 2017 season because I mistakenly looked at the wrong chart… Yep, that happened.
Review (44:10):
Since the Zatoichi series spans over 26 films and 100 TV episodes, I figured the original film from 1962, The Tale of Zatoichi, was as good a place as any to start with. In the director’s chair for our titular character’s first outing is Kenji Misumi who would go on to direct four more Zatoichi films, the Lone Wolf and Cub films, and many other noteworthy titles in the genre. The real draw of the film, of course, is the irreplaceable Shintaro Katsu, as Zatoichi, an itinerant blind masseuse and gambler, who despite outward appearance, possesses extraordinary sword fighting skills.
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BLADE LICKING THIEVES 