A manhunt in a period film: Hideo Gosha’s Bandits vs. Samurai Squadron
The recent discovery of Bandits vs. Samurai Squadron (Kumokiri Nizaemon, 1978), a film that I had never seen before, has…
Recent Posts
The inner chaos of adolescent life: Sion Sono’s Love Exposure
In Sion Sono’s Love Exposure (Ai no mukidashi, 2008), 17-year-old Yu (Takahiro Nishijima) struggles with his sexual awakening. Sono turns the…
The escape motif in Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven
Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992), set in 1881, is a complex film about violence in American history and, by extension, in…
War as absurdity: Kihachi Okamoto’s Desperado Outpost
Desperado Outpost (Dokuritsu gurentai, Japan, 1959) starts with shots of a man on horseback in a landscape reminiscent of a…
Sociopolitical reality as horror: Joon-ho Bong’s The Host
The Host (Gwoemul, South Korea, 2006) starts with gloomy images in a morgue at an American military base in South…
Todd Solondz: The home as a battlefield in Happiness and Life During Wartime
In Happiness (1998), the ever-smiling Trish (Cynthia Stevenson), in her neat kitchen, is strongly reminiscent of the female ideal as…
Human fragility: Sang-il Lee’s Unforgiven
Sang-il Lee’s Unforgiven (Yurusarezaru mono, 2013) bears many similarities with Clint Eastwood’s eponymous masterpiece from 1992. The storyline and narrative…
Social criticism and the inner journey in Battle Royale
In one of the first sequences of Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale (Batoru rowaiaru, 2000), a group of boisterous pupils on…
Thousand Words: A Nightmare Called Belfast (’71, 2014)
In 1971, Private Gary Hook (Jack O’Connell), a young British soldier from Derbyshire, arrives in Belfast with his platoon. His…
