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Feature Thousand Words

Discover this moody Japanese film about compassion within a marginalised society

Easy Tavern is an infamous inn on the edge of town, in the wetlands of the Fukagawa. The inn’s regulars are petty crooks and smugglers. Sadashichi, one of the smugglers, not only looks dangerous: he demonstrates his ferocity by killing a police officer. Yet it’s clear from the beginning that the director’s sympathies lie with […]

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Feature Four Frames

Four Frames: Goodnight Mommy (Severin Fiala & Veronika Franz, 2014)

Some of the best horror films, from Rosemary’s Baby (1968) to The Shining (1980), are fueled by subverting qualities often associated with family, such as safety, loyalty, and trust. While the thought of being murdered is terrifying in and of itself, it is even more disturbing when the perpetrator is a family member. Severin Fiala […]

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Feature Thousand Words

Thousand Words: Evil Behind the Mask of Respectability (The Bad Sleep Well, 1960)

The Bad Sleep Well (Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru), a critical portrayal of postwar corporate Japan as a breeding ground for corruption, targets the strong connections between the economy, politics and crime. As a tale of revenge, it recalls Hamlet, but it also echoes the Japanese penchant for vengeance as a dramatic motif. The famous […]