Film Reviews

  • Early Spring (1956)

    Within Early Spring’s delicately composed reflection of 1950s Japan, one office worker’s affair becomes a shattering disruption to the status quo, as Yasujirō Ozu’s melancholy meditation navigates the consequences of intimate betrayal and marital breakdown.

  • A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (2025)

    If all the world is a stage, then A Big Bold Beautiful Journey sensitively understands the roles we must play to uncover hidden truths, channelling Kogonada’s immense imagination through the romantic, metaphysical odyssey that two strangers undertake into each other’s memories.

  • Tokyo Story (1953)

    As we follow one elderly couple’s visit to their adult children in Tokyo Story, the meditative passage of time very gradually becomes visible, transforming the act of dutiful repetition into a contemplative poetry that delicately traces post-war Japan’s shift away from a past it would rather forget.

  • Sorry, Baby (2025)

    Armed with a sharp wit and touching sincerity, Eva Victor skilfully keys into the quirks and foibles of modern companionship in Sorry, Baby, composing a fragmented study of sexual trauma and healing over many years of one academic’s life.

  • The Roses (2025)

    The Roses is evidently far more a showcase for Tony McNamara’s crackling writing than its bland visual direction, yet this darkly funny autopsy of a dysfunctional marriage wields wit and cruelty with surgical precision, exposing the combustible tensions that drive vengeful lovers to self-sabotage.

  • The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (1952)

    Although Taeko and Mokichi’s marriage has been left to wither in The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice, Yasujirō Ozu never stops yearning for the love that lingers beneath their contempt and sorrow, seeking a return to steady companionship through routine, redemption, and grace.

  • Early Summer (1951)

    Post-war Japan’s shifting cultural attitudes tangibly manifest within the cluttered, multi-generational household of Early Summer, its domestic interiors of birdcages and shoji doors infused with Yasujirō Ozu’s introspective meditations, and simmering tension around its eldest daughter’s longing for independence.

  • Bring Her Back (2025)

    As Bring Her Back draws a pair of stepsiblings into an abusive foster home, Danny and Michael Philippou unravel a conspiracy of ritual occultism and necromancy, probing the demonic depths a grieving mother will pursue to mend her broken heart.

  • Late Spring (1949)

    With Yasujirō Ozu’s contemplative editing and curated mise-en-scène guiding Late Spring’s lyrical rhythms forward, there is both profound joy and sadness to be found in its central father-daughter love, finding melancholy drama in her resistance to getting marriage and his quiet acceptance of being left behind.

  • Caught Stealing (2025)

    Loyalties flicker with slippery inconsistency in the grimy urban decay of Caught Stealing, as Darren Aronofsky drags one New York bartender into the city’s violent underbelly, and masks familiar genre tropes beneath a tone that is equal parts sardonic, kinetic, and unapologetically chaotic.

  • A Hen in the Wind (1948)

    Yasujirō Ozu offers nothing but sympathy for one helpless mother’s agonising moral compromise in A Hen in the Wind, imposing the harsh, destitute architecture of postwar Japan upon her shame, as well as her desperate attempt to seek marital reconciliation.

  • Eddington (2025)

    What initially begins as a portrait of masculine rivalry in Eddington gradually reveals a study in reactionary control, capturing a microcosm of America’s tumultuous political landscape in one rural town, and cynically submitting to Ari Aster’s combustible, existential chaos.

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