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The Only Son (1936)
The Tokyo that Ryōsuke moves to in The Only Son is not the bustling city of opportunity he once dreamed of, but a desolate wasteland of factories and smokestacks, underscoring Yasujirō Ozu’s tale of parental expectations and disappointments with the social realities of Depression-era Japan.
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A Story of Floating Weeds (1934)
The contempt that travelling actors hold for themselves in A Story of Floating Weeds may be extreme, yet the petty drama they vindictively stoke only further condemns them to sorrowful lives, as Yasujirō Ozu examines their thorny relationships with both compassion and cynicism.
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Jean Vigo: The Dreamer’s Uprising
Jean Vigo’s tragically short filmography blazes with anarchic spirit and poetic invention, marrying revolutionary politics with lyrical surrealism to liberate cinema from convention, and celebrate truth in its most rebellious, heartfelt forms.
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Woman of Tokyo (1933)
Woman of Tokyo does not deliver the formal impact of Yasujirō Ozu’s later masterpieces, yet there is a melodramatic tension in its exposure of one young woman’s scandalous double life, glimpsing the quiet devastation that lies beneath domestic stability.
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The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)
Matt Shakman’s vision of the The Fantastic Four: First Steps may gesture towards greatness in its retro-futurist production design, but ultimately retreats into hollow grandeur, leaving behind a world rich in style for a superficial simulation that never dares to challenge its own utopian ideals.
