At a point in the director interview for their film, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain (Amélie et la métaphysique des tubes), co-directors Maïlys Vallade (The Lighthouse Keeper) and Liane-Cho Han (Voodoo) discuss the Japanese belief that children under… Read More ›
“Take the rod; and you and your brother Aaron assemble the congregation and speak to the rock before their eyes, that it may yield its water. You shall thus bring forth water for them out of the rock and let… Read More ›
Photosensitivity Warning: The scenes involving Angels and/or Angels battling EVA Units, which make up a significant portion of the films, almost always involve flashing lights. Be prepared before watching. GKIDS Films gained home release control of Hideaki Anno’s polarizing and… Read More ›
Live. Die. Repeat. Live. Die. Repeat. Live. Die. Repeat. Live. Die. Repeat. Before these words were linked to the Doug Liman-directed Edge of Tomorrow (2014), they belonged to Hiroshi Sakurazaka and his light novel All You Need Is Kill. Initially… Read More ›
We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams;— World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world… Read More ›
Warning: The following review will include discussion of violent imagery, infanticide, and genocide. If you read my piece last year on Hayao Miyazaki’s modern masterpiece The Boy and the Heron (君たちはどう生きるか) (2023), then you know that the Ghibli studio head… Read More ›
Before writer/director Naoko Yamada created The Colors Within (2024), she released Garden of Remembrance, a 2022 short film in which remembrance gives way to healing from grief, the presentation of which involved toying with colors, specifically the way in which… Read More ›
“This is the nature of war: By protecting others, you save yourselves. If you only think of yourself, you’ll only destroy yourself.” – Seven Samurai (1954) One never knows what their introduction to a filmmaker’s filmography will be. Someone could… Read More ›
Published from 2006 – 2007, manga creator Imashiro Takashi’s series Bakeneko Anzu-chan followed a ghost cat, a bakeneko type of kaibyō (a cat with supernatural properties), and its relationship with the people who lived in the town surrounding the temple… Read More ›
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. – The Serenity Prayer There’s a frequently quoted adage “youth is wasted on the young.”… Read More ›
There are fables that challenge children (The NeverEnding Story), that push children (Labyrinth), and that are not safe for children (Pan’s Labyrinth). In each instance, no matter their differences, the perspective of the child is the focal point through their… Read More ›
In the months since the winter release of The Boy and the Heron (2023), the following events have clarified the meaning and depth of this inscrutable film in my mind: The Megalopolis (2024) trailer, the Supreme Court’s sweeping theft of… Read More ›
In Japanese folklore, there exists what’s known as “kaibyō,” a cat that possesses supernatural properties. Of the three types within kaibyō — bakeneko, maneki-neko, and nekomata — manga creator Imashiro Takashi took inspiration from the bakeneko type for his series… Read More ›
There’s not enough whimsy in the world. Instead, we’ve got extremes. Something is either “the greatest,” “a masterpiece,” “the best it’s ever been,” or “it’s the worst,” “mediocre,” “a blight upon our collective existence.” There’s no space, it seems, for… Read More ›
Sports films are often used as a metaphor for something else. The grit, the determination required to succeed either as a team or an individual being a symbol for some other kind of battle. In the feature film directorial debut… Read More ›
A vicious murder, a private detective, a thread-pull revealing a larger conspiracy, and a question of robotic sentience — all the makings of a cyberpunk neo-noir. We’ve seen it before with the Blade Runner and The Matrix series, as well… Read More ›
Adaptations are growing in number more and more these days in entertainment. If there’s not a cinematic version of a book, show, or comic, there’s a television one. Often times, these tales involve beings of incredible strength or speed, of… Read More ›
Whimsical, musical, juvenile, comedic, romantic, adult, absurd — each of these singular words could easily describe the work of filmmaker/artist Masaaki Yuasa. Whether telling a “one crazy night” story or a rom-com or a time-traveling serial killer rock show, each… Read More ›
It’s always a pleasure to join Noel T. Manning for a chat about movies via his program Meet Me at the Movies and even more so when the topic is centered on films I’m excited to see in the tail end… Read More ›
From October 1995 to March 1996, dystopian mech anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, the brainchild of filmmaker Hideaki Anno (Shin Godzilla), broadcast in Japan, eventually coming available elsewhere in the world. It told the story of an alt-Earth in which the… Read More ›