「鬼滅の刃」上弦集結、そして刀鍛冶の里へ
A year before The Village’s release, a copy of the script was stolen and distributed to sites with zero compunction about reviewing stolen materials. If you were on the internet in the naughty aughties and a fan of movies, you know exactly the type. The flurry of reviews that followed riled up readers of such sites. It reached the point that, by the film’s 2004 release, a considerable legion of film nerds already stood poised to carve up a movie they were certain would be a turkey. Continue Reading →
エクスマキナ
SimilarBlown Away (1994), Oldboy (2003), Star Trek: First Contact (1996),
StudioToei Animation, Toei Company,
Apples opens with a series of thuds. With each one, we move in until we’re close-up on details. These are little seeds of a world. Such is the process through which director Christos Nikou peels back the skin of his story. He repeatedly plants tiny granular clues that one would be tempted to spit out and dismiss, but which make all the difference to the growth of the narrative. Continue Reading →
PSYCHO-PASS サイコパス
For acclaimed actress turned first-time writer-director Rebecca Hall, her debut feature Passing is more than her first furtive steps into another facet of her expanding career. It's a deeply personal odyssey, one rooted in her own questions about her racial identity: Hall, whose grandmother is part-Black and whose mother has Black, Native American, and Dutch ancestry, has presented as white for much of her career. With this, her adaptation of the 1929 novella of the same name by Nella Larson, Hall gets to explore those myriad facets of herself, as well as the broader implications the phenomenon of 'passing' has for all of us in our respective negotiations with our identity. Continue Reading →
シン・エヴァンゲリオン劇場版:||
SimilarResident Evil: Apocalypse (2004),
StarringKotono Mitsuishi, Mariya Ise, Megumi Hayashibara, Sayaka Ohara,
Let me start by saying this: Evangelion 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon a Time is the best film I have seen in 2021 so far. It's a gorgeously animated conclusion to one of 20th and 21st-century science fiction's great works. It executes both its quiet, still moments and its grand setpieces with care and precision. The voice cast (who have been playing these roles for decades, going back to the original 1995 television series Neon Genesis Evangelion) and the animation team give the cast an excellently detailed life and liveliness. 3.0+1.0's editing—particularly during its extended, tone-jumping climax—is downright sublime. The imagery? To paraphrase Sam Peckinpah, I will not be forgetting what I've seen in Evangelion 3.0+1.0 any time soon. I do not think I could. From a ruined piece of pre-Impact infrastructure twirling in a patch of broken gravity to one of the titular gargantuan combat androids going to work on a swarm of bizarre, disturbing opponents, it's indelible. Whether familiar or bizarre, beautiful or horrifying, 3.0+1.0's imagery is, without fail, flabbergasting. Continue Reading →
アベンジャーズ コンフィデンシャル:ブラック・ウィドウ & パニッシャー
SimilarBatman Begins (2005), Batman Forever (1995), Batman Returns (1992), Catwoman (2004), Sin City (2005),
Some will complain about the lack of stakes in Black Widow. After all, even more so than typical MCU fare, Natasha Romanoff’s (Scarlett Johansson) fate never stands in doubt. She will, of course, survive. Not because she’s the good guy, but because we already know how she dies, thanks to Avengers: Endgame (aka the biggest movie of all time). Continue Reading →