Lightness and Solidity: On Kiyoshi Kurosawa We constantly encounter the weightless in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s cinema: newspapers fluttering across the living room at the opening of Tokyo Sonata; Jun Fubuki standing alone against a wall, brushed by a breeze, at the beginning of Seance; the philosophical zombies coated in smooth silver paint inhabiting a realm of consciousness in Real; or the spectral media ghosts suspended in midair, inching toward the living, in Pulse. Conversely,

Cold War 1994 | This is not a police and gangster film, but a game of power The Poster of Cold War To be honest, judging solely from its promotional materials, Cold War 1994 can easily be mistaken for a conventional Hong Kong police and gangster film. I went into it wondering whether Hong Kong could still deliver innovative crime thriller works, only to find that what Cold War 1994 truly explores goes far beyond the simple premise of police arresting criminals—it delves deep

Improvisation - Meticulousness - About Nobuhiro Suwa *Exclusive Interview with a Film Star As a figure within the broadly defined "Rikkyo New Wave"—a movement originating at Rikkyo University in Japan in the early 1970s, which gained formal recognition and critical attention in Japan’s film industry throughout the 1980s and 1990s—Nobuhiro Suwa has long stood out as a distinctive auteur who has rarely received in-depth critical scrutiny. Unlike Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Shinji Aoyama

Rifts in Perception: Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Sheep in the Box Today, we find ourselves in an era where discussing AI has become an absolute necessity. But why must we? Whether driven by an instrumental rationality aiming to maximize the potential of this novel technology within the high-speed machinery of modern society, or by an existential threat that demands protective measures to declare our sovereignty over life as artificial intelligence increasingly encroaches upon eve

Review of The Unbroken: Struck Matches and Things Ignited by Mistake & The lit match and what was mistakenly ignited This is a film about matches. Sukanta Bhattacharya, a Bengali poet, wrote a poem titled Deshlai Kathi. A single matchstick is not enough to burn anything down, yet it carries fire, embodying the tiniest yet most resolute will of a human being. The story of Adamya (The Unbroken) stems directly from this poem. Twenty-three-year-old Palash is a left-wing revolutio

Film Review of Macho Dancer: Neon Lights, Bubbles and Cheap Kisses Neon Lights, Bubbles and Cheap Kisses We tend to equate the body with desire and nudity with seduction. Yet in the desperate struggle for survival in Manila depicted in the film Macho Dancer, the body is the only asset, the only means of expression, and the only form of resistance available to people from the lower social strata. The film lays bare the sordid and seedy nature of the male stripper industry with

Blades of the Guardians: Wind Rises Over the Desert | A Convincing Action System # A well-established action system I had barely any expectations for Blades of the Guardians before stepping into the cinema. To some extent, this lowering of expectations has become my habitual mindset when watching domestic genre films released in recent years. Yet the movie boasts a rare caliber rarely seen nowadays: a level of refinement crafted with sincere and rigorous effort. The action se

Colony Cannes Film Review｜Spectacle of Combat and Sacrifice *The Spectacle of Battle and Sacrifice "This will undoubtedly be the most commercially oriented film I have ever made so far... I am trying to draw on the strengths of Train To Busan and Hellbound to create an engaging movie." — Yeon Sang-ho #Box office and word of mouth As of June 1, 2026, the cumulative domestic audience admissions for Colony in South Korea have exceeded 3.47 million, ranking second on the annual d

Cannes Film Review of Paper Tiger: Between Seeing Clearly and Exposing the Truth & Between seeing the truth clearly and exposing it outright What kind of film is worthy of making the entire audience stand up and applaud for ten minutes straight before leaving after its Cannes premiere? James Gray's newly written and directed work Paper Tiger may hold the answer. Starring Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver and Miles Teller, the film has been officially selected for the Competitio

Cannes Film Review of Dora: A Kiss Upon the Scars & A Kiss on the Scars In 1905, Sigmund Freud published Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. The narrative of this case study later became known as the "Dora case", an extremely famous and highly controversial text in the history of psychoanalysis. Eighteen-year-old Ida, given the pseudonym "Dora" by Freud, sought treatment for persistent nervous coughing, periodic aphonia and migraines. Over three months of therapy,

Cannes Film Review of Titanic Ocean | Sparkling Mermaid Dreamland % Mermaid Dream With Sparkling Ripples Titanic Ocean (2026) is the feature debut of Greek director Konstantina Kotzamani. The film focuses on a Japanese boarding school that specializes in training professional mermaids. There, young girls undergo rigorous training, dreaming of becoming "real mermaids." A Greek, German, Romanian, French, Spanish, and Japanese co-production, the film had its world premiere in th

Review of Signs | Our Home [ Our Home ] Writing about Shyamalan is an unsettling undertaking. There is inherently an insurmountable chasm between written words and moving images. Elegant film criticism often relies on carefully crafted prose to stir sensory perception; this literary dance transports our consciousness back to the very moment we first encountered a piece of footage, letting us relive that initial viewing experience all over again. In essence, film criticism can

Portrait of a Lady on Fire | Echoes of Freedom and Fate &Echoes of Freedom and Fate Ancient Greek mythology abounds with discussions about fate, most of which are fundamentally tragic. Humans are invariably powerless against predetermined destiny, rendering them small and helpless in the face of it. Oedipus schemed meticulously at every turn, yet all his elaborate plans led him inexorably to his fated fate of killing his father and marrying his mother. Orpheus endured untold

The Drama: Moral Judgments in Intimate Relationships & Moral Judgment in Intimate Relationships If confession itself is an ultimate test for a relationship, then the question is never whether you have secrets, but whether the trust built between us can still hold once those secrets are spoken aloud. The Drama unfolds with this almost brutal premise. Shortly before their wedding, groom-to-be Charlie Thompson (played by Robert Pattinson) and bride-to-be Emma Harwood (played by

Il Buco | Time Deep Within Scenery and Declining Modernity #Time in the Depths of Scenery and Downward Modernity Michelangelo Frammartino's film Il Buco (2021), inspired by the 1961 expedition to the Abisso del Bifurto cave, meticulously depicts the descent of a caving team. Through minimalist cinematic language, it conducts an audio-visual mapping of the underground, illustrating the inseparable connection between human activity and geological processes. *Vertical Poles: Aby

Marty the Supreme｜Gradually Leveling Off Speed [ the gradually leveling-off speed ] The word "ping-pong". When we look at the form of this term, we can usually easily picture a game of table tennis, or more precisely, visualize its trajectory and shape—it is as if a back-and-forth rally is formed between the two characters. The incompleteness each character possesses drives them to collide with and draw toward one another. The ball/dot sustains the movements and intentions of

From Epstein Island to the Depths of the Labyrinth: The Pale Man’s Feast Table Is Never Cleared On January 30, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice formally released full documents pertaining to the Jeffrey Epstein case. This archive, spanning 3 to 3.5 million pages, 180,000 images and 2,000 video clips, resembles a candle lit in the dead of night, laying bare a gruesome fraction of this clandestine blood-soaked banquet. The long dining table on his private island, portraits

Film Review: Filipiñana at Berlinale — Aesthetics of Violence on the Golf Course The Poster of Filipiñana. In the aesthetic lineage of Southeast Asian cinema, we often witness the overwhelming power of nature: the lush, mysterious rainforests captured by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the dizzying sensation of being swallowed by vegetation as the camera ventures from cities into dense woods in Tropical Malady and Memoria. Yet Filipino director Rafael Manuel’s debut feature Filipi

Film Review: We Are All Strangers at Berlinale — Fireworks Burn Close, Yet Life Stretches Far Away Film Poster for We Are All Strangers Within the competition slate of the Berlin International Film Festival, We Are All Strangers could easily be categorized as a familiar family drama: blended households, marriage and childbearing, debt, illness, sacrifice, and coming-of-age. Its thematic entry points are not obscure, yet director Anthony Chen does not merely craft a story of w

Young Hearts Interview: "I just wanted to have a story for everyone who felt a little bit different." (Trailer of Young Hearts） Written and directed by Belgian director Anthony Schatteman, Young Hearts (2024) is a queer coming-of-age story that follows two 14-year-old boys who meet one summer and gradually develop feelings for each other. Many viewers have described it as a homo version of Flipped (2010) or a youthful take on Call Me by Your Name (2017). The film stars Lou Go