Wow, this is a snappy film. After watching so many slow French and Japanese movies, it’s overwhelming.
Makavejev’s name seems extremely familiar — I feel like I should know who he is, but I don’t, really.
Very chaotic.
This movie looks great. The shakycam is a bit hard on my stomach, though.
It’s an uneven film — there’s brilliant, striking scenes here, and then there’s jokey anecdote asides that are… fun? But altogether, it doesn’t quite gel, I think.
This started off really well, with lots of zip and pep. It’s still amusing, but it’s gotten a bit bogged down? We’ve been introduced to three fake ghosts and one real, and several other people, so we’ve kinda lost track of the initial characters.
It’s dark, see?
This is a most amiable movie — very pleasant to watch. But it does plod along when it should be doing snap-snap-snap hi-jinx at times. The liner notes mention Blithe Spirit, but it really suffers in comparison: While this has a pretty good premise, they really needed somebody like Noel Coward to step in and make the repartee better.
The ghostly special effects are great, though — and done practically, with two identical sets and optical effects.
Ozu’s Tokyo Story is officially the best movie ever (you don’t get more official than the director’s poll at Sight and Sound). Well, at least it was in 2012 — in a week we’ll find out what the new winner is.
This is the first film on the Late Ozu box set, but it’s not that late — we’re starting off three years after Tokyo Story, after all.
All the films on this box set seem to be two and a half hours long, so *gulp*.
This starts off very placidly indeed…
We’re fifteen minutes in, and it’s still unclear what this is going to be about. I like it. It kinda reminds me of Éric Rohmer’s approach to filmmaking, but I guess the influence is going in the other direction.
Kitten! This movie has it all.
And I still have no idea what it’s about. I’m starting to worry that something horrible is going to happen, just as a contrast to all this non-drama.
Very careful with the lighting.
Uzo sure loves this exact framing — a single person in the middle of the shot, talking straight to the camera (but really the other person sitting on the other side of the mat).
*gasp* Is this the only scene in the film where the camera isn’t stationary?
Yeah!
OK, my mind started wandering, and I lost track of what’s been going on. Er… I don’t think a whole lot? It’s about a guy having an affair, and being kinda unhappy about it, as well as being unhappy about being a salaryman.
The performances are lovely and stuff, but there really doesn’t seem to be any reason for this movie to be this long. It’s not like Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles where the slowness is an important part of the film — instead this just doesn’t seem to… move along.
This is really good — razor sharp characters, fantastic set design, and a promising storyline.
Uhm uhm… this isn’t going as well as I’d hoped. I mean, it’s a nice movie and all, and I like the languorous pacing, but it’s just not that interesting?
If Truffaut could have written even one line half as good as these two cats he’d be well on the way to earning Amateur status. The fact is that next to these two Truffaut is illiterate. Put it this way, they’re still showing ‘Douce’ sixty years after it was made. Will time be so good to The Four Hundred Yawns. In your dreams, Francois.
Yeah… people have totally forgotten The 400 Blows now, and are only watching Douce. (Imdb has the ratings count at 119K vs 365. Without the K.)
OK, now the movie is downright tedious. And it started so well!
OK, so we’re now in 1946, and Keisuke Kinoshita is working under American censors now instead of the Japanese ones from two years earlier.
It turns out that the Japanese were the villains all along!
His previous movie, Army, was brilliant, so I went into this with high hopes (which, of course, one shouldn’t do). And… it’s kinda crap? How’s that for insightful critique.
I’m guessing it was made on a very small budget? It’s all filmed in a couple of rooms, with a limited cast. But it doesn’t feel like a filmed play, either — it’s too sloppy for that. Instead it’s just these characters prattling on about how bad war is, with some of them being arrested at random points for being against the war.
Of course. Then again, we’ve really been given no reason to care one way or the other, so…
Man, this is a bad movie.
Morning for the Osone Family. Keisuke Kinoshita. 1946.
