Blog Archives

Space Battleship Yamato (2010)

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Posted on November 6, 2011 by Deni

You get what you pay for and in cinematic terms the currency, as everyone should know, is genre. If you go to see a big budget action movie, you should probably expect a big budget action movie and all that entails, and you really shouldn’t complain if you get it. In my opinion, it’s important to be clear on this concept; that way you don’t end up sitting behind me in the cinema making annoying pseudo-intellectual comments about a) the … (read more)

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I Come with the Rain (2009)

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Posted on December 2, 2009 by Elizabeth Kerr

Vietnamese-French director Tran Ahn Hung’s Cyclo and The Scent of Green Papaya were exercises in style over substance. Atmospheric almost to a fault, both made you forget that great films possess a strong story to support their images. Unsurprisingly his latest, I Come With the Rain, is more of the same. Tran loads up the garden-variety revenge/redemption tale with enough religious imagery to make the Pope proud, mixing it with an audience-baiting (some would say calculated) international cast and … (read more)

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Love and Honor (2006)

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Posted on May 18, 2008 by Deni

There’s something inherently warm – possibly even nostalgic – about the third and final film in Youji Yamada’s informal Samurai period trilogy. While The Hidden Blade seemed predominantly cool and blue, and The Twilight Samurai appeared raw with Spring and all it’s free colour, it’s the burnt hues of autumn, of summer at its hottest, that seem to leave the most lasting impression in Love and Honor, making the film look simple, bare, pared down to it’s most essential … (read more)

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