Blog Archives

Happy Times (2002)

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Posted on March 11, 2007 by Ching Yee

Has anyone noticed leading actresses in Zhang Yi Mou’s films have been getting younger and younger?!

OK, small digression — let’s get back to Happy Times. When I think back to Zhang Yi Mou films, the word that I invariably end up using to describe his work is “intense” — the experience for the audience, the film itself, the landscape, the music — unforgettable. His older films had a lot of urgency, tension, you could feel the blood, sweat … (read more)

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Japanese Story (2003)

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Posted on January 25, 2006 by Mark Morrison

Japanese Story has been frustrating critics from one end of Australia to the other; not because it’s a bad film, indeed, quite the reverse, but because it is almost impossible to actually discuss what the film is about without opening up a whole billabong of spoilers. This will be one such review.

I caught the film on the opening night of MIFF on a very rainy night in Melbourne in July; being transported to the red heat of Western Australia … (read more)

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Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (1980)

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Posted on November 25, 2005 by Justin

Akira Kurosawa is one of world cinema’s best-loved directors. Celebrated both in his native Japan and (perhaps especially) overseas, he directed some of cinema’s most enduring and famous stories, and was responsible for bringing Japan’s cinema industry to the world’s attention with 1950’s Rashomon. Fans of action cinema will be (or should be!) familiar with The Seven Samurai, his long but brilliant film tracing the story of a group of samurai hired to protect a village from marauding … (read more)

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