Top Films That I Watched in 2023

1. All Quiet On The Western Front (2022)

2. Monster

3. Past Lives

4. Beautiful Beings (2022)

5. 101 Reyjavik (2000)

6. Belfast (2021)

7. 658km Yoko No Tabi

8. Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf (1966)

Top Films That I Watched in 2022

1. Drive My Car (2021)

2. Tar (2022)

3. Nomadland (2020)

4. Minari (2020)

5. Lady Chatterley's Lover

6. Through a Glass Darkly (1961)

Top Films That I Watched in 2021

Top Films That I Watched in 2021

I have watched some of the new releases and some classics this year. 

1. The Power of The Dog

Top Films Watched in 2020

 Top Films That I Watched in 2020

I have watched some of the classics from the 20th century in this challenging year.

1. 1917 (2019)

2.  Floating Weeds (1959)

3. Le Samourai (1967)

4. Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)

5. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

6. Citizen Kane (1941)

7. Mank

8. Fanny and Alexander (1982)

9. The Lighthouse (2019)

Top 10 Films that I Watched in 2017

1. BPM (Beats Per Minute)

2. Dunkirk

3. Manifesto (2015)

4. Aquarius (2016)

5. Things to Come (2016)

6. Being 17 (2016)

7. God’s Own Country

8. Spa Night (2016)

9. Loving (2016)

10. Loving Vincent

Trailers: Nominated for Best Animated Feature Film 2016

“Anomalisa” Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson and Rosa Tran

“Boy and the World” Alê Abreu

“Inside Out” Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera

“Shaun the Sheep Movie” Mark Burton and Richard Starzak

“When Marnie Was There” Hiromasa Yonebayashi and Yoshiaki Nishimura

Trailers: Nominated For Best Foreign Language Film 2016

“Embrace of the Serpent” Colombia

“Mustang” France

“Son of Saul” Hungary

“Theeb” Jordan

“A War” Denmark

Trailers of Top Films That I watched in 2015

1. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

Comment by film critic Roger Ebert about Grave of the Fireflies (1988).

2. Two Days, One Night (2014)

3. Brooklyn

4. Me And Earl And the Dying Girl

5. Inside Out

6. Leviathan (2014)

7. Mr. Holmes

8. Song of the Sea (2014) [Alt: Shaun the Sheep Movie]

9. Room

Trailers: Nominated For Best Foreign Language Film 2014

Belgium, The Broken Circle Breakdown

Cambodia, The Missing Picture

Denmark, The Hunt

Italy, The Great Beauty

Palestine, Omar

Film Review: Still Walking (2008)

Still Walking (2008), written and directed by Hirokazu Koreeda, is a family drama of grown children visiting their elderly parents, a theme and scope that surely invoke comparison to another family drama of an old couple visiting their children and grandchildren who had little time for them in Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953).  Koreeda in partnership with confident cinematographer Yutaka Yamasaki has crafted a Japanese film that showcases the best of Asian cinema.  Many reviews have been written about this gem waiting to be discovered, and I shall quote an IMDB user’s review that Still Walking is a “rarefied endearing family story, disharmony ambiguously masked by revelry of sumptuous food and familial banters”.  This little capsule gives you a better idea of the film than the glowing reviews in The New York Times which called it the “closest thing to a masterpiece”. 

In an interview two years after the film’s release, Koreeda says he resisted the comparison to Ozu that seem apt to many others, because Tokyo Story is perhaps the only film by Ozu that most western audiences are familiar with.  Koreeda would rather attribute his influence to be another Japanese director, Mikio Naruse.  In a separate interview, Yamasaki describes his working relationship with Koreeda; on how they both started from making documentaries, and unlike majority of film makers who are focused within the frame, they are more aware of things that are going on beyond the frame. 

These interviews included in the DVD released by Criterion Collection reveal the personal source of inspiration for Still Walking.  Koreeda called this film his “grief work” because he went back to rewrite the materials after his mother’s death.  The director says that the matriarch in the film played by Kirin Kiki acts and looks uncannily similar to his mother when she was alive.  Kiki embodies the mother character with grace that comes with age, yet with spite in her otherwise ordinary banters.  Another revelation in the interview was that most of the banters were indeed once spoken by Koreeda’s mother.  Those words of wisdom with biased perspective and questionable provenance add to the realism of this family drama.  But, words unspoken are as palpable as words spoken.  There are moments that hint at a character’s disquiet realization that another family member may have known more about the secret once held close and dear. 

The scenes in this film are meticulously constructed, and the ensemble acting is outstanding.  These are some of the reasons Still Walking had won various prizes from Mar del Plata Film Festival to Asian Film Awards.  Now with the release by Criterion Collection, this film may rival Oscar-winning Departures (2008) as the Japanese film that will be watched and talked about for years to come.  Moreover, Still Walking has the advantage of being the bookend 50-year-later version of the classic Tokyo Story. 

In spite of rehearsals and preparations, film making like life itself finds ways to present its unexpected elements.  In this film, the surprise came when the crews were filming three generations of the Yokoyama family walking on the sea shore where a ship that had grounded; it’s a fitting omen in the story, and a visual gift for the storyteller.  To paraphrase Koreeda, most people have to deal with the realization that we are not going to be what we aspired to, that we are ordinary people with idiosyncratic obsessions, which to an objective observer, are petty.  Living up to expectations and dealing with disappointments are several of the common threads in the fabric of this seemingly ordinary family tale, and yet the experience is extraordinary.  Still Walking is a must-see; I rented it from the library.  If nothing else, the four recipes for corn tempura, kinpira daikon, rice with edamame and myoga ginger, and pork belly kakuni presented in the booklet may enhances our repertoire of Japanese cuisine. 

Rating:9/10

IMDB average:7.9/10

Autumn 2011 Film Previews

1. Artist, an interesting silent film.



2. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a remake of the BBC series, this is one of the best trailers (using music from another film the Wolfman).



3. We Need to Talk about Kevin, allegedly Tilda Swinton gave best performance of her career (so far).



4. Melancholia, Kirsten Dunst allegedly gave a great performance here.



5. Senna, a documentary about the Brazilian F1 driver.


6. Drive, speaking of fast driving.



7. Carnage, a theater like film that's because it was a Broadway show prior to this. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, anyone?



8. A Dangerous Method, stories of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, now analyze these.



9. Ides of March, political drama.

The King's Speech On The Way Back To Rabbit Hole In 127 Hours

1. The Way Back by Peter Weir (Master and Commander)



2. Rabbit Hole by John Cameron Mitchell based on the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play



3. King's Speech by Tom Hooper



3. 127 Hours by Danny Boyle

Films for fall season 2010

My six picks of films that look interesting for this fall season:

1. Animal Kingdom (from Australia)



2. Another Year by director Mike Leigh



3. Black Swan staring Natalie Portman



4. Never Let Me Go based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro



5. Somewhere by Sofia Coppola (who wrote and directed "Lost in Translation")



6. The Tempest staring Helen Mirren and by Julie Taymor (who directed "Titus")