Movie thoughts and fiction updates.
#16 in my ranking of Fritz Lang's filmography. In terms of how directors go out with their final movie, this reminds me of Family Plot, Alfred Hitchcock's final film. There isn't any comparison between the two in terms of tone or genre, but both The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse and Family Plot are solidly… Continue reading The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
#6 in my ranking of Masaki Kobayashi's films. Adapted from the Shusaku Endo novel Lord, Have Mercy, Masaki Kobayashi's Hymn to a Tired Man is a combination of his own The Thick-Walled Room and Kurosawa's Ikiru, a re-evaluation of war crimes of the Japanese Army during World War II and the embrace of what can… Continue reading Hymn to a Tired Man
I don't know if it's the presence of Toshiro Mifune that pushes this over the top for me in terms of Masaki Kobayashi's filmography, but there are a host of things in Samurai Rebellion (I prefer how Kobayashi always just referred to it as Rebellion) that makes it stand above the rest, no matter how… Continue reading Some extra thoughts on Samurai Rebellion
#5 in my ranking of Masaki Kobayashi's films. There's a streak in a lot of filmmakers where they want to make a film that's obviously fake. Most of what they do is heavily realistic, and yet they all have this desire to tell a story that's inherently formalistic. Fellini largely made a career out of… Continue reading Kwaidan
#2 in my ranking of Masaki Kobayashi's films. Masaki Kobayashi had shown great talent for a long time before this, and he'd even made the engrossing epic The Human Condition which seems like it could have been the pinnacle of any man's career, and then he goes and makes Harakiri. In the year following his… Continue reading Harakiri
David Vining, Author 