4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on April 13, 2021

“Dreaming’s alright if it’s all you got but if you find the real thing you’re just not satisfied with it anymore.” – Jimmy Stewart as Bill It’s 1917: the eve of the U.S. entry in WWI. The nation is yet to feel the jadedness of everyone else in mainland Euro   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on April 8, 2021

Little Man, What Now? is a curious title although Carl Laemmle seems to believe in the tale even giving it a public service announcement to make the point very clearly. This is a story for every man even as it seeks to document the daily problems of the world. From...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on April 6, 2021

In the opening designs of Only Yesterday, the New York Stock Exchange is encapsulated by its usual hubbub only to hit the skids of pandemonium when the market crashes. We’re talking about the Big Crash of 1929. It plays as the backdrop to our story, very much functioning as current...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on April 1, 2021

Claude Sautet’s Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud positions itself as a certain type of film. There are no thrills about it. We come to notice the normal rhythms of shot-reverse-shot along the 180-degree line. This comes because the movie is so invested in conversation. Unlike his earlier Max and The   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on March 30, 2021

I couldn’t help being reminded of Melville’s Un Flic catching the opening of Claude Sautet’s movie. There’s a policeman, 80 grand missing, and two dead after a heist. It’s not the events that are the same, but the initial sensibilities, the palette, even the world they   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on March 25, 2021

The premise of The Visitor is born in a rapid succession of images and shots. It’s a meet-cute correspondence so-to-speak as an attractive young woman venturing into her 30s looks to find an eligible man to invite into her home on some kind of ill-defined get-to-know-you basis. It would not...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on March 23, 2021

It’s movies like Adua and Her Friends from director Antonio Pietrangeli that remind me of the elemental joys of watching movies you’ve never heard of before. It’s a humbling experience to acknowledge how much of cinema there still is to explore and how names like his sometimes arb   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on March 18, 2021

“A girl and an exam aren’t the end of the world.” Most anyone can probably tell you Les Cousins is a fine companion piece to follow-up Le Beau Serge, and it’s true. It features much the same cast — specifically Jean-Claude Brially and Gerard Blane, in a kind of role...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on March 16, 2021

Claude Chabrol was looking to shoot his first film in Paris but for budgetary reasons, he decided to set his first picture in the village of Sardent where his mother grew up. Le Beau Serge could not occur in any other place. True, the opening shots are universal. Francois (Jean-Claude...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on March 11, 2021

“Go West Young Man. Go West.” – Horace Greeley I had to refresh my memory on Horace Greeley because he’s as much a mythic figure — supreme champion of manifest destiny — as he is a mere historical figure. During the mid-19th century, he was a sometime political st   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on March 9, 2021

Whatever your thoughts on silent movies, be it based on misinformation, overt loathing, or verging on utter veneration, one has to admit there’s something to the simplicity of these films. And by simplicity, I’m referring to the construction of their stories. They rarely seem to get bog   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on March 4, 2021

During the period of time I lived in Japan, I became acquainted with the works of Isao Takahata, and by that I mean I watched both Grave of The Fireflies (1988) and Only Yesterday (1991). This was all that was required because these two films on their own left a...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on March 2, 2021

A version of this review was first published in Film Inquiry.  If Floating Clouds is a film about making peace with the war years, then When a Woman Who Ascends The Stairs is a far more forward-thinking endeavor. In fact, I would say it’s a near-prescient portrait of where Japan...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on February 25, 2021

As someone of Japanese-American heritage, it’s become a personal preoccupation of mine to search out films that in some way represent the lives of my grandparents and their generation. This means the rich Issei and Nisei communities of Los Angeles, the subsequent internment camps, and even the   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on February 23, 2021

Winchester 73 has the initially dubious reputation of being a portmanteau western. Whether or not this is a one-of-a-kind distinction, any number of popular culture vehicles have employed the device in often gimmicky fashion. It makes for a La Ronde-esque sitcom episode in a pinch. However, this Ja   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on February 18, 2021

One could choose any number of labels to attempt categorizing Departures. It’s a film indebted to the rapturous compositions of the past. It shares elements akin to any police procedural ever made or for that matter, the veterinary antics from a British gem like All Creatures Great and Small.   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on February 16, 2021

Whisper of The Heart is wholeheartedly a Japanese anime and yet learning John Denver’s “Country Roads” holds a relatively substantial place in the plotline might catch some off guard. After all, as the metropolitan imagery establishes our setting, we hear a version of the song play   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on February 12, 2021

What A Foreign Affair offers is a curious mix of Billy Wilder’s brand of gleeful satire with docudrama. In this regard, it stands alongside the likes of The Search (1948) as one of the earliest American films to explore the world of post-war Europe with so much rebuilding to do...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on February 10, 2021

It might be a futile exercise but at least for a brief moment, I will attempt to get back into the headspace from when I first came upon Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend. I was younger then. Bright-eyed and a budding cinephile. It is the film that defined Ray Milland’s...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on February 8, 2021

Billy Wilder obviously got his start in screenwriting but much like Preston Sturges before him, he desperately wanted creative control to sculpt the vision of the meticulous scripts he helped forge with writing partner (and producer) Charles Brackett. He got his breakout chance with The Major and T   read more