4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on June 4, 2018

What strikes me right away about Yasujiro Ozu’s silent classic is just how relatable it feels. Yes, this is a Japanese film and yes, it’s silent too but watching the scenarios play out on screen have an undoubted timelessness. This is decidedly fresh material that’s blessed with h   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on June 2, 2018

Sufjan Stevens released a song not too long ago as an elegy to Tonya Harding. Being the modern-day folk poet that he is, he cast her as a tragic hero, championing her as a definitive portrait of an All-American girl, larger-than-life, unapologetic, and ultimately beaten back by society at large....   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 31, 2018

George Stevens is only one among a plethora of filmmakers who came back from WWII changed. He had seen a great deal of the world’s ugliness — Dachau Concentration Camp for instance — and as a result, the films he made thereafter were more mature ruminations on humanity at large.   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 29, 2018

There is a phenomenon in Japan called hikikomori (pulling inward). It mostly applies to 20-somethings. But in 2017 an article came out in The New York Times to document a different and yet somehow similar occurrence. Many older people risk the chance of dying alone if they have no family because...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 28, 2018

In English, it means Train Man and it finds its origins in a media franchise that now includes Manga, a book, a television show, and of course this movie. But the events of the story are purportedly based on real life when a young otaku (Japanese tech nerd) in Akihabara came to the...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 25, 2018

30 Minutes into Lost in Translation our two traveling misanthropes finally meet in the hotel lobby at the bar sharing a friendly exchange. They are two people who share one striking similarity — they are Americans in a foreign land — and they’re looking for a friend. It’s a   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 23, 2018

Like you I know what it is to forget and yet still be endowed with memory. These are only a couple fragments from this film stitched together but in many ways, they encapsulate the essence of its core themes. I suppose such words ring true for all of us and Alain...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 21, 2018

If Yasujiro Ozu can be considered foremost among Japan’s preeminent directors then there’s no doubt that Ohayo (Good Morning in English) is one of his most delightfully silly films. But that’s only on the surface level. Young boys are unified in their affection for watching sumo on   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 20, 2018

We meet a college-aged Korean guy (Cha Tae-hyun) as he relates his first encounter with the girl (Jun ji-hyun) who would ultimately become his girlfriend. In the throes of a drunken stupor, she flails perilously near the railway as an incoming train comes on so he steps in to pull her...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 17, 2018

It’s not something you think about often but stoners and film noir fit together fairly well. Why more people haven’t capitalized on this niche is rather surprising. Think about it for a moment. film noir in the classic sense is known for its private eyes, femme fatales, chiaroscuro cinem   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 15, 2018

My dad has been and forever will be a fountain of pop cultural knowledge. I learned the little I know from the best, the difference is, he lived through most of it. Still, I must admit, at times I didn’t believe some of these touchstones of yesteryear when I was...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 13, 2018

“I’m a stranger here myself.” ~ Sterling Hayden as Johnny Guitar In watching even only a handful of Nicholas Ray films, it’s possible to discern fairly quickly that his films are often about the marginalized outsiders. Rebel Without a Cause (1955) is the most iconic example   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 11, 2018

Jules and Jim breaks out of the gates with a frantic burst of energy giving off the effect of a comedic circus act or a whirling carousel and at times it functions as both. Champion of the French New Wave, Francois Truffaut, at 29 years of age injects the film...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 9, 2018

I never put much stock in a Hitchcock title out of force of habit or lack thereof because he never seemed to. But thinking on Notorious I came to the rather unextraordinary epiphany that it refers to lovely Ingrid Bergman as much as any Nazi, at least from a certain...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 7, 2018

The Fault… is Not in Our Stars, But in Ourselves… — William Shakespeare It’s so easy to adore Ingrid Bergman and it’s no different in Spellbound. Yes, she starts off as an austere psychiatrist purely interested and invested in scientific thought and practices in psychoanalys   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 4, 2018

Rope’s title sequence is composed of your prototypically serene establishing shot. But really, you could not have a more unique and in some sense unnerving picture. It was Alfred Hitchcock’s first foray into Technicolor and it’s quite the looker as are the beautifully constructed   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 3, 2018

Entering into the latest Avengers blockbuster I felt like I was missing something thanks to a cold open that places us in an unfamiliar environment. That’s a feeling that has come upon me on multiple occasions previously. Not only because as a mild enthusiast I’ve missed a stray entry he   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 2, 2018

“It’s my duty as an American citizen to believe a man innocent until he is proven guilty.”  I stand corrected. Maybe Foreign Correspondent (1940) is not Alfred Hitchcock’s most patriotic movie. Maybe it’s Saboteur, made two years later. Or maybe they are both made by t   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 1, 2018

I can’t even begin to comprehend what it’s like to get laid off in Tokyo. In any city, any place, any circumstance it’s one of the feelings which would instigate the formation of a lump in your throat. But Tokyo is swarming with so many people and so much competition; it seems...   read more

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on April 29, 2018

Though director Anthony Mann later made a name for himself with a string of Westerns pairing him with James Stewart, it’s just as easy to enjoy him for some of the diverting crime pictures he helped craft. Everything from Raw Deal (1948) to T-Men (1947), He Walked by Night (1948), and of...   read more