Kanichiro Yoshimura is a Samurai and Family man who can no longer support his wife and children on the the low pay he receives from his small town clan, he is forced by the love for his family to leave for the city in search of higher pay to support them. In his search he joins a notorious clan, known as the Shinsengumi where he does as much as possible to get money. Looked at as a money grubber,Yoshimura proves his strength physically and mentally by being loyal to his honor. During the dramatic period, with the rise of the Emperor and the fall of the Shogun. Yoshimura shows us the struggle of life in a personal way, by changing the lives of the people he meets and the way life is looked at.Read More »

Raúl Ruiz is one of the great cinematic self-perpetuators, like Louis Feuillade and Jacques Rivette—a film like this gathers a motion and a rhythm that makes it feel like it could on and on, self-generating new stories and new characters ad infinitum. Based on the novel by Camilo Castelo Branco (whose writing has been the source for Oliveira’s similarly fatalistic romance, Doomed Love), Mysteries of Lisbon is, to paraphrase a line from one of its many characters used to describe a disastrous relationship he had, a game that turns into a bourgeois romantic drama, to which I would add, that turns into a game. It starts—as all stories must?—with an orphaned boy questioning his parentage and falling into a fever, and out of that starting point the film evolves less as a story than a cartography of characters crossing points in space and time.Read More »

HUA YANG DE NIAN HUA, a fascinating 2m 28s montage of images Wong kar-wai pulled from a number of vintage Chinese features, most of which were considered lost until some nitrate prints were discovered in a California warehouse during the 1990s. Focusing on the popular actresses of the time, the short’s lovely vintage costumes and imagery perfectly compliment the look and feel of the main feature. Unfortunately, the transfer (provided to Criterion by Wong’s company, Block 2 Pictures) is framed too tightly on top, bisecting a number of heads.Read More »

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A modest chair in the semi shade of a derelict place… An old man wearing a black shirt sits on that chair and starts talking with a calm voice: “Fiz um curso de engenharia elétrica, depois fui fazer o serviço militar e a partir daí dei caminho à minha vida como mercenário” (I did a course in electrical engineering, then I did my military service and from there started my life as a mercenary). Thus begins the 2012 acclaimed documentary Terra de Ninguém (No man’s land in Portuguese) directed by Salomé Lamas. [Terra Nullius: Confessions d’un mercenaire, 2014].Read More »

Plot Synopsis:
While driving home one day, David, a graphic designer and recovering addict, sees a young girl on the edge of a bridge, possibly about to jump to her death. He rescues the girl, named Aura, who is also an addict and an anorexic. The two are suddenly separated, though, when Aura is reunited with her oddball parents. That night, Aura’s mom is holding a séance, which is interrupted by “The Headhunter” — a serial killer who beheads victims with an electric cutting wire.Read More »

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Never one to shy away from touchy subject matter, Bigas Luna seems determined to become to Spain what Russ Meyer is to America and Tinto Brass is to Italy. One of his most explicit works to date, The Ages of Lulu (Les edades de Lulú) begins like a fairly standard knockoff of 9 1/2 Weeks but swerves into far more dangerous waters that could only be explored in Europe. Sweet little Lulu (Live Flesh’s Francesca Neri) discovers her sexual awakening at the hands of older, self-absorbed Pablo (Óscar Ladoire), who makes her acquaintance by shaving her nether regions (“…so you’ll look prettier”). Read More »

The life and times of Petar Chushko and his fellow peasants from the village Sushevo (Droughtville) are inextricably linked to the scarcity of their water supply. With the blessing of their priest, the villagers of Sushevo change the course of the local river and steal the waters of the neighboring village Kamenovo (Stoneville). A fight breaks out between the villages, their priests included. The peasants are brought before a judge for disturbance of the peace. The judge is corrupt enough to pronounce a verdict in favor of those who are prepared to pay more, so the water goes to Kamenovo. Meanwhile, there is no water at all in Sushevo and the villagers refuse to pay the water tax in protest. Read More »

After Kanchana Seeta (1977), the mythical dimension of Aravindan’s cinema acquires a quasi-real, quasi-mythical character in Esthappan (1980). Esthappan is a mysterious figure, allegedly immortal, in a Christian fishing village in Kerala. An enigmatic figure defying spatiotemporality, like many others in Aravindan’s films, Esthappan resides at the periphery of society. Although a more earthly version of Kummatty (the subject of Aravindan’s previous film), all manner of virtues and magical powers are ascribed to the Christ-like worker of miracles (including printing his own money and drinking whisky without getting drunk).Read More »

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A slow-burning masterwork of the early 1990s, this third feature by Charles Burnett is a singular piece of American mythmaking. In a towering performance, Danny Glover plays the enigmatic southern drifter Harry, a devilish charmer who turns up out of the blue on the South Central Los Angeles doorstep of his old friends. In short order, Harry’s presence seems to cast a chaotic spell on what appeared to be a peaceful household, exposing smoldering tensions between parents and children, tradition and change, virtue and temptation. Interweaving evocative strains of gospel and blues with rich, poetic-realist images, To Sleep with Anger is a sublimely stirring film from an autonomous artistic sensibility, a portrait of family resilience steeped in the traditions of African American mysticism and folklore.Read More »