Features
Monday, August 22 2011
The 100 Essential Directors Part 7: Kenji Mizoguchi to Satyajit Ray
Pushing boundaries seems to be the thread that ties the directors of our seventh day together. From Japanese innovators to Italian iconclasts and Polish provocateurs, the directors that fall between Kenji Mizoguchi and the man who was perhaps India's greatest visual storyteller, Satyajit Ray, all push the form in incredible, surprising ways.
Thursday, January 6 2011
The Best DVDs of 2010
As the medium continues to struggle with significance in the steady "streaming" of the 21st Century, here are PopMatters' picks for the best the format(s) have to offer.
Monday, October 1 2007
The Face of Another Cinema: Classic and Modern Mirrors of Japan
Criterion captures three films directed jaggedly by Hiroshi Teshigahara, scripted enigmatically by novelist Kobo Abe, and scored unnervingly by Toru Takemitsu, and provides a welcome box of five films by Yasujiro Ozu.
Reviews
Friday, April 19 2013
Hollywood Gangsters, Japanese Sensibilities: 'Yasujiro Ozu: The Gangster Films'
There's plenty to enjoy in this BFI collection of Yasujiro Ozu's three silent gangster films, not least the director’s entertaining take on the mythology of American crime cinema.
Thursday, August 2 2012
Family Crisis in Yasujiro Ozu's 'Three Melodramas'
Director Yasujiro Ozu, the Japanese master of understatement, flirts with conventional melodrama in this exquisite trilogy.
Friday, February 24 2012
'The Ozu Collection: The Student Comedies' Makes Us Nostalgic of Modernity
In this specific 2-disk DVD set, the BFI has compiled four rare films by Yasujiro Ozu plus a surviving fragment. The films belong to the genre of ‘The Student Comedies’, a genre which Ozu picked up from imported American films.
Friday, May 20 2011
Yasujiro Ozu's 'Late Autumn' and 'An Autumn Afternoon'
Like a haiku with a rigid structure or a kimono-clad mother, these films are restrained and beautiful.
Friday, July 23 2010
'Tokyo Story' is Resonant, Insightful and Superbly Performed and Directed
Delicately portrayed and played by all concerned, many sequences have tremendous power. When Noriko’s broad, generous smile gives way to long-suppressed tears it is utterly heartbreaking.
Blogs
Wednesday, November 2 2011
ReFramed No. 13: Yasujiro Ozu’s 'An Autumn Afternoon' (1962)
Across a 50-plus film career, Yasujiro Ozu managed a singularity of vision that is unmatched in the history of the medium. His thematic inclination coupled with perhaps the most effortlessly formalist visual aesthetic ever conceived marks his catalogue as one of a unified, personal vision.
