Manga and anime artist Osamu Tezuka has been almost universally praised for his works in numerous genres (romance, sci-fi, even erotica); his son, Macoto Tezuka, is a visual artist and filmmaker in his own right, but a more obscure one. Only recently, through the re-release of 1985 cult…
Alone John Hyams’ new film Alone is a minor miracle. A terrifically tense thriller pared down to the barest essentials, it is survival horror in the best, most literal sense, following an intrepid woman who tries to escape her homicidal captor, locking us into the victim’s point of…
Words on Bathroom Walls is emotionally manipulative and easy to mock but has moments that are genuinely affecting. Broadly speaking, film has not exactly been kind or forgiving in its depiction of mental illness on the big screen. It’s always a tricky endeavor, balancing the innate histrionics of serious…
Johnnie To’s Chasing Dream is a return in more ways than one. An earnest romance between an MMA fighter, Tiger (Jacky Heung), and an aspiring singer, Cuckoo (Keru Wang), as their lives and careers become inextricably intertwined, it is the Hong Kong director’s first feature in three years,…
Chasing Dream Johnnie To’s Chasing Dream is a return in more ways than one. An earnest romance between an MMA fighter, Tiger (Jacky Heung), and an aspiring singer, Cuckoo (Keru Wang), as their lives and careers become inextricably intertwined, it is the Hong Kong director’s first feature in…
It’s a bad sign that the only person attempting anything in The Tax Collector is also delivering a racist caricature as performance. David Ayer isn’t a particularly good filmmaker, but he’s certainly consistent. Since his Oscar-winning screenplay for Training Day, Ayer has obsessively tilled the same terrain of clichéd,…
Ciro Guerra opts for transcription over translation, and in doing so, loses the allegorical power of Coetzee’s novel. Ciro Guerra’s Waiting for the Barbarians is a misguidedly straight-faced bore, a literary adaptation that fails to find the story in the text. To understand the depth of the film’s…
Pedro Costa has long been celebrated for his loose Fontainhas trilogy, a series of docu-fiction hybrids made in collaboration with residents of the former Lisbon slum (it’s now been demolished). These are great films, of course, but like all artists, Costa did not stumble into a particular method…
“It has been quite a journey / From my driveway to my front door / It has been quite a journey.” Lil Wayne floats this observation shortly past the halfway point of his 13th album, and a litany of connotations can be elucidated. There’s a literal interpretation: Funeral…
Lil Wayne “It has been quite a journey / From my driveway to my front door / It has been quite a journey.” Lil Wayne floats this observation shortly past the halfway point of his 13th album, and a litany of connotations can be elucidated. There’s a literal…
Built to Spill’s latest is a celebration of Daniel Johnston that regrettably undermines the best of both parties. The ethical conundrum that surrounds Daniel Johnston’s cult celebrity has been poked at plenty over the years, though for good reason. Johnston’s output was enviable — scuzzy, lo-fi cassette releases…
Honey Harper Honey Harper isn’t yet a big name. But if you’ve had any exposure to the musician, you’ll know of his reputation as the modern torch carrier of Gram Parsons’ Cosmic American Music tradition. Born William Fussell, the singer was the son of an Elvis impersonator, and…
Haruhiko Arai is a four-decade veteran screenwriter and director specializing in erotic films, cutting his teeth with the legendary pink film auteur Koji Wakamatsu, and going on to become a key screenwriter of Nikkatsu’s roman porno genre. In more recent years, Arai scripted some great films for fellow…
Labyrinth of Cinema Nobuhiko Obayashi, who passed away earlier this year, on April 10, was until recently relegated to the periphery of cinematic discussions of legacy. His status as a master filmmaker — he humbly preferred to be called a ‘film artist’ or a ‘cinematic magician’ — was…
Yves Tumor’s latest realizes an androgynous vision of rock ‘n roll and continues their morphology as an artist. It’s hard to imagine an artist reinventing themselves while so successfully achieving a unified goal and message, but this is what Yves Tumor accomplishes on each of their records. In…
Phoebe Bridgers At this point, Phoebe Bridgers seems unstoppable. While Punisher is only her second solo studio album, she’s been busy since her 2017 debut Stranger in the Alps: first forming the supergroup boygenius with indie darlings Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker, and then pairing with Conor Oberst…
The Deluxe edition of Eternal Atake adds a wrinkle of inequity to the album’s two halves, but it remains an fascinating document of Uzi’s evolution as an artist and individual. Eternal Atake (Deluxe), aka Lil Uzi Vert vs. the World 2 and Eternal Atake, is a project that lives…
Lil Uzi Vert Eternal Atake (Deluxe), aka Lil Uzi Vert vs. the World 2 and Eternal Atake, is a project that lives up to its loopy approach to titling, an act of anti-branding worthy of Lil Uzi Vert’s obstinate emo persona. This project began its life as Eternal…
Roar begins with a vertiginously disorienting prologue, as a manic handheld camera frantically searches a room before pushing into an extreme close-up of a frightened, tearful young face. The camera then quickly pivots to a first-person POV, and characters begin addressing it directly. Hurried whip pans become flashforwards,…
Seijo Story – 60 Years of Making Films I think it’s safe to say that Nobuhiko Obayashi no longer requires an introduction. For that we owe the Japan Cuts team a debt of gratitude. The Obayashi retrospective they programmed back in 2015, the first of its kind in…