That’s one of the sad things about this modern view of happiness, that it’s something you pursue and attain. But actually, it’s always there. It’s not something you have to chase or find—it’s in you, or right by you, and you just have to notice it.
—Hikaru Utada
I had the pleasure of interviewing Hikaru Utada earlier this year, just as they were about to start rehearsing for this tour (it’s definitely the most personal and open I’ve ever seen…
My hope is always that if I have an audience of 30 people, they see 30 different films. I ask the audience to participate with the film and you can only participate through your own self, through your own beliefs.
—James Benning
I met up with James Benning when he was in Chicago a couple months ago and talked with him about growing up in Milwaukee, his experiences with organizing, pedagogical strategies, and numerous films from throughout his career including…
“There’s something about a person who is cultured that is so expectable. You know so well what they’re going to say… it gets tiresome.”
“I brought these grapes—a great many of them, 20 pounds piled in a box—back to the studio. I knelt down before her, she who had now become princess. I said, ‘Oh my loved one, oh my queen, here are pounds and pounds of imported grapes from for use by you, as you wish, on your…
It's impossible to watch Ultramint and not think, "Okay, so this is like the cover art for Friction's debut album except as a film." And then I looked it up and, yeah, Hirose Tadashi did the photography for that, albeit for the back cover (what a twist!). Soundtrack isn't anything from there though—it's Public Image Ltd's "Radio 4," which has these massive garish synth pads with bass guitar noodling underneath, which feels queasy and lurid and right for a film…
Has a painful hour-long setup with poorly timed jokes, and then a second hour of “reveals” that are wholly the result of withholding information. There’s no real surprise when a mystery operates in this way, nor is there any opportunity to find satisfaction in noticing and following specific clues. So really we’re just led through everything one step at a time, with flashbacks shaking up the structure to provide a shallow sense of complexity. No one’s acting is noteworthy, and…
The top review on Letterboxd claims this is a cross between Gaspar Noé and In the Mood for Love and it makes zero sense—just a shallow understanding of all three directors' sensibilities and what these movies are even about. Shinji Sômai's Love Hotel is best understood as a Roman Porno because it is one: Sômai began his career at Nikkatsu in the early 1970s before moving on his own path (of note, he worked on Kazuhiko Hasegawa's The Man Who…
