Author Serdar Yegulalp

July 11, 2018 0 106

Yūzō Kawashima's Bakumatsu Taiyōden starts and ends as effortless entertainment, a breezy and bracing comedy exuding endless energy.

Big Eyes Smart Mouth: A Silent Voice

July 4, 2018 0 50

A gorgeous adaptation of the acclaimed manga, and a story with a hard moral question: Who gets to be redeemed?

The Xeno File: The Man Who Stole the Sun (1979)

June 27, 2018 0 133

Almost forty years later, this jet-black comedy about a one-man nuclear terrorist ring remains an absurdist masterwork

Big Eyes Smart Mouth: Like The Clouds, Like The Wind

June 20, 2018 0 48

But there's more to Like The Clouds, Like The Wind than nostalgia or cross-references; it's a fine project in its own right.

The Xeno File: Mishima – A Life in Four Chapters (1985)

June 6, 2018 1 59

Paul Schrader's 1985 film Mishima, co-funded by George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, uses both the man's literary art and public theater to bring us to him from the inside out.

Big Eyes Smart Mouth: Mary and the Witch’s Flower

May 30, 2018 0 42

The freshman effort from ex-Ghibli creators Studio Ponoc at first seems like a riff on 'Kiki's Delivery Service' or 'Harry Potter' territory, but has morality rather than magic on its mind.

Liquid Sky (1982)

Classic Film/New Blu

May 4, 2018 0 52

Many of the other strategies Liquid Sky used to be confrontational and novel have aged, some better than others.

Big Eyes Smart Mouth: After the Rain

April 25, 2018 0 21

But After the Rain, from Jun Mayuzuki's manga of the same name, isn't about romance, but something subtler and harder to come by.

Big Eyes Smart Mouth: The Life of Budori Gusuko

April 13, 2018 0 52

What I can't complain about, and what makes the movie absolutely worth seeing anyway, is just about everything else in it.

The Xeno File: Blade of the Immortal (2018)

April 6, 2018 0 62

I never believed anyone other than Takashi Miike deserved to adapt Hiroaki Samura's raucous, blood-drenched manga Blade Of The Immortal into a live-action film,

The Xeno File: Ichi the Killer (2001)

March 23, 2018 1 263

I approach Ichi The Killer in the way I would a friend who once did some pretty stupid things in high school.

Big Eyes Smart Mouth: Napping Princess

March 14, 2018 0 22

Napping Princess feels like too much and too little at the same time.

Big Eyes Smart Mouth: Perfect Blue

February 28, 2018 0 167

A movie this good, there's always another layer to unwrap.

The Xeno File: THE LIFT (1983)

February 21, 2018 0 31

"Take the stairs, take the stairs, for god's sake take the stairs!!" begged the tagline on the posters for the Dutch cult movie The Lift.

Big Eyes Smart Mouth: Land of the Lustrous

February 7, 2018 0 121

Lustrous's microcosm is a crescent-shaped island somewhere out in the middle of an apparently endless ocean.

Big Eyes Smart Mouth: Haibane Renmei