Godzilla: King of the Monsters
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) accomplishes what's generally expected these days from a mega-CG-monster flick: it's visually...
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2 min read
The Naked Director
I really enjoyed The Naked Director (全裸監督) and kind of binged its eight episodes on Netflix over a couple days. Released in August...
2 min read
The Overstory
Trees communicate, spread their seeds over impossible distances, learn, remember, have wants, compete and interact with other forms of...
1 min read
The Power of the Dog
The Power of the Dog (2005) is an action-packed crime novel by Don Winslow. I really got into this one—the perfect read while on...
1 min read
Rocketman
Rocketman (2019) is an over-the-top biographical musical film directed by Dexter Fletcher (who initially was supposed to direct Bohemian...
2 min read
A Wild Sheep Chase
A Wild Sheep Chase (羊をめぐる冒険, in Japanese) is a 1982 novel by Haruki Murakami. It's sort of a mystery with magical realism mixed in (the...
2 min read
Jimmy the Gent
Jimmy the Gent (1934) is a comedy-crime movie directed by Michael Curtiz, starring James Cagney and Bette Davis. It's considered an...
2 min read
A Dangerous Method
A Dangerous Method (2011) is a German-Canadian film directed by David Cronenberg, starring Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, Viggo...
1 min read
Shoplifters
Twice in one week I've come to the end of a film and felt like I was being abandoned in a quagmire of anxiety and hopelessness. The other...
1 min read
Dogtooth
I can't remember ever pleading out loud with the end of a movie to, "No! Don't stop there!" Dogtooth did this to me, but I'll leave out...
2 min read
Where the Crawdads Sing
Where the Crawdads Sing (2018) is a first novel by Delia Owens that tells the story of Kya, a young girl abandoned by her mother, then...
2 min read
High Sierra
High Sierra (1941) is a noir heist film released the same year as The Maltese Falcon, both of which star Humphrey Bogart, with John...
1 min read
Eyes Without a Face
Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeux Sans Visage) is a 1960 horror film directed by Georges Franju and starring Pierre Brasseur, Édith Scob, and...
2 min read
Giovanni's Room
This is the first James Baldwin novel I've read, and I don't know why I waited so long to read him. His writing feels very honest, with a...
2 min read
Laura
Laura (1944), directed by Otto Preminger and starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb and Vincent Price, is a murder mystery and...
2 min read
Patriotism
I remember reading in 2005 that Yukio Mishima's film Patriotism (Yūkoku in Japanese) (1966) had been found in his former home. His wife,...
3 min read
Death in Midsummer and Other Stories
Death in Midsummer and Other Stories is a 1953 collection of stories by Yukio Mishima that was translated into English in the 1960s. I've...
2 min read
Tampopo
Tampopo (1985), directed by Juzo Itami, is entertaining, funny and occasionally bizarre. Truck drivers Gorō (a cool Tsutomu Yamazaki) and...
3 min read
Kottō: Being Japanese Curios, With Sundry Cobwebs
Lafcadio Hearn lived a wandering life. Born in Greece in 1850 and raised in Ireland, he emigrated at a young age to the U.S. and became a...
2 min read
Five Came Back
Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War is a documentary by journalist Mark Harris which was released by Netflix in...
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