The Taiwanese film “Yi Yi” by Edward Yang from the year 2000 is a masterfully crafted, calm reflection on the aspects of human life. Using the example of a family of three generations, the drama shows how everyone, old or young, faces their own personal problems and challenges. While the film begins with a wedding, […]
Tokyo Olympiad (東京オリンピック, Tōkyō Orinpikku) is a 1965 Japanese documentary film directed by Kon Ichikawa, documenting the 1964 Olympic Summer Games in Japan. Tokyo Olympiad focuses more on the atmosphere of the Games than on journalistic coverage, making it an important cinematic work in contemporary history. Tokyo was supposed to host the Olympics as early
Tokyo Olympiad – ★★★★★ Read More »
This film was made between “The Godfather” (1972) and “The Godfather Part II” (1974) and was a return to a small art film for Coppola. Gene Hackman plays wiretapping spy Harry Caul, who is tasked with intercepting a young couple’s conversation in the bustling Union Square in San Francisco. The words are clear, but their
The Conversation – ★★★★★ Read More »
The horror silent film “Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari” by Robert Wiene from 1920 is an important milestone in film history and counts as an essential work of German expressionist film. Before the Second World War, he had a profound stylistic influence on much of German cinema, was the forerunner of the atmospheric light-dark look
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari – ★★★★★ Read More »
Prime Video is finally showing Asif Kapadia’s great British documentary “Diego Maradona” from 2019. The film tells the story of the Argentine football star with a focus on his time in Naples from 1984 to 1991. From the rise to the football god to his dramatic fall. In the 1980s, Maradona’s agent Jorge Cyterszpiler had
Diego Maradona – ★★★★½ Read More »
The Polish film “Cold War” (Zimna Wojna) by Pawel Pawlikowski, a very fine historical love drama, is available on Netflix and probably one of the best movies of 2018. After the Second World War, a music director in Poland was commissioned to find talent for a Polish folk music ensemble. He travels the country looking
On Netflix you can now see the award-winning Romanian film “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” by director Cristi Puiu from 2005. The film belongs to the Romanian New Wave, whose works are sober, realistic and minimalist, usually with a touch of black humour, telling their storiess and usually take place in the late 1980s at
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu – ★★★★★ Read More »
Jia Zhangke’s 2010 Chinese documentary “I Wish I Knew” (传奇) is an elegant, poetic portrait of the port city of Shanghai. To mark its 10th anniversary, the film was released in the US for the first time in January 2020. People of different ages tell of their personal experiences in the rapidly changing political conditions
I Wish I Knew – ★★★ Read More »
The Japanese low-budget horror comedy “One Cut of the Dead” by Shinichiro Oeda from 2017 is easily the Most Hilarious Shit I’ve seen lately. A film crew makes a small one-cut zombie movie in an old World War II factory building and is attacked by real zombies. Horror for the actors, but the director sees
One Cut of the Dead – ★★★ Read More »
The American documentary “Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution” by James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham has been released on Netflix. The film tells the story of a group of young people with disabilities who experience appreciation and community in a summer camp in the early 1970s and then, motivated by their experiences, take to the streets