Was child trafficking real?

Why was part of my higher education learning to write a compare and contrast essay? What’s even the point of those? Feels like a lazy mistake of film criticism. If you think anyone cares about hearing you compare and contrast Serpent’s Path (1998, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) with its remake you’re too stupid. 

     Although I was surprised to find that Serpent’s Path (2024, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) almost entirely jettisons its predecessor. The plot points you do remember when they recur are modified. There’s still a dirty tile room for the questioning. And a lush verdant ext for the bad guy abduction. For the remainder of this post when I say Serpent’s Path I’m gonna solely be referring to the 2024.

Serpent’s Path takes all the fun out of the revenge genre. For that alone it shoulda been awarded a Nobel Prize. As far as the narrative goes the plot removes all ambiguity. The tone of this is heavy.
     Oppressively. Paralyzing. When ALBERT BACHELET flutters tickled giddy throwing LAVAL’S food on the ground we aren’t laughing with him. That moment is horror manifest. After we’ve seen the ending and put it all together we’ve become complicit in the trauma. This is a moral indictment. Made all too uncomfortable not by being explicit but rather by its restrained deliberate tone and execution. The audacity with which what and how Serpent’s Path chooses to leave out is stunning. Perfection. Perfected.
     It leaves out the sensationalization of punishment scenes and in doing so dismantles the revenge genre. But it spells everything out plotwise. Not through exposition dumps but enough. It’s here and now and real. Child trafficking. The foundation. The circle. Deborah Minar. With the state of current real life sensationalist shock scandal frenzy conspiracy glut I’m surprised more people haven’t seen this movie.
     Not exaggerating the scariest thing about Serpent’s Path for me even me boasting I’m not one to be scared by movies the climax in that warehouse. It troubles me beyond gore menace deranged villains or any conceivable aesthetics of cinematic evil. When that guy JAKE is killed then all of the sudden this devious twist implicit maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy what the hell? All those sweet wholesome innocent looking little kids looking like they’re fine in some daycare with this really sweet teacher. 
     The sweet teacher who explains to Albert and subsequently more importantly for our benefit the truth behind what really happened to his daughter. You didn’t love that girl. That girl hated her parents. You told me to consult Deborah is overwhelmingly subversive. Truly unsettling. The stuff that resonates. That I can’t shake. Why does that teacher have to be so sweet oh god? Genius.

Oh wait. There’s also this abduction of CHRISTIAN in a gym that’s so realistic it has to be my new favorite fight scene in a movie. It’s sloppy. The way it’s choreographed timed and how hard they have to earn it by making it look so natural is the equivalent of cinema at its finest. Figuring out new better ways to do something like a fight scene already suffering from overly-familiar fatigue.

All you've done is talk about yourself?

Everyman existential middle class pretty much set perfect life family check shelter check security check but stuck hitting your upward mobility ceiling the monotony dissatisfaction of it all smothering you depicted designed manifested as abstract horror is what Chime (2024, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) and Kiyoshi Kurosawa do so well. Everything about Chime is so clean staged sterile cool blue theory aesthetic average it invents itself as an image system through which the messy visceral outbursts of incomprehensible reprehensible violence evoke the morality of our repressed frustrations with the inessential we bury just beneath our surface. 

     So that’s why the most amazing shot in Chime the dude walking across the bridge high wide crane tracking ext has such an impact. Chime is the promise of cinema we’d hoped for because its economy of purpose doesn’t waste a thing. Each moment is sparse yet charged with significance to be decoded. Even the protagonist a just only slightly good enough cook to teach yet not head chef has the lifelong acquired experience to prepare a course for all to enjoy. Until you discover the tragedy at its soul. 

     Chime is the film I’ve been waiting for my entire life because it does what no other film I’ve ever seen has been able to. It makes slow exciting. Riveting. It demands you to think without spelling everything out until you feel that it already has. The horror of Chime is people who don’t have any reason to worry about their lives. That’s the kind of twist that wakes me up from my cinematic slumber. When that main character bombs his interview the random patron who tries to stab the other diner comparatively isn’t as disturbing. Although we’re made to assume each chime breakdown is the same for everyone we just get made to experience one man’s.

 

What about all the stuff we don’t see? The ghost of AKEMI visiting the academy. What does the teacher see offscreen that we don’t early on the first time he looks toward the entrance to the academy outside? A premonition of what’s to come? What’s the significance of that part of the house with the junk hoard beyond the fringe curtain that precipitates his breakdown? And what does he see when he confronts the terror out on the street? This is the abstract doom we too are confronted with manifested for us to feel.

     Remaining thoughts just gotta throw out there the el train established outside the academy to be used as int strobe light source through window as ominous supernatural capacity rocks. The final climax we get to hear the two note melody door chime is my favorite type of use of establishing sound design and use of familiar liminal nightmare instrument. The way the teacher’s descent shifts to another grain field that makes us feel like we’ve returned to film this is the end.

4/5/2026 4/8/2026 Plaza Theatre

Atlanta, GA

Crate expectations

I have a strong aversion to protagonists who lack moral ambiguity. I mean too perfect. Passively condescending. Arrogant. Delusional. Too close to real life how there are those self-righteous hypocrites whose squeaky-clean ethos is oppressively untenable. 

     Golden Age in Hollywood is where I find all the best templates. Lang paranoia. Screwball love grifters cheats prostitutes toxic matches. Wilder romanticized waif discarded sexpot suicidal self-destructive slighted emotional map of how the heart feels.

Wife of a Spy (2020, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is one part smug oh look at how perfect we are couple. Especially the husband YUSAKO. But then it clicks it’s period appropriate. Especially the genre. Back in the Forties we wanted to see couples who were a more perfect version of ourselves. Do gooders. The life of means manners and marriage we should aspire to. It took me a while though with Yusako’s recurring defense I’m not a spy I’m acting out of my own self-interest I’m such a good person schtick. 
     But there’s more to what these period genre conventions are hiding. In Wife of a Spy the timeline has everything to do with the chronology of the War. The couple start out just as the history of cinema started out just as the world started out idealistic. Then comes the war. Then comes the darkness. Cynicism. Suspicion. Betrayal. Paranoia. Atrocities.
     What makes this strand of espionage suspense distinct unfamiliar and different striking off guard is its political stance. Because back then wartime means nationalism. Or at the very least civic duty. Chip in. Do your part. Maybe I’m naïve but I can’t think of any correlative frame of reference where the hero is so unpatriotic. Leaking information treason aiding enemies. But the empire of the sun looms ominously in the shadows as perpetrator of mass war crimes gradually methodically exposed infecting our moral codes as audience with its own akin to biological plague weaponized arc.
 
This hybridization of period and modern genre codes achieves the perfect pitch blending nostalgic sentimental escapism with disillusionment destruction detached no simple resolution profound disjointed culmination of enlightened despair. SATOKO wandering away from us into the air raid night with her country her life her psyche burning to the ground. The film and she don’t let her country of the hook either.
   We are meant to feel what she feels. And do. That’s what Wife of a Spy manages to achieve. We mourn that Yusako wasn’t portrayed as the kind of hero period propaganda would have dictated all the more because reality has sunk in by then. And we redefine our notions of heroism and projected outcomes with a little more weight because of it.

Less a fun park ride than some kind of propaganda exercise

Japanese woman films travelogue in Uzbekistan for television. Is To the Ends of the Earth (2019, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) as boring as its premise would suggest? Excrutiatngly yes.

 

Ruminative search for place. Identity. Yawn. First half has some mildly amusing tensions based on the sexism YOKO is subjected to from the Uzbek guides along with the irony of the sexism her team the Japanese production harbor. 
     Warm and fuzzy feminine. Conflict of ethics over the purchase of and intended liberation of a goat. Third act seems to be the fulfilling payoff success of finding Chorsu Bazaar subject to make the show a smash. But then authorities apprehend Yoko for filming where it’s not allowed. False alarm. Everything’s ok. Back home a huge refinery fire in Tokyo Bay. Is Yoko’s bf dead? False alarm. He’s ok. But we’re not. The heavy dose of obligatory drama feels insufferable. How much more can she endure becomes how much more can we endure. 
     At least Okoo is ok. To the Ends of the Earth has its charm. But it doesn’t work tonally structurally thematically or have any worthwhile sense of purpose enough to give us a reason for watching it.

Love is nothing more than a weak painkiller sentimental fake comfort

Wow I see the first Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie that I hated and its follow up turns out to be as if he remade it in a way that more closely corresponds to my own desires. Uncanny.

 

In Before We Vanish (2017, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) three aliens are sent to comprehend concepts from humans set up a communication device to convey its completion then await invasion however one of them has difficulty taking the concept of love. He stumbles into a church where cute children give their answers. A charismatic priest provides the definitive love chart from the Gospel. Finally the alien’s surrogate wife shows him. So once the entire alien species find out what love is to humans they call off the invasion. Most sentimental optimistic life affirming possible outcome. 
     In Foreboding (2017, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) same basic arc. But this time at the end the alien MAKABE through seeking to gain the concept of love ultimately sees that it’s a delusion gimmick masking humanity’s fear of death and as far as their aims at coexisting and loving one another they’ve failed. Their entire our entire civilization remains on the verge of death. Invasion time. World annihilation. The end.
 
No seriously as much as I hated Before We Vanish I completely adore delighted in loved Foreboding. Before We Vanish has this bombastic whimsy quirk romcom score set on bright sunny days. Foreboding has a scarce ambient track menace gloomy dark funeral march feel to it.
     Foreboding is set in a hospital. TATSUO has this line like you should get out of here a hospital is not a healthy place. Sources point to this being extracted from a longer five hour version I’d love to see some day. But its focus is narrowed to fewer characters. Mostly Makabe and ETSUKO. Its tone is a consistent psychological horror that feels every bit as scary as if it really were the end of the world.
     If you look close enough you could maybe see Etsuko’s endurance resilience in the face of the apocalypse striving to save her husband. But no. I see it as bleak. She’s working in some crappy just above sweatshop conditions hospital job her husband is a janitor nervous wreck spineless murderer turned dope addict. That’s what breaks my heart the most. Probably my favorite aspect of the plot. By the end I don’t see Tatsuo as anything more than a junkie desperate clinging to Etsuko because she literally holds his next fix in her pocket. Now that’s an apt symbolic dynamic for what holds a loving couple together. The ending makes literal the lyrics from one of my favorite Charli xcx songs. Love of my life selling all the drugs that I like.

Metaphysical linguistics lessons

First speedbump through my Kiyoshi Kurosawa run. This one didn’t do it for me.

 

So what do we got workin here? In Before We Vanish (2017, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) its tone manages to strike that whole satirical Earth is not worth saving well enough. As cynical as generating more sincere empathy for the SHINZY alien than any of the humans. 
     Maybe that’s what makes me remiss in formulating any critical appreciation of Before We Vanish. The motor is too recognizable for me and it has a certain forbearer that is such a prominent crucial work so dear to my heart entire emotional cinematic composition that I could never look past the Karen Allen of it all.
    
The other all too super familiar trope is the learning alien whose data is the humans he encounters. It’s been mined well and often. As a gag. For all the time we spend watching the central conceit of the movie the three aliens taking concepts from humans it never even comes close to a laugh. Or interesting. It’s like auditing a preschool class.
 
The petite highschool girl fighting huge dudes is rad enough. But weighed against everything else so what? Similarly though when she goes up against a gang of mercenaries in an isolated warehouse once she gets her hands on that grease gun it’s on. Any scenes with AKIRA TACHIBANA sociopath wave of mutilation cute precocious oblivious unstoppable are fun yes.
     The narrative stakes just aren’t there. What payoff that might have redeemed the slog we’d invested our attention into proves illusory. Okay sorry I am such a sourpuss here but for the love of Karen Allen please.

The secret of the dark room

Emotionally macabre. The scary thing is how does this film get me to empathize to actually truly feel the sorrow and sadness for these deplorable pathetic irredeemably selfish toxic deranged lost souls?

 

Daguerrotype (2016, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is a gothic ghost story through which Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns to themes of men with obsessive inabilities to relinquish their chokehold on the past on a woman on their delusional fragile identities lost intwined therein. Who cares right?
     Me. I’m into these loser goth boy crybaby fables. So emo. The dark room is such a great image system in Daguerrotype. It’s STÉPHANE HEGRAY’S troubled psyche. Stéphane has this fixation on daguerreotypes as a figurative manifestation of his paralyzing desire to preserve a foregone past ultimately to the point beyond which it may even have existed. A past where he seeks to objectify immobilize immortalize the women in his life closest to him. And as he’s losing his hold on it he drinks himself away losing his hold on reality on himself on his health on life.
     But this dark room image system also serves a secondary function. JEAN is this young either too lazy or too desperate to earn an honest living drifter type whose morally polluted psyche is just as dark as Stéphane’s. Daguerrotype lays out this whole climate of young men not being able to find any work resorting to drastic means giving up or compromising to survive. Again this unemployment horror is more profoundly disturbing than Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s supernatural flourishes but they’re not competing they’re in balance with one another. I just can’t resist stressing how effective they are.
     So in contrast the other image system is MARIE as bright room. In the second half notice how she literally brightens the room with gold light when Jean goes there. But there’s also the contrast between her father Stéphane’s passion hobby this cold inanimate poison antique with hers botany nurturing this living regenerative life giving delicate greenhouse. And of course the outcome of improper disposal of the waste from the mercury.
 
When photographing Marie why does Stéphane build that life size daguerreotype though? The answer probably isn’t worth spelling out. That’s the kind of ambiguity Kiyoshi Kurosawa is master of. Does Stéphane actually see the ghost of Marie? Why doesn’t Jean? Why do we hear her say Dad? Who was the young woman the appraiser sees upstairs? DENISE?
     The tragic irony is in the dark room the master passes down everything to the apprentice. The powerful way it does so is it’s unbeknownst to Jean until it’s too late. And even then he probably never realizes it. Covering it up burying it under his own self-delusion. Psychologically so on point it stays with you the antithesis of beauty. 

motives patterns and continuity

Shochiku. Lavish production values. First of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s late masterpieces. There’s always been something about the police procedural genre of movies that has this familiar cozy nostalgic inviting intellectual sensation of relaxed paced learning where the journey is the reward as much as if not more than the outcome.

     Creepy (2016, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is a studio movie. Wall to wall emotional underscoring emphasizes the suspense cuing us when and how to respond. Instantly and thoroughly accessible engaging. Broad. Unabashedly crowd pleasing. Until it isn’t.
 

The procedural makes detectives of us all. At that house in Hino City who were those five bodies? Or for that matter this might be obnoxious of me to ask but if they were vacuum sealed in those body bags why does NOGAMI have that repulsive retch smell reaction in the house? It’s the three Hondas and two Mizutas right? No these questions aren’t important. Aren’t as compelling as.
     What hold does NISHINO have over MIO? When he gives her Nogami’s gun we notice how she doesn’t for a second seem to consider using it on him. How does she still go to school every day?  Why wasn’t SAKI HONDA susceptible to Nishino’s influence even though the rest of her family was? How was she allowed to live? What does she remember? 
     Before I get any further it’s worth mentioning that Creepy isn’t grounded in the verisimilitude of what we might call the real world nor is its logic what we might call accessible. It’s cinematic which is better. Embrace artifice and you won’t be disappointed. The ways the lives of Mio Saki YASUKO and TAKAKURA are affected is what’s relevant here. 
 
Nishino is the embodiment of Evil. He only wears black. He only gets others to enact his heinous crimes. Although never called heroin by name he uses so called shots to enslave his victims. This figure through cinema is a symbol of the psychological anomaly in society that makes men evil. 
     But the big twist thematic conceit of the film is what does pure evil really want? To have his own happy family. To live right next door to you. To have the perfect little life we all want. And that’s what’s so scary. Antisocial Personality Disorder psychopath doesn’t fit the profile categories of motives patterns or continuity because he wants to be just like you. 
     As trad as Creepy starts off the second half and into the final act the façade shatters. Just like Nishino. And it will be because he pushes it too far. Just as the narrative does. The narrative transgresses by pushing us too far. It operates on our limits until we can’t take anymore either. It doesn’t play fair. 
 
The circumstances under which we may observe Nishino preying upon Yasuko is sublime. There are two key scenes between just she and he where the color is boosted. The greens of the grass and skintones saturated for a brief moment in this otherwise subdued washed out palette. Why? Even the filmmaking techniques are pushed too far.
 
In closing some movie nerd miscellany. In that trope scene where Nishino and Takagawa see who can get Yasuko to choose between them the cut does this thing I know Kiyoshi Kurosawa does in his later work I have been obsessed with for a while and haven’t spoken with anyone else about or read about in any helpful way but I wanna call it a match reverse.
     Specifically a wide where the perspective although it may contain depth is flat in the sense of frontal geometrically even horizontally. So when it cuts to the reverse each of the bodies of the characters are shown in the exact same size of the previous composition and placement in said previous frame. My guess is they have a video playback person put an overlay on the image to achieve this. I don’t know if I’m even properly describing this. But anyways. 
     Also around the midpoint when Nogami opens that sliding heavy metal door it totally gives The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974, Tobe Hooper) iconic vibes. Even more so because like in that movie he enters without being invited in and no one is around. That hypnotic yellow pinwheel fan spinning. If I said it was reminiscent of the Texas tower windmills I’d be pushing it too far.

Finally a movie that shows how great suicide is

Tender sweet as a marshmallow over a crackling campfire. Childlike innocence imbued picaresque extended sleepovers ghost romance syllabus of spirituality.

 

The profound thesis of Journey to the Shore (2015, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is calm down even though I committed suicide it has nothing to do with you I did it for my own personal reasons I still love you watch me prove it to you. Its themes are how crucial resolution is to our spirit. 
     If Kiyoshi Kurosawa films tend to end with a symbolic or implied sense of where its characters are headed Journey to the Shore would be a sunset. Literally it has a sunset montage. With a dose of sentimental Hollywood-lite rom-com schmaltzy whimsicality indulging fantasy what life could have been playing house potential possibilities that never existed the film is exceedingly beautiful. Broken up into three parts Newspaper followed by Gyoza Maker then Physics Professor each conceals an underlying troublemaker antagonist in need of redemption. 
     The midpoint is when MIDORI gives into this flaw herself. Her insecurity turns to paranoia over TOMOKO which then backfires and turns into a bitterness not of a woman rival but of a woman she envies. The identical composition frontal direct reverse coverage heavy handedly suggests to us these two women are one and the same. But I doubt it’s just me who sees an unspoken spiteful arrogance in Tomoko’s delivery? Ultimately what this brings up is the withering motif Kiyoshi Kurosawa uses.
     How blissful the deterioration of the SHIMAKAGE flower wall is in contrast to Midori’s alarm waking her from her dream into nightmare reality disheveled flat and subtle shock horror of her dying houseplants. This cut erases time. When in commune with our spirit there is no such thing as time. 
 
Although we perish. Our bodies do. One day we will see our final sunset. Journey to the Shore is full of questions for us to ask ourselves like did we take care of everything we needed to while alive? Settle everything with our loved ones? Will they be okay after we’re gone? However many billion years old the Earth the Milky Way are they too will wither away yet the universe has only just begun.
     The third act in this spiritualscape has expanded so vastly with the inclusion of the waterfall cave pathway to the dead. When KAORU falls under scrutiny for coming to town on a bus with YASUKE it is now we who are tested as if are we going to now let ourselves be the ones who have to ruin everything by seeing this all as a lie? Kaoru’s husband is becoming something indescribable something hideous because he’s confused.
     Confusion. That husband foreshadows or confronts Midori with the threat of foreshadowing what can happen to her if she falls into this transcendental existential confusion. I think when she meets the ghost of her father he’s headed there too. All of this poison doom so dangerous becomes nothing though when we pass into the wide of that field with Midori and Yasuke walking and all those children play shooting guns at each other. It’s a paradise moment. And we’re ready for the sunset.
     Journey to the Shore is pretty powerful. Stays with you. It haunts us with our own regrets. If forces us to ask ourselves what we hold onto that we shouldn’t? What should we let go of?

Christie Smith SS26 Fashion Show

Were you apprehensive worried by the trailers that this looks too colorful too chaotic like a Joel Schumacher Batman mess? I was. Don’t worry. It’s not. 

 

I Love Boosters (2026, Boots Riley) is the kind of comedy Hollywood should have been making the whole time since the Golden Age. It’s also unbridled imagination hyperartificial final solution to the what if question. 
     Like Golden Age screwball the comedy is the delivery system yet it has to be backed up by a character story. Clear as can be CORVETTE is against CHRISTIE SMITH. I Love Boosters is a Keke Palmer vehicle and rightly so. Has Demi Moore ever played a character anything like this? Her delivery elevates the Christie Smith character’s pseudointellectual narcissist powermad psychobabble cultleader influencer innovator disruptor pop messiah dictator hilariously sparklingly endearingly effective.
     The plot structure again like Golden Age screwball is busy. Hawksian screwball onslaught rambunctious fast-paced. But around the midpoint an element is introduced so unbeknownst unannounced unexpectedly dynamic creative highly conceptual that it shapes the entire latter half into the stuff of awe dream cartoon. Call it what’s in the magic bag. But it’s staggeringly sci-fi impact is purposeful practical relevant pays off and far less convoluted oversaturated needlessly complicated as the multiverse trope problem plaguing the franchise houses. And speaking of Hollywood glut mediocre cashgrab comicbook slogs how does I Love Boosters do so much more and so much better at half the runtime? 
 
The art direction’s intentionally excessive color palette is more aggressively monochromatic than anything since production designer director Bo Welch’s The Cat in the Hat (2003). But it serves the unified aesthetic of its milieu as extension of its subject matter. Fashion. Low class urban bitches. With all due respect to urban bitches.
     Does the ending work? As far as Corvette’s story yes adequately. About the political messages? There aren’t any silly this is an entertainment. And it’s intelligent. Like the way Hollywood used to be good at.
 
In closing. Random bits. The wall to wall expressionistic aggressive art score fits well. And the LaKeith Stanfield recurring plot device character offering soliciting the answers to the meaning of life’s questions along with accompanying leitmotif acoustic therapeutic escape is just that much more reason as a whole I Love Boosters is evidently every bit and more the comedy I dreamed it’d be.

4/21/2016 AMC Phipps Plaza 14
Atlanta, GA