One would be hard pressed to walk away from Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses without having formulated an opinion or have gone through some sort of emotional response. The film provokes and assaults those without the...
Japanese Summer: Double Suicide starts with drones of disenfranchised masses painting over the graffiti covered walls of public bathrooms and whitewashing away any semblance of individuality from the increasingly desolate landscapes of a sparsely occupied urban Japan. This film...
We continue our exploration of the works of Nagisha Oshima with his surreal and humanistic Three Resurrected Drunkards (Sinner in Paradise). This 1968 film comes at the tail end of Oshima’s jaded search for personal identity in a senseless...
The Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties Eclipse set from the Criterion Collection is an essential addition to any ardent cinephile’s DVD collection. Each film in the set is as incredible as the last, and it does an amazing job of capturing...
Nagisa Oshima’s The Sun’s Burial is a lamentation for the death of Japanese society and the subsequent death of morality. The film follows the lives of the poor and down trodden citizens of post-war Japan driven by little more...
The Japanese flag flutters in impotent silence against the backdrop of Technicolor urban landscapes, like a ubiquitous eye casting a mournful glance at the decline of innocence and the loss of national identity in post-war Japan. Creeping westernization has...
Nagisa Oshima’s A Cruel Story of Youth is a film that illustrates the disconnection between youthful rebellion, and the unwitting influences that helped to shape Japanese culture in the early 60’s. This was a time of postwar rebuilding and...
Nagisa Oshima was a man of many different states of being that only knew how to sort out the contradictory elements of society and the unbridled idealism of youthful naiveté through his art. Using cinema to explore societal elements...
Review: The Descendants (2011)
