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A Genteel Black Hole

Tag: Japanese cinema

  • Project Glowing Rectangle: Late Autumn

    Ally

    Day 36 of Project Glowing Rectangle, in which I try to divert some of my daily doomscrolling time back towards a more nourishing oblong: Cinema.

    Title: Late Autumn
    Director: Yasujiro Ozu
    Writer: Kogo Noda, Yasujiro Ozu
    Year: 1960
    Country: Japan

    Format: Blu-ray
    Length: 128 minutes
    Seen: 10 February 2026
    First viewing

    Late Autumn is one of Yasujiro Ozu’s last films. Setsuko Hara stars as Akiko Miwa, a widow living alone with her daughter Ayako (Yoko Tsukasa). Three old friends of the late Mr Miwa take it upon themselves to find Ayako a match, but she is hesitant to marry and leave her mother alone. Maybe the three meddling friends can solve that problem by finding a match for Akiko too…

    This feels almost like a remake of Ozu’s 1949 film Late Spring: In that film Setsuko Hara played the marriageable daughter, but here she’s the widowed parent. (Chishu Ryu, her father in the earlier film, here plays her brother.) The film balances humour, sadness and social commentary, all in Ozu’s typical, quiet and delicate style—and starring many of his favourite actors. If you’re not already an Ozu devotee, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this one as an introduction to his work. But if you’re already sold on Ozu, Late Autumn will certainly scratch that itch.

  • Project Glowing Rectangle: The Life of Oharu

    Ally

    Day 32 of Project Glowing Rectangle, in which I try to divert some of my daily doomscrolling time back towards a more nourishing oblong: Cinema.

    Title: The Life of Oharu
    Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
    Writer: Kenji Mizoguchi, Yoshikata Yoda
    (based on stories by Saikaku Ihara)
    Year: 1952
    Country: Japan

    Format: Blu-ray
    Length: 136 minutes
    Seen: 29 January 2026
    First viewing

    It’s been a disruptive few weeks, but things have finally settled down enough for me to watch a film: The Life of Oharu (1952), a period drama directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. Kinuyo Tanaka stars as the eponymous Oharu, whose life is one of ever-increasing misery. We are introduced to her as a fiftysomething prostitute, walking the streets and struggling to find a client. She takes shelter in a Buddhist temple where the statues’ faces remind her of figures from her past. What follows is the heartrending story of how she fell from a life of nobility to one of such hardship.

    First an affair with a lowly retainer (Toshiro Mifune) ends with her lover executed and her family banished. Then her father sells her, first to a Lord as a mistress to bear him a child, and later to a pleasure district as a courtesan. From there things only get worse for Oharu, almost always due to circumstances beyond her control. But the film does end with the faintest glimmer of hope… at least if you subscribe to Buddhist philosophy.

    You’re bought and paid for. You’re no different from a fish on a chopping board. We can serve you up any way we like.

    This was my second Mizoguchi film: Ugetsu (also starring Tanaka) was a highlight of last year. Both films are beautifully directed, very gripping, and intensely emotional. But while Ugetsu is a spine-tingling, supernatural tale, The Life of Oharu is horribly realistic. Oharu’s suffering comes not from personal hubris or ghostly tricks, but from the cruel treatment of other people—mainly men. Throughout the whole film I found myself bristling at the sheer injustice of it all.

    Kinuyo Tanaka is brilliant in the title role. I’ve seen her in several films recently, each one displaying a different facet of her talent. (She was also one of Japan’s first female directors, so I’m excited to explore that side of her work too.) As far as Mizoguchi goes I definitely preferred Ugetsu, but I can’t deny this film’s power—it left my heart feeling, like a fish on a chopping board, rather battered!

  • Project Glowing Rectangle: The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice

    Ally

    Day 31 of Project Glowing Rectangle, in which I try to divert some of my daily doomscrolling time back towards a more nourishing oblong: Cinema.

    Title: The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice
    Director: Yasujiro Ozu
    Writer: Kogo Noda, Yasujiro Ozu
    Year: 1952
    Country: Japan

    Format: Blu-ray
    Length: 115 minutes
    Seen: 7 January 2026
    First viewing

    Today’s film was The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice (1952)—yep, it’s another Ozu family drama! He was my most-watched director of 2025, and I fully expect him to be somewhere near the top of the list this year too. I just can’t get enough of this stuff.

    Shin Saburi and Michiyo Kogure star as Taeko and Mokichi, a middle-aged couple in a loveless marriage. Mokichi resents her husband’s apparent simplicity, referring to him among friends as Mr Bonehead. She assumes that he doesn’t call out her frequent lies because he’s too stupid to even notice. Their relationship is on the brink of dissolution, but will they confront and reconcile their differences? Meanwhile their niece Setsuko (Keiko Tsushima) tries to avoid an arranged marriage, not wanting to follow the example of her unhappy aunt and uncle.

    This film has a reputation as A Lesser Ozu, but I bloody loved it all the same! The scene where the couple reconcile over a late night meal of green tea over rice, Mokichi suddenly coming to appreciate Taeko’s simple, unpretentious ways, brought a happy tear to my eye. It’s a bittersweet, heartwarming story told in Ozu’s typically quiet, subtle, complex way. Just what I needed today.

    (Also, I had a good chuckle when the characters visited a restaurant called Calorie Hut!)

  • 2025 Wrap-up: My Year in Films

    Ally

    I’ve been tracking my film viewing since 2012. That year, at the height of my obsession, I watched 161 films! By the end of the decade, things had settled down to a more reasonable level, about 50 or 60 per year. But in 2022, due to a mixture of creative projects and health disasters, I watched just 11 films—and for the next couple of years that number didn’t go above 17. With less time spent on films, my doomscrolling ballooned.

    Enter Project Glowing Rectangle, my personal effort to simultaneously get my phone habit under control and reclaim my love of cinema: Two birds, one Sharon Stone! I started the project in late August 2025. By the end of the year I had watched 38 films, of which only 9 were pre-Rectangle.

    But numbers don’t tell the whole story. What actually happened is that I fell back in love with cinema. I had several transcendent movie experiences during the year. While my 2010s film binge was kickstarted by the Golden Age of Hollywood, my recent cinematic renaissance had a more Japanese flavour. I started the project with a rewatch of Yasujiro Ozu’s Floating Weeds and ended the year with Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure. And that’s just two of the 14 Japanese films I watched—nearly all of them great! Ugetsu and Seven Samurai were two standouts, both seen for the first time in November. And Yasujiro Ozu has become a real favourite filmmaker for me: I watched the entire Noriko Trilogy and several more besides, and loved them all. I’m excited to explore more of his work in the coming year, as well as more Mizoguchi, Kurosawa, and other Japanese classics on my radar.

    Most of my biggest disappointments came pre-Rectangle. Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron was underwhelming, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza was a real slog. Then there’s Mitchell Leisen’s Midnight, a screwball comedy co-written by the great Billy Wilder. I was excited to watch it, only to find it utterly forgettable. So forgettable, in fact, I had already forgotten it! When I went to log it on Letterboxd, I was baffled to discover I had already watched it a decade ago; the rewatch hadn’t jogged my memory at all. Even if I couldn’t necessarily tell you what a film was about, I can usually at least remember that I’ve seen it! Maybe I’m getting old…

    Anyway, Project Glowing Rectangle has been a rousing success. Getting back into cinema feels like reclaiming a lost part of myself. It’s good to start feeling more like Me. I’m excited to see what cinematic discoveries await me in 2026.

    And now it’s time for the charts and lists!

  • Project Glowing Rectangle: Cure

    Ally

    Day 29 of Project Glowing Rectangle, in which I try to divert some of my daily doomscrolling time back towards a more nourishing oblong: Cinema.

    Title: Cure
    Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
    Writer: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
    Year: 1997
    Country: Japan

    Format: 4K Blu-ray
    Length: 112 minutes
    Seen: 29 December 2025
    First viewing

    Back in August I started Project Glowing Rectangle — basically a conscious effort to watch more films. I’ve been neglecting my love of cinema for the past few years, and wasting too much time staring at The Bad Oblong (my phone). Project Glowing Rectangle is an attempt to correct both of these problems. Last year I watched a grand total of 16 films. This year it’s up to 38, of which 29 were between August and now. So far so good!

    Today’s film was Cure (1997), a psychological horror film written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa — no relation to Akira Kurosawa.

    Koji Yakusho stars as a police detective investigating a spate of inexplicable killings around Tokyo. The perpetrators are unconnected, and each seems unable to explain their motives. And every victim is found with an X carved into their neck.

    I was very impressed by this film. Koji Yakusho (who I also loved in Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days) is excellent in the lead role, as is the whole supporting cast. It’s an extremely dark film, and the bleak atmosphere lingers long after the end credits have rolled.

    The question is, did I enjoy the experience? I think so. But it’s not one I’d want to repeat too often!