By the mid-1960s Japan has miraculously recovered from the Second World War, defeat, military occupation. Or had it? Writer-director Nagisa Oshima’s Shonen detects a residue, a social warping, an appalling degeneration. His is a precise and burrowing film. The focus here is on a criminal, renegade family. Father is a wound-riddled war veteran. Chillingly, Mother […]
Daily Archives: September 2, 2008
“I’d like to give you the first kiss again.” Charming is the adjective most often applied to writer-director Ermanno Olmi’s 49-minute “The Crush”; however, I also find the film close to devastating. Perhaps it is the low, crestfallen voice that seemingly on-top-of-everything 15-year-old Andreà slips into when Jeanine, his girlfriend of ten days and presumed […]
Dennis Grunes 