Reviews

Barely scrapes the surface of what Kurosawa and his films were about. Despite some interesting insights by Japanese film expert Donald Richie and a story by director Arturo Ripstein, all the interviews seem hurried and incomplete. Director Alex Cox doesn't even cover Kurosawa's whole filmography- interviewee Francis Coppola mentions more films than the actual documentary manages to do. But what can really be done in only 50 minutes about such a master? For a more detailed and affectionate approach to Kurosawa, check out Chris Marker's A.K., a documentary of the making of Ran.

Why did the main characters' names have to be slapped on the screen every 5 minutes? It was all to obvious and yet confusing for me. The way Julio Medem glorifies his characters and their involvement in the story just doesn't work. The two main characters are called Otto and Ana: two names that are the same if reversed. This is suppose to justify why they are attracted to each other when it is in fact a meaningless detail. To make this even more obvious, Medem has to put their names up on the screen every five minutes to remind us who is narrating and to show how much they love each other. At the end there is a close up on Otto's eyes, reflecting Ana's face so naturally they have to superimpose Ana in the eyes of Otto over the "symbolic" image. The finale is semi-interesting as a result of the crafty editing but I won't spoil it for you if you're a fan of the pretentious but nevertheless innovative director of Earth, The Red Squirrel and Cows.

Cannes favorite Kusturica takes us back to his 1993 Time of the Gypsies with this machine-gun paced European hit that has enough insights for 5 different films. Generic story of two brothers' entanglement with mobster and younger sister is used as an excuse to show off impossible and absurd situations. The direction is near perfect (earned Kusturica prize at Venice) and the characters, constantly movin' to a techno beat, are not easily forgotten. I don't know where the director casts these people but a lot are Serbian non-actors.