The final round-up for 2025, and it's a big one, here early before Christmas! Thanks again for all of your requests!
Cutie Honey, requested by Riley:
https://letterboxd.com/comrade_yui/film/cutie-honey/
Winter Light, requested by Chasen:
https://letterboxd.com/comrade_yui/film/winter-light...
2025-12-20 17:50:38 +0000 UTC View Post
The professional treasure hunter seems like one of those jobs that the movies made us think was a viable career instead of a strange fantasy. Of course, there have been real 'adventurers', soldiers-of-fortune, wanderers, gold-miners, but the person who makes their livelihood out of bagging rare goodies from antiquity, you don't hear much about that these days, probably because it's largely illegal -- traveling to another country and stealing their swag is a quick way to a prison sentence, whi...
2025-12-11 14:21:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Lots of noir-ish requests for this Noirvember, got to catch up on plenty of great blindspots! Thanks again to all who requested.
Elevator to The Gallows, requested by Chris:
https://letterboxd.com/comrade_yui/film/elevator-to-the-gallows/
Second Breath, requested by Chasen:
This time, Jake and Ian invited me to discuss all the adaptations of The Killers, and we had a very good time together. Their Patreon feed is great, so I do recommend checking that out in addition to this episode we did!
2025-11-28 20:10:32 +0000 UTC View Post
The standard line on the late career of Tom Cruise was created in the anticipation and wake of Mission Impossible -- Fallout: that he will move heaven and earth, and himself, marshal the whole industrial apparatus of film production, to entertain, and through that entertainment, to keep alive a certain idea of himself, and of the American cinema. But what is that idea?
Is it the vitality of action?
The 'reality' of stuntwork?
That a movie star, rather than a movie property,...
2025-11-20 13:28:27 +0000 UTC View Post
Lately I've spent many hours with the westerns that have been abandoned by time -- before it became a prestigious genre with John Ford's Stagecoach and Cecil B. Demille's Union Pacific, the vast majority of westerns were either serials or B-pictures pumped out by the studios and sustaining the reputation of various stars who could handle the physical stress of producing four, six, eight, even ten movies per-year. This was the reliable 'product' that the studios block-booked into their theatre...
2025-11-06 13:16:43 +0000 UTC View PostMan On The Borderland, the short film that my friend Tom Oliver directed from a script that I wrote, will be premiering at CINECITY, The Brighton Film Festival!
It will be on November 11th, on the Part 2 of the CINECITY OPEN screening, where the viewer can see a number of other short films:
https://www.cine-city.co.uk/event/cinecity-open/
You can watch the trailer for Man On the Borderl...
2025-11-01 13:22:17 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm not any economist by any means -- the numbers surrounding the movie industry have seemed to me to be fickle and arbitrary things, one film's bomb becomes another's belated blockbuster, especially these days in the age of streaming data where there's no outside source like theater chains to verify the 'success' of these platform-first releases. But last night, I was considering my own life in wider terms, and how the economic realities that my family developed in reflect the broader condit...
2025-10-31 14:52:47 +0000 UTC View Post
Another month of reviews and requests! We had a good variety here for the spooky season, films about the corruption of the mind, body and soul.
Hunger, requested by Francis:
https://letterboxd.com/comrade_yui/film/hunger/
To Sleep With Anger, requested by BrokenFlowers:
2025-10-30 12:07:02 +0000 UTC View Post
The art of Siegel is one that, no matter how much time may pass, how many retrospectives there are, or how many books written about him, will never quite get its 'due'. I first came across him as a named entity in Andrew Sarris' The American Cinema, which features him and several other 'misfit' directors in the 'Expressive Esoterica' category: all of them artists who, although one might have seen one or two of their works, don't have the reputation or consistency of career to sustain a non-cu...
2025-10-13 12:54:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Spoilers for Neon Genesis Evangelion and The End of Evangelion are found below.
In retrospect, I do feel that I ended up first watching The End of Evangelion (and Evangelion as a whole) precisely at the perfect time when I needed it the most. I watched it right after I graduated from high school, during a summer in which I had no job, no plans for the future, nothing to do but take care of my brother and sister, and to ruminate on the past.
The way we culturally structure life i...
2025-10-11 15:16:38 +0000 UTC View Post
Another month, another eclectic series of requests!
Hobson's Choice, requested by Konstantin:
https://letterboxd.com/comrade_yui/film/hobsons-choice/
That Man from Rio, requested by Francis:
https://letterboxd.com/comrade_yui/film/that-man-from-rio/
Hundreds of Beavers, r...
2025-09-27 16:06:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Yesterday I celebrated my 30th birthday, and the unavoidable cliche of using such a milestone to reflect on the past and present is something I imagine I share with most people. There was a time in my life where I couldn't even imagine living to twenty, much less thirty -- through a series of accidents, intentions, luck and hard work, I've made it here today, and I'm still planning on sticking around, that is what I am certain of.
I saved M.J. Bassett's new adaptation of Red Sonja for ...
2025-09-21 18:38:19 +0000 UTC View PostAs of this writing I have seen 19 of Keisuke Kinoshita's 50 films, enough of a survey that I can begin to analyze the broad strokes of his artistic effort. I have not seen all his most popular works, but have focused on the immediate post-war period and then his contributions to the 50s 'golden age'.
The recurring subjects of his work are the contemporary and early 20th century developments in subjectivity, occurring on the level of the individual and of the family unit. Repeat...
2025-09-12 14:59:28 +0000 UTC View Post
A great and eclectic assemblage of films this month, many classics I am glad to have seen. Thanks again for your requests!
Beauty and The Beast, requested by Chasen:
https://letterboxd.com/comrade_yui/film/beauty-and-the-beast/
The American Friend, requested by Francis:
2025-08-28 12:09:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Watch closely for what is about to happen.
From 1988 to 2010, television commercial director Jean-Teddy Filippe created a series of 13 short films in a series known as The Forbidden Files, with each episode purporting to be a discovered document of mysterious phenomena and experiences.
With its elliptical narration and mostly silent handheld recording, The Forbidden Files is one of the earliest examples of the 'found footage' genre, where the rawness of the filming and the spars...
2025-08-23 14:14:06 +0000 UTC View Post
An insecurity that plagues cinema as an artform is the dogged question of authorship: that, when you 'boil down' to the 'essence' of a work, who is responsible for it, who is in command?
Because our default dogma today is to answer with 'the director', the figure who oversees most aspects of the project, whose personality over cast and crew sets 'the tone' for shooting, and whose ability to improvise and plan can steer the immense machinery of film as an industrial process into a manage...
2025-08-17 20:26:32 +0000 UTC View PostThe salutary effect of Anthony Mann's work is that, despite its insistent violence and psychological intensity, he is still a figure in the immediate post-Fordian tradition, not ever working in pastiche or abstraction. In what I am coming to understand as the Neo-Classical era of Hollywood cinema, Mann plays a vital role: he belongs to the directors who came-up within the studio system, he was educated by it, and then oversaw the years of its decay as a major director, dying in 1968 right as ...
2025-07-30 19:00:26 +0000 UTC View Post
Another big month of reviews! Thanks again to everyone for their requests.
Funeral Parade of Roses, requested by Francis:
https://letterboxd.com/comrade_yui/film/funeral-parade-of-roses/
Ritual, requested by Riley:
https://letterboxd.com/comrade_yui/film/ritual-2000/<...
2025-07-25 16:46:01 +0000 UTC View Post
The work of the old vanguard of the film business is intimidating -- when I started out doing this in 2017, I hadn't even heard of John Ford, Henry King, or Raoul Walsh, much less contemplated working through the entirety of any of their surviving bodies of work. It is something I've slowly come to accept as a valid approach: away from looking for isolated, singular masterworks, and towards a more holistic understanding of a director's oeuvre, both the good and the bad.
My journey thro...
2025-07-09 21:30:45 +0000 UTC View Post
On a lark, my partner and I watched 2014's Divergent and 2015's Insurgent, not out of a particular interest but because both of us needed to watch something that wouldn't prove challenging after we'd had a taxing day and were mentally exhausted by it, and that these films were available on Tubi made it all the easier.
Relating to this 'Young Adult' era of cinema in the 2000s and 2010s, I don't have that much of a strong relation to it. I did read Harry Potter as a child, but my interest...
2025-06-30 11:19:46 +0000 UTC View Post
Pretty sure this is the first silent film we've done, I hope to continue doing many more!
2025-06-30 09:54:46 +0000 UTC View Post
A boatload of requests this month; thank you all once again!
Pride, requested by Riley:
https://letterboxd.com/comrade_yui/film/pride-2014/
La Belle Nouiseuse, requested by Chasen:
https://letterboxd.com/comrade_yui/film/la-belle-noiseuse/
A Silent Voice: The Movie, requested...
2025-06-28 15:13:24 +0000 UTC View PostOver the past few months, in my efforts to write a new screenplay, I keep coming back to attempting to pen two types of stories that I am very fond of: the vampire story, and the detective story. Running them both through my mind, I wondered why this fixation existed, and what these types meant to my engagement with cinema as a whole; I offer here a tentative theory.
It seems to me that vampires and detectives are indicative of two basic philosophic questions that cinema as an artform ...
2025-06-25 18:29:49 +0000 UTC View PostWhen the term 'escapism' is brought up in film discussions, it generally serves to denote two separate but related ideas: the notion of 'empty' escape, a rejection of responsibility, morality, and dignity as the filmic space is reduced to a flight from the hard truths of reality, and the notion of 'comfortable' escape, a release valve for the overburdened mind and body, a relaxed familiarity that allows for reflection and rejuvenation.
Often the difference between these ideas comes dow...
2025-05-30 15:44:57 +0000 UTC View Post
Kuroneko, requested by Chasen:
https://letterboxd.com/comrade_yui/film/kuroneko/
Blood Tea and Red String, requested by Riley:
https://letterboxd.com/comrade_yui/film/blood-tea-and-red-string/
Bad Lieutenant, requested by Francis:
Hoping this is the first of many Walsh films! There's a lot to get to...
2025-05-23 13:30:02 +0000 UTC View Post