B | A Japanese samurai general receives a prophecy about his future success. Directed by Akira Kurosawa Starring Toshiro Mifune and Isuzu Yamada Review by Jon Kissel |
Adaptations of English plays into English movies have plenty of successful entries, but cross cultural adaptations automatically justify their existence in a way that English-to-English adaptations do not. New cultural vagaries, historical changes, and an entirely new environment make something old feel new, even when the transplant is as compatible as feudal Scotland to feudal Japan. Akira Kurosawa, having already adapted a Dostoevsky play with The Idiot and a Gorky play with The Lower Depths in the same year, brings his version of Macbeth to the samurai period with Throne of Blood. Well-suited to large and operatic noh style of acting long present in Japan, Throne of Blood provides Kurosawa with another opportunity to work with Toshiro Mifune, a pairing that automatically means this is a can’t miss film from one of the greatest actor-director combos in cinematic history.
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Undaunted by the COVID pandemic, Stephen Soderbergh keeps up his prolific filmmaking rate with No Sudden Move, his 11th movie in the last decade, not counting his 20 episodes of The Knick. Returning to the kind of small-potatoes criminals and corporate crime that he’s made so many great films about, No Sudden Move ties the Detroit denizens of the mid-50’s into the collusion of the Big Four automakers, with most involved out of their depth when compared to the opportunity before them. What distinguishes No Sudden Move from earlier Soderbergh films, however, is the involvement of sole writer Ed Solomon. Where Soderbergh has previously worked with writers like Stephen Gaghan and Scott Z. Burns or adapted works by titan authors like Elmore Leonard, Solomon’s credits include Super Mario Brothers and the Now You See Me franchise. Soderbergh shoots and edits all his films, and this is no exception, but Solomon doesn’t provide his director with enough of the good stuff to make No Sudden Move truly stand out against Soderbergh’s considerable filmography.
The first Phase 4 Marvel Cinematic Universe film or television series to omit Thanos’ universe-halving snap, Shang Chi and the Ten Rings is as close as the giant franchise is likely to get to a standalone film. No one from any of the earlier MCU films drops in for an important cameo, and the plot is siloed off in a corner of the world that isn’t hanging on the antics of a Tony Stark or a Peter Parker. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, a filmmaker whose previous works put together wouldn’t have cost a tenth of Shang Chi’s budget, the film gets tantalizingly close to being a unique entry before the gray-filtered mess of ones and zeroes that is the standard MCU finale horns in and disrupts the balance. Cretton was so close to putting a distinctive stamp on an entire MCU entry, but he’ll have to be satisfied with two-thirds.
In the recent autobiographical documentary Val, Val Kilmer is shown struggling to stay engaged at a convention where fan after fan thrusts a Top Gun poster in front of him and asks him to sign it with his Iceman catchphrase. Kilmer had earlier remarked on how little he thought of Top Gun, dismissing it as a jingoistic puffball, but now, people are singling it out to talk with him as opposed to anything else he’s ever done. Alexander Dane (Alan Rickman) knows this feeling as Galaxy Quest begins. We’ve just seen footage of his major credit played for an eager convention, and with its lot of corny effects and stilted acting, it’s not something anyone should be proud of. Dane certainly isn’t, but he has to economically rely on fans who like the show for reasons he cannot understand. Galaxy Quest engages with both sides of fan culture and lovingly satirizes it by imagining the most dedicated fans possible, which here are guileless aliens who’ve patterned their space-faring culture off a D-grade sci-fi series that likely aired at 11 on Saturday mornings between Looney Tunes reruns and Julia Child. Dean Parisot’s crowd-pleasing comedy acknowledges how silly and disposable parts of the culture can be, and still manages to make the same ephemera affecting in the exact scenario. |
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