This is the second part in a short series of reviews of Murakami adaptations, and contains spoilers for both the short story and film adaptation of “Burning”. I would recommend either reading or watching before reading this. Thank you. Lee Chang-dong, a South Korean auteur and one of the leading members of the Korean New Wave, …
This is the first part in a short series of reviews of Murakami adaptations, and contains slight spoilers for both the short story and film adaptation of "Tony Takitani". I would recommend either reading or watching before reading this. Thank you. Published in The New Yorker in April 2002, “Tony Takitani” isn’t one of Japanese …
This post contains full spoilers for both The Rehearsal and Nope, and I would recommend watching both before reading. Thanks! When I was at middle school, one of the popular activities during free periods was r/5050, a subreddit that presented a kind of gamble with each link - when you clicked, you’d either see something …
This post contains full spoilers for Red Rocket, as well as minor spoilers for Uncut Gems & The Wolf of Wall Street. Thanks for reading! Earlier this year, filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson generated conversation with his latest film Licorice Pizza, a love story between an older girl and a younger boy. The film, which depicts …
For years, I’ve been trying to think about what makes certain moments in games work. Part of the joy of criticism is that kind of self-reflection; why does x scene, film or video game work for me where another one doesn’t - and what does that reflect about what works for me about media? Sometimes …
It’s been a good year at the cinema – following the stall of 2020, when films found themselves delayed by the pandemic, this year truly feels like a revival. Being able to watch films on the big screen again is a welcome relief, but it does bring back one annoying thing – country-specific film release …
This post is about the 1984 film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, and I would recommend watching that before this. This post contains full spoilers for that film, as well as for the film First Reformed. The contents of this post were originally written as my university dissertation, and have been minimally edited here …
For the first time in 22 years living in London, I have been able to attend the BFI London Film Festival. Waking up at 6am everyday so that I can queue up for hours to pack into press screenings of new films is a tiring privilege, but completely worth it - even just to say …
This essay was not originally written for this blog, so the style might seem a little different. I'm currently busy with work so I've decided to lightly edit this and post it here. This post contains spoilers for Memories, Perfect Blue, Paranoia Agent, Millennium Actress and Paprika and I recommend watching them before reading. Kon …
2020 hasn't been a bad year for films, but it has been a slightly strange one. I was only able to see one of these films in the cinema; the rest had to be seen on my laptop, my TV or my shitty home projector. This isn't the worst thing in the world, but it's …
Toatali Reviews 