Film Reviews by sh

thoroughly unpleasant but thats the point of transgression in cinema like this.

the fact that Chihiro's rapists show up and just linger around her apartment, showering, pissing, eating. totally listless in their cruelty feels more like how they exist in her head. from the extra locks to the fear of the dark, they will always and forever hang around inside her head, filching the idea of stable rationality. geniune demons on the return leg. I think Ishii's more overt controversy comes from how willing he is to let her get close to them before the hammer drops, offering her body and those locked down rooms of her mind as last meals. pretty destructive stuff, but thats all it ever is.

wild how good this looks with the low-light TV fish tank hum, kitchenette fridge clicks. everything feels like its occurring in the time between rain and streetlights meeting.

gnarly and cathartic and i do not wish to see it again

sometime you'll hold a story or event from your own life so close to your heart, kept in the chamber of the mouth to tell instantly because its full of wild things, happenstance, things someone said that felt like it was the first time anyone said it, the physical movement of a slip, the roaring of blood to your face as you cried with laughter, the theme-park gut drop as you went pale with fear. the full story rounded into a perfectly sanded sphere you love regaling.

thats Black Cat, White Cat.

a pig eating a car, a dead man strung to a rail crossing pole with an umbrella, a man cleaning shite off himself with a live goose, a bride escaping her own wedding by hiding in a fake tree stump, a dead body wearing an ice bag facemask, a giant driving around a decorated shed on the back of a yute.

Kusturica's vision is one massively of completely charmed chaos, where it feels like there are about 40 people behind the camera choreographing the scene, but they fell asleep on the take they used. its so pulsating, rhythmic. weird and funny. theres almost nothing as completely defined and directed, yet so shambolic and physical.

its like he sold his soul to the gods of timing.

his kitchen-sinked gypsy aesthetics feel like a themepark made in a scrapyard. hoses, broken kettles, upended tables. a complete dust-junk heaven.

if you ever wanted to see and feel the chaotic miasma of a shotgun wedding, Black Cat White Cat gives you: a shotgun wedding, a double wedding, death, resurrection and a sleeping child and an old man being launched out a car on their wheelchair with a goat.

genuinely the most joyous experience ive had all year watching films. this is so so fucking funny man. probably shouldve been as big as Delicatessen (1991) tbh

please watch this