24 Words Per Film (#42)

88 Minutes too many. I haven't enjoyed a Pacino performance since he started SCREAMING...BETWEEN.... PAUSES! Whatever happened to understated Al of Godfather I?

24 Words Per Film (#41)

Wiggappropriation of 'gangsta culture'; teenage lesbian homoerotica; gang initiation gangbang; faux-documentary lameness: audience agreement with Anne Hathaway's repeated sentiment: "We are totally fucking bored."

Havoc (2005); dir. Barbara Kopple; written by Steven Gaghan; starring Anne Hathaway, Bijou Phillips, Freddy Rodriguez

24 Words Per Film (#40)

A rape victim blames herself for the perpetrator's repeat offenses amidst jump-cuts/disorienting series of pans proving early Oshima's reputation as "the Japanese Godard."




Violence at Noon (1966); dir. Nagisa Oshima; d.p.: Akira Takada; starring Akiko Koyama, Ryoko Takahara, Kei Sato

24 Words Per Film (#39)

Dramatizes the suffocating, incestuous, struggle to break free from familial duty through series of ceremonies; the primal scene as viewed from a baseball mound.









The Ceremony (1971); dir.: Nagisa Oshima; d.p.: Tsutomu Narushima.