“I Can’t Stop Loving You”: Thoughts on Metropolis
Madhouse’s 2001 rendition of Tezuka Osamu’s Metropolis is a movie that only ever seems to get better with age. The world of this Metropolis is so kaleidoscopically…
Killer: A Cab Driver’s Life in Interesting Times
If there’s one English phrase that makes every Asian studies major and every China hand wince, it’s this: ‘May you live in interesting times’. Unfortunately, it belongs…
Dostoevsky’s Poor Folk
"Poor people are subject to fancies—this is a provision of nature. I myself have had reason to know this. The poor man is exacting. He cannot see…
Stýdent: Ómirbaev’s Adaptation of Crime and Punishment
Dárejan Ómirbaev turns his sights on classical Russian literature in his 2012 film Stýdent [Student], a modernised adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. The setting,…
Qyz-Jibek: A Slow Stunner of a Tragic Period Drama
The Kazakh film I’m reviewing today is the 1970 Kazakhfilm production Qyz-Jibek directed by Sultanahmet Qojyqov, the retelling of the epic tragic romance of the same name…
Skif: A Eurasian Tribute to Eighties Hollywood
Rustam Mosafir – the director of 2015’s Begletsy – returned in 2018 with the big-budget action movie Skif (literally, The Scythian, but released in English under the…
Beloe Solntse Pustyni: A Deserving Cult-Classic Ostern
Ваше благородие, госпожа Разлука, Все мы с ней не встретимся, вот какая штука. Письмецо в конверте погоди не рви, Не везет мне в смерти – повезет в…
Brat 2: “Are y’all gangsters?” “No, we are Russians.”
Aleksei Balabanov’s sequel to Brat, Brat 2, is at once quite a bit more and quite a bit less than the movie which kicked it off. The…
Dersu Uzala – Man is Small Before the Face of Nature
I am unfortunately not as well-versed in the filmography of Kurosawa Akira 黑澤明 as I ought to be. The ones which I recall seeing, and all of…
Begletsy: Searching for Gold and God
The year is 1907. Revolutionary fervor sweeps Russia, and the most common punishment for political subversives and revolutionaries is exile to Siberia. Those who try to escape…
Sëstry: Two Faces of the “New Russia”
Though not technically a Kazakh film, Kazakh director Gul’shad Omarova’s screenwriting debut, before directing Shıza in 2005, was a 2001 Russian-language road movie called Sëstry (or Sisters),…
Platform: A Ground-Eye View of Uneven Development
Recently I watched Platform 《站台》, the third of Jia Zhangke’s 贾樟柯 full-length films. Following a group of young musicians from the death of Mao through the era…
Absurdistan: Light Magic-Realist Veit Helmer Comedy
Absurdistan is a modern adaptation of a classical Greek comedy, inspired by a Turkish news story from 2001, featuring a Czech leading lady and an East German…
Réketır: The Bowl of Our Own Injustice
Last month before leaving for Tulsa, I watched the Aqan Sataev film Jaýjúrek myń bala, the dastanic national epic written for the twentieth anniversary of Kazakhstan’s independence,…