Juxtaposing the rise and fall of two Beijing opera actors against China’s tumultuous 20th century, Farewell My Concubine (1993, Chen Kaige) is one of the most prominent queer Sinophone films, intensified with the iconic Leslie Cheung in the lead role.
Xan’s threat to Antoine in The Beasts (2022) distils director Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s searing examination of the collision between tradition and modernity. The native Galician farmer, Xan, resents the presence of Antoine, a French outsider who has moved into the village with his wife to pursue a self-sufficient rural life.
Looking at the poster, his black silhouette is the first thing that catches your eye. Against an emblazoned landscape, with his coat swaying in the wind and a rifle in his hand, he strides towards you with an air of stoic triumph, away from the carnage.
“They killed him terribly… they cut his neck.” On cue, a raw chicken’s cocote is chopped clean off with a butcher knife.
Last year, I visited a fan-curated exhibition in memory of Leslie Cheung in Guangzhou, China. I was drawn to a model of a Peking Opera theatre. The curtain patterns, the uneven rows of seats, and the crumbs on the tables made me feel like I could almost sense the smell and noise of the theatre.
While Japan has long had traditions of horrific and supernaturally-themed narratives of various kinds and mediums, the present continuing wave of Japanese horror films is one of the most significant for its exceptional global popularity and visibility
A disembodied voice beckons from the dark, bellowing from the depths. It laments,
“There has never been a night so deep and opaque. Here, it is the only possible reality.”
I once read that writer-director Joel Coen said “Every movie is an attempt to remake The Wizard of Oz”. Though I no longer recall the context of what prompted his remark, I can only speculate that he was referring to the cinematic experience that The Wizard of Oz (1939) created.