Mondo Bungle

Frontière(s) - This whole movie really needs to calm down. And everyone needs to stop trying to be so hard cuz they be lookin' like fools. So there's that and not much else to say about the movie. Highly unoriginal and stereotypical with some decent but unextraordinary splatters. It rips off a lot from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and any number of modern torture movies that suck like Hostel, although this is leagues better than that at least. Hostel is terrible. This movie has Nazis. I'm not into this brand of action horror. It did have at least one good horror moment though aside from the killings. 2.5/5

Synecdoche, New York - This didn't become my favorite movie ever or even one of them like I thought it might have the potential to, but I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like it's not a great and groundbreaking movie. Unfortunately this'll be a case of me not being able to exactly articulate what it was that didn't hella click with me, being a dumbass and all. The only other Kaufman movie I've seen was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and I liked that better. Synecdoche is funnier though, and a lot whacker if the surrealism. A lot of people'll tell you it's a movie to watch with emotions rather than logic, and that's pretty agreeable to me. The timeline is absurd and hard to make sense of, but feelings still run deep throughout the whole thing. It seems to me like a portrait of an artist obliviously decomposing and self-destructing, with everything and everyone around him only breaking him down more. There's a lot of fantastic shots too. I dunno, maybe I'll have to watch it again to figure out more to say. Still 4/5

天浴 [Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl] - After watching this it dawned on me that it's the only Chinese movie I've seen (pretty sure). I would learn after this that the Orient is rampant with empathetic themes and sorrow. This movie was good but never flooring to me. It's slow (though that's not a problem with me considering the following movies in this post) and bleak and sparse, depicting a young girl sent away to the countryside to assist a nomad farmer. The film centers around homesickness, I'd say, that only grows as the protagonist doesn't return when she was promised she would. Various people that stop by say they can make it so that she can get back, only to take advantage of her is all sorts of ways while her host watches on in despair. Sad ending, though I didn't tear up, the movie didn't do enough to establish the emotional bond. 3/5

二十四の瞳 [Twenty-Four Eyes] - The story here is so simple but so nice. A schoolteacher watching her students grow up in wartime Japan. And boy do these kids love their teacher. Similar to what I said about Mary and Max, numerous sad events occur to really connect with the viewer before the ending comes around to make you realize that life is beautiful. I cried here, majorly. I imagine if you've ever had a strong connection with a teacher it would hit even harder, I never did and it still got me wrecked. It's slow and long but so humble and heartwarming. Seriously, these kids' admiration stays strong until they're adults, never forgetting their teacher the whole way. The end made me so happy I couldn't breathe. Only giving it4.5/5 because there's a lot of singing filler.

東京物語 [Tokyo Story] - There's hardly anything to do with a plot here, and that makes it all the more genuine. Even slower in pace than Twenty-Four Eyes, it's a simple view into the lives of a Japanese Family. There's so much to connect with here though it didn't make me cry as much as before. Its simplicity makes it hard to say a lot, but this is a highly emotional piece of film. 4/5

山椒大夫 [Sansho the Bailiff] - It's hard to find much fault with this movie, except maybe the title. Yeah Sansho was a major character but I wouldn't say he's worthy of the namesake. Either way, this is completely transcendent. Utterly beautiful cinematography, bold music, and emotions turned to 11. It's all about endurance, the strength to be no matter the circumstance. Yes, it made me cry again. 5/5

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