Former J-Pop Idol, Mima struggles to escape her past image.
For its 20th anniversary, superb animator Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue is getting a nationwide theatre release. Luckily for fans of Kon’s chilling psychological thriller, the Coral Gables Art Cinema will be hosting a screening of the film as part of their After Hours program this Saturday, October 6th, at 11:30pm. Kon’s directorial debut showcases his skillful animation style and penchant for stories with dreamlike qualities, and in Perfect Blue’s case, we get a nightmarish glimpse into a woman stripped of her personhood.
It’s easy to forget the power a visual medium like film can have when an audience is presented with little story, but packs in interesting visuals. Our friends at Coral Gables Art Cinema are screening an excellent example of such a movie in showing Tom Tykwer’s German thriller film Run Lola Run (1998). Run Lola Run is a work that, while clearly a product of the MTV era, is visually stylish in all the right ways, delivering a heart-racing thriller through its fast-paced editing and flashy presentation.
As one of this year’s nominees for Best Foreign Film, Sebastián Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman covers a sensitive issue well, delivering a powerful film worthy of its Oscar nod. A Fantastic Woman follows aspiring singer Marina Vidal (Daniela Vega) through her experiences as a transgender woman who wants nothing more than to fulfill her life goals. Unfortunately, when her boyfriend Orlando (Francisco Reyes) suddenly dies, Marina finds herself unable to properly mourn, as Orlando’s family are quick to throw suspicion and scorn towards our protagonist when they discover her gender identity.
On a rare occasion, the passage of time helps a film age like a fine wine. Such a rare example of this phenomenon is best observed in the case of Georges Franju’s French horror film, Eyes Without a Face (1960). Released the same year that Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) was criticized for its “vulgar” shot of a flushing toilet, Eyes Without a Face is a movie that phenomenally blends emotional turmoil with the grotesque into a simple story whose unnerving aura transcends time and language. With four screenings of the film scheduled for this week thanks to the Secret Celluloid Society, now is an opportune time to sit back and re-examine a classic that deserves more mainstream attention than it currently has.
