Letterboxd — Your life in film

Text by an unknown autor from the Kino Tuškanac website:

Using the observational method, the film describes the knitting of the braid, a traditional hairdo among women in the villages of Dalmatian Hinterland. There are also some scenes of working in the field.

"The Plaits" is a typical minimalist documentary by Zoran Tadić. By reducing the documentary structure to images of braidmaking and farmwork, these two types of work become imbued with a metaphorical meaning. They are metaphors of life's…

Another shockingly underseen and unknown film from the '60s. Happy End takes the depressing story of a murderer who gets executed via guillotine and puts an ironic spin on it by showing his entire life story in reverse. So, a man whose life gradually gets worse and worse is mirrored into someone whose life gets better and better. The dialogues and situations are cleverly written and absolutely hilarious, and overall the technical skills required to pull something like this off…

Director Man-hui Lee is best known for the classic drama A Day Off (1968), but he also tried his hand at the noir genre. Black Hair is a deadly dull emulation of the typical foreign noir picture that copies all trademarks of the genre and does nothing else. Fatalism, moral corruption, gangsters, dark alleyways, fists, guns, knives and backstabbings - if you've seen any other noir, you've also seen this one, except this one takes place in Seoul. It quickly…

Walter Hugo Khouri's film Noite vazia, literally Empty Night but boringly translated as Men and Women, follows two married men who take two girls out for a passionate night, only to get confronted with boredom, ennui and sadness.

This is an amazing film, but it's too derivative of Antonioni's La notte (1961). The single night setting, the extended rain sequence, the vapidness and boredom of hedonism, the ominous glassy buildings, the ending, everything. Even the two lead actresses look almost…

A high-concept avant-garde comedy from Erik Løchen, who was apparently Norway's only modernist filmmaker.

The film is divided into five reels, but even though they're labelled as A, B, C, D and E, it is not neccesary to watch the movie in that order. In fact, the viewer is encouraged to randomize the "reels", or you can just pick your own order, meaning that there are 120 ways to watch this film. I've read that in 1972, it was originally…

The undisputed master of ninja trash fiction, director Godfrey Ho, made over 100 bad movies, and this one is widely known as one of his most ridiculous ones. As with other Ho films, Ninja Terminator is a collage between the material he personally recorded ("Movie A") and clips from some other movie that he "adapted" to his plot by dubbing the voices ("Movie B"). Movie B is in this case some super-obscure Korean potboiler known as Uninvited Guest (1986), while…

Maybe one of the best films of the 21st century, and certainly one of the most depressing films in general, A Place in the World is a film so brutal and bleak that it almost plays out like an endurance test. It's the second and last (as of now) film by the somewhat mysterious Artur Aristakisyan, about whom little is known, and whose two films are so oppressively depressing that he makes directors like Béla Tarr, Pedro Costa and Konstantin…

I remember this was one of the first "weird" movies I've seen, and it was about 6-7 years ago. It's basically the first horror movie ever made that's shot entirely in American Sign Language (which the film calls "SignScope"). Made mostly by the deaf and for the deaf (although a voiceover is provided for the hearing), this is a mix between camp horror, arthouse experimentation and comedy.

Watching this is quite a surreal experience. Everyone communicates via sign language in…

Another low-key gut-punch from Kôji Wakamatsu, the absolute master of noxious, desolate pornography films which make you feel completely dead inside. His career is a huge enigma in world cinema, really. The man mostly directed sensationalist crime films and straight-out soft-porn, yet his films are more compelling, sharp and indelible than those of most directors who tackled more sophisticated genres and topics. His movies rarely exceeded the 60-minute mark, yet he conveys more than most filmmakers who had a 90+…

The first Coffin Joe film, At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (1964) wasn't exactly earth-shattering stuff, but it does have some real charm to it thanks to the awesome premise, José Mojica Marins' fun performance as Coffin Joe, some unusually bold violence and trashy Z-grade special effects. With a good script and more competent direction, the film could've become a true horror classic.

This sequel, however? It just sucks. The title and the poster are easily the best thing here.…

I have some respect for Kinoshita here because, while this is a state-ordered WWII propaganda film, the overall message seems to be quite the opposite, which must've been a ballsy move on his part. The film was made to convince people to sacrifice all they have for the army and the noble pursuit of war, but the actual takeaway turns out to be that war is awful, depressing and that government's measures take heavy tolls on its citizens. I didn't…