Rin

A ★★★½ review of The Devil's Advocate (1997) Overly didactic, and the high-powered defense attorney bit is both risible and problematic in such a way that almost undercuts the whole endeavor. Like, you mean to tell me the big bucks is in defendi...

Overly didactic, problematic and tonally muddled. Still fun! Waiting for the elevated horror version of the Charlize Theron haunted house B plot

letterboxd.com/rinkou/film/...

Devil’s Advocate (1997)

nw

A ★★★ review of Guilty Bystander (1950) The world's drunkest detective is hot on the tail of his missing kid and ex-brother-in-law and the only thing that can stop him is the most obviously guilty folks in the world offering him a drink. In...

Incredibly fun. The world's drunkest detective and graduate of the Harry DuBois school of investigation fails every single Volition roll, but it's okay because half the folks he's up against are also rolling Nat 1s

letterboxd.com/rinkou/film/...

Guilty Bystander (1950)

nw

A ★★★★ review of Election (2005) Johnnie To's Casino. Layers of authority and control, alliances shifting in real time between the bosses while the underlings get to find out in the moment just who is still on their side and who has ...

Vibes are immaculate. All the ceremony, traditions, rules - that's only ever been for keeping the goons in line. The bosses know there has never been any loyalty between them.

letterboxd.com/rinkou/film/...

Election / 黑社會 (2005)

nw

A ★★★★ review of Breaking News (2004) Heat, but over the course of a single afternoon. To’s preoccupation with the different factions within HKPD and the way they each have their own priorities and interservice rivalries (and camaraderie)...

Big time To themes - interservice rivalries in HKPD and how these mirror gang factions, the enduring institutional legacy of colonialism.

An all-timer oner with the camera dipping in/out of buildings, cars, giving a whole sweep of a 7-min gunfight

boxd.it/bGFXZv

Breaking News / 大事件 (2004)

nw

A ★★★★ review of The Big Sleep (1946) The quintessential Hollywood noir, but ultimately a bit neater and kinder than the novel. There's something missing in eliding some of the bleakness of the novel, especially in the long denouement. Lo...

A quintessential noir, but ultimately a bit neater and kinder than the novel. Missing the absolute bleakness of the long denouement, but immaculate vibes throughout.

letterboxd.com/rinkou/film/...

The Big Sleep (1946)

Bogie/Bacall round 2

nw

A ★★★ review of Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc (2025) Really captures that tunnel vision feeling about young love. There’s so much here - the endless possibility and exuberance of youth, the underlying deconstruction of the way that Denji and many of his...

‪Some difficulty in adapting the material as a film, but really does remind me of why it’s such an enduring series. Achingly romantic, cleverly subversive, a real beating heart to it‬

boxd.it/bEqi8x

Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc (2025)

was seated earlier

A ★★★½ review of PTU (2003) Lots to love here between the multiple converging storylines involving several factions of the world's most corrupt cops and most unfortunate criminals getting tangled up in each others' business. The...

Super cynical, incredibly funny. Three teams of the worst cops in the world doing increasingly distressing wanton and unwarranted violence to cover up their own ineptitude. Mr. Bald Head is helping me find my gun.

letterboxd.com/rinkou/film/...

PTU (2003)

Johnnie To films count as noirs, right?

nw

A ★★★½ review of To Have and Have Not (1944) Produced in the throes of the Second World War, adapted from a novel written by a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, you certainly couldn't doubt its bona fides as a genuine revolutionary text. Having ...

I should probably go finish Andor, huh

letterboxd.com/rinkou/film/...

To Have and Have Not (1944)

with the conclusion of spooky season, we heartily welcome the start of noirvember

nw

‪There’s a whole subtext here about how cars are evil - how reckless driving is borne of a masculine insecurity and kicks off this whole chain of events, how cars are used to isolate women… No accident that the lab is hidden in a garage.‬

‪https://letterboxd.com/rinkou/film/eyes-without-a-face/‬

Eyes Without a Face / Les yeux sans visage (1960)

nw

A delayed double feature with The Face of Another

A ★★★★ review of The Face of Another (1966) Asks a lot of really pointed questions about identity, of faces, of pasts tied to the relationships we've built and the ones we were born into, of the way so much of our personality is driven both by ...

Love the wild experimentation of the New Wave - Teshigahara imbues this whole project with these meticulously designed sets and blocking that is both heightened by and thrown out by the frenetic camerawork and editing.

letterboxd.com/rinkou/film/...

The Face of Another / 他人の顔 (1966)

Back for my boy Nakadai Tatsuya

nw

A ★★★★½ review of The Fog (1980) Incredible thematic density here. Carpenter and Hill weave such a tight ghost story about the original sin of settler colonialism, and right on the heels of the US bicentennial. Everything is just a b...

‪Incredibly tight ghost story about the original sin we have inherited as the descendants of the American Adam‬

letterboxd.com/rinkou/film/...

The Fog (1980)

nw

A real miss! I had this same experience earlier in the month 🙂‍↔️

A ★★★ review of Mr. Vampire II (1986) A cute kids-movie follow-up to the first. A lot more uneven than the first, but the jokes that hit really do land. You'd think the 15 minute long slow-mo gag would wear thin at some point, but it stay...

Surprising amounts of heart to this one, even if it's much more uneven and kid-focused than the original.

You'd think a 15-minute long bit would wear thin at some point, but it doesn't!

letterboxd.com/rinkou/film/...

Mr. Vampire 2 / 殭屍家族 (1986)

time for a silly one

nw

A ★★★★ review of The Craft (1996) Mean Girls, but about the goth kids. This was one of my wife's Halloween favorites growing up, and it's really interesting to unpack why. There's so much here about being a teenage girl, about feeling...

Being a teenage girl seems rough.

letterboxd.com/rinkou/film/...

The Craft (1996)

nw

Another one of my wife’s childhood favorites

A ★★★½ review of Prince of Darkness (1987) Tons of spooks and exceedingly confident. Carpenter knows how to construct a scare purely out of tension and unsettling imagery and only hits us with a jump scare once, and only just to let us know he...

turns out the satan cylinder has been under Little Tokyo this whole time

letterboxd.com/rinkou/film/...

Prince of Darkness (1987)

nw

I should revisit this some time. There’s so much to like about it - a lot of really striking images, thematically rich, both extremely funny and sentimental, but it felt a bit overstuffed