Asian Cinema
The industries outside the West. Kurosawa, Ozu and Mizoguchi, Hong Kong action and wuxia, Bollywood, Korean cinema through Parasite, and the films that Hollywood spent decades remaking.
Part of Films
19 moments in this segment.
- - Rashomon. Akira Kurosawa. Four contradictory accounts of the same crime. Won the Venice Golden Lion and introduced Japanese cinema to the West. Coined the "Rashomon effect", the term every social scientist would later steal.
- - Tokyo Story. Yasujirō Ozu. Elderly parents visit their adult children in Tokyo and find no one has time. Static cameras, tatami-mat angles, devastating quiet. Sight & Sound's greatest film of all time in the 2012 directors' poll.
- - Seven Samurai. Akira Kurosawa. Village hires seven masterless samurai to defend it from bandits. The template for every "team of misfits assembled for a mission" film ever since. Three and a half hours; not a minute too long.
- - Seven Samurai (1954) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers. 00:03:59
- - Ran. Akira Kurosawa, 75, his last great epic. King Lear transposed to feudal Japan. Self-financed because Japanese studios wouldn't back him by then.
- - Ran | Official Trailer. 00:01:04
- - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Ang Lee. First foreign-language film to gross $100M+ in the US. Yuen Woo-ping's wire-work choreography; the bamboo-forest duel. Brought wuxia to Western mass audiences.
- - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers. 00:02:04
- - In the Mood for Love. Wong Kar-wai. Maggie Cheung's cheongsams, Tony Leung's cigarette smoke, Nat King Cole on the soundtrack. The most stylistically beautiful film of the 2000s.
- - Oldboy. Park Chan-wook. The hammer fight shot in a single take. Won the Grand Prix at Cannes, Tarantino, on the jury, championed it. The film that broke Korean cinema globally.
- - OLDBOY - Official Trailer. After being kidnapped and imprisoned for fifteen years, Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) is released, only to find that he must find his captor in five days.
- - Rashomon Trailer (Akira Kurosawa, 1950). ) · 00:01:49
- - Tokyo Story - Official Trailer. 00:01:22
- - Parasite. Bong Joon-ho. First non-English film to win Best Picture in 92 years of Oscars. Class warfare comedy-thriller; the basement scene. The Korean film industry's coronation moment.
- - Parasite - Official Trailer (2019) Bong Joon Ho Film. 00:02:17
- - Drive My Car. Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, from Murakami. Three-hour film about grief, theatre, and the long drive between work and home. Won Best International Feature; nominated for Best Picture.
- - Drive My Car - Official Trailer. 00:02:01
- - Past Lives. Celine Song. Two childhood friends, Seoul and New York, 24 years apart. Quiet, restrained, devastating. Best Picture nominee on a tiny A24 budget.
- - Past Lives | Official Trailer HD | A24. 00:02:25
