Hey there, Passport fans. Just wanted to let you guys know that the Passport Cinema review marathon has been postponed until next month. When I announced the marathon, I hoped to have some reviews stockpiled, but too much got in the way, and I wasn’t able to get anything written as I had planned. The marathon will arrive as planned, just on March 1st instead. But we do have some reviews ready to go, so check back later tonight when they’ll be posted for your perusal.
Thanks for reading, and take care!
-A.J. Hakari
Creator and lead film critic, Passport Cinema
Oh, reality TV. Sweet, intelligence-sapping, airwave-clogging reality TV. Centuries from now, historians will discover amidst gordita wrappers and discarded Team Edward shirts evidence of people who shouldn’t have been famous trying to prove why they should be. The concept was fairly green in 2001, but Takashi Miike anticipated the desperation that would soon follow in Visitor Q. Even for the man whose Audition churned our tummies and provoked our thoughts, Visitor Q is an unapologetically raw and uncomfortable piece of work, a film that captures all sorts of sights that should’ve remained unseen.
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Movies don’t quite know what to make of pornography. Comedies mine it for material all the time, and dramatic works tend to be revenge sagas that fall just short of sermonizing. So the animated Danish film Princess has a tricky job to fulfill, though it succeeds mostly because it never condescends. It doesn’t pretend that porn being bad is a foreign concept, nor does it stake a claim amidst the moral high ground. Princess is a tragedy cast in that most classic of molds, in which both its viewers and its characters are confronted with the personal price of seeking vengeance.
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Perhaps the most frightening films aren’t those that hunt us but those that haunt us. They make us question how we’d handle a certain situation, if we’d go with the flow or crack under pressure. While these ideas will be addressed countless times to come, few can get you scratching your head like Gabriele Salvatores’ I’m Not Scared. The film won’t outright scare you, but it will have you pondering the notion of whether an easy way out is always possible.
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Greetings, Passport fans! Didn’t think we left you guys by the wayside, did you? Nah, a little thing called the holidays bit myself and Mr. Luedtke in the behind big time, and we’re just now getting back into the swing of things. We didn’t forget that two weeks ago saw our little site’s second anniversary. Neither of us were in the mood for another week-long review blow out like last year…but we have something even better planned.
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