Screening Log

This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.

April 2007 activity

Total Log Entries: 50

Total Comments: 20

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Cursed / ‘Cho’ kowai hanashi A: yami no karasu / Japan / 2004

No, not the uber-foul Wes Craven flick from a few years ago, but a semi-foul 80-minute mishmash from Japan. A convenience store is the epicenter of strange happenings: birds crash into windows, eyes peer out from behind refrigeration shelves, a mysterious figure in a hefty parka stares endlessly into magazines. The owners, a husband and wife who sit like zombies before a security monitor, are psychological grenades—they yell, glare, accuse, and laugh demonically, all while their part-time employees manage the store with blissful ease.

The problem with Cursed is that first-time director Yoshihiro Hoshino refuses to commit. For most of the film, the camera’s attention drifts relentlessly. Much of the focus is on the store’s fated customers, who are stalked by an array of murderous one-scene-only apparitions and variations on the number 666, rather than the store itself; when the store’s curse is revealed—and by a crazy homeless woman, nonetheless—we are left with more than a few questions, as well as a few reasons to groan. But the film ends without resolution.

by Adam Balz | Source: Tokyo Shock DVD
12 Apr 2007 12:57 PM | Submit Comment

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