In Japan the very first few snowflakes begin to fall signaling the change of seasons. Another clue is we see young Takuya (Keitatsu Koshiyama) and his baseball-playing buddies taking those final swings at bat and moving on to ice hockey. That is basically how this quiet and lilting charmer of a coming-of-age story is introduced, and it sets the table perfectly for what is to follow.
Only the second narrative feature film for promising 28-year-old filmmaker Hiroshi Okuyama, whose first film 2018’s Jesus like this one also dealt with children, My Sunshine does not come from his own childhood experiences but is a story about figure skating, or in this case ice dancing, with which he has always been fascinated but never had a way in. Finally listening over and over to Humbert Humbert’s song “My Sunshine,” he not only got the English-language title for the film, but also...
Only the second narrative feature film for promising 28-year-old filmmaker Hiroshi Okuyama, whose first film 2018’s Jesus like this one also dealt with children, My Sunshine does not come from his own childhood experiences but is a story about figure skating, or in this case ice dancing, with which he has always been fascinated but never had a way in. Finally listening over and over to Humbert Humbert’s song “My Sunshine,” he not only got the English-language title for the film, but also...
- 5/19/2024
- by Pete Hammond
- Deadline Film + TV
In Hiroshi Okuyama’s My Sunshine, three souls find solace and poignant moments of self-discovery in figure skating. The film chronicles a season of the sport in a small town on a Japanese island, the kind of place whose melting snow and changing leaves inspire poetic musings. Guided by the beauty of the landscape and the nostalgia of childhood, Okuyama constructs a quiet narrative buoyed by an understated charm.
The film opens with signs of a new season. During a baseball game, Takuya (Keitatsu Koshiyama), a sheepish boy with minor speech troubles, becomes mesmerized by snowflakes fluttering to the ground. While his teammates steal bases, he cranes his neck, angling for a better view of the crystals. Scenes of snow blanketing the town in Hokkaido, the Japanese island where Okuyama (Jesus) filmed My Sunshine, follow. These images — of powdery mountain peaks and quiet streets flanked by snow — possess the haunting...
The film opens with signs of a new season. During a baseball game, Takuya (Keitatsu Koshiyama), a sheepish boy with minor speech troubles, becomes mesmerized by snowflakes fluttering to the ground. While his teammates steal bases, he cranes his neck, angling for a better view of the crystals. Scenes of snow blanketing the town in Hokkaido, the Japanese island where Okuyama (Jesus) filmed My Sunshine, follow. These images — of powdery mountain peaks and quiet streets flanked by snow — possess the haunting...
- 5/19/2024
- by Lovia Gyarkye
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
A Cannes 2024 acquisitions title already picking up buzz out of the Un Certain Regard lineup is Hiroshi Okuyama’s “My Sunshine,” which IndieWire shares an exclusive clip of below. Writer/director Okuyama won the top prize in the New Directors competition at the 2018 San Sebastian Film Festival for his debut feature, “Jesus,” at just 22 years old and now makes his Cannes debut. The moving coming-of-age drama set in rural Japan premieres later this week, centering on the bond between an ice figure-skating coach and his young pupils who take a particular interest in him — and with life-defining consequences.
Here’s the official synopsis: “On a Japanese island, life revolves around the changing seasons. Winter is time for ice hockey at school, but Takuya isn’t too thrilled about it. His real interest lies in Sakura, a figure skating rising star from Tokyo, for whom he starts to develop a genuine fascination.
Here’s the official synopsis: “On a Japanese island, life revolves around the changing seasons. Winter is time for ice hockey at school, but Takuya isn’t too thrilled about it. His real interest lies in Sakura, a figure skating rising star from Tokyo, for whom he starts to develop a genuine fascination.
- 5/13/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Reese Witherspoon as Tracy FlickScreenshot: Paramount Pictures
This May, Glee turns 15. For better or worse—often both, within the same episode—the series is singular. It ushered in a wave of musical TV shows, and with it a new era of merchandising. Its young cast might not have become Euphoria famous,...
This May, Glee turns 15. For better or worse—often both, within the same episode—the series is singular. It ushered in a wave of musical TV shows, and with it a new era of merchandising. Its young cast might not have become Euphoria famous,...
- 4/30/2024
- by Drew Gillis
- avclub.com
‘The Sweet East’ Review: ‘Good Time’ Dp Sean Price Williams Hits the Road in Promising Feature Debut
Festival reviews just love to hype a breakout performance, to the extent that one worries about becoming the little critic that cried breakout. But here goes: Talia Ryder, lead actor in “The Sweet East,” is a star. There’s something of Kristen Stewart about her, not merely in terms of physical resemblance, but more in her gift for not just acting but reacting. That’s fortunate, because her character is generally surrounded by extremely chatty blowhards, most of them interested only in the role she might play for them in their own lives. She lies constantly about her identity and where she’s from, and these lies go down easy because nobody is particularly invested in who she might actually be — they’re too keen to fit her into their own mythology.
In debuting director Sean Price Williams’ picaresque road trip along the United States’ east coast, the most horribly...
In debuting director Sean Price Williams’ picaresque road trip along the United States’ east coast, the most horribly...
- 5/18/2023
- by Catherine Bray
- Variety Film + TV
A post-ironic picaresque born from a take-no-prisoners attitude so oppressive that it soon becomes its own kind of jail, Sean Price Williams’ “The Sweet East” amounts to something more than just a series of semi-connected trolls. But this sniveling little satire of modern American thought is never funnier or more sure of itself than when it makes you feel like an asshole for taking it too seriously.
Consider the film’s opening few minutes, which appear to tee up a lo-fi but legibly familiar sex comedy set on a high school trip to Washington, D.C., until things, uh, take a turn. We first meet Lillian as she lies in a hotel bed next to a blond mouth-breather who plays with his used condom like it’s a party balloon and brags about how he’s going to be a star. Later, after reuniting with the rest of her grade,...
Consider the film’s opening few minutes, which appear to tee up a lo-fi but legibly familiar sex comedy set on a high school trip to Washington, D.C., until things, uh, take a turn. We first meet Lillian as she lies in a hotel bed next to a blond mouth-breather who plays with his used condom like it’s a party balloon and brags about how he’s going to be a star. Later, after reuniting with the rest of her grade,...
- 5/18/2023
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Despite its controversial subject matter, which involves a middle-aged man of letters obsessing over a 12-year-old "nymphet", Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 book "Lolita" is often regarded as one of the finest novels ever written. In 1998, the year that a new Adrian Lyne adaptation of "Lolita," starring Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain, premiered on Showtime, Modern Library named Nabokov's book the fourth-best English-language novel published by Random House in the 20th century. This was the second attempt at a film adaptation of "Lolita;" the first came in 1962 when Stanley Kubrick was in the director's chair.
Kubrick's adaptation of "Lolita" works backward from the climax of Nabokov's novel, as Humbert Humbert (James Mason) confronts and shoots his drunken counterpart, Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers), in his mansion. The film magnifies Quilty's role, with Sellers even adopting a German disguise at one point, similar to how he would play multiple roles two years later in "Dr. Strangelove.
Kubrick's adaptation of "Lolita" works backward from the climax of Nabokov's novel, as Humbert Humbert (James Mason) confronts and shoots his drunken counterpart, Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers), in his mansion. The film magnifies Quilty's role, with Sellers even adopting a German disguise at one point, similar to how he would play multiple roles two years later in "Dr. Strangelove.
- 1/21/2023
- by Joshua Meyer
- Slash Film
In a postscript to his 1955 novel "Lolita," Vladimir Nabokov stated, quite shockingly, that it was a love story. Not between an adult man and a 12-year-old girl, as the dark plot of the novel details, but between Nabokov and the English language.
Nabokov, born in St. Petersburg in 1899, always had a strange affinity for the English language and often translated his own works from their original Russian. He also had an equally strange affinity for American culture as it looked in the 1950s, and "Lolita" was his full exploration of that. Among many other things, "Lolita" is about how post-War America -- featuring a money-raking landscape of hotels, kitsch, and secrets -- was all too willing to offer its youth as prey for a seemingly respectful European aristocracy. The book's main character, comically named Humbert Humbert, was a morally bankrupt transplant who saw himself as the king of his own story,...
Nabokov, born in St. Petersburg in 1899, always had a strange affinity for the English language and often translated his own works from their original Russian. He also had an equally strange affinity for American culture as it looked in the 1950s, and "Lolita" was his full exploration of that. Among many other things, "Lolita" is about how post-War America -- featuring a money-raking landscape of hotels, kitsch, and secrets -- was all too willing to offer its youth as prey for a seemingly respectful European aristocracy. The book's main character, comically named Humbert Humbert, was a morally bankrupt transplant who saw himself as the king of his own story,...
- 1/15/2023
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
The first, and greatest, adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s troubling 1955 novel still possesses a strange and unnerving power
What happens when a magnet for controversy depolarizes with age? Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel Lolita still attracts plenty of analysis, admiration and disgust, in the classroom and beyond. But despite the pedigree of the beloved film-maker Stanley Kubrick, the first film adaptation of Lolita – released 60 years ago this week – is arguably more of a curio these days, forced to excise or elide some of the book’s thorniest elements for the sake of being allowed to exist at all.
The sheer unlikelihood of a Lolita movie being made near-contemporaneously with the novel was worked into the ad campaign, some of its posters adorned with a cheeky question: “How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?” Good question, relatively simple answer: by ageing up the title character slightly, and relying on innuendos...
What happens when a magnet for controversy depolarizes with age? Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel Lolita still attracts plenty of analysis, admiration and disgust, in the classroom and beyond. But despite the pedigree of the beloved film-maker Stanley Kubrick, the first film adaptation of Lolita – released 60 years ago this week – is arguably more of a curio these days, forced to excise or elide some of the book’s thorniest elements for the sake of being allowed to exist at all.
The sheer unlikelihood of a Lolita movie being made near-contemporaneously with the novel was worked into the ad campaign, some of its posters adorned with a cheeky question: “How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?” Good question, relatively simple answer: by ageing up the title character slightly, and relying on innuendos...
- 6/13/2022
- by Jesse Hassenger
- The Guardian - Film News
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