At Home With… August Picks

Jasper Sharp SELECTS
Millennium Actress

Millennium Actress, dir. Satoshi Kon, 2001

The sophomore feature of anime maestro Satoshi Kon, whose all-too-brief directing career was tragically cut short by pancreatic cancer in 2010 at the age of 46, covers similar thematic territory to his dazzling debut, the psycho-thriller about a teen idol, Perfect Blue (1997). It presents a much lighter exploration of the blurred lines between dreams and reality in its tale of a documentary filmmaker (and dumbstruck fan) granted a rare interview with an enigmatic and reclusive screen legend of yesteryear, as she leads him from the pre-war beginnings of her career through the classical era of 1950s period dramas and beyond. Is Kon’s model based on such iconic screen sirens from Japanese cinema’s Golden Age as Ozu’s muse Setsuko Hara, or the more controversial figure of Yoshiko Yamaguchi? It doesn’t really matter. Millenium Actress is a visual and narrative tour-de-force all the way.

WATCH MILLENNIUM ACTRESS

Jasper Sharp is an author, critic and filmmaker known for his work on Japanese cinema and the co-founder of the Japanese film website Midnight Eye. His books include The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film (2004) and The Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema (2011), while he has contributed chapters to a number of edited anthologies. He has also directed the feature-length documentaries, The Creeping Garden (2014), about plasmodial slime moulds made with Tim Grabham, The J-Horror Virus (2023) with Sarah Appleton, and Splatterfest Exhumed (2024). His 2008 book on Japanese erotic film, Behind the Pink Curtain, has just been republished in an expanded third edition and is available through FAB Press.

David Haynes Selects
The Brother from Another Planet

The Brother from Another Planet, dir. John Sayles, 1984

Has anyone ever spent a McArthur grant as well as John Sayles, who used that bounty to create an entertaining, low-budget sci-fi classic? Brother from Another Planet features a masterful and entirely silent performance by Joe Morton, silence which is set against a relentless cacophony of ’80s-era electronic noise, obscure but funky needle drops, and hilariously absurd dialogue about everything and mostly about nothing. The resolution is as cheesy as the special effects, and somehow the whole thing just makes you smile. Did I mention Joe Morton is a genius?

WATCH THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET

David Haynes is the author of eight books, most recently Martha’s Daughter: A Novella and Stories. He is Founder and Board Chair of Kimbilio.

Gus Edelen O’Brien SELECTS
Introduction

Introduction, dir. Hong Sangsoo, 2021

What Hong accomplishes with Introduction is an ideal of art, recalling the epigraph of Frederich Holderlin’s Hyperion: “Not to be constrained by the greatest, to be contained by the smallest, is divine.” Introduction is a divine image made out of overlapping strokes of white paint, a celebration of poetry and of light. Introduction is marked by the realization not only of the individuals’ ability to grapple with the divine internally, but also by a faith in nature to provide a setting for such transcendent emotion. Hong accomplishes this in a manner which elicits from me such hyperbolic praise that I find myself smiling trying to remember why this film moves me so much. Introduction is a soft shell, a medical tool, a bright light shone into your eyes by a professional. It draws life from the surfaces of cinema, and therein represents life as a painting might, forever pointing elsewhere, outside of the frame, outside understanding, but it is never absurd, never that.

WATCH INTRODUCTION

Gus Edelen O’Brien is a filmmaker, writer, and Metrograph’s Social Media Manager.