Kenji Fujishima | Movie Mezzanine - Part 2

Kenji Fujishima

In addition to being Deputy Editor of this site, Kenji is also a contributor to Slant Magazine, Brooklyn Magazine and The Wall Street Journal, as well as the former editor-in-chief of In Review Online. When he’s not watching movies and writing and editing film criticism, he’s trying to absorb as much music, art, and literature as possible. He has not infrequently been called a “culture vulture” for that reason.

All posts by Kenji Fujishima

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Longform

Why Long-Take Cinema Should Do More Than Experiment

9 years ago by Kenji Fujishima

Kenji Fujishima writes about the recent trend of long-takes in movies such as "Too Late" and "The Revenant."

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Longform

Superman Before Batman: On Ben Affleck and “Hollywoodland”

9 years ago by Kenji Fujishima

On the eve of "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," Kenji Fujishima looks back at Ben Affleck's work as a TV Superman in "Hollywoodland."

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Longform

On the Surprisingly Personal Remake of “The Manchurian Candidate”

9 years ago by Kenji Fujishima

Kenji Fujishima on the 2004 remake of "The Manchurian Candidate."

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Longform

How “Chimes At Midnight” Parallels Orson Welles’ Life and Career

9 years ago by Kenji Fujishima

Not too long after the highly anticipated restoration of Out 1, here is yet another holy grail of sorts returning to theaters in a big way. Not that Orson Welles’s Shakespearean adaptation Chimes at Midnight has quite the same mythical cachet as Jacques Rivett...

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Theatrical

“Anomalisa” Is A Genuinely Enlivening Work of Art

9 years ago by Kenji Fujishima

With his directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York (2008), Charlie Kaufman, one of contemporary cinema’s most distinguished screenwriters, undertook no less grand a task than articulating the way we all live our lives. Funneled through the mind’s eye of theater ...

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“Re-Animator” At 30

9 years ago by Kenji Fujishima

In his book Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, Jonathan Glover discusses what he calls "the cold joke”—wringing humor out of a lack of respect for human life—as a method people often use to distance themselves from atrocities they partake in, ...

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“Room” Is Vivid and Poignant

9 years ago by Kenji Fujishima

Note. This review was originally published as part of our 2015 Toronto International Film Festival coverage. Going into Room not knowing anything about the Emma Donoghue novel on which it’s based, I found myself, in its opening moments, forced into the proces...

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Interview: Hou Hsiao-Hsien of “The Assassin”

9 years ago by Kenji Fujishima

It has been 8 years since the great Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien’s last feature (the Paris-set Flight of the Red Balloon, starring Juliette Binoche), but The Assassin shows no lessening of his formidable artistic grip. In its patient long takes, impecca...

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TIFF Review: “Francofonia”

9 years ago by Kenji Fujishima

Aleksandr Sokurov takes on fresh formal territory in his latest film, Francofonia. Having previously dabbled in nonfiction (his early documentaries on artists like Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Dmitri Shostakovich), historical docudrama (Moloch, Taurus, The Sun) ...

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TIFF Review: “About Ray”

9 years ago by Kenji Fujishima

Even though About Ray revolves around a transgender teenager, this isn’t the hot-button topical-issue film one might expect. Certainly, there is very little anguished hand-wringing about transgender issues; among most of the main cast of characters, transgende...