Red menace

For those in the NYC area, a reminder that Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Bright Future opens today at the Cinema Village. Kurosawa's films are hard to see theatrically in the U.S. outside of festivals, so try to catch this one while you can.

Kurosawa's films have a mysterious elusive quality to them, none quite as much as Bright Future. Of the five I have seen, this is on the one hand the most straightforward film, but it is also perhaps the hardest to get one's head around. I have been mulling it over in my mind like no other movie this year. The other Kurosawa films I've seen have used thriller/horror genre trappings to allow a point of entry for the viewer. Bright Future, while no less concerned with modern alienation than Cure or Kairo, allows the emotional undercurrents to drive the story more, all while keeping the technique largely the same. It's an odd film, but a rich and rewarding one.

Manohla Dargis's review is nicely done, and skillfully skirts the plot spoilers that others have freely spilled.