• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Newcity Film

Reviews, profiles and news about movies in Chicago

  • Newcity
    • Newcity Network
    • Best of Chicago
  • Art
  • Brazil
  • Design
  • Film
    • About Newcity Film
    • Advertise
    • Contributors
    • Privacy Policy
  • Lit
  • Music
  • Resto
  • Stage
  • Subscribe
    • Magazine
    • Newsletters

Fiery Flowers: A Review of Fireworks

February 11, 2019 at 8:00 am by Ray Pride

Ray Pride by Ray Pride
February 11, 2019February 11, 2019Filed under:
  • Comedy
  • Drama
  • Featured
  • Recommended
  • World Cinema


RECOMMENDED

Less is moral: “Fireworks” (Hana-bi, 1997), Takeshi Kitano’s transcendent wallop of a cop movie, is one of my all-time favorites. The maverick Japanese master filmmaker’s haunting, gorgeous pluperfectly balanced elegy to art and conjugal love is also a brilliant action painting of the wages of extravagant violence. (And absurdly, brutally funny, as well.)

Cop, yakuza, wanderer: Takeshi Kitano plays only one role in the films in which he serves as writer, director, painter, producer and sometimes editor, and that is the most imperturbable man on earth. Even before the motorcycle accident that creased his face several years ago, turning a thin smile into a classic smirk, Kitano was the “coolest”—combine “Point Blank” actor Lee Marvin with its director John Boorman—and you get some idea of his persona before and behind the camera, improvidently mingling stoicism, lyrical imagery and sudden violence.

Kitano has a rare gift for eccentric but telling transitions and framings that are essential cinematic poetry. Can you live a standoff? That question seems implicit in every late Kitano picture, and his characters are caught at the moment it all begins to teeter: a life’s balance, a meditative practice, all blown to smithereens by a careless act or careless word. The drenching score is by Joe Hisaishi. (Kitano also co-edited, as well as creating all the drawings and paintings in the film.) 103m. (Ray Pride)

“Fireworks” will be shown in 35mm at Chicago Film Society at NEIU, February 13. Short: Kenneth Anger’s “Fireworks” (1947). 

Ray Pride
Ray Pride

Ray Pride is Newcity film critic and a contributing editor of Filmmaker magazine. He is also a photographer: his history of Chicago “Ghost Signs” in words and images is forthcoming. Previews on Twitter (twitter.com/chighostsigns) as well as daily photography on Instagram: instagram.com/raypride. Twitter: twitter.com/RayPride. (Photo: Jorge Colombo.)

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • More
  • Print
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Tumblr
  • Reddit
  • Pocket

Related

Tagged:
  • Fireworks
  • Hana-bi
  • Takeshi Kitano

Post navigation

Previous Post The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film: A Review Of Soderbergh’s High Flying Bird

Primary Sidebar

Popular Stories

  • Hydronium Bromide for All: A Review of After.Life
    Hydronium Bromide for All: A Review of After.Life
  • Film 50 2018: Chicago's Screen Gems
    Film 50 2018: Chicago's Screen Gems
  • Balance of Power: A Review Of The Favourite
    Balance of Power: A Review Of The Favourite
  • The Sky Over Berlin: A Review Of The Restored "Wings of Desire"
    The Sky Over Berlin: A Review Of The Restored "Wings of Desire"
  • Family Matters: The Intimacy of Alfonso Cuarón's "Roma"
    Family Matters: The Intimacy of Alfonso Cuarón's "Roma"

Newsletters


Copyright Newcity Communications, Inc. © 2019

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.