Dreams

"A scene that looks like a painting does not make a painting." What a genuinely fascinating movie. The only way I can think to properly review this is to talk about each short film individually, so I'm going to rank them from worst to best. 8. Sunshine Through the Rain - 3/5 I thought it was mostly forgettable, especially compared to the rest of the movie. Also, why can't a fellow look at the foxes' marriage ceremony without having to kill himself? What has this world come to that he can't take a little look-see? 7. Village of the Watermills - 3/5 Probably the most boring short film in the movie, it essentially consist of one overly-preachy conversation about how technology is bad. I very much wanted to agree with the old man while I watched it (and in a lot of ways I do), but man I felt like I was getting sold some sketchy de-aging supplements or something. 6. Mount Fuji in Red - 3/5 There's some very good, genuinely haunting imagery in here (the man desperately waving his jacket at the radiation that he can't possibly stop has sat with me in particular). But it contains maybe the worst individual shot of the entire film, where we watch some stock-footage ass explosions behind a png of Mt. Fuji. There's also the pretty strictly anti-nuclear energy messaging here, which I don't think super closely reflects the realities of the technology and is definitely just a (very fair) reaction to Chernobyl. Also the meltdown in Fukushima would happen 20 years after this movie came out, which like, damn. 5. The Weeping Demon - 3.5/5 The scene where you first see all the rest of the "demons" has not left my head since I first saw it. The abject misery, the suffering of all these people that happens like clockwork every day, is absolutely horrifying. Otherwise, I found this story super compelling, but the concept was so interesting that I felt as if a simple 15 minute short film simply doesn't do it justice. 4. Crows - 4/5 I love Vincent Van Gogh, and I thought this was a pretty well executed portrayal of him and what he put into his work. There's definitely some parts of it that don't work for me (Martin Scorsese literally just puts on a normal American accent for his portrayal of Vincent lmao), but I found it overall pretty charming. 3. The Blizzard - 5/5 The first part of this movie (although something before it is higher on this list) that genuinely took me off guard stylistically. It's a portrait of resilience and struggle and god I just think it works on so many levels. Kurosawa uses about two colors (and they're both blue) throughout the entire thing and yet it is STUNNING. 2. The Peach Orchard - 5/5 Idk man I just found this delightful. I love this strange, maybe schizophrenic child who just adores his family peach orchard and is devastated his parents chopped it down and may or may not have made up an entire peach tree council/civilization in order to cope with it for a moment. 1. The Tunnel - 5/5 A former army officer confronts his failures as a leader head on. I kind of refuse to say more about this, because it absolutely blew me away watching it blind, and I want as many people as possible to have that experience.