​Less interesting than Hui's later work, though it certainly establishes themes that the filmmaker would further excavate through his career related to the clash between traditionalism and modernity, and the effect it has in Hong Kong's cultural identity.  Games Gamblers Play simply feels like a first feature, with it's narrative being relatively straightforward and lacking the same anarchic energy that would define the brilliance of his later work in which the comedic set-pieces dazzled with ingenuity and bravado.  

Cop propaganda that props-up the carceral state through its main protagonist, a police commissioner who operates with impunity and tactics deeply rooted in punitive justice. Portrayed with affection, Darbar can be uncomfortable in its general fascistic perspective, one in which a strict binary exists between right and wrong, good and evil, a binary that is defined in the context of Darbar by  legality  - this agent of the state and his brutal methods never come into question, he is infallible given his status granted by the state. The action is enjoyable and heavy on the panache one has come to expect from blockbuster Tamil cinema, and I'd be remiss if also didn't comment on how utterly charming it is that the lead protagonist takes down gangsters, drug kingpins, and assorted goons with ease but when it comes to garnering the affection of a woman, he is stripped of all his power. The escalation in the back half of the narrative, one in which the film firmly posits the baddie as a caricature of evil makes the film's praise of punitive justice a bit easier to swallow, though the film remains bit uneasy given its simplistic perspective on legality and justice but hey, the final fight in this film is pretty great.

​Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure is one of the greatest evocations of horror ever committed to celluloid, a film that largely subverts traditional modes of genre filmmaking to deliver a terrifying experience which is near epistemic in the horror it invokes about modernity.  Following a familiar cop/killer framework, Cure's general narrative text is accessible from the onset, leaning into the mystery of these murders through the point-of-view of its lead protagonist - a cop who is tasked to solve the grisly crimes.  Obfuscating the traditional expectations of this familiar conception - the discovery and satisfaction felt by a viewer through narrative closure, which in this case never comes, Cure reveals the truly horrific module it is operating on, one in which unconscious desires and all their moral attachments are far from repudiated by modernity but suppressed and perhaps even exacerbated by its normalization of "acceptable" social modes of living. These heinous acts of violence were not supernatural, they did not come from any form of mental illness or other socially constructed descriptors that absolves the larger collective of humanity instead, these desires are perhaps, just a part of human consciousness itself.  The final denouement of Cure is particularly revealing to the film's subtext, in which the suggestion of more violence is coming, despite the killer at the fulcrum of the narrative being no more.  Perhaps Cure isn't just about unconscious desires as a device for its examination of evil, but also about the void created by modernity in which individuals are forced to posit themselves and their defined identities around societal expectations.  For our main protagonist, he is forced to wrestle with his professional and personal identities - as a husband and police officer, identities that don't often congeal particularly due to his wife's deteriorating health.  Though Kurosawa's cinematic formalism that is completely devoid of empathy and exudes a consistent feeling of detachment, Cure percolates with dread more than outright induces it, the police detective at the fulcrum of this story deeply in pain which he has largely suppressed, symbolic in a sense of modernity itself.  Suppression, either socially or individually, leads to instability and agitation, with the potential for abject violence being almost sure to follow.

Nanni Moretti's The Mass is Over is a compelling examination of faith, one which differentiates itself in interesting ways from the host of similar films which have attempted to excavate the complexities of belief systems, internal spirituality, and the external forces which strain and disrupt one's faith.  Narratively speaking, The Mass is Over details the deteriorating temperament of a young Priest as he returns home, grappling with his past and those in his life who have known him long before he became a man of god.  Seemingly straight-forward in conception, The Mass is Over manages to be quite piercing in what it illustrates, exhibiting the difficulty even for a man of god to  maintain fidelity when consumed by the milieu of a community which is struggling with negativity and emotional strife.  We are all social creatures after all, and the transference of milieu is inescapable but not absolute as the film details the trials and tribulations of this priest whose troubled past creates strain on his present identity.

​A loveless marriage personified through a hypnotic formalist framework in which abstraction evinces the film's underlying thematic intent.  Exhibits the cruelest perspective on domestication under a patriarchal society, one in which femininity is commodified for social gain and emotionally subjugated to the whims of its oppressor - her husband - who profits off of their externally perceived status in which he himself provides no emotional labor in return.  Dura's employs both static compositions and free-flowing camera movements which enunciate the stasis of this character who is a ghost in her own life.  The way the camera navigates the spaces of this grandiose villa - the restrictive material structures of the hallways and various enclaves of the architectural floor plan become symbolic of this woman's emotional state, she is nothing more than an object, a novelty for her husband's social perception/status.  Her life exudes decadence but is void of meaning or autonomy.  The film features no plotting or narrative yet through its series of encounters the film reveals the layers of this woman's emotional destitute and the events which shaped her current psyche. Through a series of interactions she has with individuals who know her husband, the viewer begins to realize how deep the abyss goes - these strangers are intermediaries, having more knowledge of her husband and his actions than her, his own wife.