On his way home from work, Yamashita, a successful businessman, receives a mysterious phone call about his wife's infidelity.  Yamashita doesn't know what to think, but he does decide to return home earlier than usual that night to investigate.  On arrival, he discovers his wife in bed with another man and in an act of rage he murders her in cold blood.  After eight years in prison, Yamashita is released and put on probation, returning home to his small village town where he opens up a barbershop.  One day he stumbles accross an unconscious woman in Keiko, who bares a striking resemblance to his wife.  Unconscious due to a botched suicide attempt, Yamashita alerts the authorities, who are able to save Keiko's life.  Soon enough, Keiko begins working in Yamashita's barber shop, even beginning to fall in love with Yamashita, who tries as hard as he can to keep her at a distance.  Shohei Imamura's The Eel is a difficult film to categorize, a tonially-shifting exploration of self-forgiveness and self-acceptance that is deeply lyrical, imaginative, funny and emotionally resonant.  While their have been many films dealing witha  recently paroled men looking for a second chance, Shohei Imamura's The Eel is endlessly more fascinating than most due to it being largly an internal film that focuses on Yamashita's inner-self more than societies acceptance.  Imamura's expressionistic style on aids this film, with a host of artistic decisions that speak volumes about what the characters are feeling.  My particular favorite decision Shohei Imamura made centers around the scene where out of desperation, Yamashita tells Keiko that he was in jail for murdering his wife.  Yamashita is  shameful but also attempting to force her away.  As Yamashita reveals that he lied about simply being divorced, Imamura lights the scene with  this bright spotlight that illuminates the frame, signifying a powerful moment that hits Keiko emotionally like a ton of bricks, letting it soak in.  The Eel is about a man attempting to move forward and begin anew, fearful of falling in love with another woman and not trusting himself as a decent human being.  In summary, Shohei Imamura's The Eel explores a man's internal struggle to forgive himself but it's also full of silly and funny moments, with Imamura  making fun of his characters as he exposes who they are as human beings.

Maya, a 30-something adult female, has hit a crossroads in her life, moving out of the home she lived in with her Aunt for several years.  Her Aunt recently passed away after being very ill, leaving Maya emotionally and physically affected and trying to pick up the pieces.  Maya took leave from work to take care of her aunt Maya, but as she tries to move-on she finds herself reflecting on the experiences with her late Aunt that helped shape her life.  Ava DuVernay's I Will Follow is a mature portrait of life and death, following a woman in Maya as she attempts to make sense of her Aunt's death.  The film centers around her interactions with a host of different characters ranging from immediate family to strangers, each affecting Maya's grief and emotionally healing in unique ways.  I Will Follow is a superbly written film with a nuanced screenplay that can only be described as a reflective exploration of humanity, focusing on Maya having to accept mortality and gain strength from the memories and experiences she has of her late Aunt.  I Will Follow captures the strife, insecurities, and revelations that death can have on the living, being a poignant study of the power of memories and importance of making the most of life while you have the chance.  Nuanced and mature, I Will Follow is an impressive debut feature for Ava Duvernay that showcases the filmmaker's observant eye and knack for the understated drama.

Taking place in the world of organized crime, Kinji Fukasaku's Black LIzard tells the story of a cunning female jewel thief known as Black Lizard, the most feared of her kind.  Black Lizard has set her sites on her next prize, the 'Star of Egypt' diamond, owned by an extremely wealthy jeweler.  In order to get the diamond, Black Lizard designs a well-crafted plan that entails kidnapping the jeweler's daughter, Sanaye, and demanding the 'Star of Egypt' in exhange.  Unfortunately for The Black Lizard, the jeweler has hired Japan's number one detective, the brilliant Akechi, in an attempt to protect himself from her cunning plan.  This sets off a dual of minds between Black Lizard and Aketchi, each mercifully trying to outwit the other.  Known almost exclusively for his yakuza films, Black Lizard offers a departure for Kenji Fukasaku, being a campy action film that really defies genre description.  Black Lizard is a cat and mouse film on acid, centered around the relationship that develops between two powerful adversaries.  Romanticizing these two brilliant people, Fukasaku shows the mutual respect between both The Black LIzard and Akechi, which slowly turns into affection.  In a strange way, Black Lizard is a film that brilliantly and subversively captures the feeling of love, with two characters, particularly The Black Lizard, who begins to weaken under the weight of her own heart.  While somewhat a departure for Fukasaku in terms of tone, Black Lizard maintains the stylish, kinetic energy one is accustomed to seeing from the filmmaker.  A subversive, campy story that explores love and beauty, Kenji Fukasaku's Black Lizard is an extremely fun and entertaining experience. 

Based on a strange true story, Tony Mahony and Angus Sampson's The Mule follows Ray Jenkins, a naive and possibly mentally challenged man who lives at home in the suburbs with his mother and stepdad.  Named the clubman of the year by his local football team, Ray is asked by his friend Gavin to accompany him to Bangkok to smuggle heroin.  Reluctant, Ray is essentially tricked into smuggling a kilo by swallowing twenty condoms only to be picked up by airport security.  Denying an x-ray, the Austrailian police can legally detain him for 7 days, stashing him in a hotel room.  The Mule's premise is simple- a man attempts to hold in his feces for seven straight days in an effort to evade the police and the jail time associated with drug smuggling.  This film can be downright grotesque at times but The Mule manages to be a funny, black comedy about a man somehow evading not only the police but the drug dealers who themselves want their product back.  Ray is a character that it takes awhile to get emotionally invested in, something that hurts the film at first, but this film does become a solid underdog story.  A film from Austraiia, The Mule uses the 1983 America's Cup yacht race that saw Australia miractulously steal a victory as a parallel to Ray's miraculous win.  A strange "pet project to have", The Mule is a unique black comedy that isn't anything special from a narrative perspective but its bizarre underdog story makes it worth a look.    

Junior is a nine year old boy living in the slums of Venezeuela with his single mother, Marta.  Junior doesn't have the same typical interests as most boys his age, dreaming of being a fashionable pop signer with long, beautiful hair.  This infatuation drives his mother crazy, who begins to be fearful that her son may be a homosexual.  Mariana Rondon's Bad Hair is a intimate and unique study of young boy living in a culture that refuses to except him.  Junior is not cognizant enough to understand his sexual preferences but his mother recognizes the signs, growing increasingly agitated by Junior's fixation with his hair and looks in general.  Bad Hair is not an easy film to experience, with Marta being a volatile but sympathetic mother whose trying and failing to make things work.  Jobless and a single mother, Marta desperately tries to support Junior and his baby brother, failing far more than she succeeds, with Bad Hair capturing the struggle that life has dealt her.  As a matter of fact, Bad Hair is as much a study of urban desolation and decay as it is about homosexuality, displaying a vital portrait of the delapitated high-rise apartments where so many poverty-striken people live.  Bad Hair's cinematography is subtlely brilliant, routinely shooting Junior and Marta from low angles, having these large, decaying structures hang over these characters, as a reminder of how restricted they are economically, trapped in this world.  The film captures the poverty, dispair, and violence that make up the world of these characters live-in, which is also the main reason why Marta is so terrified on Junior's budding homosexuality.  Doing so in a subtle way, Bad Hair slowly reveals Marta's true reasoning for being fearful of Junior's homexuality has nothing to do with morals or religion but instead life itself, fearing for her son's life in a mean-spirited world.  Anchored by two impressive lead performances, Bad Hair is a story about characters attempting to find themselves and make peace with what life has given them.