goldgreen

One Wonderful Sunday is Kurosawa's warmest film and unfairly overlooked as an early naive curio. It certainly can be accused of being a low budget, cheap sets, many scenes with just the two leading players, plus some cheap lenses, but despite this Kurosawa's genius is very much present. Masako is one his greatest characters; part saint, part vulnerable woman; her role is to inspire and instil faith in her despondent boyfriend. Her line "Everyone's miserable nowadays but you have to see past the present to the future" is the very essence of the film. She speaks this to her boyfriend Yuzo, but Kurosawa is aiming it at all young Japanese men in 1947 who had come back from a disastrous war to see their country poor, occupied, humiliated and in ruins. The film's message to the Japanese public makes sense of the infamous, breaking the fourth wall scene. I am writing this review after watching it a second time, and it is truly the mark of a great film that it improves by leaps and bounds on repeated watching.

I have just finished watching this for the third time since it came out and I am coming round to the idea that this may actually be the best of the series. And yes, it does improve on repeated viewing. The scenery is the best of all four series, lush landscapes, a succession of shallow coves where the sun illuminates the sea floor. There is no drop off in quality in the dialogue - there is an higher level of subtlety in the way Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan mock exaggerated versions of themselves. Steve comparison of his one night stand with a pirate raiding a ship is also one of the best jokes of all the series. And the sombre finale of Steve travelling back to Manchester is a brilliant shift from the comedy/travelogue. Dare I say it, this feels like art cinema at its best. A Trip to Ireland or A Trip to France next hopefully - please make series 5 now. I think the perception the series was shaped by the first being so fresh, and a slight ennui with each successive series, but now time has passed that is less of an issue.

Loved this episode for the way it confounds stereotypes in casting and plot. Our hero is a black, female papparazzi who has some scruples unlike those she works with. The plot and editing move fast and place her quickly in her final stake out of a reclusive Hollywood actress. The use at this point of a classic horror theme is a typical Black Mirror twist, but the piece de resistance is the ending. It is funny, morally questionable and completely irreverent. Personally, I love to see the story-telling cliches of cinema subverted. I also loved that the lead actress is morally ambivalent - if this was the BBC or Disney she would be used to embody female and black empowerment - instead she is a real person with good and bad sides. Bravo!