... always-connected digital communication that we live in, there’s a belief that one must be seen in order to be real and being seen must be shuffled through a myriad of filters before clicking publish, the message from 1953 remains a poignant one.

| Apr 18, 2025

Mizoguchi was trained as a painter, and his deep-focus shots often remind one of a Dutch interior.

| Mar 5, 2024

Ugetsu, with its many adventures and accidents and stories, is a well-constructed work of art, growing out of a sense of drama.

| Apr 20, 2022

Mizoguchi's blend of historicity, artistic refinement, and human observation combines with his rare embrace of the spiritual in Ugetsu, and its effect is entrancing, affecting, and unforgettable.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 14, 2022

Mizoguchi's exquisitely tragic ghost story is his finest cinematic achievement.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 9, 2020

The characters inhabit a cruel and desperate world, and their obsessions for success take them on a journey between the real world and the realm of the fantastic.

| Jul 17, 2020

Japanese ghost stories have been a part of that country's cinema for as long as they've been making films, but Mizoguchi's treatment of the format is sublime, eerie, and quite disturbing in terms of the lessons learned.

| May 6, 2020

The acting is superb, and the ability to interweave fantasy and realism is evident through out the story.

| Jul 16, 2019

Mizoguchi's craftsmanship remains unparalleled, providing a deep and powerful exploration of human folly that achieves an almost mystical status.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 4, 2019

Part sensual ghost story and part cautionary tale about profiteering from war, Ugetsu is a stunning film.

| Aug 17, 2017

With rare humanity, Mizoguchi reveals the toll these misadventures take on the souls of both men and their wives, many moments an uncanny synthesis of the realistic and the otherworldly.

| Feb 28, 2017

It is maybe even the most important of all war movies, despite showing not more than a few minutes of anything we might properly consider to be "combat".

| Original Score: 10/10 | Dec 8, 2016

Rarely, however, has its visual beauty been equaled.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 3, 2014

In exploring the transience of happiness and the injustice of patriarchal society, Mizoguchi makes lyrical use of gliding long takes that reinforce his material and mystical themes. It's a work of sheer genius.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 18, 2013

Mizoguchi's graceful, meditative camera style lends quiet intensity to the drama.

| Nov 18, 2013

One of the masterpieces of Japanese and world cinema.

| Original Score: A | Jul 17, 2011

Tale of two men in seething 16th-century Japan has a color and panorama which makes this absorbing film fare.

| Sep 16, 2008

A masterpiece of Japanese cinema.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 16, 2008

A marvelously wise and moving classic, but also one full of sights that might make you cry, like Genjuro, 'I never imagined such pleasures existed!'

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 16, 2006

A ravishingly composed, evocatively beautiful film.

| Feb 9, 2006