The Depths (2010)

[Ryūsuke Hamaguchi Ranked] [Japanese Movies Ranked] ⚠️This review contains minor spoilers.⚠️ For a movie called The Depths, I found that it barely scratched the surface of the human condition. The story involves a renowned Korean photographer (Bae-hwan) who is hired by…

cine_matic 💢

took a little while to get into but ended up really enjoying seeing these characters and their dynamics develop, it’s always fun watching early hamaguchi stuff!

˗ˏˋ suspirliam ˊˎ˗

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi tell more queer stories challenge.

Terence Ang 洪偉凱

“What is it you like about him?” “You must not be able to see it.” A bride spontaneously running off from her wedding celebration, an old man’s corpse smuggled out of a hotel room, a photographer visiting from Korea and a moody young male prostitute no one can seem to look…

jrhovind

Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s deceptively sprawling ambitions, evident as they are, have more or less always been tied to ideas of theme and structure; rarely, if ever, is straightforward narrative focus chief among his preoccupations. Whether or not The Depths—one of the earlier and…

Julian (Seeking Film)

Feels almost amateur in the context of what Hamaguchi would later achieve with Happy Hour (or even the "lesser" Asako I & II), but even before his peak he still possessed his key sensitivities. The broken relationships, the debts they incurred and the linguistic divide…

Jack Russo

A big step forward visually and with performances, but a step back narratively. The two leads are really good here, each running the spectrum of emotions, and, in his third available film, Hamaguchi has fully smoothed out his visual kinks. Where before there were sporadic…

Sean

Something of an abridged Happy Hour focused on male relationships, with thriller genre trappings, and nowhere near as good. The two main characters are friends. One has left his wife behind in Korea while he attends his friend’s wedding in Japan. He arrives in time to…

Hutch

an oddity in hamaguchi’s filmography. it all works well enough. i dig the slight genre play and thematically it lands. wouldn’t say he is typically very subtle but there’s something a little too manufactured about the beats and payoff here.

Jake