Kotone Furukawa Archives | Deep Focus Review Movie Reviews, Essays, and Analysis Mon, 21 Jul 2025 14:57:01 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 https://www.deepfocusreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/cropped-DFR-Favicon-5-32x32.png Kotone Furukawa Archives | Deep Focus Review 32 32 Cloud https://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/cloud/ https://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/cloud/#respond Fri, 18 Jul 2025 19:09:44 +0000 https://www.deepfocusreview.com/?post_type=reviews&p=29218 Note: Janus Films and Sideshow will distribute Cloud in limited release, starting on July 18, 2025. It will expand to other markets, including Minnesota, in the coming weeks.  Listen to the audio version of this review. Kiyoshi Kurosawa warns that something dreadful awaits those who prey on thrifty, unassuming online shoppers in Cloud, an unpredictable thriller about a shady reseller whose minor crimes come back to haunt him. Kurosawa, the Japanese director whose approach to genre adheres to no rulebook except his own, navigates a predatory capitalist underworld with a masterful control of tone. What begins as a portrait of a small-time grifter unravels into a study of how even the most modest offenses accumulate into something more nefarious—a transformation from petty transgressions into an all-consuming and inescapable criminal enterprise. Kurosawa considers how the desire for profit—or on a much more basic level, survival—instills a rampant need to exploit bargain shoppers for everything they’re worth. Cloud dissects how a world in which income means life gives way to opportunistic self-preservation. And yet, the corruptive nature of capitalism, and those caught in its wake, perpetuate a system of irresistible deals and prospective dividends. From this framework, where Kurosawa crafts both an […]

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]]> https://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/cloud/feed/ 0 Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy https://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/wheel-of-fortune-and-fantasy/ https://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/wheel-of-fortune-and-fantasy/#respond Sun, 19 Jun 2022 22:11:46 +0000 https://www.deepfocusreview.com/?post_type=reviews&p=20235 Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s triptych of short stories, each loosely connected by their narrative structure and thematic concentration rather than their characters. The three episodes called “Magic (or Something Less Assuring),” “Door Wide Open,” and “Once Again” employ fortuitous meetings and accidents, some happy and others less so. The English-language title makes the film sound more whimsical than perhaps it should, whereas the direct translation of the Japanese title, Coincidence and Imagination, feels more appropriate. But no matter. The anthology plays like a collection of literary short stories by a singular author. Unlike most films of its kind, it resists feeling like random bits woven together to fit the required runtime of a feature. Instead, Hamaguchi’s treatment of character and form creates unity from one tale to the next. The filmmaker creates three initially unassuming stories driven by dialogue about romantic desires, personal uncertainties, and a longing to feel seen by others. Hamaguchi’s talky characters share confessions, hopes for the future, vengeful schemes, and histories with one another. In each story, the conversation takes a sharp turn in an unexpected direction, altering the story’s trajectory in a way that deepens the characters, despite each […]

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