For this Sunday Kino Night, we’re starting off with The Fifth Seal (1976), a Hungarian WW2 drama in which a trio of men in fascist-controlled Budapest hold a thought experiment: which would you prefer to be, an amoral tyrant or a moral slave? Drama ensues when the participants start getting a little too into the game, and their dirty secrets are revealed. It is by far the best-known and best-regarded work of director Zoltan Fabri, being both the highest-rated Hungarian film on Letterboxd, and ranked #149 on the site’s Top 250 films of all time. Great reviews for this one across the board, so let’s check it out. After that is Kikujiro (1999), a road-trip comedy from Japanese auteur Takeshi Kitano. A boy goes on the road to look for his missing mother; he meets a crotchety man, played by Kitano, and they proceed to go on adventures. Dudes rock. We previously watched his yakuza-vacation film Sonatine (1993), which was a hit on Hextube, so let’s give another of his a shot.

We’ll start at 9PM EST on Hextube, right here:

https://live.hexbear.net/c/movies

Be there, comrades!

Letterboxd:

• The Fifth Seal: https://letterboxd.com/film/the-fifth-seal/
• Kikujiro: https://letterboxd.com/film/kikujiro/

Doesthedogdie.com links:

• The Fifth Seal: Sorry, nothing on DTDD or IMDB.
• Kikujiro: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0199683/parentalguide?ref_=tt_stry_pg

CWs for The Fifth Seal:

• Mention of child sexual abuse in a hypothetical context to demonstrate amorality. Not depicted.
• Fascism.
• Holocaust setting, which is plot-relevant, though no atrocities are shown.

CWs for Kikujiro:

• A child is abducted by a man who tells him to take off his underwear. No sexual acts are depicted, nor do they even happen off-screen, as the protagonist stops the man and beats him up.
• Nudity.
• Fistfights
• Comic violence.
• Ghosts.
• Nightmare sequence.

Links to movies:

• The Fifth Seal: https://vimeo.com/907098161
• Kikujiro: https://vimeo.com/907299241