Retro Reels

Where did the social and sexual stereotypes about Asian women played out in movies like Sayonara and The World of Suzie Wong come from, anyway? All roads lead back to Madame Butterfly.

Hanna continues to torture herself with shoddy movies featuring Asian stereotypes. Don't worry, there's a point to all of this suffering.

Ending the year with much less than a bang, Hanna watches a movie so racist and so sexist that she might have hated it even more than she hated Memoirs of a Geisha for similar reasons.

Feeling obligated to make a seasonal choice, but generally allergic to anything billed as a Christmas movie, Hanna goes with the most obnoxious possible option. Yippee-ki-yay...you know the rest.

Over the top is the name of the game when it comes to John Woo. Unbelievably, his 1992 film Hard Boiled technically started out as an effort to tone things down.

Hong Kong director John Woo was one of a long list of filmmakers to feel inspired by Jean Pierre Melville's film Le Samourai. His take on it, however, has quite a different vibe. 

Hanna looked into French director Jean Pierre Melville's take on the samurai warrior so often seen in the films of Akira Kurosawa and finds herself pleasantly surprised, not least of all by how hot the leading man happens to be. 

One Week in the West is the program's new series that'll see Hanna spend a week analyzing a film made in the Western world...partly due to realizing that after about a year and a half, she's been working through Asian film so quickly that it's probably best to mix things up a bit. 

This week, Hanna watched Akira Kurosawa's 1961 film Yojimbo, a samurai film so cool that he saw his entire story stolen wholesale. 

Kurosawa's two for two on works that redefined storytelling as we know it. His 1954 film, Seven Samurai, is rightfully considered one of the greatest movies ever made.

Several years since her first viewing back in college, Hanna revisits Akira Kurosawa's legendary 1950 film Rashomon ...was it quite like she remembered it?

In the days ahead of Halloween (and her son's first birthday), Hanna reflects on the horrors of birth, revisiting Thai horror for just a moment to watch Nang Nak , a 1999 film based on the story of Mae Nak Phra Khanong. 

Hanna shares her thoughts on the direction Chinese director Zhang Yimou ended up taking his career in the early aughts when he started making big flashy wuxia productions. Surprising no one, she's not especially impressed.

This week, Hanna watched Zhang Yimou's 1991 film, Raise the Red Lantern, based on the trials and tribulations faced by women in feudal China.

Hanna decides it's past time she gave some Fifth Generation Chinese directors their due, starting with Zhang Yimou's directorial debut, the 1988 film Red Sorghum.

Hanna's done with scary movies for now, but seeing as it's October, she can't help but check out a monster movie. THE monster movie, as it were, the 1954 classic Godzilla directed by Ishiro Honda.

Hanna closes out Ghost Month with something that's not so spooky, but perhaps a bit difficult to interpret — Apichatpong Weerasethakul's enigmatic 2010 film and winner of the Cannes Palme d'Or, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.

This Thai horror anthology is very hit and miss, but some parts still had Hanna at the edge of her seat, watching through her fingers. More than anything though, it was a trip back through memory lane, filled with cultural hallmarks of the recession era.

It's Ghost Month again! Hanna's watching Thai horror this time, starting with their very worthwhile 2004 film, Shutter. Unfortunately, there's also the matter of the 2008 American remake.

After watching a couple of movies treat the subject of geisha with sensitivity and humanity, Hanna takes in a movie about geisha that manages to do pretty much everything wrong.

For the last episode of her series on Mikio Naruse, Hanna watches the always radiant Hideko Takamine in his 1960 film, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. She also gets a view in to the rarefied world that is the upscale Japanese hostess club, the popularity of which ultimately boxed out geishas in mid-century Japan.

Continuing the Naruse series, Hanna reads up on geisha and how the profession has changed throughout the decades in order to better understand his 1956 movie Flowing.

Working her way through a few of Naruse's movies this month, Hanna watches his 1954 film Late Chrysanthemums, which was adapted from three short stories by lauded female author Fumiko Hayashi.

Hanna pivots back to Japanese cinema to cover the works of the lesser known but no less great Japanese director, Mikio Naruse, starting with his 1954 drama based on a novel by the same name, Sound of the Mountain.

Hanna watches King Hu's 1971 movie A Touch of Zen, a sprawling epic based on an old folklore tale and filled with symbolism from Chan Buddhism.