Category: Movies at the Riv
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This story of folk songs and fateful queer romance is both a tearjerker and a clumsily structured narrative. 2025 has been a year full of cinema that has touched on music as a force of community and identity. In Sinners (2025), blues became a symbol of shared pain during the Jim Crow era that connected…
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One of the defining films of the 20th century, Rashomon (1950) questions if truth is an immovable object, and what happens when different versions of the truth collide. A man walks through the woods, hoping to collect some wood. After combing his way through trees, he stumbles upon a horrific scene. First, a white hat.…
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In this genre-shifting thriller, a manhunt for a dangerous extortionist leads the audience through the most divided parts of Japan in Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 picture. There’s a house up on a hill. Its minimalist, with a panoramic view of the city that lies below. At the bottom of the hill lies a studio apartment that…
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One man’s quest for a missing gun turns into an introspective journey on the plight of postwar Japanese veterans in this venerable Kurosawa picture. On his way home after a session at the gun range, Detective Murakami finds himself the victim of a pickpocket. But the thief doesn’t steal a couple of coins, but a…
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