Kurosawa’s ‘Ikiru’ Comes Back to Life in ‘Living’
'Living' dives into many themes that we can all understand regardless of our cultural backgrounds. We can see this through the shared similarities between 'Ikiru' and 'Living'.

Caroline Leaf’s films are renowned for their emotional content and graphic style, which evolves from the innovative hand-crafted animation techniques she invented: beach sand and painting on glass and scratching in the emulsion of film stock. The medium is always at the service of a dark and brooding storytelling touched by flashes of humour. This box set celebrating the talents of a master animator comprises all her classics: The Owl Who Married a Goose, The Street, The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa and Two Sisters, as well as Interview, made with Veronika Soul. The DVD includes a student film, an animated video done for MTV, a comprehensive biofilmography and a brand-new director’s commentary on Two Sisters.
'Living' dives into many themes that we can all understand regardless of our cultural backgrounds. We can see this through the shared similarities between 'Ikiru' and 'Living'.
This year, in light of the pandemic and the inability to gather with our loved ones, a few of our staff members reviewed their favorite holiday films with the hope of recreating some of the sentimentality that reminds us of home.
Overall, Altered Carbon: Resleeved is pretty “meh.” It’s cool and all that it takes a different approach from the TV show to make it animated rather than live action, but it doesn’t help that the animation looks like something from a video game.
What are we willing to walk through to see our dreams come to pass? Our minds might be so wholly alive with the passions we carry and the plans we make to see these things become all we wish them to be, yet life doesn’t always want to come alongside. Instead, obstacles arise, both physical and mental, which attempt to dissuade us or even prevent us from moving forward, stalling or stagnating the momentum to achieve what we desire. The age-old question remains….can we overcome? Or will we BE overcome?
Barry Jenkins' masterpiece holds up as the story of a lifetime centered on the intersection of Blackness and gay identity.