Directors steal from each other constantly — sometimes out of love, sometimes envy, sometimes a tangle of motives. The results range from Brian De Palma’s famed “Odessa Steps” sequence in “The Untouchables,” which thrillingly referenced the Sergei Eisenstein silent classic “The Battleship Potemkin,” to Gus Van Sant’s dull shot-by-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”
What then to make of Norihiro Koizumi’s “Flowers,” which recreates the look of everything from the 1930s black-and-white dramas of Yasujiro Ozu to 1960s Toho Technicolor comedies? Neither slavish imitation nor inventive recreation, the film is more about its faux authentic look and feel-good story lines than actual drama.
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