NEW YORK — Self-described “cinema aficionado” Kevin Clifford has spent the past several months becoming fluent in Japanese in order to “watch” Kurosawa movies while scrolling through his phone, impressed sources confirmed.
“When you’re an active intellectual like myself, multitasking is key. So now that I speak Japanese, I can absorb a Kurosawa movie while sending emails, Facebook stalking my crush, or posting hot takes on Twitter,” noted Clifford. “It’s been pretty great so far… although I think there’s something off with the dialect the actors are using. And the dialogue seems to be really sparse, and keeps referring to events I can’t quite pick up on. Also, why are there these extended periods of zero dialogue? Not really sure why critics hold this guy in such high regard. I mean, he’s clearly no Todd Phillips.”
Clifford’s friend Rich Brooks joined for the first movie since Clifford became fluent.
“He won’t shut the fuck up about how he has ‘an ear for languages,’ so I guess that’s why he invited me over to watch ‘Ran’ — to show off that he kind of knows Japanese now,” Brooks remarked while smoking his fourth cigarette in 20 minutes. “He kept asking me to explain scenes, so I told him to just put the phone down and watch the movie, since visuals are a huge component of Kurosawa’s work, to which he reminded me that he took a film course at Oberlin and I only went to state school. When I mentioned that I’d seen this one several times and he failed his class, he shushed me because he was writing something about the scene on Reddit.”
Clifford’s wildly incorrect takes did not go unnoticed by his fellow Redditors.
“God, get a load of this fucking weeb,” said Redditor Angela Scott. “When this jackass isn’t offering overwrought opinions that have already been said dozens of times, he’s completely missing the point. And if you try to point out how wrong he is, he claims that he speaks fluent Japanese so he ‘gets’ Kurosawa more than we ever could. Then, he tried to correct me when I pointed out Kurosawa didn’t direct ‘Tokyo Story.’”
Sources say Clifford is now learning Korean so he can correct Bong Joon Ho’s interpretation of “Snowpiercer.”