To Sleep So as to Dream [Blu-ray]

Inventive director Kaizo Hayashi has skillfully re-created the ambience of silent films of the 1910s and 1920s in this endearing story. All dialogue is not spoken, but captioned in subtitles. An actress called "The Princess" has been kidnapped and it is up to the heroic detective and his trusty, comic assistant to rescue this damsel in distress. Off they go, tracking down leads and sniffing out clues. The city never sleeps and somewhere out there is an older woman watching a silent-era film in which she starred -- no matter that the last reel seems to have been swallowed by time. The plot continues to thicken in this eye-catching and evocative film.