1981-1990

Young woman Yoshiko (Reiko Nakamura) gets a call from a man, Fuji (Johnny Okura) claiming to be from her husband’s company. He tells her that he will come to pick her up on behalf of her husband, Hiroyuki (Masami Horiuchi) who is the scion of a hotel magnate. The kidnapper is Hiroyuki’s father’s secret love-child. He takes her to a hotel, and proceeds to rape her. He calls her husband but doesn’t request a ransom. He’s just bent on humiliating her to submission to be his sex slave, but she begins to fall in love with him even as Hiroyuki is finally deciding to pay the ransom to free her.Read More »

About Soviet and Japanese volley-ball players who are both rivals and friends. The events cover the period from the 1976 Montreal Olympics to the eve of XXII Olympics in Moscow.Read More »

Based on a novel by Tomiko Miyao (Kai, Kura, Midwinter Camellia). A woman’s love is tested as she faces betrayal.Read More »

Celebrated director Chu Yuan helms “Descendant Of The Sun”, a Superman meets Hercules a la old style martial art film. Derek Yee is a magic solar baby sent Earthbound by a benevolent god, raised by an old carpenter, has martial art superpowers and “green kryptonite” loses them during solar eclipses. That’s when the evil baby counterpart shows up. Demon-paced martial arts action by Jackie Chan’s kung-fu classmates Yuan Pin and Yuen Hua compliments Toho Studio style special optical effects.Read More »

Quote:
The movie depicts some episodes of the life of a noble in the Rome of the early XIX century. Loosely based on folklore accounts about the real Onofrio del Grillo (who actually lived in the XVIII century), this character plays a number of pranks, one even involving Pope Pius VII. The movie won two David di Donatello, four Nastri d’Argento in 1982 and a Silver Bear as Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival, still in 1982.Read More »

Two curious extraterrestrials land with their dustbin at a panel-house estate one day. Their task is to study the human race by studying Dr. Jánský, an average worker of the Institute for Relations with the Extraterrestrial Civilizations, whom their presence drives mad. Who would like to be selected as a perfect sample of mediocrity and insignificance that, moreover, cannot lie? The playful comedy by Oldřich Lipský is entirely based on the central couple, Mr. A and Mr. B, performed by the comedian duo Lasica – Satinský, topped up by the drawings by Vladimír Jiránek.Read More »

A scientist invents a potion that allows vampires to be able to live under the rays of the sun. When the word gets out to the vampires of the world, they fly to Cuba to gain control of the potion. It becomes a battle between the American and the East European vampires. A trumpet player is the scientist’s nephew and holds the formula for the elixir.Read More »

letterboxd wrote:
Toyoichi Otomo suffers from psychological and spiritual troubles after a horrific industrial accident. He lives with his elderly mother and wife near Mt. Aso in rural Kyushu. He seeks solace in a small religious group run by Buddhist nun Chishu-bo who claims to be the 68th descendant of famed 11th century poet Izumi Shikibu. The members of her sect regard her as a living saint. Yet instead of balming his soul, she riles his libido by playing a sexual cat-and-mouse game with the fragile Toyoichi. When she does bed him, it leads to a miracle healing – followed by a terrible calamity.Read More »

From Charles Tesson, Cahiers du cinema 333 (March 1982):
Raul Ruiz filmed the gardens of the Château de Versailles. The first one, French, focuses on the King’s Square (a space where everything is arranged in order to be seen). The other one, English, is the exact opposite, because from any point within it, one falls out of view. Within these two constructions, the labyrinth and the concentric circles, Ruiz conceives a ‘photo-roman’ plot: a husband and his mistress rendez-vous in the English garden (one understands why) and, through a series of accidents and afraid of being seen, he relocates to the other garden. There he runs into his wife who is with her own lover, into the ex-husband of his wife who is with his new mistress, and into the new lover of his ex-wife….Read More »