Asian

A woman marries, gives birth to a stillborn child, and divorces, falls in love with a hotel-keeper, only to find herself subordinated to his drive for success, takes up with a tailor who cannot console himself with her strong personality.Read More »

A dramatized biography of Fumiko Hayashi, the noted Japanese writer. Born to improverished parents Fumiko does all she can to earn money enough to support herself. Along the way she gets invovled with various men, good and bad.Read More »

Famous detective Kosuke Kindaichi follows a dying man’s words to an enigmatic island, where he meets beautiful twin sisters and tragic events unfold.Read More »

Yusaku, whose nickname is “Tonkatsu Taisho” (General Pork Cutlet), is a popular young children’s doctor. Mayumi, a female doctor of another hospital, plans to expand her clinic with the advice of a lawyer named Oguro by destroying small houses. Oguro, however, plans to take advantage of Mayumi’s plan and build a cabaret instead.Read More »

Based on the script by the late Shoji Kaneko, director Toru Kawashima turned it into a buddy movie that has quite the cult following in Japan. The two already collaborated on the, in my opinion, excellent Ryuji a year earlier and shortly before Kaneko’s death.Read More »

A famous sound film comedy by Kajira Yamamoto, best known for being the mentor of Akira Kurosawa. This is actually considered a major classic of physical comedy in Japan and remains perhaps the most fondly remembered vehicle for the famous comedian Enoken, who was a major star during the pre-war period.

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A comedic tale told in four parts, this film follows the antics of the pickpocket Kinta as he is pursued by a low ranking deputy named Kurakichi. The two get into all manner of peccadilloes and encounter a range of peculiar characters as their game of cat and mouse moves across the countryside in the last days of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The title role is played by Enomoto Kenichi (known by his performance name Enoken), a star of screen and stage. Kinta the Pickpocket showcases his indefatigable energy and talent for physical comedy.Read More »

Two cowardly palanquin carriers know the culprit of a murder but are too scared to report it to the police. In the mean time, an innocent man is arrested as the murderer and chaos ensues.Read More »

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It’s the first film adaptation of Natsumi Soseki’s novel “I Am a Cat”, but I was a little disappointed when I saw it with high expectations, because it’s less than 90 minutes long and there’s no monologue about the cat, so it’s just me in the middle of the human drama. Before that, there are only a few scenes in which I appear.

The world situation at the time of the Russo-Japanese War has been replaced by that of World War I (the attack on Qingdao is shown in a newspaper article. However, since it was filmed before the war, the scenery has a certain feel to it. This atmosphere is something you can’t get in a postwar film.Read More »

A cowardly samurai is sent as an official executioner targeting the clan’s former sword instructor, a man whose sword and spear skills are second to none.Read More »