When 150 guns are lost from the Iwakuni base and two police officers are shot dead, a detective tries to find out the truth.
Review by kagetsuhisoka:
Kenji Misumi’s nihilistic cop movie has finally been subbed. This is an amazing (and in my opinion) superior companion piece to Shintaro Katsu’s The Big Boss, which I uploaded not long ago. dimax9 provided me with a copy of the movie. Subs were timed and commissioned by me (thanks TheCatacomb as always). chapaev patched the DVD.Read More »
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A Japanese soldier Tsutomu Yamazki deserts his position and travels to a small town on the Sea of Japan to start over in this melodrama from director Shinoda Masahiro. When a young maid falls for him, he talks her into sleeping with an older man for money. The woman is told by a Geisha Mayumi Ogawa that she gave up her virginity cheaply. The resort town begins to feel the influence of the modern world as the sabre-rattling that preceded World War II begins to change their lives forever. ~ Dan Pavlides, RoviRead More »
Being shelved for four years over censorship issues sounds like a death knell for any film, and yet in the case of Ning Hao’s No Man’s Land, it may actually have been a considerable boon : indeed, the four-years delay meant that the film came out after the comedy Lost In Thailand, which starred two of the leads of No Man’s Land (Xu Zheng and Huang Bo), and thus became positioned as their follow-up to what is still the all-time highest-grossing Chinese film in China. It did however lose its potential status as China’s very first modern-day set western – with Gao Qunshu’s Wind Blast having been released in the meantime – though in truth it is closer to a film noir than a western, with moody voice-over and a cynical outlook on human nature. It tells of an arrogant big city lawyer (Xu Zheng) who travels to the far west of China to plead the case of a falcon trafficker (Togbye), then tries to rush back to the city to close a book deal on that very case.Read More »
In the wake of Watergate, the scandal surrounding then Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka’s dealings with construction companies in Japan caused a similar political upheaval. Director Yamamoto chose as the subject for his film a scandal that had taken place some ten years prior to the Tanaka disclosure, to let the Japanese people know that such corruption had long been part of their politicians’ lives.Read More »
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Chow Yun Fat’s last film in the pre-Handover Hong Kong film industry before he went on to try his luck in Hollywood, Peace Hotel was directed by regular Johnnie To collaborator Wai Ka Fai, produced by John Woo, and has the feel of a swan song. Indeed Chow Yun Fat’s next Hong Kong Cantonese-speaking film would come almost 20 years later. So it is quite suitable that his character in the film is known only as “the Killer”, echoing arguably the apex of his Hong Kong career and his legendary collaboration with John Woo. The Killer, as a gorgeous black-and-white prologue tells us, once wiped out an entire gang of horse thieves responsible for the death of his wife (Wu Chien Lien). His killing spree led him to an abandoned hotel, where after an experiencing an epiphany he spared the life of the last gang member. 10 years later, the hotel is not abandoned anymore : it has become a safe haven for fugitives and outlaws, run by the Killer himself. Read More »
There is little to nothing written in English about this film, and in fact of the entire Cinemateque Ontario Ichikawa Kon tome the only mention of Goodbye, Hello was in the extensive filmography. This was one of the films Ichikawa made for Daiei that he co-wrote with his wife Wado Natto, the pair being one of world cinema’s great husband and wife collaborations. Ichikawa worked with the cinematographer for Goodbye, Hello, Kobayashi Setsuo, on some of his best looking films: Ten Dark Women, Fires on the Plain, and An Actor’s Revenge. Actress Kyo Machiko was certainly a familiar face in Ichikawa’s films, starring in Odd Obsession and The Pit. Judging by cast and crew alone, this looks like prime Ichikawa, and I personally find this period of his filmmaking (late 50s, early 60s) the most interesting.Read More »
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Puss in Boots is one of the great slapstick cartoons, a freewheeling joyride that stays in your head and sticks to your bones. It’s probably the best animated comedy ever made in Japan (although I’m often torn between this and Animal Treasure Island). The comedy will remind Westerners of their favorite Tom and Jerry or Road Runner cartoons, and the action scenes are endlessly inventive and thrilling. This movie was released in 1969 at Toei Doga, and was a tremendous rush of freedom for the animators; after three years of battling the studio over Horus, Prince of the Sun, everyone was set loose like children in a candy store.Read More »
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Directed by the Japanese king of kooky-cool, SABU, Hold Up Down has it all: bank robbers dressed in skin-tight Santa suits, the subway busker that looks like he is straight out of Woodstock, the suicidal church minister-turned-truck driver, a couple of twisted policemen – oh, and a key to a whole lotta cash.
SABU exploded on the Japanese film scene in 1986, first as an actor and later, taking a more firm role behind the camera as both director and scriptwriter with the acclaimed Dangan Runner in 1995. Hold Up Down is SABU’s second collaboration with all-male J-pop group V6 (they first starred in his previous Hard Luck Hero), which serves as a gentle reminder that, in Asia, pop stars who also act can find their CD sales actually increase (as opposed to the norm in this part of the world which seems to have the opposite effect)..Read More »
synopsis:
Kenichi Asakura is an uptight, hyper-square salesman. One day, three bank robbers
commandeer his van. They are in hot pursuit of their fellow robber who has snatched the
money. Unfortunately for the bank robbers, Asakura never drives over 40 km/h speed limit
even under the extreme situation.Read More »