Asian

Sadao Nakajima had made his name with Toei’s particular brand of violent action movie, but by the early seventies, the classic yakuza flick was going out of fashion. Datsugoku Hiroshima Satsujinshu (脱獄広島殺人囚, AKA The Rapacious Jailbreaker) follows in the wake of seminal genre buster, Battles Without Honour and Humanity, but also honours the classic Toei ganger movie past in its exploitation leaning, cynically humorous tale of a serial escapee and his ever more convoluted schemes to avoid the bumbling police force’s noose.Read More »

Film 1: Fainda no Onna (Woman in the Viewfinder)
Sakura Mizutani, Kenji Mizuhashi, Yoko Kashiwagura

Photographer Suga (Kenji Mizuhashi) aiming to win the photo contest and Lulu (Sakura Mizutani), a girl who works as a model. Two people who are drawn to each other while maintaining the relationship between the photographer and the model. One day, a mysterious woman, Sayoko (Yoko Kashiwagura), appears in the viewfinder of Suga. Eventually, Suga and Lulu win the long-awaited victory.
[24 minutes 49 seconds]Read More »

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Ten years after World War II, five people set out dig up a stash of morphine buried under a butcher shop in this black comedy by Shohei Imamura.Read More »

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Nagisa Oshima’s first feature film, A STREET OF LOVE AND HOPE paints a biting portrait of poverty and class difference through the life of a young boy who sells pigeons on the street. The radical and unflinching politics that would become Oshima’s hallmark are here on display in his earliest work.Read More »

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Kanjaki, a middle-aged man, goes to a quiet countryside village. He puts his helmet on a shrunken old woman whom he meets by chance in a shop. As soon as he presses the buttons on the helmet one by one, she suddenly remembers forgotten happy moments and is rejuvenated. This is just the beginning. Kanjaki goes on to make the village people recall their happy pasts, but his face is lined with worry and a sadness that deepens. What is the secret of this helmet? And what is he trying to do with it? Director Sabu’s Happiness suggests happiness and suffering are intertwined through the unusual scenario of a helmet reminding people of the happiest moments of their lives. Sabu convincingly portrays the notion that memory is the source of both happiness and suffering, and how memory affects our lives.Read More »

Aspiring fashion model Midori (Atsumi Mari) finds herself caught between a dubious lover (Kawazu Yûsuke) and the yakuza. The sixth and final film in Daiei’s “Mollusk” series. Masumura co-authored the script with Ishimatsu Yoshihiro. The title — Shibire kurage — translates literally as Numbing Jellyfish.Read More »

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Outside of a small village in Japan, a mysterious pond is inhabited by mythic creatures. Their story is of revenge, tragedy, and the power of real love. A classical tale which translates wonderfully to film.Read More »

In 1966, Mikio Naruse made two films that featured elements of the suspense/thriller genre. According to IMDb, The Stranger Within a Woman came first in January. Then in April, this film was released

Here’s Michael Kerpan’s review of the film:
In Naruse’s next to last film, he returned to cinemascope format, but stayed with black and white film. This is once again, in terms of plot, a bit of a shocker. Soon after we meet Kuniko (a young widow, played by Hideko Takamine) and her much-beloved young only son, the boy is run over by Kinuko (played by Yoko Tsukasa the rich spoiled wife of an automobile executive). Kinuko, it turns out, was distracted at the time of the accident because her companion in the car, a hunkish younger man who is her lover, had just told her of his plan to soon begin a far-away job. Kinuko tells her husband of the accident (but not the precipitating cause), and he orders the corporate chauffeur (Yutaka Sada, who was also the unfortunate chauffeur in “High and Low”). Luckily for him, he gets off with a small fine and a suspended sentence.Read More »

Two Kyushu based yakuza groups are desperate for domination of the area. When more powerful yakuza groups get involved in their power struggle, a group of childhood friends, belonging to different yakuza families, are caught in the middle. Lies, deceit, and backstabbing are in play resulting in a bloodbath and a quest for revenge…

Cast: MATSUKATA Hiroki, NEZU Jinpachi, UZAKI Ryudo, MATSUZAKI Shigeru, NARITA MikioRead More »