An unofficial sequel to Million Dollar Match (1961) which also starred Koji Wada as a young energetic boxer. This story deals more with betting action surrounding a boxing match, concentrating mostly on the high-powered Yakuza gambling dens.
Once again, Suzuki was reprimanded by his Nikkatsu boss, Kyusaku Hori, for refusing to deliver a simple, straightforward story. The scolding centers on Suzuki’s “extensive use of symbolism in a traditional action picture.”Read More »
Every Monday morning, a team of advisors welcome in a facility a group of people that has just died with the mission of helping each one of them to select their best memory that will last for the eternity in the first three days. On Thursday, filmmakers begin to recreate the selected memory, and in the end of the week they screen it in a movie theater and he or she moves to Heaven.Read More »
Quote:
Yasujiro Ozu’s frequent leading man Chishu Ryu is riveting as Shuhei, a widowed high school teacher who finds that the more he tries to do what is best for his son’s future, the more they are separated. Though primarily a delicately wrought story of parental love, There Was a Father offers themes of sacrifice that were deemed appropriately patriotic by Japanese censors at the time of its release during World War II, making it a uniquely political film in Ozu’s body of work.Read More »
Synopsis:
Japanese pink film in Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno series starring Asami Ogawa and directed by Masaru Konuma. Ogawa’s debut film, this was the seventh and last entry in the Office Lady Journal series, which had been launched in 1972 with Office Lady Journal: Scent Of Female Cat. In their Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films, the Weissers write, “This film is a perfect end to the series. Konuma is the master of free-form, rambling cinema. He manages to make ordinary life seem extraordinary with moments of kinkiness (i.e., the eroticism of a sex scene with Ms. [Aoi] Nakajima wearing a full kimono dress; or another segment where Asami is making love in a room full of baby chicks).”
— From wikipedia.Read More »
Synopsis:
A string of bank robberies sets off a public panic. In order to appease the residents of the city and fulfill his own ambitions, the newly appoints chief of police decides to hold an anti-bank robbery drill to demonstrate the effectiveness of the police. He secretly appoints a naïve traffic cop to disguise as a robber, overlooking the fact that the inflexible, by-the-book officer will go all out in accomplishing any assigned mission-even when it’s robbery.Read More »
IMDB says:
An elegiac ode to a loner who finds it difficult to fit in and the inevitable eruption of his frustration, Isolation of 1/880000 tells the story of Takemitsu, a disabled young man caught in the “examination hell” of trying to get into one of Japan’s top universities. Director Sogo Ishii (now renamed as Gakuryu Ishii) was the original 8mm punk, whose works expressed unhinged energy and made speed, intensity and rebellion their stylistic and thematic center, carrying over into his later 16mm and 35mm films such as Crazy Thunder Road and Crazy Family. In contrast, Isolation prefigures the more ethereal aesthetic of his big budget 1990s films.Read More »
Set in Edo period. Koheiji, an actor, and Takuro, a musician, and his wife, Ochika, grew up together and are traveling performers. Koheiji’s obsession for his friend’s wife grows until he finally demands that Takuro give up Ochika so that Koheiji might have her. Incensed, Takuro beats up Koheiji, believing that he murdered him. Then Koheiji begins to haunt Takuro and Ochika. The film is inspired by a novel based on an Edo-period play that features the ghost of an actor. This is the last film made by NAKAGAWA Nobuo, master of such films as The Ghost Story of Yotsuya and Hell.Read More »
A teenager is dismissed from school for misconduct. His mother moves him to a high-school out in the sticks, so as to cool him down. However, it is not long before he starts rebelling against the established order and the local beauty catches his eye…Read More »
Peter High wrote:
Fushimizu Osamu’s immensely successful China Nights works the rich metaphorical possibilities afforded by the commonplace image of China as a disreputable “woman” in need of redemption. As early as 1911, popular historian Yamaji Aizan had characterized the nation as “not a powerless country like a single woman, but an infelicitous one like a prostitute.” Although it’s discretely muted, the film’s first scene introduces Ri Koran’s character as something perilously close to a “fallen woman”.Read More »