Asian

Two killers revenge a wirepuller of the underworld in Yokohama.

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An adults-only entry to Hong Kong’s new-wave film movement, House of the Lute is elegant and engaging. The classy production is accompanied at all times by sounds of a lute – a dynamic instrument adding audio punctuation marks and exclamation points throughout the course of the story. A television set features prominently in the second half and adds interest. Aside from providing the advertising spiel for the famed Darkie toothpaste brand, the TV also brings additional issues to the screen. It appears no coincidence that a forced sex scene between Shek and a less-than-willing Mrs Lui plays against a news report of Hong Kong’s rising social ills, notably rape and murder. Later, a local farmer brushes aside books and smashes away antique pottery to better view the TV – akin to how Hong Kong has bulldozed heritage in its hurtling drive for urban modernity. House of the Lute lends itself well to retrospective viewing.Read More »

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Takeru (Renji Ishibashi), a young rebel, is travelling alone in the North of Honshu. He once used to practice pole vaulting but he gave up and became a robber. Along his trip he crosses the path of a young couple doing a performance for a super market. Fascinated by both of them but probably a bit attracted by the mysterious silent girl (Kaori Momoi), he decides to follow them. He starts to realize that they have no other means of communication than their hands and gestures. One night, some young laborers from the town kidnap the girl and rape her. The next morning, Takeru and his friend (Tenmei Kanō) head to the mine in order to find the girl and avenge her.Read More »

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Experimental film in which three girls and one boy lead playful lives. Just as a game, in which the course is determined from beginning to end by certain rules, can be played time and again, their lives are also endless repetition. This eventually results in a loss of a sense of time, for past and future. The four are permanently surrounded by cameras and projectors. In this way we see how photos are repeatedly taken of one of the girls and the boy keeps staring at a film screen. Everything which cannot be repeated is the object of their hatred. One day a woman appears in their lives and wants to die. The four try to involve her in their game, but the opposite happens: the fact that the woman is different disrupts their self-made world. Having playacted a funeral for the woman, they become more and more entangled in their own game.Read More »

Intrigue and mystery surround a cold-hearted assassin who must keep one step ahead of the Hong Kong police as he tries to find out who framed him for the murder of a woman and set him up as the fall guy in a complicated drug scheme. Starring Takakura Ken as Nanjo the assassin and directed by the critically acclaimed Ishii Teruo, this is a journey into the dark underside of Asia’s most exciting city. Will Nanjo be able to find the solution and exact revenge for the terrible situation he finds himself in?Read More »

Just as many American studio-era directors found acclaim abroad that was denied them in their home country, by 1980 Akira Kurosawa’s reputation outside Japan exceeded his esteem at home. As uncompromising as ever, he found considerable difficulty securing backing for his ambitious projects. Unsure he would be able to film it, the director, an aspiring artist before he entered filmmaking, converted Kagemusha into a series of paintings, and it was partly on the basis of these that he won the financial support of longtime admirers Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. Set in the 16th century, when powerful warlords competed for control of Japan, it offers an examination of the nature of political power and the slipperiness of identity. Read More »

Eunshil, a mentally handicapped teenage girl, dies in the janitor’s closet at school during winter break while giving birth to a baby. The principal’s daughter decides to look after the baby herself and try to find out what really happened to her former classmate. However, everyone around her seems oddly disinterested, and her search uncovers secrets that she didn’t want to know–about Eunshil, her family, the whole village, and even about herself. This movie is a withering social statement about the darkest elements of rural life in South Korea.Read More »

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Kinnosuke Nakamura plays seven roles in consecutive generations of Iikukuras: (Jirozaemon, Sajiemon, Kyutaro, Shuzo, Shingo, Osamu, Susumu), from medieval warrior Jirozaemon to modern day salary-man Susumu.

He is essentially playing his own descendants, each generation bound by a glorious ancestor’s oath of vassalage for himself & his family to a castle lord.Read More »

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This anthology film consists of nine incidents in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when assassins changed the course of Japanese history. Among them are the Sakurada Gate Incident that occurred in 1860 (Assassination of Ii Naosuke) and the February 26th Incident of 1936, when a group of Japanese Army troops attempted a coup d’état. The vignettes are all played out in ultra-violent form by a large number of Japan’s major stars, including Wakayama Tomisaburo, Sugawara Bunta, Tsuruta Koji, Takakura Ken, Chiba Shinichi, and Kataoka Chiezo. Read More »