Japan

A plot to steal money from gangsters leads to trouble.Read More »

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Working between text, sound, and moving-image, Hayama crafts profoundly beautiful short films whose obliquely mythopoetic narratives explore what might best be termed “ecological anomie.” Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as the Lumière brothers, medieval Japanese poetry, and proto-scientific treatises by Goethe and Aristotle, Hayama’s works probe the essential loneliness experienced by a human-kind which has been estranged from the unity of nature by our modern systems of perception and knowledge production. While many experimental filmmakers operating in a romantic mode have taken nature as a subject – often seeking to spectacularize her optical presence through the creation of “transcendent” imagery – Hayama’s films are characterized by an uncommon sense of aesthetic restraint, a conscious preservation of critical distance in the face of nature’s inscrutability and our own primordial entanglement within it.Read More »

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University student Ryo works at a bar part-time to earn money. He is not enamoured with his job or life for that matter. He is introduced to a female pimp who first tests him, and once he passes the hurdle, employs him as a male escort. Ryo takes to his job like a duck to water and prides himself in satisfying his diverse clientele. Getting to know the needs and wants of his customers helps Ryo understand himself better.Read More »

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 »

Spook Warfare, tells the tale of an evil Babylonian vampire inadvertently awoken by treasure hunters, and a brave samurai that teams with the yokai to defeat the bloodthirsty demon.Read More »

The murder of an old man on sacred grounds provokes the intervention of vengeful yôkai.Read More »

An unusual J-horror film written and directed by Hiroshi Takahashi, best-known internationally as the screenwriter of The Ring. A day in a group meeting of a Bolshevik cult in a warehouse in present day Japan. Members confess their past transgressions as ways of summoning the dead and bringing about revolution, and perform prayers and group exercises to the spirits of Lenin and Stalin.Read More »

In the late 1960s, photographer Takuma Nakahira published the legendary photography magazine Provoke with Daido Moriyama. With this edgy writings and photographs, Nakahira rejected preexisting photographic expression. In 1977, an alcohol-induced coma resulted in a permanent partial memory loss. In the following years, with gradual recovery, Nakahira started photographing stray cats, homeless, and thatched roofs in the neighborhood near his home in a monomaniac manner. This essay-film style documentary is a portrait of the Nakahira’s daily life. Directed by photographer Takashi Homma.Read More »