Japan

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 »

Yumi is a young orphan girl. She studies in a sewing school paid by her mother’s hard work as a bar hostess. All their plans will be disrupted when the mother’s boyfriend will rape Yumi, virgin and innocent.

The film sometimes “helps itself” with some psychoanalytic clichés to move forward or gives substance to its tale (For ex., Yumi plays cards almost as a genetic gift). But there’s more truth in the simple portrait of the young girl Yumi and in many details of the Japanese way of life, society and way of laws (an ironic comparison of gambling and prostitution)… including a scene which captures with an amazing realism the violence of greed.Read More »

Plot / Synopsis
Yoji Yamada’s torchy Japanese drama Love and Honor follows the heartbreaking plight of Shinnojo, a young man employed as a “food taster” for the imperial family. Shinnojo’s position comes to a sudden and tragic end when he consumes poisoned fish intended for the clan leader and is forever robbed of his sight. Forced to give up his job, Shinnojo thus heads home and sinks into a deep and seemingly inescapable depression. Contemplating suicide, Shinnojo is only stopped by the love of his wife, Kayo, who insists that she will also commit seppuku if he proceeds. Begrudgingly, he agrees to relinquish his self-destructive thoughts, but financial problems from his unemployment linger on. With no other recourse, Shinnojo must send Kayo off to the clan bursar to appeal for monetary assistance. Nothing, however, can prepare him for the bursar’s demand for his wife’s body in exchange for monetary help — or for his wife’s sudden complicity in this arrangement. ~ Nathan Southern, RoviRead More »

Quote:
A horrifying series of murders, committed by a teenaged killer in 1968, prompted a group of filmmakers to chart his path, capturing the things he might have seen before committing his crimes. Their result is this provocative, rarely-screened meditation on geography and society.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 »

Quote:
A taut, economical policier-cum-gang-hostage thriller.Read More »

The seventh and final film in Shinsuke Ogawa’s groundbreaking Sanrizuka Series chronicling the agrarian resistance to the construction of Chiba Prefecture’s Narita International Airport.Read More »

While extracting and polishing their blocks of stone, stonecutters used to say the stone is coming to life. This paradox provided Matsumoto with the best metaphor for what making a film is all about. In his opinion, filmmakers work images in the same way that stonecutters work stones.Read More »