Japan

letterboxd:
During World War II, the Japanese military established a secret underground laboratory in Tokyo. Three Olympic-level athletes were selected to undergo a process that would turn them into Jinra-go, superhuman armored soldiers. By March 1945, one of the soldiers had been completely transformed into the half man/half machine ultimate soldier called Mikadroid. But American B-29s firebomb the city and, while the two super soldiers manage to escape, Mikadroid and the lab are apparently destroyed. 45 years pass, Tokyo is rebuilt, and old secrets are forgotten. The site is now home to a complex that includes the Discoclub Layla. The disco’s patrons dance late into the night, unaware that a faulty basement generator has reactivated Mikadroid and the cyborg now prowls the basement levels, killing anyone in its path.Read More »

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The country makes an unusual setting for Naruse, known for his city films, and the lyrical, open-air feeling of this color, ’Scope film almost hides the defeat that permeates the story of a woman trying to be independent of her traditional farming family.Read More »

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One spring Hiromi, who is the mother of an 11-year-old girl Tomo, left home for the umpteenth time. Tomo is accustomed to such a mother and as always went to Makio’s place. He is a brother of Hiromi and has lived with Rinko, a pretty girlfriend. Actually, Rinko is a transwoman. She works as a caregiver in a nursing home where Makio’s mother Sayuri who suffers from dementia is living. Rinko makes a delicious meal and sometimes cuddles Tomo. She is a little confused, but Tomo, Rinko and Makio start to live a life together. One day Rinko teaches Tomo to knit to control her temper. Rinko was also taught by her mother at the age of puberty when she struggled with her sexuality. A daughter neglected by her mother. A gentle uncle and his transgender lover. An angsty boy who recognizes a sense of himself as a gay – A warm “knitting” reorganizes unconventional family.Read More »

The third film in the female revenge Scorpion movies, Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable, finds its heroine, Nami Matshushima (Meiko Kaji) hiding out in the city, and branded public enemy #1. A dogged police detective (Mikio Narita) corners her on a subway but loses an arm as a result, and Nami finds refuge from the dragnet with Yuki (Yayoi Watanabe), a down-and-out prostitute living in an incestuous relationship with her brain-damaged brother. The pair of women soon run afoul of a local gang of villains led by a sadistic, gender-bent female crime lord named Katsu (Reisen Ri), who inflicts forced abortions on the girls working for her, and tortures Nami before confining her in her own private dungeon.Read More »

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Writer/Director Kawasaki Minoru shot to cult fame with the infamous “Calamari Wrestler” about a wrestling squid, and he’s back in anthropomorphic territory with “Executive Koala”.

Keiichi Tamura is a hardworking executive in a pickle company, who is making a big merger at work and struggling with memory loss and the mysterious disappearance of his wife three years prior. He’s also a koala, which doesn’t seem to bother people too much, but then the president of the company is a large white rabbit. Tamura enters the sights of the police when his current girlfriend is found stabbed to death and his murky past seem to imply that he is not the well-mannered Koala he appear to be.Read More »

Kanegon, a 28 year old, moves into his abandoned school after returning to his hometown from Tokyo. He practices his table tennis skills everyday to fulfil his dream of joining the Bundesliga, a prominent table tennis league. His old classmates find out of his return and as they hang out together at school, they find where Kanegon is “now”.Read More »

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Director Mikio Naruse has admitted to going through a dark period as a younger man and his 1958 film Anzukko (the first he is credited with writing after 1950’s White Beast) seems, in part, his way of dealing with the tortures of his past.Read More »

imdb:
Dear Kaita Ablaze brings together a young woman Azami obsessed with Murayama’s painting, a young man Saku, who can hear unusual frequencies and claims to be Murayama or his spiritual imprint and a quartet of young performers with psychic abilities. They bond over Murayama’s work which they recreate in performative dance while driving to a mysterious cave called Agartha.Read More »

A detective is charged with investigating a bank corruption scandal.Read More »