Japan

Set in Hokkaido, Japan’s outback, an eight-year-old boy discovers a fawn whose mother has been hit by a car. Hiding it in an abandoned railway station, he attempts to raise it by himself.Read More »

Eiji Kawano (Kunie Tanaka) has recently broken from the Japanese company he used to work for. As an immigrant to Tasmania, he has been won over by the island’s immense natural beauty, and he is conscience-bound to oppose his former employer’s ecologically unsound practices. He is also estranged from his grown son, who still resides in Japan. When his son comes to Tasmania for a visit, he must face the challenge of renewing their relationship.Read More »

Very entertaining Kihachi Okamoto feature, and while it is a WWII film, it is also a tribute to John Ford’s Westerns, set in Manchuria. In addition to the regulars in the series, a fine performance by the always lovely Kumi Mizuno.

One of Okamoto’s trademarks is his recessive staging, i.e. the big foreground wide-angle look, the kind of wide-screen composition which is quite common in spaghetti westerns, particularly those of Sergio Leone’s (partly due to the technical problems of the Techniscope format, widely used in Italy in that period). We could notice this signature in Okamoto’s late 50s films already, that is, a few years earlier than Leone and other western directors.Read More »

Another sprawling Nakahira drama detailing the love life of several members of a middle class family.Read More »

imdb wrote:
Dumped by a bored pet owner, a mixed-breed mutt ends up with three time loser Yasuyuki, who’s loveless, homeless and jobless. Yasuyuki finds solace in the dog, whom he calls Tamura, and uses it to mend fences with his ex, who’s distracted by her mother’s debilitating illness. A trip to a hospital reveals Tamura’s ability to comfort dying patients, leading to dog and master attending the real-life Japanese Therapy Dogs training school.Read More »

Mankind is dying. Only one man can do anything about it, Space Captain Harlock, but the Gaia Coalition will stop at nothing to end him.Read More »

Kurosawa’s lost masterpiece has finally come to light. Filmed in 1970 and aired on Japanese television “Song Of The Horse” is his visual poem for the horse, the creature that he loved the most. Told through narration by an old man speaking with his grandson while the visual mastery of one of the greatest filmmakers of all time expands before one’s eyes. Kurosawa ordinarily avoided television work and this is the only time that he had any involvement with the small screen. A rare and beautiful ode to the most gallant member of the animal kingdom!Read More »

Quote:
Masaki Kobayashi’s six-part magnum opus, The Human Condition, based on Junpei Gomikawa’s postwar novel, bears the imprint of Kobayashi’s tutelage under legendary filmmaker Keisuke Kinoshita at Shochiku’s Ofuna studio, a critical, introspective, and deeply personal account of wartime Japan framed from the perspective of an idealistic everyman (and Kobayashi’s alterego), Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai). Opening to the ironic image of lovers Kaji and Michiko (Michiyo Aratama) meeting under an archway auspiciously called the Southern Gate of Peace in Manchuria as Imperial troops march in the street, Kobayashi presents an incisive image of 1930s Japanese society that is morally consumed—and ravaged—by increasingly extremist values of militarism, occupation, and nationalism.Read More »

An early TV film by Kurosawa, one of two for the Dramada (1990-1993) series. Stars Kurosawa regulars Ôsugi Ren and Suwa Tarô. Read More »