1990s

The traditional nature of this kaidan, or Japanese ghost story, is underscored by the fact that it is based on a tale by Encho Sanyutei (1839-1900) — an author and performer of the late Edo-early Meiji period. His popular story “Botan Doro” has been the subject of some 18 film adaptations, this one being the first of the “modern” period. Sanyutei’s story was itself an adaptation of a traditional Chinese folktale that has a long history of re-telling and performance, especially in the form of kabuki theatre. It entered Japanese culture in the 1600s and became one of that country’s most loved kaidan, fusing romance, sexual politics and terror into an emotionally potent drama.Read More »

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At a college in Rome, a professor, nicknamed “Dodo” is in a deep depression. His stunningly beautiful wife has just left him for another man. Dodo wants her back very badly and has erotic daydreams about her. A beautiful young student in his class asks him for a ride home and seduces the lucky man, but still he wonders about his wife and her lover. Wile visiting his father he meets his dad’s very sexy live-in nurse who takes care of much more then his broken leg. She tells Dodo of a beautiful young woman whose been having a sexual relationship with his father?Read More »

Nostalgia is Takashi Miike’s favorite film of his considerable body of work. Including biographical elements, Nostalgia centers around the home and school of a young boy, whose family mix the violent and dysfunctional with the comic and the loveable. Though containing elements of the sudden and shocking brutality that many associate with this director, Young Thugs – Nostalgia is more concerned with a child’s moment of leaving the internalized world of fantasy, and passing on eagerly to the next stage of life. A wonderful, touching, startling vision that is uniquely Miike’s.Read More »

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In a small, dilapidated village in 1990s Hungary, life has come to a virtual stand-still. The Autumn rains have started. A few of the villagers expect to receive a large cash payment that evening, and then plan to leave. Some want to abscond earlier with more than their fair share of the money. However they hear that the smooth-talking Irimias, who they thought had died, is returning. They are apprehensive that he will take all their money in one of his grandiose schemes to keep the community going.Read More »

Steven Soderbergh’s 1996 film is a free-form satire with a broad range of targets, chief among which is the form itself. Shot guerilla-style between The Underneath and Out of Sight, Schizopolis is an uninhibited, stream-of-consciousness window into Soderbergh (in goofy dual starring roles here) at play, with all commercial considerations stripped away. This is what it looks like when a gifted Hollywood filmmaker makes a student film.Read More »

Shun Nakahara directs this comic take on Sidney Lumet’s 1957 classic Twelve Angry Men. Just as in that earlier work, this film takes place in a jury room and takes place in real time. The film opens as the jury is about to acquit the defendant — a bar hostess who pushed her ex-husband path of an oncoming truck, supposedly in self-defense. Just as everyone seems to be in agreement over the woman’s innocence, one bespectacled juror (Kazuyuki Aijima) — no one is given names in this film — voices second thoughts. Slowly, like an inversion of Henry Fonda’s character in the earlier film, he sets about convincing his fellow jurors — a group of nice folks who don’t like thinking ill of people — that the defendant is in fact a cold-blooded killer. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie GuideRead More »

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Driven by lust and jealousy, two men and two women spiral into a frenzy of destructive madness. This shocking early work by Toshiki Sato, which depicts the fundamental and clear-cut themes of sex and murder with a rapid sense of speed and a momentum, tells a simple story of men and women whose jealousy and impulses spark a chain of murders and runs with a unique and strong tension.Read More »

The group of people gather at the house in Copenhagen suburb to break all the limitations and to bring out the “inner idiot” in themselves.Read More »

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Two icons of 60s cinema, Terence Stamp and Peter Fonda, go head-to-head in Steven Soderbergh’s stylish reworking of the lone avenger theme. Stamp plays Wilson, an ageing Cockney villain newly out of jail, who arrives in Los Angeles to ask some awkward questions. His beloved daughter, mistress of powerful rock promoter Terry Valentine (Fonda), has died in a car crash; but Wilson’s far from convinced it was an accident. With his gaunt, grim features and sparse white hair, Stamp’s a dead ringer for the angel of death. Or maybe, as Soderbergh hints with some intricate flashback and flash-forward cutting, the whole story is a dying man’s dream of vengeance. Echoes of Get Carter and Point Blank aren’t far to seek. Read More »