Dual timelines explore a Japanese widow’s memories spanning post-war Nagasaki in 1950s and England during 1980s Cold War era, unraveling secrets that intertwine her past and present experiences across borders.

Tôi.yama-nami.no.hikari.2025.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+5.1.H.264-playWEB.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 3 min
Size: 	5.36 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1792x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	5:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	5 575 kb/s
BPP: 	0.120
Audio
#1:  	Japanese 5.1ch E-AC-3 @ 640 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/707053F441D4D4B/Toi.yama-nami.no.hikari.2025.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+5.1.H.264-playWEB.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Kei Ishikawa – Tôi yama-nami no hikari AKA A Pale View of Hills (2025) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Acclaimed screenwriter and filmmaker Haruhiko Arai dusts off his director’s hat following his 1997 Body and Soul to turn a passion project of 30 years into a reality. An adaption of Yuichi Takai’s prize-winning 1983 novel of the same name, This Country’s Sky is a nuanced drama set in Suginami, Tokyo towards the destitute final years of WWII. Satoko (Fumi Nikaido) is a 19 year old girl falling passionately in love with her older married neighbor (Hiroki Hasegawa), who has been spared combat due to his failing the military physical examination. Even away from the battlefield, as they grow closer their feelings are caught up in the violence of war.

When.I.Was.Most.Beautiful.2015.720p.BluRay.x264-WiKi.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2h 10mn
Size: 	7.95 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1280x690 
Aspect ratio:  	1.85:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	8 098 Kbps
BPP: 	0.382
Audio
#1:  	Japanese 2.0ch AC-3 @ 640 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/0FDF819E7330C05/When.I.Was.Most.Beautiful.2015.720p.BluRay.x264-WiKi.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/804CD3C0AA1FBD9/JPTVclub-_Kono_kuni_no_sora.srt
https://nitro.download/view/22088AF577C8CCE/When_I_was_most_beautiful.srt

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English, Chinese, Japanese

The post Haruhiko Arai – Kono kuni no sora AKA When I Was Most Beautiful (2015) (HD) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Sakuko is an 18 year old student, who travels with her aunt to Mikie from Tokyo to a seaside town where they plan to housesit for the summer. Mikie is working on an academic project and Sakuko is preparing for her university entrance exams.

But the summer days move slowly and Sakuko soon makes a friend, Takashi, a simple young lad who was sent to the town as a refugee from Fukushima and the Great East Japan Earthquake. Takashi has dropped out of school and works at love-motel managed by Ukichi, a old friend of Mikie.

Au Revoir l’ été literally translates as goodbye summer and many of us can remember a summer holiday where we felt keenly aware of being caught between adult and adolescent worlds. Sakuko finds herself in just such a place; aware she is no longer a child, confident and independent in herself as a teenager, yet feeling ill-equipped to handle the decisions of adult life.

Director Koji Fukada is well known for making thoughtful independent films and Au Revoir l’ été continues in the tradition of Human Comedy In Tokyo (2008) and hospitalité (2010). Au Revoir l’ été is a fluid study in perspective and perception. An amusing, carefully worded script builds steadily over the course of the first 80 minutes to an extraordinary dinner scene between Mikie, Ukichi, Sakuko, Mikie’s friend, a visiting academic and Ukichi’s somewhat wayward daughter.

Here deceptions and hypocrisies are revealed and we start to see one of Au Revoir l’ été’s masterstrokes, the way the adults in the film seldom manage to say what they really mean, often hiding behind a veneer of falseness and how the younger cast members, especially Sakuko and Takashi struggle to come to grips with this.

Despite the winsomeness of the storytelling (which in many ways parallels Éric Rohmer’s Pauline At The Beach), the film feels longer than its already generous 125 minutes. While some of the slower scenes feel well paced, there are others that drag and add little to our understanding of either the characters or the place where they find themselves.

Still, there is much to admire in Au Revoir l’ été – from the rich yet subtle costuming to the natural dialogue and excellent performances from pretty much all the cast (especially Fumi Nikaidô, Mayu Tsuruta and Kiki Sugino). This is a memorable, charming and beautiful film.

2.02GB | 2h 05m | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/3006410DBB60BD2/Koji_Fukada_-_(2013)_Goodbye_Summer.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Kôji Fukada – Hotori no Sakuko AKA Au revoir l’été (2013) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
Haruna is a high school student whose, school-mates, school and life is topsy turvy and often tragic. One of her classmates is the homosexual Ichiro. The boy is often bullied, derided and beaten. He has the scars to show for it. Haruna stands by Ichiro‘s side and comes to know Ichiro‘s secret. Then they discover a corpse by a river beside the tall grass.

Review:
The ‘90s were a strange time to be a teenager, but then what age isn’t? Isao Yukisada, surprisingly making his first manga adaptation, brings Kyoko Okazaki’s cult hit River’s Edge (????·???) to the big screen, recreating those days of nihilistic despair in which ordinary teens spiralled out of control in the wake the bubble bursting, watching all their possibilities disappear in a cloud of smoke. Set in 1994, River’s Edge is a post-bubble story but it also takes place in the period immediately before everything started to go wrong. In 1995 there was a devastating earthquake followed by terror in Tokyo and somehow it all seemed so dark – something the kids at the centre of River’s Edge already seem to see as they watch time flow, knowing all that awaits them is yet more emptiness.

Haruna (Fumi Nikaido), a spirited tomboy and latchkey kid living with her busy single-mother, is in a lazy relationship with violent popular boy Kannonzaki (Shuhei Uesugi) though in truth she doesn’t seem to like him very much. One of her major problems with Kannonzaki is that he keeps picking on one particular guy, Yamada (Ryo Yoshizawa), who is rumoured to be gay. Warned by one of Kannonzaki’s minions, Haruna races off to an abandoned storeroom where she finds Yamada trussed up and naked hidden inside a locker. The pair become friends and he offers to show her his “special treasure” which turns out to be a dead body hidden among the reeds near the edge of the river. Yamada, with another friend, Kozue (Sumire) – a model with an eating disorder, likes to come to the river to gaze at the body in an effort to feel alive.

The ‘90s were full of tales of cruel, emotionless youth torturing itself without mercy and there is something of the era’s insensitivity in the detachment of the central trio. Unable to feel alive, the teens of River’s Edge chase sensation and oblivion through indiscriminate sex, drugs, violence, and self harm but rarely find the kind of fulfilment they so desperately crave. Kannonzaki, the rowdy delinquent, blames his broken home for his lack of connection, making a fierce resentment of a perceived rejection his excuse for his dangerously violent proclivities which run not only to venting his rage on the figure of the gay outsider Yamada but also to drug fuelled rough sex with one of Haruna’s classmates, Rumi (Shiori Doi), who is also chasing agency through sexuality but eventually finds herself cornered in the most terrible of ways.

Yamada is indeed gay, but can hardly say so in the environment in which he lives and so has turned in on himself with a near sociopathic detachment. Having given up on the idea of romantic fulfilment he has resigned himself to loving the object of his affection from afar, happy enough that he exists in the world even if he can never declare himself let alone dare to hope his feelings may be returned. Yamada works as a rent boy in the evenings, going to hotels with middle-aged men for money, but has a fake girlfriend at school, Kanna (Aoi Morikawa), whom he uses as a beard. Kanna, seemingly sweet and oblivious, soon becomes jealous of her boyfriend’s friendship with Haruna and is driven into her own kind of despair by Yamada’s continued coldness.

There’s an especial irony in Yamada’s use of Kanna which is almost certainly not lost on him. These kids, like many before them, abhor the fakery of the adult world but are also unable to embrace their own painful truths. Yamada covers up his sexuality through misleading Kanna, while Kannonzaki is resentful towards his parents who put on a front of marital harmony even after his father ran off with his mistress only to come back a week later with his tail between his legs, and Kozue laments the superficiality of her industry in which everyone falls over themselves to declare something ugly beautiful in order to make themselves feel better. There are no responsible adults here, having ruined the future for their kids they no longer have any kind of moral authority that can offer guidance or support to a jaded generation.

Shooting in the classic 4:3 of a ‘90s TV, Yukisada recreates the narrowness of an era in which the kids struggle to see past themselves, blinkered by their own solipsistic perspective and trapped by the shallowness of their perceptions. Permanently dark, gloomy, and lonely their world is one nihilistic despair in which they feel themselves already dead, living in the half-dug grave of a moribund city giving off its last few puffs of toxic industrial smoke before the whole thing collapses in on itself. In one sense nothing changes, there are no answers or cures for adolescent malaise, but something does eventually seem to shift in the genuine connection formed between two detached outsiders standing on the brink, watching the decay of their era flow past them with melancholy resignation.

— Hayley Scanlon (Windows on Worlds).

2.07GB | 1 h 58 min | 790×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/6049200B9E1F066/Rivers.Edge.2018.576p.BluRay.x264-PTP.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English (muxed)

The post Isao Yukisada – Ribâzu ejji AKA River’s Edge (2018) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Set after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, all 14-year-old Yuichi Sumida (Shota Sometani) wants to become is a regular boy and live a decent life. His environment though repeatedly drags him into the mud. He runs his parent’s rental boat business, which is located next to a nondescript lake. His mother frequently comes home with different men and soon she leaves him entirely. His father only comes around looking for money. Whenever Yuichi’s father is drunk he tells Yuichi “I wish you were dead.”

Keiko Chazawa (Fumi Nikaido) is a classmate of Yuichi Sumida. She harbors a severe crush on Yuichi. Keiko’s home life isn’t much better than Yuichi’s. Her mother builds a gallows with a noose in place for Keiko to take her own life. Her mother believes her life would be better off without Keiko.

Under these circumstances, Keiko pays a visit to Yuichi’s home. A group of people are lingering nearyby who live in make shift tents on the property. Keiko tries to befriend Yuichi, but she is berated and even physically assaulted. She doesn’t get deterred though and sticks around.

One day, the yakuza come by Yuichi’s home. They look for Yuichi’s father who is nowhere to be found. The men then tell Yuichi that he has to come up with 6 million Yen by tomorrow to pay off his father’s debt. Yuichi already heartbroken by his mother’s abandonment and abuse from his father nears a tipping point. A string of incidents then occurs that brings Yuichi’s world to a screeching halt. Is there light at the end of the tunnel for Yuichi?

Himizu.2011.576p.BluRay.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	2h 10mn
Size:	3.40 GiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	1024x548
Aspect ratio:	1.85:1
Frame rate:	23.976 fps
Bit rate:	3 289 Kbps
Audio
Japanese 5.1ch AC-3 @ 448 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/060B01BE63302AB/Himizu.2011.576p.BluRay.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Shion Sono – Himizu (2011) first appeared on Cinema of the World.