Fumio Watanabe

Letterboxd-Review:
A superb proto-jitsuroku type yakuza film by Junya Sato. Fumio Watanabe (in probably his best role) is a wonderfully cast against type as a crime boss who actually cares for his men and is the first one to barge into fight when rivals come knocking on the door. Powerful political figure Eijiro Yanagi becomes his consultant, after which short tempered rival boss Ryohei Uchida starts feeling the fire under his arse. Things get even more heated after Watanabe takes a Ginza gambling joint from the Chicago mafia with the assistance of machine gun happy lone wolf Noboru Ando. Tetsuro Tamba, Hideo Murota and Rinichi Yamamoto are a detective squad in a desperate battle against red tape while trying to bring the gangs down. The story is fictional, but the film feels like a jitsuroku movie. Sato draws an entire underworld map with cops, gangsters and political players all placed on the same chess table. The film is talkative, but never boring, feels extremely matter of fact, and comes with a fabulous musical score by Masaru Sato.Read More »

Synopsis (from Letterboxed):
Aiba is a gang boss who has just got out of jail, and finds everything has changed. His old gang has broken up, and only a few people still respect him. So he becomes a consultant to another gang who are about to be clobbered by a much larger gang moving in from out of town. Aiba proves a crafty tactician, and does very well at playing gangs off against each other in order to save the smaller gang. His advice is not always taken by those he tries to help, but he is generally proved right.Read More »

Summary:
In a Japanese women’s prison, the female prisoner Matsu, nicknamed Scorpion, is treated with extraordinary cruelty and sadism by the warden Goba. While being transferred, she is able to affect an escape along with six other women. Leading them across the wastelands, all the while pursued by Goba, they take their revenge on the men who seek to abuse them.Read More »

Synopsis:
The Joy of Torture is an anthology that is made up of three separate stories that all intersect: The first segment is about Shinza who was hurt while working when a log hit him on the head, and now sister Mitsu is forced to give herself to her brother’s boss Mr. Mino in order to help pay for Shinza’s doctor bills. The second segment is about the arrival of mother Reiho and her servant Rintoku at the Jukuin monastery. The monastery is located near a temple inhabited by priests and one day when one of them named Shunkei runs by Reiho he arouses something inside of her. The final segment is about a tattoo artist named Horicho who has just given Kimicho his greatest tattoo to date. While showing his work off to a group of people, a man named Lord Nambera walks by mocking the tattoo and its lack of realism. (imdb)Read More »

Quote:
Nagisa Oshima’s first feature film, A STREET OF LOVE AND HOPE paints a biting portrait of poverty and class difference through the life of a young boy who sells pigeons on the street. The radical and unflinching politics that would become Oshima’s hallmark are here on display in his earliest work.Read More »

Quote:

A clinically presented series of stark white, unembellished placards illustrates the sobering statistical data for the overwhelming public sentiment against the abolition of the death penalty as an off-screen narrator (Nagisa Oshima) provides a snide, but impassioned rebuttal to popular opinion by presenting a objective documentary of the austere and impersonal milieu associated with the methodical process of carrying out a state execution through the specific example of the appointed hanging of a convicted rapist and murderer known only as ‘R’ (Do-yun Yu): an empty, minimalist sitting room that provides an illusive, parting glimpse of a semblance of home for the condemned prisoner as he makes his way into the execution room, an assembly of unnamed official guests waiting in a segregated viewing room to witness the macabre ceremony, a procedural rehearsal of the chamber’s fail-safe sequence as the prisoner is blindfold and fitted with a noose, the actuation of trap door, the median measured time of 18 minutes before the heart completely stops and a staff physician (Rokko Toura) is able to record the official time of death. Read More »