Yuichi Koga is an upper-class business executive, running his own adult video company, and living a successful life with his wife and daughter. Outwardly, his family seems really happy, but in reality Yuichi enjoys sex with everyone but his wife Chikako. One day, he gets a phone call from a woman named Sanae, an old elementary school classmate of his.Read More »
Mid 50s: the trials and tribulations of Shinsuke Ibuki, freshly arrived in Tokyo from Kyushu.Read More »
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Kabukicho, Shinjuku. A woman chased by a yakuza appears in front of Katsuhiko Goda, the master of the snack “Kashkash`. The woman’s name is Yang Meyrin, a Taiwanese. At that time, the chief of the Sakuradokai group Toida was shot dead. A VHS-C video adapter was left at the murder site, but there was no tape inside. On the other hand, “Kashkash` The store’s closing party, which lasted for 20 years, was held, and Katsuhiko’s former all-out companions, Kiritsuko, Akikawa, and Miyake, gathered there. Meyrin can be seen inside, and it turns out that she is a Vietnamese refugee and a smuggler with a forged passport. Meyrin, who left the store to get her passport for escape, was chased by the Toida group, but Katsuhiko rescued her. Read More »
14-year-old Shizuko (Mami Nakamura) dreams of drawing manga in Tokyo to escape her life of poverty and loneliness. Shizuko’s father has left the family, and her mother (Kaori Momoi) — who is desperate for money — takes in an icy, brutal lover (Michio Akiyama) who insists on being called “Father.” He is obsessed with having a “high-class” family and forbids Shizuko to draw her “low-class” manga, which he calls “trash.” When Father discovers that Shizuko has been impregnated by a schoolmate, he inflicts a brutal punishment. Her mother, unable to support the family without him, responds with drunken apathy. In self-defense, Shizuko’s creates manga characters who are gentle and caring.Read More »
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A car with two passengers plunges into the sea. The man dies, his wife (Kaori Momoi) is barely scratched. So did she or didn’t she? Shima Iwashita stars as her lawyer.
1982 Mainichi Film Awards Best Screenplay. Fourth place on Kinema Junpo’s 1982 top ten.Read More »
Synopsis
In Japan’s bubble economy everyone is looking for ways to increase their wealth and assets. But the Kimura family is particularly determined – in fact it is abnormally determined – to accumulate wealth. They don’t want a palatial mansion, they have no outstanding loans and they’re not planning to travel abroad. They just love money so much that they work day and night for even the smallest amounts. And of course nothing is allowed to go to waste.Read More »
This 1981 nihilist epic by Shohei Imamura is witty, grotesque, relentless, and beautifully engineered. The setting is the Edo era, when local warlords battle the emperor for control of the country, and all of Japan is under cultural pressure from its long delayed opening to the West. Political loyalties and personal loves disintegrate; the only certainty is money, and even that is crumbling. Imamura follows eight major characters through a bright, bursting, impossibly dynamic mise-en-scene, leading up to the Eijanaika (“What the hell?”) riots—a frightening, exhilarating explosion of empty freedom, the freedom of those who have lost everything. A very important film, and possibly a great one.Read More »
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“Bitterness of Youth (1974) was Kumashiro’s first non-roman poruno (<– wrong), based on a novel with a family resemblance to Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy “and set in a milieu of imploded student radicalism: A callow law student impregnates the classmate he is tutoring, then dumps her for his wealthy cousin. The most extraordinary scene has the antihero and his ex revisit the ski resort where they began their affair—carrying on in the snow in a long, behavioral sequence that recapitulates their relationship as they roll struggling and screaming downhill toward a raging river.”Read More »
Hirobe is a lonely man. After witnessing her girlfriend die with a terminal illness, he wanders through the city like a shadow. One day, he meets Masako and they begin an affair. Masako is in an unhappy marriage with Yazawa, who is also cheating on her with a younger lover. The tension builds up to an unforgiving, yet quiet climax…Read More »