Yûsuke Kawazu

Shot in the midst of the Daiei debacle, a yakuza film that turns its lack of resources into a strength, multiplying scenes of fog with poetic opacity.Read More »

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This unique melodrama depicts the anguish of a new wife whose husband confesses to her his infertility on their wedding night. The virgin wife, who spends her days in a state of unfulfillment, is gradually attracted to a young playboy, but she is unable to cross the line. One day, her husband proposes to have a child through artificial insemination.Read More »

The second part of the ‘Sword’ trilogy by Kenji Misumi is an interesting story about a young man obsessed by kendo. Kokubu is a university student and has just been made captain of the kendo team, just ahead of Kagawa. Kokubu doesn’t think of anything other than kendo, this kind of upsets his fellow students, especially those that look up to him. Kagawa is the worst. He, having just lost the place for captain, gets obsessed by becoming a better kendo swordsman then Kokubu. Around his back, Kagawa is stirring up the anti-Kokubu sentiments in the group. He even charters his sister to seduce him. When the team goes into a trainingcamp led by Kokubu, things go awry…Read More »

During the 1930s, a teenager yearns for a Catholic girl, whose only desire is to reform his sinful tendencies. Hormones raging, the young man channels his unsatisfied lust into the only outlet available: savage, crazed violence.Read More »

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A woman brings her injured daughter to the hospital, only to realize that the doctor is the estranged father of her child. Directed by Masahiro Shinoda.Read More »

The insects are taking over in this nasty piece of disaster horror directed by Kazui Nihonmatsu. A group of military personnel transporting a hydrogen bomb are left to figure out how and why swarms of killer bugs took down their plane; the answer is more deliriously nihilistic—and convoluted—than you could imagine. Also known as War of the Insects, Genocide enacts a cracked doomsday scenario like no other.Read More »

Aspiring fashion model Midori (Atsumi Mari) finds herself caught between a dubious lover (Kawazu Yûsuke) and the yakuza. The sixth and final film in Daiei’s “Mollusk” series. Masumura co-authored the script with Ishimatsu Yoshihiro. The title — Shibire kurage — translates literally as Numbing Jellyfish.Read More »

Yumi is a young orphan girl. She studies in a sewing school paid by her mother’s hard work as a bar hostess. All their plans will be disrupted when the mother’s boyfriend will rape Yumi, virgin and innocent.

The film sometimes “helps itself” with some psychoanalytic clichés to move forward or gives substance to its tale (For ex., Yumi plays cards almost as a genetic gift). But there’s more truth in the simple portrait of the young girl Yumi and in many details of the Japanese way of life, society and way of laws (an ironic comparison of gambling and prostitution)… including a scene which captures with an amazing realism the violence of greed.Read More »

Mod-sixties visuals and black humor mark this wild New Wave masterpiece about a vengeful contractor who hires a series of young killers to target a woman muckraker. Trouble brews when an amateur marksman shows up his eclectic competition. Directed from a script by Shuji Terayama, Shinoda’s colorful showcase of action (and unexpected song!) has been compared to a pastiche of Pierrot le Fou and Kubrick’s The Killing. —NYFF 2010Read More »