Japan
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Brisk, no-nonsense sequel that pits Zatoichi against a clan of disgruntled yakuza and government officials, while a mysterious wandering bandit also takes an interest, who is revealed to be the… Read More
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Also known as War of the Insects, this is a real sci-fi horror oddity from Criterion’s Eclipse series, When Horror Came to Shochiku, about a swarm of marauding bugs capable… Read More
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Apparently based on a prize-winning novel, this is a coming-of-age story following a young lad Toma (Suda Masaki), who lives with his abusive father and younger lover, while his mother… Read More
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The latest from Kids Police director Fukuda Yuichi is a humorous and mostly successful tale of five young women who are all but coerced into becoming a secret crime fighting… Read More
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Pinku director Imaoka Shinji (Underwater Love) gives us his own version of Richard Linklater’s Slacker, as we follow a string of characters in a series of vignettes, each focusing on… Read More
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Sabu’s latest is a bleak, expressionistic, low budget retelling of Kim Ki-Young’s The Housemaid. With zombies. Read More
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The latest work of absurdist humour from Japanese comedian Matsumoto is extreme, even by his own bafflingly delightful standards. On the face of it, R100 is set-up as an outrageous… Read More
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Another one-gag movie from Fukuda Yuichi that gets by on the strength of its child actors long after the joke gets wearisome. Read More
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Japanese director Sono Sion is back to his delirious best in this frenetic free-wheeling ode to filmmaking and yakuza cinema. Two feuding gangs look to settle their lingering scores in… Read More
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Indie director Uchida Eiji looks to finally have scored a breakthrough hit with this darkly comic exploration of neglect, obsession and voyeurism that successfully mixes exploitation with an astute social… Read More
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After losing his job, a lowly office lad attempts to drown his sorrows, only to be thrown out of a girly bar. He manages to anger a gang of yakuza… Read More
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For this month’s Full Disclosure over at Twitch, my July entry on the list of shame was Kurosawa Akira’s 1965 drama, Red Beard – his last collaboration with actor Mifune… Read More
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Incredibly silly comedy from director Fukuda Yuichi about a high school boy (Suzuki Ryohei) who inherits the twisted perversions of his parents (a masochistic cop and sadistic dominatrix respectively). When… Read More
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I’ve watched and struggled with Gaspar Noe’s surreal exploration of life after death before in the past, but there’s no denying the audacity of its ambition and the impact of… Read More
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Masters of Cinema just released Shindo Kaneto’s wonderfully poetic film on Blu-ray in the UK, a modern silent with almost no discernible dialogue, but an incredibly powerful narrative nonetheless about… Read More
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I almost let this one pass me by, put off by the daunting 160 minute runtime, but my efforts were handsomely rewarded as Okita Shuichi’s adaptation of Yoshida Shuichi’s popular… Read More
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A typically oddball tale of Japanese adolescence, but one that is hilarious, charming and delightfully off the wall. It centres on a typical 14-year-old boy, Maruyama, with an over-active imagination,… Read More
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Abbas Kiarostami continues his filmmaking sabbatical away from his Iranian homeland, which began in Tuscany with Certified Copy and now moves to Tokyo. As with many of the director’s films,… Read More
