After visiting the more obscure side of Japanese cinema in the last episode, this time we kick off a two-parter with one of the most well-regarded names that the country produced in the modern era – Takeshi Kitano. Or Beat Takeshi as he was known when he broke through. Joined […]
Japan
Satoshi Miki (Turtles are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers & Adrift in Tokyo)
The Deer King (2021) Too many characters fail to spoil this sumptuous anime (Cinema Review)
Makoto Shinkai (Your Name & Journey to Agartha)
Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle (2021) (Cinema Review)
To Sleep So As To Dream (1986): silent Japanese dream detectives! (Review)
The fictional detective is a rational creature. As soon as detective stories were invented, Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle were using their sleuths to reveal the mundane truth behind apparently supernatural events; the latter’s maxim that when you have eliminated the impossible, what remains – however improbable – […]
Pale Flower (1964) Humble, Contrarian Anti-Yakuza Classic (Review)
In the solitary extra of Criterion’s new Blu-ray of 1964’s Pale Flower, Masahiro Shinoda says that his writers wanted to make something fresh, something Shochiku studio wasn’t doing. In the 1960s, Yakuza cinema was full of rough boys driven by anger and anachronistic musical numbers. The leading men were manly […]
Crazy Thunder Road (1980) Japan’s Mad Max or Generational Clash? (Review)
Released to Blu-ray this week by the Third Window Films label, Crazy Thunder Road is the breakthrough movie of Gakuryu, the artist formerly known as Sogo Ishii. A high-octane and proudly (cyber)punk movie, Crazy Thunder Road was actually the filmmaker’s graduation project. So impressive was it deemed for a student […]
Red Angel (1966) Bloody And Fearless Japanese Anti-War Satire (Review)
Toshiaki Toyoda (Blue Spring & Monsters Club)
We’ve had the fun of the annual review, it’s time to get back to business. Joining Rob are show-regular, Graham (Horrified & Pop Screen), and Robert Edwards (YouTube), to talk about cult-Japanese director Toshiaki Toyoda. We talk about his 2001 anti-delinquent movie, Blue Spring. Then, we follow that up by […]