Between Social Media and Marketing agencies, Japanuary is one of these traditions that happen every year, in which people portmanteau months to programme month long sessions into a particular movement – or, in this case, national cinema – into their cinematic diet. Giallo January is another common theme that people […]
Kinji Fukasaku
Samurai Reincarnation (1981) – Theatrical bombast meets relevant messages (Review)
Adapting Futaro Yamada’s 1967 novel, Samurai Reincarnation, writer/director Kinji Fukasaku crafts a historical fantasy which begins over 350 years ago following the Shimabara Rebellion. A revolt led to thousands of Christians being slaughtered by the Tokugawa regime, as horrifically conveyed within a display of severed heads – with many split […]
Yakuza Graveyard (1976) A Chaotically Rewarding Yakuza Classic That Demands All of Your Attention (Review)
Toei had already garnered a reputation for being the studio that made Yakuza movies. Between their ninkyo-eiga (“chivalry”) pictures of the 1960s to the harder-hitting jitsuroku-eiga (“actual record films”) popularised by the likes of Director Kinji Fukasaku and writer Kazuo Kasahara, Toei Company had a winning formula that brought in […]
Hiroshima Death Match – Cinema Eclectica Podcast 275
Cinema Eclectica 221 – Load Bearing Clown
Is it Pensive Staring Chapter Two or Creepy Spooky Fun Time With Bill Skarsgård, Chapter Two? Whatever we think of our feature film, this week, Andrew, Prob and Aidan talk the blockbuster horror release of the summer in “It: Chapter Two”: The Revengening. After that, Aidan talks about BFI’s release […]
Doberman Cop (1977) A peculiar Sonny Chiba character in an endlessly odd police thriller (Review)
Once upon a time, it was instantly apparent when a film was based on a comic or graphic novel as those films concerned themselves with the super-powered and the otherworldly, then around the mid-1990s there was a paradigm shift and the nature of these titles became indistinguishable from the more […]
Cinema Eclectica 114 – Cops Vs Goatzilla
Ever had one of those mornings? Anne Hathaway does in our Film or the Week – “Colossal” – when she finds out last night’s drunken bender has somehow destroyed Seoul. There’s plenty of destruction in Off the Shelf with yakuza running amok in Kinji Fukasaku’s “Cops vs Thugs”, emotional devastation […]