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 […]
Tatsuya Nakadai
Kagemusha (1980) Kurosawa, the master visual story-teller (Blu-ray Review)
74 years old Akira Kurosawa was when he directed Kagemusha. And, funnily enough, the 1970s weren’t a kind decade to the master director with the highest-profile film, of the three he produced that decade, being the marginal Serbian Adventure Movie, Dersu Uzala. A point stressed in the extras of this […]
Sword of Doom (1966) one of the highest watermarks in Samurai cinema (Review)
Cinema Eclectica 140 – Come Back British Folk Horror! Come Back!
The Human Condition (1959) a must-see for any fan of world cinema (Review)
WWII is a frequently used setting throughout the course of cinema history. No matter what, every critically acclaimed filmmaker must have at least one film set in-between the time period of 1939 – 1945. Steven Spielberg presented the horrors of the Holocaust in unflinching black-and-white realism in Schlinder’s List. Wolfgang […]
Cinema Eclectica 66 – The Biscuits for Movies Initiative
Everything can be justified if you’re rewarded with biscuits. Off The Shelf features the new (and classic), Takashi Miike film “Yakuza Apocalypse”, Akira Kurosawa’s Japanese Shakesperean epic “Ran”, and “Innocence of Memories” – an essay film from Grant Gee. We also have a minority report on “Captain America: Civil War” […]
Akira Kurosawa’s Ran (1985) Home to one of the greatest battle scenes of all time (Review)
Shakespeare’s stories, character and language might be what reel us in, but it’s the mysteries that can engender an obsession. From Sigmund Freud, who famously pored over a psychiatric diagnosis of Prince Hamlet, to John Sutherland and Cedric Watts, who published an entire book (Henry V, War Criminal?) on the […]