Lots of people throw the term “cult film” around or call somebody a “cult director” but very few people fit that definition as much as Nobuhiko Obayashi. A director who whilst having an incredibly long-standing career, which started in the mid-60s and lasted all the way up until his death […]
Japan
Takeshi Kitano II (Violent Cop & Zatoichi) Beat Takeshi
A Fugitive from the Past (1965) A ruthless Japanese Masterpiece FINALLY makes its UK debut (Blu-Ray Review)
Takeshi Kitano Part I (Hana-Bi & Kikujiro)
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 […]