Tag: Japan

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Animation Features Live Action Movies Shorts

Tsukamoto
–
Killing
(Zan, 斬、)
–
Haze
(ヘイズ)
–
The Adventures
of Denchu Kozo
(Denchu Kozou
no Boken,
電柱小僧の冒険)

Killing (Sawamura)

Director – Shinya Tsukamoto – 2018 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 79m

***

[Update: The Adventures of Denchu Kozo streams on the Arrow Channel from Friday, May 3rd 2024.]

The Adventures of Denchu Kozo (Denchu kozo no boken)

Director – Shinya Tsukamoto – 1987 – Japan – 45m

****

Haze

Director – Shinya Tsukamoto – 2005 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 48m

*****

Shinya Tsukamoto’s latest feature, the samurai movie Killing comes to UK Blu-ray in a two-disc edition, along with two fascinating shorts: the Super-8 epic The Adventures of Denchu Kozo and the later masterpiece Haze. All three feature informative audio commentaries by Tom Mes, author of Iron Man: The Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto (2005). The director is probably best known for cyberpunk epics Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) and its sequel/reboot Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) which concern the fusion of flesh and metal into a new evolutionary human weapon form. His new film similarly explores the samurai and his metal blade becoming as one in a deadly human fighting machine. Read the rest…

Review published in All The Anime.

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Spy x Family
Code: White
(SPY x FAMILY
CODE: White)

All images © 2023 SPY x FAMILY The Movie Project © Tatsuya Endo/Shueisha

Directors – Kazuhiro Fusuhashu, Takashi Karagiri – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12A – 111m

*****

A spy and an assassin are married to each other, each unaware of the other’s secret career, while neither of them are aware their adopted daughter is a telepath who therefore knows everything they don’t – bonkers anime deploying cookery to prevent Armageddon (!) is out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 26th

An opulent art deco ball. Couples dance. A man connives to be alone with a drunken woman so he can…photograph a file in an office desk. A woman driving a car rips off her face (in the manner of the characters in Mission: Impossible II, John Woo, 2000) to reveal… a man, the spy Loid (voice: Takuya Eguchi). Another woman, Yor (voice: Saori Hayama), is revealed as an assassin when she kills a man who sold industrial secrets. The spy and the assassin are married to one another in a pretend marriage which is a cover for their undercover operations, although neither knows the other is in the spy / assassination game. Their daughter Anya (voice: Atsumi Tanezaki) – adopted to make the bogus marriage look real – is a telepathic orphan who can read minds, so knows about the two secret identities of her ‘parents’.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Evil Does Not Exist
(Aku wa Sonzai Shinai,
悪は存在しない)

Director – Ryosuke Hamaguchi – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 106m

**

A small, unspoiled village community is visited by two representatives of a company planning to set up a glamping facility – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 5th

This starts and ends with a journey on foot through a forest with a viewpoint looking up at the branches of trees as quiet, meditative and arresting music by Eiko Ishibashi plays on the soundtrack.

A young girl of about eight (was it her viewpoint?) wanders through the woods.

A man chainsaws chopped tree trunks into small logs, then takes them near to his house to chop them for firewood. He puts several big, plastic cans in his car boot and drives out to a stream to fill them with water. Kazuo drops by to help the man load the filled bottles into his car. They hear gunshots, which the first man remarks he heard they were hunting in Kunihara.

At this point the first man Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) realises he’s forgotten to pick up his daughter from daycare, and drives over there to discover she’s given up waiting and walked home along. He finds her in the forest and gives Hana (Ryo Nishikawa), for that is her name, a piggyback home.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Typhoon Club
(Taifu Kurabu,
台風クラブ)

Director – Shinji Somai – 1985 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 115m

*****

A group of teenagers is trapped inside their school by a typhoon – screenings around the UK and Ireland from Wednesday, April 3rd; also available on Blu-ray from Third Window Films

A film about teenagers which uses tropical weather conditions – in this instance, an approaching and then all-encompassing typhoon – as a catalyst for exploring character. Its bravura visual style engages from the get-go, with a shot looking across a swimming pool between two ropes of a lane with a child swimmer.

Thursday. A bunch of girls in bathing costumes including Yasuko (Tomoko Aizawa) lark about outside in what is obviously hot and humid weather – one runs through a shallow pool and turns on a water spray to catch the others as they follow, but soon their tomfoolery looks like it may have dire consequences as they all but drown the boy pool swimmer Akira (Toshiyuki Matsunaga). Fortunately, Kyoichi Mikami (Yuichi Mikami), who turns up with his friend Ken (Shigeru Benibayashi) in tow, is able to sort the situation out by administering artificial respiration.

Later, Akira and Mikami, with Ken smoking between the pair of them, hang out on a bamboo scaffolding structure discussing girls, including Yasuko’s lesbian activities with another girl.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Hoarder on the Border
(Danshari Paradise,
断捨離パラダイス)

Director – Takayuki Kayano – 2022 – Japan – 101m

****

A failed pianist takes on a job at a cleaning company which specialises in decluttering houses filling up with rubbish – played UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2024 between Friday, 2nd February and Sunday, 31st March

Promising young pianist Ritsuke Shirotaka (Ryo Shinoda), whose mantelpiece is adorned with prizes he won in school, can’t carry on due to hand tremors. His girlfriend pushes him towards eking out a living giving piano lessons, but that isn’t enough to stop her abandoning him.

In need of gainful employment, he interviews for and gets a job at cleaning company Danshari Paradise. (Note: Danshari is a Japanese philosophy of decluttering, based on principles that have been around in that culture a long time.)

This is a whole new world to him, and he must learn on the job. The houses or flats that the company deals with are typically places where you can’t see the floor for items of clothing and packaging that have been discarded there.

On his first assignment with such a team, Ritsuke attempts to physically pull blockages from a kitchen sink, only for a female colleague to pull him aside and pour liquid down the plughole to clear it.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Godzilla x Kong
The New Empire

Director – Adam Wingard – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 115m

*****

Godzilla must leave the surface world to team up with Kong in the subterranean Hollow Earth below to defeat a powerful enemy – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 29th

The latest movie in the Toho / Warner Bros. Godzilla / Kong Monsterverse is globetrotting in scope, with scenes of monsters wreaking havoc in Rome and Rio; its central conceit is that Godzilla roams the surface of the Earth fighting off other monsters which humanity would be unable to see off alone, while Kong, reconceived as a similar size to Godzilla, lives in the subterranean paradise of Hollow Earth.

With one beast on the outer rim of the planet and the other in a world beneath its surface, there is no possibility one will run into the other, which fight would be devastating for mankind. To make sure the two monsters remain isolated from one another, the huge Monarch organisation monitors both constantly.

Yet a terrible force is on the ascendant in Hollow Earth, one that neither Kong nor Godzilla would be able to contain let alone defeat on their own. And so, to save humanity, they must join forces and fight it.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music

Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus

Director – Neo Sora – 2023 – Japan – Cert. U – 103m

*****

Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto performs a final concert of his music in 2022, months before finally dying of cancer on March 28th, 2023 – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 29th, 2024

Released in the UK within a day of the anniversary of his passing, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s final concert is an intimate affair, shot in a sound studio by his son Neo Sora in crisp, iconic black and white, the sound of his piano recorded with state-of-the-art equipment. Within months of this performance, cancer would have taken him from us. This is very different from concert films where the performer(s) is / are still alive. Much of Sakamoto’s music tends towards the melancholy, and watching this remarkable, musical testament, one is constantly reminded of the fact that he is no longer with us.

Caught by the camera, he is clearly aware that he doesn’t have that much time left. One of the pieces, he struggles to get right. “This is too hard”, he says, “I need a break.” Nevertheless, the camera and sound recording equipment proceed to capture him playing his 20 chosen compositions with all the considerable skill of the great player that he is / was.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Monster
(Kaibutsu,
怪物)

Director – Hirokazu Kore-eda – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 126m

****

The mother of a school pupil believes her son is being abused by his teacher, who in turn protests his own innocence, yet the truth is more complex – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 15th

A movie at once spellbinding and infuriating, as a seemingly straightforward narrative is retold from different points of view and shifts subtly as further details emerge. It’s not a film to see if you’re tired, as it requires considerable attention on the part of the audience.

It starts off with a child’s feet walking along a patch of wasteland at night, sirens in the distance and then a blazing urban building which his single-parent mother Saori Mugino (Sakura Ando from Godzilla Minus One, 2023; Shoplifters, 2018 and Love Exposure, 2008) summons her son Minato (Soya Kurokawa) out onto their flat’s balcony to watch. Overheard conversation later suggests that not only was there a hostess bar on the third floor of the burning building, but that Minato’s teacher Mr. Hori (Eita Nagayama from Toshiaki Toyoda’s 9 Souls, 2003 and Blue Spring, 2001) used to go there.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Lonely Castle
in the Mirror
(Kagami no Kojo,
かがみの孤城)

Director – Keiichi Hara – 2022 – Japan – Cert. – 116m

*****

Seven children are sucked via mirrors in their homes into a mysterious castle perched high above a sea, presided over by a wolf queen, and prowled by a hungry wolf at night – plays UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2024 between Friday, 2nd February and Sunday, 31st March

Teenager Kokoro Anzai (voice: Ami Touma) can’t face going to school. Her understanding mother (voice: Kumiko Aso) takes her instead to the Classroom of the Heart at an alternative school for a session with friendly teacher Mrs. Kitajima (voice: Aoi Miyazaki). This is to be Kokoro’s new school, but in the end, she can’t face going to that one either, so her mum phones her in as sick.

Moping in her bedroom, she is attracted to lights glowing around the tall mirror there before touching its surface which, like the mirrors in Orphée (Jean Cocteau, 1950) dissolve to allow her to pass through them into another world. On the other side, she finds herself in a castle perched high on a rock above a sea along with six other kids – tall Aki (voice: Sakura Kiryu), soccer player Rion (voice: Takumi Kitamura), computer geek Subaru (voice: Rihito Itagaki), piano player Fuka (voice: Naho Yokomizo), enigmatic Masamune (voice: Minami Takayama), and dumpy Ureshiro (voice: Yuki Kaji).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Moon Thieves
(Dou Yeut Ze,
盜月者)

Director – Yuen Kim-wei – 2024 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 107m

**

A gang including a counterfeit watchmaker and an amateur safe cracker attempt to steal a watch worn by an astronaut on the 1969 moon landing – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 23rd

This heist movie is built around three members of hugely popular Cantopop boy band Mirror: Anson Lo, Edan Lui and Keung To. Vincent Ma (Lui) is a watchmaker who builds counterfeit (i.e. non-brand name) watches out of genuine parts. He takes great pride in his work and his watches are very reliable as a result. Yoh (Lo) desperately needs money to pay for the operation that will save the ailing eyesight of his mom Ms. Hong (Luna Shaw), so he signs up to work with the ruthless young crime boss heir known simply as Uncle (Keung) despite the fact that Yoh’s elder brother was previously killed by gangsters, so he ought to know better.

Uncle has enlisted Ma to look at three watches in Tokyo that might be worth stealing – he is to take them apart, examine their insides and confirm as to whether or not they are genuine.… Read the rest