Tag: Jun Kunimura

Categories
Movies Features Live Action

Godzilla Minus Zero
(Gojira – 0.0,
ゴジラ – 0.0)

Godzilla Minus Zero (Gojira – 0.0, ゴジラ – 0.0)

Director – Takashi Yamazaki – 2026 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 135m

IMAX version *****

Regular version *****

Japan, slowly recovering from World War Two, must again deal with the seemingly unstoppable menace of Godzilla when it rises again from the depths of the ocean – out in UK and Ireland IMAX cinemas on Tuesday, November 3rd then in regular cinemas on Friday, November 6th

*** Please note: Godzilla Minus One spoiler alert in opening paragraph. ***

“Is your war finally over?”, redeemed Kamikazi pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is asked by Noriko Oishi (Minami Hanabe), the woman who he has taken in to his home along with a baby only for her to be subsequently blasted away when pushing him into a building recess to save him from Godzilla during its attack on Ginza, at the end of Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki, 2023). Miraculously, she survived that incident, which scarcely seems possible. Although perhaps writer-director Yamazaki shrewdly included the conundrum to enable him to kick around some ideas as to why she might have survived beyond mere luck.

One such idea makes it into this new film, and a fascinating idea it is too, one of a number of script elements for which Toho have asked journalists to keep the specifics under wraps so as not to spoil the film for audiences – which seems reasonable enough given that critics had the privilege of seeing the film before any reviews had given anything away.… Read the rest

Categories
Movies Animation Features

The Boy and the Heron
(Kimitachi Wa
Do Ikiru Ka,
君たちはど
う生きるか,
lit.
How Do You Live?)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 124m

*****

During World War Two, a boy bereaved of his mother moves to the countryside with his businessman father where a heron lures him into another dimension to rescue his vanished stepmother – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 26th

Directors, eh? They make their last film, then, some time later, they go and make another one. The Wind Rises (2013) was supposed to be Hayao Miyazaki’s last film, but three years later, he was working on his next one. And seven years further on, The Boy and the Heron hits cinemas. The Japanese title How Do You Live? comes from a popular children’s novel, a copy of which appears in the film, rather than the film being an adaptation of the novel.

Three years into World War Two, young boy Mahito (Japanese dub: Soma Santoki; English dub: Luca Padovan) loses his mother in a Tokyo hospital fire. Four years into the war, his father (Japanese dub: Takuya Kimura; English dub: Christian Bale) – a businessman who manufactures aircraft cockpits for the war effort – decides to move both his factory and his son out of Tokyo to the countryside where he plans to marry his late wife’s younger sister Natsuko (Japanese dub: Yoshino Kimura; English dub: Gemma Chan).… Read the rest

Categories
Movies Features Live Action

KIBA:
The Fangs of Fiction
(Damashie
no Kiba,
騙し絵の牙)

KIBA: The Fangs of Fiction (Damashie no Kiba, 騙し絵の牙)

Director – Daihachi Yoshida – 2020 – Japan – 112m

*****

Forward thinkers take on the conservative old guard within a Japanese publishing corporation – plays UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2022 between Friday, 4th February and Thursday, 31st March

Megumi Takano (Mayu Matsuoka from One Night, Kazuya Shirashi, 2019; Shoplifters, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2018; A Silent Voice, Naoko Yamada, 2016; Lesson Of Evil, Takashi Miike, 2012; Love Exposure, Sion Sono, 2008), daughter of local bookstore owner Takano (Shinya Tsukamoto), is as dedicated an editor as you’ll find anywhere in publishing. Alas, she lacks the political savvy needed to survive in its ruthless, corporate, dog-eat-dog world. When the owner of the publishing company Kunpu which employs her dies unexpectedly, she finds herself caught up in the machinations of a large organisation where some employees resist change while others plan to completely reinvent the business model to ensure the company’s survival, possibly at the expense of some of its employees.

Thus it is that new CEO Tamatsu (Koichi Sato from Fukushima 50, Setsuro Wakamatsu, 2020; Sukiaki Western Django, Takashi Miike, 2007; Where The Last Sword Is Drawn, Yojiro Takita, 2002) comes in with plans to restructure the company.… Read the rest

Categories
Movies Features Live Action

Minamata

Director – Andrew Levitas – 2020 – US – Cert. 15 – 114m

****

A dramatisation of celebrated photographer W. Eugene Smith’s investigation of Japan’s Minamata environmental atrocity in 1971 – out in cinemas and on digital from Friday, August 13th

This feels like a Hollywood actor-led project with laudable aims which comes unstuck somewhere in the execution. That said, there’s still much to admire.

Minamata is the name of a Japanese coastal town which became synonymous with Mercury poisoning caused by the Chisso chemicals factory in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Following a celebrated career as a war photographer in WW2, W. Eugene Smith photographed the series Country Doctor for Life magazine, now recognised as a landmark in the medium of the photo-essay. In the early 1970s, he and his Japanese-American wife Aileen were introduced to the town of Minamata and its dark secret, and collaborated on a photographic book about it. When we meet him in 1971, played by Johnny Depp (from such films as Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, 2005; Sleepy Hollow, 1999; Edward Scissorhands, 1990, all Tim Burton) he has his own darkroom in a New York loft and has clearly seen better days as he is constantly on the whisky and amphetamines.… Read the rest