Tag: Tokyo

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The Contestant

Director – Clair Titley – 2023 – UK – Cert.12a – 90m

*****

How a man’s incarceration in a room, broadcast on TV, became a media sensation in Japan– out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 29th

Before The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998), which would be released later the same year, a couple of years before Big Brother and the start of the UK’s reality TV phenomenon, a Japanese TV show breaks new boundaries. A man is put in a room where he had to earn a million yen in prizes from magazine competitions before being released. The facilities are basic – there is a sink unit and a gas ring, but no cooking utensils. The whole situation is filmed by two cameras. The man in the room, Nasubi, knows it is being filmed, but has been told by the producer that most of it will be thrown away. He is completely unaware that this setup is being edited into a weekly, six-minute TV spot and going out on the weekly, magazine format, endurance TV show Denpa Shonen.

The Denpa Shonen show is the brainchild of TV producer Tsuchiya, who for this segment auditions a dozen or so male hopefuls and chooses one of them, Nasubi, by lottery.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Love Hotel
(Rabu Hoteru,
ラブホテル)

Director – Shinji Somai – 1985 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 88m

***1/2

After violently taking out the stress of yakuza business debts on a call-girl, a man finds her two years later and attempts to rekindle a relationship – roman porno is out on UK Blu-ray on, Monday, July 22nd

NSFW.

Tokyo. Muraki (Minori Terada) phones Milky Way from room 301, all dark suit and shades, obviously a gangster, to be is told a girl, Yumi, will be with him in 10 minutes. Only, a flashback reveals him as the owner of a publishing office, his stairwell to his small office premises blocked by a yakuza, another of whose number, he discovers on entering, is forcibly having sex with Muraki’s wife (Kiriko Shimizu) while two further fellow yakuza look on approvingly. Later, he considers throwing himself out of the third storey window of his unfurnished office with “for rent” signs, but swats a fly and thinks better of jumping.

When Yumi (Noriko Hayami) arrives at 301, her initial euphoria at Y100 000 for two hours is dispelled when Muraki unexpectedly slaps handcuffs on her, pulls a knife, slashes at the bedsheets and her clothing to undress her than violates her with a dildo, later cutting the skin between her breasts as she writhes orgasmically.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Perfect Days

Director – Wim Wenders – 2023 – Germany, Japan – Cert. PG – 123m

*****

A cleaner for The Tokyo Toilet Company takes great pleasure in his everyday routine – out on UK Blu-ray and DVD from Monday, June 10th

There is a pecking order in society. Right at the lowest level is anything to do with human waste. Nowhere is this more evident than towards the end of this film when his sister, who drives a large, impressive looking car and is making a rare visit to her sibling, asks, incredulously, “are you really cleaning toilets?”

In this remarkable film, Wenders turns this notion on its head. Welcome to the world of Hirayama (Koji Yakusho), employee of The Tokyo Toilet Company, who has been doing the job for five or six years and takes great pride in it. He is part of a two-person detail, however his young co-worker Takashi (Tokio Emoto) doesn’t share his enthusiasm, often arriving late for his shift and looking at his mobile phone on the job.

Hirayama drives a small van and has invested in various tools to help him carry out the job; Takashi rides a motor scooter. Hirayama takes great pleasure in his audio cassette collection (The Animals, Lou Reed, Patti Smith) which he listens to on his van’s cassette player driving to and from work.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Luminous Woman
(Hikaru Onna,
光る女)

Director – Shinji Somai – 1987 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 118m

*****

A Hokkaido farmer comes to Tokyo in search of his vanished fiancée but finds a world he has not expected – on Blu-ray from Monday, Monday, May 20th

At a rubbish tip on the outskirts of Tokyo, a barefoot man (Takeiji Muto) in cheap trousers and top encounters a suave-looking sophisticate (Kei Suma) and a woman opera singer (Michiru Akiyoshi), the latter performing gracefully atop the rubbish heap. The woman is dependent on the sophisticate. The barefoot man has travelled from Hokkaido to find his fiancée Kuriko Sakura, who was supposed to return after studying accounting to help him run a farm.

The sophisticate knows someone of that name, and drives the barefoot man into the city. In his nightclub, he offers the outsider a deal – if he’ll fight the club’s pro-wrestler for ¥100 000, the other will tell him where to find Kuriko. However, she may not be the person he seeks. Out of her boss’ earshot, the woman warns the outsider that the wrestling may be to the death.

In the club she plays the piano while another woman sings opera and, on the circular dias bordered by a water pool, a challenger fights the incumbent wrestler and loses.… Read the rest

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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

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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

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Features Live Action Movies

Shadow of Fire
(Hokage,
ほかげ)

Director – Shinya Tsukamoto – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 95m

****

A woman has drifted into prostitution, while a small boy struggles to survive in post-war Tokyo – plays UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2024 between Friday, 2nd February and Sunday, 31st March

An interior in the ruins of post-war Tokyo. A figure sleeps restlessly on a mat. A man hunts for a child who has broken in and is stealing food to survive. The man says to the waking woman (Shuri), “I approach the ones who look harmless – but who knows?” As he forces himself upon here, the image cuts away to decay on the walls. The woman’s hand, like a strange, disembodied limb, appears over a parapet fixture. The man goes out to solicit clients from the woman.

A soldier (Hiroki Kono) comes in, clearly in a bad way, drinks some Sake, pays the fee, then falls asleep. In the morning, she makes him breakfast. He asks to stay, promising to get work and pay his way, but after a day or so the young boy (Oga Tsukao), who she has taken under her wing, reports that he just sits in the same spot and does no work-hunting.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies Music

Blue Giant
(BLUE GIANT)

Director – Yuzura Tachikawa – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 120m

*****

Three 18-year-olds form a jazz band with the aim of playing at Tokyo’s top jazz club – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, January 31st and Thursday, February 1st

Before this property was a movie – an animated movie – it was a manga. Which, on one level, is nothing that out of the ordinary in Japan (see, for instance, basketball movie The First Slam Dunk, Takehiko Inoue, 2022) but on another is extraordinary. Blue Giant is about music, specifically jazz, even more specifically teenager Dai Miyamoto (voice: Yuki Yamada; musicianship: Tomoaki Baba) who gives up basketball and decides he wants to be the best tenor sax player in the world. He rehearses intensively by the banks of the river in the city of Sendai where he lives, leaving for Tokyo at age 18 and talking his way into moving in with old pal Shunji Tamada (voice: Amane Okayama; musicianship: Shun Ishikawa).

Unsure where to start, Dai visits a bar named Jazz – Take Two where the friendly Mama-san Akiko (voice: Sayaka Kinoshita), who no longer hosts live jazz gigs there, takes pity on him and plays him selections from her vast wall of jazz LPs.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Crazy Thunder Road
(Kuruizaki
Sanda Rodo,
狂い咲きサンダーロード)

Director – Sogo Ishii – 1980 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 97m

*****

Following on from Arrow’s superb BD of Sogo Ishii’s Burst City (1982) comes Third Window’s equally impressive BD release of its predecessor in the Ishii canon Crazy Thunder Road (1980) – on Blu-ray from Monday, February 21st 2022 and, as of January 2024, available to stream on Amazon Prime UK

This was Ishii’s Nihon University student graduation project, his first to be shot on 16mm rather than Super 8, which somehow got picked up for distribution by major Japanese Studio Toei which led to their giving him a budget for Burst City. Tom Mes, who as with Burst City supplies a commentary for the film, describes Crazy Thunder Road as “one of the Holy Grails of Japanese film releases if not the Holy Grail.”

When Toei presented Ishii with what seemed like astronomical funding for Burst City, it led him to overreach himself. In retrospect, he considers Burst City unfinished… [Read the full review at All The Anime]

Crazy Thunder Road was out on Blu-ray in the UK on Monday, February 21st, 2022 and, as of January 2024, available to stream on Amazon Prime UK.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

#Manhole
(#マンホール)

Director – Kazuyoshi Kumakiri – 2023 – Japan – LEAFF Cert.15 – 99m

***

A man falls down a manhole following his stag night and turns to social media to get help and, hopefully, escape – plays in the Official Selection at the 2023 London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF) which runs from Wednesday, October 18th to Sunday, October 29th.

The opening minutes of #Manhole resemble any number of Japanese movies you can think of as Shunsuke Kawamura (Yuto Nakajima) attends a surprise party put on by work colleagues at his local watering hole. It’s a good night, suggesting he’s well loved (albeit on a fairly superficial level) and he leaves extremely drunk, briefly saying goodbye to best mate Etsuro Kase (Kento Nagayama from Love Life Koji Fukada, 2022; Villain, Lee Sang-il, 2010) whose well-intentioned present – a lighter – may not be so much use to Kawamura now that he’s given up smoking. Or so it would seem at that point in the proceedings.

Kawamura must have drunk a good deal more than he realised because as he staggers home, he falls down a manhole off of which someone, by accident or design, has left the cover. His upper leg is badly cut.… Read the rest