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Kinji Fukasaku – Kuro bara no yakata AKA Black Rose Mansion (1969)
Synopsis: A feverishly perverse 1969 film noir oddity starring female impersonator Akihiro Maruyama. When wealthy Kyohei hires singer “Black Rose” to perform in his exclusive men’s club, he gets more...
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Yuuji Makiguchi – Tokugawa onna keibatsu-emaki: Ushi-zaki no kei aka Shogun’s...
a review by Ian Jane I don’t know what it is with Japanese cinema and it’s affinity for violence and cruelty, but man, when they pull out all the stops they sure do a damn good job of grossing me out....
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Yasuo Furuhata – Eki Station aka Station (1981)
A very beautiful film. This is a Ken Takakura vehicle, and as such follows his formula. Takakura plays to type as the laconic brooder who suffers multiple tragedies with manly stoicism. While the...
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Yimou Zhang – Qian li zou dan qi AKA Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (2005)
A young Japanese film maker is in hospital in Tokyo. His estranged father tries to visit, but the son refuses to see him. So, as a gesture of reconciliation, the father decides to go to China to...
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Mitsuo Yanagimachi – Saraba itoshiki daichi AKA Farewell to the Land (1982)
Even though this film has (ofifcially) no involvement by Kenji Nakagami, it still feels totally like one of his stories. People familiar with his writings set in Wakayama will cerntainly recognize a...
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Kon Ichikawa – Hakai AKA The Broken Commandment (1962)
Keiko I. McDonald: Kon Ichikawa’s Hakai (The Broken Commandment) began in 1961 as a televised dramatisation of Toson Shimazaki’s novel of the same title first published in 1906. Toson’s pioneering...
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Koreyoshi Kurahara – Aru kyôhaku AKA Intimidation (1960)
Koreyoshi Kurahara’s ingeniously plotted, pocket-sized noir concerns the intertwining fates of a desperate bank manager, blackmailed for book-cooking, and his resentful but timid underling, passed...
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Kiyoshi Kurosawa – Kanda-gawa inran senso aka Kandagawa wars (1983)
Quote: Two sexually energized young women who live in a high-rise apartment building happen one day to spy from their window a mother and son making love in the apartment across from theirs. They...
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Teinosuke Kinugasa – Yukinojo henge AKA An Actor’s Revenge (1935)
Quote: Here is the 1935/1936 original version of “An Actor’s Revenge”, which was hugely popular at that time and a high point in Kazuo Hasegawa’s career. In fact, he even chose to remake this film as...
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Hsiao-Hsien Hou – Nie yin niang AKA The Assassin (2015)
The film is set during the mighty Tang Dynasty-period in Chinese history. Nie Yinniang returns to family after several years in exile. The mission of her order is to eliminate the tyrany of the...
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Hsiao-hsien Hou – Xi meng ren sheng aka The Puppetmaster (1993)
Hou Hsiao-hsien’s masterpiece about the childhood and early adulthood of octogenerian Taiwanese puppet master and actor Li Tien-lu. This is the second part of a trilogy about Taiwanese life in the...
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Wayne Wang – Eat a Bowl of Tea (1989)
Synopsis Ben’s wife wants some attention. Ben’s boss wants some dedication. Ben’s father wants some grandchildren. And Ben just wants a minute to sort it all out in Wayne Wang’s gentle comedy, “Eat a...
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Kon Ichikawa – Shijûshichinin no shikaku AKA 47 Ronin (1994)
Synopsis: In Japan in 1701, Asano, the daimyo of Ako, assaulted Kira (Rie Miyazawa), an official of the Shogunate, in Edo Castle, for which offense he was ordered to commit suicide. The following...
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Ki-duk Kim – Samaria AKA Samaritan Girl (2004)
Jae-Young is an amateur prostitute who sleeps with men while her best friend Yeo-Jin “manages” her, fixing dates, taking care of the money and making sure the coast is clear. When Jae-Young falls in...
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Yoshishige Yoshida – Honô to onna aka Flame and woman (1967)
Quote: Honoo to onma (lmpasse; the title translates as the more poetic ” Flame and Woman” neatly rendered in the French title, La Femme et la Flamme) made the same year as The Affair (whose Japanese...
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Kon Ichikawa – Tokyo orimpikku AKA Tokyo Olympiad [+Extra] (1965)
Review from the Criterion website : A spectacle of magnificent proportions, Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad ranks among the greatest documents of sport ever committed to film. Utilizing glorious...
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Yôjirô Takita – Okuribito AKA Departures (2008)
Synopsis Departures follows Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved and who is suddenly left without a job. Daigo decides to move back to his...
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Katsuhito Ishii & Hajime Ishimine & Shunichiro Miki – Naisu no mori: The...
Quote: An outrageous collection of surreal, short attention span non-sequiturs largely revolving around Guitar Brother, his randy older sibling, and the pair’s portly Caucasian brother....
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Yimou Zhang – Hong gao liang AKA Red Sorghum (1987)
An old leper who owned a remote sorghum winery dies. Jiu’er, the wife bought by the leper, and her lover, identified only as “my Grandpa” by the narrator, take over the winery and set up an idealized...
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Hsiu-Chiung Chiang – Saihate nite AKA The Furthest End Awaits (2014)
Misaki Yoshida (Hiromi Nagasaku) runs a roasting coffee shop in Tokyo. She lives alone. In order to find her father, who was separated from her when she was a child, Misaki goes back to her hometown...
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