Happy weekend!

I had a productive week in terms of movie-watching with High Noon, Dracula, The Curse of Frankenstein, The Draughtsman’s Contract watched. I went and reviewed Ruined Heart (2014) as well.

I’ve got more overtime in work with the staff movie club – I won’t be able to watch the film but I will be earning money for next year when I have something special in store. I will be posting a review next week of a zombie films I have watched but there’s a trailer for I am a Hero which I want to post first. I will not be able to post as much as I once did because I want to practice Japanese and French.

What’s released this weekend?

Happy Hour    

ハッピーアワー「Happi- Awa-」　

Release Date: December 12^th, 2015

Running Time: 317 mins.

Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Writer: Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Tadashi Nohara, Tomoyuki Takahashi (Screenplay)

Starring:  Rira Kawamura, Hazuki Kikuchi, Maiko Mihara, Sachie Tanaka, Shuhei Shibata, Ami Kugai, Sachiko Fukunaga, Reina Shiihashi,

Website IMDB

I saw Happy Hour at this year’s London film festival and gave it a review which was full of praise is a film unlikely to get licensed in the West. It’s a five hour seventeen minute running time dedicated to showing the lives of four middle-aged women and it has split my friends between those who are absorbed in the minutiae of everyday lives and those who find it goes on too long. It has won many awards on the film festival circuit but will it travel beyond cinephiles?

Fumi (Maiko Mihara), Akari (Sachie Tanaka), Sakurako (Hazuki Kikuchi), and Jun (Rira Kawamura), are four friends. These ladies are in their late 30s and are in relationships of varying sorts but not everybody is happy and so when Jun reveals that she is getting a divorce, well, this kicks off a train of dramatic events that make the women re-evaluate their lives.

Nagasaki: Memories of My Son   

母と暮らせば「​ Haha to Kuraseba」

Release Date: December 12^th, 2015

Running Time: 130 mins.

Director: Yoji Yamada

Writer: Yoji Yamada, Emiko Hiramatsu (Screenplay),

Starring: Sayuri Yoshinaga, Kazunari Ninomiya, Haru Kuroki, Tadanobu Asano, Kenichi Kato, Miyu Honda,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis: Nobuko (Sayuri Yoshinaga) lives in post-war Nagasaki and works as a midwife. She survived the atomic bomb which killed her son Koji (Kazunari Ninomiya) three years earlier. Then, one night, Koji appears again and gives comfort to his mother and they reminiscence about pleasant times.

Wake Up, Girls! Beyond the Bottom   

Wake Up, Girls! Beyond the Bottom「Wake Up, Girls! Beyond the Bottom」

Release Date: December 11^th, 2015

Running Time: 54 mins.

Director: Yutaka Yamamoto

Writer: Touko Machida (Series Composition),

Starring: Airi Eino (Airi Hayashida), Kaya Okuno (Kaya Kikuma), Mayu Yoshioka (Mayu Shimada), Minami Tanaka (Minami Katayama), Miyu Takagi (Miyu Okamoto), Nanami Yamashita (Nanami Hisami), Yoshino Aoyama (Yoshino Nanase), Reina Ueda (Rika Takashina)

Website     ANN   My Anime List

This is the second of a two-part movie adaptation of the TV anime Wake Up, Girls! which debuted in 2013.

Synopsis from Anime News Network: In the story of the original anime and previous film, Green Leaves Entertainment is a tiny production company on the verge of going out of business in Sendai, the biggest city in Japan’s northeastern Tohoku region. The agency once managed the careers of magicians, photo idols, fortune-tellers, and other entertainers, but its last remaining client finally quit. In danger of having zero talent (literally), the president Tange hatches an idea of producing an idol group. On the brash president’s orders, the dissatisfied manager Matsuda heads out to scout raw talent. Matsuda makes a fateful encounter with a certain girl…

The new films will follow the group as they make their debut in Tokyo.

Orange   

オレンジ「​ Orenji」

Release Date: December 12^th, 2015

Running Time: 139 mins.

Director: Kojiro Hashimoto

Writer: Arisa Kaneko (Screenplay), Ichigo Takano (Original Manga),

Starring: Tao Tsuchiya, Kento Yamazaki, Ryo Ryusei, Hirona Yamazaki, Kurumi Shimizu, Erina Mano,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis: Naho Takamiya (Tao Tsuchiya) is a high school girl who gets something odd in the post… a letter sent by herself from 10 years in the future. The letter tells her about a guy she had a crush on, a student named Kakeru Naruse (Kento Yamazaki) who will die. Naho never forgot Kakeru and with the knowledge of his death she is determined to change the future. 

W: Futatsu no Kao wo Motsu Onnatachi   

W 二つの顔を持つ女たち「​ W: Futatsu no Kao wo Motsu Onnatachi」

Release Date: December 12^th, 2015

Running Time: 89 mins.

Director: Shinichi Fujita

Writer: Masashi Shimizu (Screenplay), Shindo Fuyuki (Original Novel),

Starring: Kayano Masuyama, Shizuka Umemoto, Hanako Takigawa, Nodoka Sakura, Asuka Kishi, Yuri Morishita, Noboru Takachi, Noboru Kaneko,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis: The women at the bar “W Lounge” are known for having everyday jobs such as office ladies and teachers but at night they are part of a private detective agency dedicated to protecting all women.

Tsubomi’s (Kayano Masuyama) joins the club after her friend Airi (Keito Aoki) disappeared and left her with a debt of 3 million yen which Tsubomi co-guaranteed. The W Lounge manager Mona (Yuri Morishita) and the other women at W Lounge investigate the case and soon receive information that Airi is part of a secret club…

Kamen Rider X Kamen Rider Ghost & Drive: Super Movie War Genesis  

仮面ライダー×仮面ライダー ゴースト＆ドライブ 超MOVIE大戦ジェネシス「​ Kamen Raidaa × Kamen Raidaa Goosuto & Doraibu Choo Muubii Taisen Jeneshisu」

Release Date: December 12^th, 2015

Running Time: 89 mins.

Director: Osamu Kaneda

Writer: Makoto Hayashi (Screenplay), Shotaro Ishinomori (Original Creator),

Starring: Shun Nishime, Ryoma Takeuchi, Ryosuke Yamamoto, Rei Yoshii, Rio Uchida, Hikaru Osawa,

Website    IMDB

Scifijapan to the rescue again as they have a press release for this with cast info and a plot synopsis.

Synopsis: While in pursuit of a common enemy, Kamen Rider Ghost (Takeru Tenkuji) and Kamen Rider Drive (Shinnosuke Tomari) are caught in a sudden space-time distortion and thrown a decade into the past.

The time travel has unexpected consequences as Shinnosuke now meets Mr. Belt before their initial encounter, and Takeru finds his father, who is 10 years dead in the present day. The introduction of “foreign matter” into the past results in the revival of Roidmudes destroyed by Kamen Rider Drive in the present. Kamen Riders Specter, Mach and Chaser united against the Roidmudes only to discover that the evil androids are more powerful than before.

The disruption to history could have dire consequences for the human race. But Takeru is determined to prevent the murder of his father by magical forces, unaware that he and Shinnosuke are falling into a trap set by one of the greatest geniuses of all time — Leonardo da Vinci — who has been revived as an evil Ganma!

Neko bun no 4   

4／猫　ねこぶんのよん「4/neko neko bun no yon」

Release Date: December 12^th, 2015

Running Time: 94 mins.

Director: Naoya Asanuma, Ryosuke Hayasaka, Yuya Nakaizumi, Shinichiro Ueda

Writer: Shinichiro Ueda (Screenplay),

Starring: Masaki Miura, Aki Asakura, Kanna, Tomoharu Hasegawa, Takashi Yamanaka, Haruka Kinami, Kyoka Shibata, Eriko Kumazawa,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis: Cats are the best pets! Fact. This movie is an omnibus film where four young directors tell stories about people and their cats including a mother-daughter pickpocket team, a hotel manager, and a school girl. It has lots of great character actors in it but it looks too sentimental.

Tennoji Old Elephant Haruko’s Last Summer   

天王寺おばあちゃんゾウ　春子　最後の夏「Tennoji o bachan zo Haruko saigo no natsu」

Release Date: December 12^th, 2015

Running Time: 99 mins.

Director: Hitomi Takeshi

Writer: N/A

Starring: N/A

Website

Synopsis: Haruko was an old elephant in Tennoji zoo that died in 2014 and a documentary was shot of its last summer. The elephant lived for over sixty years and was a much loved attraction and even while it was old it still made an appearance for the public.

Hikari no kuni no ohanashi   

ひかりの国のおはなし「Hikari no kuni no ohanashi」

Release Date: December 12^th, 2015

Running Time: 99 mins.

Director: Norio Ogikubo

Writer: N/A

Starring: Doishuu

Website

Synopsis: A documentary about memories of the womb?

Death Forest Kyoufu no Mori 3   

デスフォレスト 恐怖の森3「Desu Foresuto Kyoufu no Mori 3」

Release Date: December 12^th, 2015

Running Time: 64 mins.

Director: Yasutake Torii

Writer: Satoshi Okonogi (Screenplay), Kazz (Original Game Creator)

Starring: Kayano Masuyama, Shizuka Umemoto, Hanako Takigawa, Nodoka Sakura, Asuka Kishi, Yuri Morishita, Noboru Takachi, Noboru Kaneko,

Website    IMDB

More death forest films… Here’s what I wrote for the last one and I think the comment still stands:

I never thought that the first Death Forest (released last December) would get a sequel but the Japanese film industry will adapt anything (because original ideas are too dangerous to bet on). The reason for my cynicism? These Death Forest films are based on a free downloadable game where people get chased by a big white headed thing. Japanese let’s players have tackled this in a number of videos. The new film looks worse than the first.

Synopsis: Those giant heads travel from the forest to Tokyo. So I guess they are in an urban forest… jungle??? Which one makes more sense?

The next three films look intriguing:

Mori no Cafe   

森のカフェ「Desu Foresuto Kyoufu no Mori 3」

Release Date: December 12^th, 2015

Running Time: 76 mins.

Director: Norio Enomoto

Writer: Norio Enomoto (Screenplay),

Starring: Yuki Kan, Kumiko Wakai, Ayu Higashi, Mao Inami, Ichiro Hashimoto, Kotaro Shiga,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis: A philosophy professor meets a mysterious girl in a forest and the two engage in conversation while they drink coffee.

The Sunset Drive   

サンセットドライブ「Sansetto Doraibu」

Release Date: December 12^th, 2015

Running Time: 93 mins.

Director: Jun Himoto

Writer: Jun Himoto (Screenplay),

Starring: Hinako Saeki, Ryo Himoto, Takashi Kobayashi, Eri Sugawara,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis: A mother and father are going to divorce and break up the family. The father is ready to give custody of their two children, a girl and boy, to the mother but when the daughter is taken ill he has to look after his son. The time spent with his son makes him reassess whether he wants to proceed with this plan.

Kuchibiru ha doko?   

唇はどこ？「Kuchibiru ha doko?」

Release Date: December 12^th, 2015

Running Time: 98 mins.

Director: Shunichi Nagasaki

Writer: Shunichi Nagasaki (Screenplay),

Starring: Natsumi Hirose, Tatsuya Miyatani, Kazuki Yamamoto, Rieko Suzuki,

Website

Synopsis: Students from Nagoya University have worked with veteran director Shunichi Nagasaki (The Witch of the West is Dead) in a film about love and life.

Japanese Movie Box Office Results for this Week:

007 Spectre (2015/12/04)

Sugiara Chiune (2015/12/05)

I Love Snoopy The Peanuts Movie (2015/12/04)

125 Years Memory (2015/12/05)

High Speed! – Free! Starting Days – (2015/12/05)

Little Prince (2015/11/21)

Girlz und Panzer der Film  (2015/11/21)

Raintree no Kuni (2015/11/21)  

Grasshopper (2015/11/07)

Gekijouban Mozu (2015/11/07)

As a fan of the manga I Am a Hero I had been cautious in getting my hopes up for this one since the horror genre has been in the doldrums in Japan with a mixture of dumb low-budget, badly-made schlock and funny but low-budget badly-made schlock dominating the output (as I have been discovering over a long summer/autumn/winter of splatter films). When there is something other than monsters and zombies its pretty idol girls getting chased around by ghosts or psychos.

Zombie films in particular are pretty bad. The list of good Japanese zombie is a pretty short one as far as I’m concerned. Perhaps it’s a good thing that this is based on a best-selling manga and the approach to the film is to turn it into A-grade survival panic horror” movie as Anime News Network reports.

I Am a Hero

アイアムアヒーロー「Ai amu a hi-ro-」

Release Date: April 23^rd, 2016

Running Time: 126 mins.

Director: Shinsuke Sato

Writer: Akiko Nogi (Screenplay), Kengo Hanazawa (Original Manga)

Starring: Yo Oizumi, Masami Nagasawa, Kasumi Arimura, Miho Suzuki, Yu Tokui, Yoshinari Okada, Nana Katase,

Website    IMDB

I Am a Hero was first published in 2009 and in the years since it was launched it has over 4 million copies in print with a spinoff set in Osaka. My review of the manga shows how much I like it and I have been half-anticipating half-dreading seeing what the film will turn into. The trailer has left me relieved. I like what I see.

Synopsis: Hideo Suzuki (Yo Oizumi) is a manga artist assistant who is struggling to get his own manga made. As he struggles with life a mysterious virus spreads throughout Japan and the rest of the world. People with the virus are known as ZQN and they turn into zombies with super speed and strength and attack other people. One of the victims of the virus is Hideo’s girlfriend Tetsuko (Nana Katase) who comes down with the virus and attacks him. Hideo flees Tokyo and heads out into the country.

During his escape he meets a high school girl named Hiromi Hayakari (Kasumi Arimura) but she has been bitten by a ZQN, a baby without teeth, so her infection isn’t as bad. During their escape they head to a mall where a group of survivors lead by NEETs are hiding on the roof. There they meet Nurse Yabu (Masami Nagasawa) who hopes she can draw an antibody from Hiromi.

The build-up of the manga is more or less there in the trailer with Hideo’s depressed attitude to life and thwarted artistic ambitions on display but are we going to get those weird psychological visions he suffers? It seems from the trailer that they may be excised to make this a condensed version of the story and we get shoved straight into the zombie chase sequence (which is what completely sold me on the manga).

There are different elements from that scary sequence here like the taxi ride but Hiromi’s introduction on a school field trip and the mountain shrine sequence look like they have been cut. Those parts key contain great sequence where Hideo is in a forest and is surrounded by ZQNs and scary visions, people panicking, the zom-baby, and Hiromi getting some great characterisation.

Other than that, the ZQNs are what you would expect, fast moving “infected” as seen in 28 Days Later (2002) and they are throwing themselves around and charging hither and thither on the screen. The film looks like it has a good budget: fantastic cinematography and scenes of chaos as streets are overrun with many extras playing the ZQNs with enthusiasm as they dominate streets while people are running on mass. Cities on fire can be glimpsed and the costumes and sets/special effects are great (I want to see the taxi chase!) and, on top of the action, I like the comedic atmosphere to the trailer.

The director is Shinsuke Sato and his work on Princess Blade (2001) and the two live-action Gantz (2011) movies is all stellar action which is exciting to watch and while I was ambivalent about Library War that was mostly down to the script and the premise. The key thing is that he has experience making action titles from adaptations of manga which explains why this looks like a lot of fun. While I don’t expect scary zombie movies from Japan (I haven’t seen one yet), they can be funny and so I hope that I Am a Hero turns out to be good.

In terms of the actors, well I cannot think of any who capture the looks of the characters as well as this crop do. If you live in the West and have been following Japanese films since the 2000s you will recognise faces or, at the very least voices. Yo Oizumi I have heard in numerous Studio Ghibli films such as Spirited Away (2001) and Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) and he has acted in things like Gegege no Kitaro (2007) and Bolt from the Blue (2014) – I need to finish my review for that film… – and I think he’s good at playing the everyman.

Yo Oizumi as Hideo Suzuki

Masami Nagasawa as Nurse Yabu

Kasumi Arimura as Hiromi Hayakari

The film had its premiere at the 48th Sitges Film Festival in October and it won two awards, the Grand Audience Award and Award for Best Special Effects. The film goes on general release in Japan on April 23^rd 2016.

Stacy: Attack of the Schoolgirl Zombies   

ステーシー「Sute-shi-」

Release Date: February 18^th, 2008

Running Time: 80 mins.

Director: Naoyuki Tomomatsu

Writer:  Chisato Ogawara (Screenplay), Kenji Otsuki (Original Novel),

Starring: Tomoka Hayashi, Yukijiro Hotaru, Shiro Misawa, Hinako Saeki, Yoji Tanaka, Shungiku Uchida, Toshinori Omi, Shiro Misawa, Natsuki Kato, Yasutaka Tsutsui,

IMDB

Stacy: Attack of the Schoolgirl Zombies (2008) is made by pink/horror film director Naoyuki Tomomatsu and it slots in between two other titles in his filmography, Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (2009) and Zombie Self-Defence Force (2006) and it comes as I hit a wall reviewing bad horror movies. This one has ambitions of social commentary but it has a confusingly told story where the special effects overwhelm the message.

The premise of the film is that between the ages of 15 to 17 school girls around the world die from unknown causes and come back as zombies known as ‘Stacys’ who will devour anybody and everybody around them. The only way to tell when someone is going to die is that they display bizarre levels of happiness, running around and laughing, while they sparkle and glow. These are symptoms attributed to Near Death Happiness.

Governments around the world respond by forming STACY Romero Rekill Special Units (George A. Romero reference) that round-up and gun down the zombies. These troopers are made up of young men, commonly boyfriends and family members of the Stacys who are trained to capture and kill their targets. The psychological toll on them is high. Working on a cure is Dr. Inugami Sukekiyo (Yasutaka Tsutsui). He aims to stop the STACY phenomenon and hopefully stave off the end of the human race. Unfortunately the Romero Rekill troops with him are at their limits and the number of zombies is overwhelming…

Meanwhile, in a small puppet theatre, a puppeteer named Shibukawa (Toshinori Omi) meets a girl named Eiko (Natsuki Kato). She is around the age she will turn into a Stacy. With a huge grin and a glass wind chime and a penchant for dancing, she is clearly afflicted with Near Death Happiness and she knows it.

 With her end in sight she wants to become friends with Shibukawa and get close enough so that when she turns she will be killed by someone she knows and loves which may happen because Shibukawa slowly falls in love with her…

After months of mindless zombie films we come across one that has aspirations for telling a profound story. Much like fellow horror movies Suicide Club (2002) and Audition (1999) attempted to dissect identity and address the state of decay in interpersonal relations in modern Japan. Stacy seeks to tell a story about… Well, I’m not quite clear on what because its narrative is muddled. At a stretch I would say that the film attempts to address how the absence of love drives people to turn into monsters with voids inside them created by hungry hearts. Zombification acts as the catalyst to give the audience this social commentary. How it tells the story is problematic.

Stacy is made up of two stories that are filled with characters who are meant to mirror situations and emotions before and after the Stacy transformations:

We see what is lost in a generation of girls through the fresh-faced Eiko’s transformations and Shibukawa’s romance with her. We see the lasting emotional damage wrought on those left behind in the section devoted to the Romero Rekill Units as soldiers face their loved ones.

The film awkwardly pairs these two narrative strands up by intercutting between storylines but it fails to cohere into a satisfying whole as the characters are poorly explored despite the time spent investigating their relationships. As a whole the script comes across as a series of tenuously linked episodes. Narration and direct to camera monologues by Eiko are used throughout the film to add a thread of cohesion to everything, to explain why the girls are all transforming into zombies and it all gets mawkishly sentimental. Eventually it all collapses into slow-moving chaos as the zombies jerkily sweep across the screen after every girl turns into a Stacy.

It never makes a lot of sense and I suspect that maybe it doesn’t matter. The filmmakers are more comfortable creating a cavalcade of violence which overwhelms whatever message the film may have wanted to relay.

This is where I hit the wall (and not the dodgy social commentary). A film full of schoolgirl zombies means that there is going to be a lot of violence meted out on girls and this, I quickly found, became distressing.

Perhaps I’ve overdone it on horror but I felt that the onslaught of violence on-screen directed at the schoolgirls in their iconic sailor uniforms is ugly and degrading as they are cut down in hails of bullets, chopped up in autopsies, chained down and experimented on in many, many graphic scenes. Spinal columns are extracted from bodies, eyes shot out of gurning shuffling zombies, brains are extracted from zed-heads while their eyes swivel around, legs and arms are chopped off with machetes.

The physical effects are effective in making scenes extremely gory with glistening brains and rubbery intestines on display. The one thing I can say is that there is no sexual violence but there are plenty of disturbing scenes. It’s all shot in a somewhat comedic way although it would be more than generous to describe it as funny.

Ironically, the violence I complained about played a big part in one of the big successes of the film which is the world-building.

There is something distasteful about the constant obsession with schoolgirls in Japanese media but the film takes this obsession, zombifies it and plays it out to its grim and logical conclusion. With young women taken out of circulation the world population drops, people go to war over resources and societies are on the verge of collapse. Violence against zombified women is normalised and as the film progresses we see whole industries has been created out of it, television shopping channels selling Blues Campbell (or should that be Bruce Campbell in another reference) chainsaws. Although a lot of heavy lifting is done by crude exposition such as news reports and long and unnatural sounding slices of dialogue, the general sense of despair over the situation becomes overwhelming when you witness the carnage on screen.

With a decent budget Naoyuki Tomomatsu pulls off great gore effects but the story is a mess and the violence is effectively ugly, perhaps too much so. Over the course of 80 minutes the characters and audience are subjected to a lot of horror references, carnage and running around and not a lot of coherence as everything goes batsh*t insane and so the half-hearted attempt at social commentary gets drowned out in the chaos. It was not as much fun as I thought it would be.

2.5/5

Happy weekend!!

A week left until Christmas. The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme has been announced and so I’ll get a preview of that done but for Anime UK News. Here I’ll try and close out the year with reviews of films, decent ones, not zombie trash like Stacy: Attack of the Schoolgirl Zombies (2008). Next year sees the release of the live-action adaptation of I Am a Hero and, as I mentioned during my report on the trailer earlier this week, I’m excited about it.

Subete ga F ni naru: The Perfect Insider ended and I have to say that it has become a strong contender for my anime of the year. I’m still waiting on that final episode of One-Punch Man to see if I change my mind. Blood Blockade Battlefront was fun but I still haven’t seen the last episode of that.

What’s released this weekend?

Her Father, My Lover      

友だちのパパが好き「Tomodachi no Papa ga Suki」

Release Date: December 19^th, 2015

Running Time: 105 mins.

Director: Kenji Yamauchi

Writer: Kenji Yamauchi (Screenplay),

Starring: Mitsuru Fukikoshi, Yukino Kishii, Wako Ando, Kei Ishibashi, Tomu Miyazaki, Kami Hiraiwa,

Website    IMDB

Film of the weekend by a long shot. This one played at the Tokyo International Film Festival which is where I got the synopsis from. It looks like fun and stars Mitsuru Fukikoshi who is great playing as bitter weedy guys. I liked his turn in Cold Fish (2011).

Synopsis: “You’re a sicko”. University student Taeko is appalled by her kooky friend Maya’s attraction to her father, Kyosuke. His affair with workmate Hazuki results in her pregnancy. His divorce from cancer survivor Midori, who only encourages Maya further. Meanwhile, her jilted lover Tadokoro, who also happens to be her former high school teacher, begins to stalk her. Maya’s obsession with Kyosuke sets off a chain reaction of imploding relationships, and all Taeko can do is watch…

Hana’s Miso Soup   

はなちゃんのみそ汁「Hanachan no Misoshiro」

Release Date: December 19^th, 2015

Running Time: 118 mins.

Director: Tomoaki Akune

Writer: Tomoaki Akune (Screenplay), Shingo Yasutake, Chie Yasutake, Hana Yasutake (Original Book)

Starring: Ryoko Hirosue, Kenichi Takito, Emina Akamatsu, Mahiru Konno, Kiwako Harada,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis: Chie (Ryoko Hirosue) is a happy woman. She has a boyfriend named Shingo (Kenichi Takito) and her life seems idyllic but when she is diagnosed with breast cancer her world is rocked. Shingo steps up to the plate and asks her to marry him. Despite having to undergo treatment the two try for a child and they succeed in having one: Hana. Chie is determined to pass on memories of time spent together with her daughter and that includes making miso soup.

Eiga Youkai Watch: Enma Daioh to Itsutsu no Monogatari da Nyan!   

映画 妖怪ウォッチ エンマ大王と5つの物語だニャン!「Eiga Youkai Watch: Enma Daioh to Itsutsu no Monogatari da Nyan!」

Release Date: December 19^th, 2015

Running Time: 110 mins.

Director: Shigeharu Takahashi, Shinji Ushiro

Writer: Yoichi Kato (Screenplay), Miho Tanaka, Akihiro Hino (Original Scenario), Takuzo Nagano (Original Character Design), LEVEL-5 (Original Creator),

Starring: Haruka Tomatsu (Keita Amano), Etsuko Kozakura (Jibanyam), Yuuki Kaji (Fuyunyan), Chie Satou (Kanchi Imada), Aya Endo (Fumika Kodama),

Website ANN MAL  

Synopsis: For the second Youkai Watch movie we get an omnibus tale made up of five stories which are connected to a a machine which turns Keita into a ghost nd a mission to travel into the future to meet the next owner of the device to try and figure out a way to save Keita.

As well as this film, audiences will get the chance to see the five minute short Snack World (スナックワールド) which is directed by Takeshi Mori and written by Akihiro Hino.

Alice in Dreamland   

アリス・イン・ドリームランド「Arisu in Dori-murando」

Release Date: December 19^th, 2015

Running Time: 110 mins.

Director: Kentaro Hachisuka, Mari Shimizu

Writer: Kentaro Hachisuka (Screenplay),

Starring: Aya Uchida (Alice), Hiro Shimono (The White Rabbit), Kazuya Ichijou (The Dark), Shiori Katsuta (The Red Queen), Mai Hashimoto (The Cheshire Cat),

Website ANN MAL

Synopsis: Alice in Dreamland is a stop-motion/doll animation film which was crowd-funded. Mari Shimizu’s dolls take centre stage in a new spin on Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland tale.

Ryuichi Hirokawa Human Battlefield   

広河隆一　人間の戦場「Hirokawa Ryuichi Ningen no Senjou」

Release Date: December 19^th, 2015

Running Time: 98 mins.

Director: Saburo Hasegawa

Writer: N/A

Starring: Ryuichi Hirokawa

Website    IMDB

Here’s an interesting article about Ryuichi Hirokawa which gives more about the famous photographer’s background.

Synopsis from documentary Japan: A film covering two years of Ryuichi Hirokawa, a 71 year-old photojournalist and the founder of DAYS JAPAN, a monthly photojournalism reviews.

The film follows Hirokawa visit his origins, Chernobyl and Palestine, and through this we discover the man, and the subjects of his work, what he calls “human battlefields”, any place where human dignity is at risk.

Gekijoban: Tokyo Joshi Puroresu “Bakuon Serenade”   

劇場版　東京女子プロレス　爆音セレナーデ「Gekijoban: Tokyo Joshi Puroresu “Bakuon Serenade”」

Release Date: December 19^th, 2015

Running Time: 101 mins.

Director: Michiru Arashiyama

Writer: N/A

Starring: Yuka Sakazaki, MIZUHO, Ai Shimizu, Rika Tatsumi,

Synopsis: A documentary following female pro-wrestlers in Japan.

Japanese Movie Box Office Rankings for this Week:

Orange (2015/12/11)

007 Spectre (2015/12/04)

Haha to Kuraseba (2015/12/11)

Kamen Rider X Kamen Rider Ghost & Drive: Super Movie War Genesis  (2015/12/11)

I Love Snoopy The Peanuts Movie (2015/12/04)

Sugiara Chiune (2015/12/05)

125 Years Memory (2015/12/05)

Girlz und Panzer der Film  (2015/11/21)

High Speed! – Free! Starting Days – (2015/12/05)

Little Prince (2015/11/21)

The Machine Girl    

片腕マシンガール「Kataude Mashin Garu」

Release Date: August 02^nd, 2008

Running Time: 96 mins.

Director: Noboru Iguchi

Writer:  Noboru Iguchi (Screenplay),

Starring: Minase Yashiro, Asami, Kentaro Shimazu, Honoka, Nobuhiro Nishihara, Ryosuke Kawamura, Kentaro Kishi, Taro Suwa, Nahana,

IMDB

Over the summer months I reviewed Sushi Typhoon movies. This is the label responsible for many splatter films and was created to sell movies to westerners based on what Japanese filmmakers think will sell, namely extreme action, horror and all of the clichés that are conjured up when we think about Japan. Machine Girl is the perfect encapsulation of this and it isn’t even a Sushi Typhoon film! It doesn’t get any more Japanese than a schoolgirl fighting ninjas and yakuza with blood spraying everywhere. What makes our central protagonist a machine girl? The huge machine gun she totes in place of her left arm.

The opening sequence sees our titular Machine Girl, Ami Hyuga (Minase Yashiro), blow the gore, gristle, and guts from a bunch bullies with no explanations given. The film then jumps back in time to when our sailor-suited protagonist was still a normal girl. Her brother Yu (Ryosuke Kawamura) is being hounded by bullies and with no parents to take care of them they only have each other which is why Ami is devastated when Yu is killed by the bullies.

With righteous anger fuelling her search for the bad boys Ami tracks them down and after a series of battles involving their parents she discovers they are led by Sho Kimura (Nobuhiro Nishihara), the son of a ninja family who make their money from being yakuza. His father (Kentaro Shimazu) is a snarling swod-swinging disciplinarian with bad hair and a mean temper. Sho’s mother (Honoka) is even worse, a woman who is smoking hot in terms of looks but ice cold in terms of empathy, heartless and cruel she packs a decidedly deadly collection of devices which she uses on victims.

These guys are so rich that they can afford a massive house complete with staff who are maimed and killed whenever they upset their masters – witness the sushi chef who must eat his own fingers, complete with icky crunching sounds, and a maid who is throttled to death.

Ami has her work cut out fighting these guys and she soon has her arm cut off when they capture and torture her but with the help of ex-biker chick Miki (Asami) and her husband she comes back to the fight with a mini-gun attached to her body. With shuriken and bullets whizzing about, this is a showdown between some of Japan’s most iconic fetishes: school girls and ninjas.

LET BATTLE COMMENCE!

The Machine Girl is the best splatter film I have seen. It is precision tooled action awesomeness that plays with every Japan related fetish you can name with a blood-spattered grin. Unlike many other splatter films I have reviewed so far this one features great direction both in terms of what’s shown on screen and when we get to see it. Director Noboru Iguchi knows where he is going and gets there at a fair clip, the pace of the film flowing fast with little to no down-time between gags and action.

Director Noboru Iguchi can derail a film when he loses control of his silly and pervy side but not here. He is laser-focussed on playing up clichés and fetishes and so there is a purpose to every scene and camera angle and it is to further the awesomness and awesome silliness of the film, providing the perfect B-movie texture. Nary a scene goes by where we’re not firmly placed in a location and soon staring down the barrel of Ami’s gun, watching shuriken zoom towards us or getting a glimpse of Ami’s panties as she spins, jumps, and kicks and her skirt lifts up while she beats up a variety of bad guys.

Editing is rapid during the fights and measured during the more dramatic and comedic bits and it is all played up straight which just emphasises the cheesiness and bizarreness of the fights where sword-wielding ninjas can pop out of nowhere and start slashing at Ami, yakuza heavies start blasting away at people and Ami and her biker friends blasts them back wit her minigun. The special effects and pints of blood sprayed around are fun to see and the cheesiness is emphasised from their excessive use. The camera zooms in and out of gore shots and intense knife fights but never for too long. The violence meted out between characters is over the top but perfectly pitched to ensure the audience is never left too uncomfortable while gorehounds will still get lots of fun. The violence and sexiness is almost always tastefully shown and never as dumb and offensive and lame as they can be in Iguchi’s other films.

The gore quotient is somewhere in the middle of the splatter film wave but it features the best use of physical and digital special effects that skew close to realistic but are pushed a little bit further for fun and to play up the fakeness of certain aspects. With blood spraying out and CG shuriken flying about, there’s plenty of things in motion but Yoshihiro Nishimura’s (Helldriver, Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl) special effects get their real work out with the prosthetic limbs and the fake heads that scatter across the set.

The acting is pitch-perfect. Women take the lead in this one training each other and battling wave upon wave of burly men and look totally cool while doing it. In this film it is guys who are the damsels in distress. The bad guys are all snarling and glaring thugs while Sushi Typhoon movie stalwart Asami is given a meaty role as Miki, mother of another boy murdered by the bullies. She seizes it with gusto, looking gorgeous as tough biker chick covered in blood and beating the stuffing out of people and going through a range of emotions while doing so.

The engine at the heart of the film is Minase Yashiro as Ami, the titular Machine Girl who captures the mood of the film by playing everything straight. With an aura of seriousness she embarks upon her quest for revenge with grim determination that sees her athletically leaping around the set, overcoming torture and discarding prosthetic limbs to attach the mini-gun and look totally cool as she blasts bad guys into oblivion.

All in all, this is a fun film that I have rewatched numerous times this year. It’s a film that is easily re-watchable and as far as I am concerned, out of everything I have seen it is Noboru Iguchi’s best work and better than anything his fellow splatter directors have made.

4/5

Happy Weekend and Merry Christmas, people!

I hope you guys had a good Christmas. I have had a lot of time off work recently and so I watched a lot of films including Howl’s Moving Castle, 100 Yen Love, Arrietty, and It’s a Wonderful Life. I also got lots of useful presents and I am now playing Fallout 4 over the rest of my winter holidays.

Only one post this year and that’s The Machine Girl (2008) which is a splatter film that is a lot of fun.

What’s released this weekend?

Eiga Chibi Maruko-chan – A Boy from Italy –   

映画ちびまる子ちゃん　イタリアから来た少年「Eiga Chibi Marukochan Itaria kara kita Shounen」

Release Date: December 23^rd, 2015

Running Time: 94 mins.

Director: Jun Takagi

Writer: Momoko Sakura (Screenplay/Original Creator),

Starring: TARAKO (Momoko “Chibi Maruko-chan” Sakura), Kei Tomiyama (Tomozo Sakura), Kyousei Tsukui (Sekiguchi-kun), Masami Kikuchi (Hanawa-kun), Mie Suzuki (Sumire Sakura),

Website ANN

Synopsis: An Italian boy named Marco is one of six foreign children placed in Chibi Maruko-chan’s town on a home stay. Marc o confesses his love to Maruko and tries to court her. The film will also follow Maruko and her classmates as they travel to Kyoto and Osaka.

Showa Genroku Era Comic Storytelling Yotaro’s Wandering Director’s Cut      

昭和元禄落語心中　“与太郎放浪篇”ディレクターズカット版「Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju Yotaro Horo Hen Direkuta-zu Katto Hen」

Release Date: December 23^rd, 2015

Running Time: 94 mins.

Director: Mamoru Hatakeyama

Writer: Jun Kumagai (Screenplay), Haruko Kumota (Original Creator),

Starring: Tomokazu Seki (Yotaro), Akira Ishida (Kikuhiko), Chaurin (Bansai Tsuburaya), Megumi Hayashibara (Miyokichi), Yu Kobayashi (Konatsu),

Website ANN

Showa Genroku Era Comic Storytelling is an adaptation of a manga by Haruko Kumota the anime will premiere on January 8 so why is it in a cinema? According to Anime News Network “a theatrical screening of the “director’s cut” of the OAD episodes bundled with the manga’s seventh and eighth volumes will be played at Shinjuku Cinemart in Tokyo from December 26 to January 8 (with a break in December 30 and January 1), and in Cinemart Shinsaibashi in Osakafrom January 2 to January 8.”

Synopsis: The anime’s first story revolves around a mature prisoner who was released on good behavior during Japan’s Showa Genroku era (1960s to early 1970s). He is called Yotarō by others, a term that means an “anti-hero” or a “dim-witted man.” When he returns to society, he starts a new life in rakugo (comic storytelling). Touched by Yakumo’s role as the “grim reaper,” he asks the master to take him in as an apprentice.

Denki Groove the Movie?    

DENKI GROOVE THE MOVIE? 石野卓球とピエール瀧「DENKI GROOVE THE MOVIE? Ishino Takkyu to Pie-ru Taki」

Release Date: December 26^th, 2015

Running Time: 115 mins.

Director: Hitoshi Ohne

Writer: Kenji Yamauchi (Screenplay),

Starring: Masakazu Amahisa, Andi Absolon, Masahiro Hidaka, Kera, Shinco, Pierre Taki, Keigo Oyamada,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis: Denki Groove celebrated their 25^th anniversary last year and their music has been a mainstay of Japanese pop music. This doc contains footage fro their debut in 1989 to now and features everybody involved over the years giving their view on the group. It’s directed by Hitoshi One, the dude behind Moteki and Be My Baby.

REVIVAL This is mixed martial arts of Japan   

REVIVAL これが日本の総合格闘技だ「REVIVAL kore ga Nihon no sougou kakutougida」

Release Date: December 26^th, 2015

Running Time: 100 mins.

Director: Shigeru Saeki

Writer: N/A

Starring: Takashi Otsuka, Shunsuke Kitada,  Yuuma Horiuchi,

Website

Synopsis: I know nothing about MMA but it looks like DEEP has brought MMA to Japan and they stage massive events like DEEP DREAM IMPACT 2014 at Saitama Super Arena. We get a behind the scenes look at the tournament and the people involved. DEEP have a YouTube channel so you can check out some of the fights.

Japanese Movie Box Office Results for this Week:

Eiga Youkai Watch: Enma Daioh to Itsutsu no Monogatari da Nyan! (2015/12/19)

Star Wars The Force Unleashed (2015/12/18)

Orange (2015/12/11)

Haha to Kuraseba (2015/12/11)

007 Spectre (2015/12/04)

Kamen Rider X Kamen Rider Ghost & Drive: Super Movie War Genesis  (2015/12/11)

I Love Snoopy The Peanuts Movie (2015/12/04)

Sugiara Chiune (2015/12/05)

High Speed! – Free! Starting Days – (2015/12/05)

125 Years Memory (2015/12/05)

Fires on the Plain        

野火   「Nobi」

Duration: 87 mins.

Release Date: July 25^th 2015 Seen at Raindance

Director: Shinya Tsukamoto

Writer: Shinya Tsukamoto (Screenplay), Shohei Ooka (Original Novel)

Cast: Shinya Tsukamoto, Lily Franky, Tatsuya Nakamura, Yuko Nakamura, Dean Newcombe, Yusaku Mori,

Website   IMDB

War is hell, as the saying goes, and no more so is that better demonstrated than in Fires on the Plain, a harrowing and horrifying story about a Japanese soldier’s efforts to survive the fall of the Philippines in the final days of the Second World War. From the first scene to the last it serves up a series of hellish vignettes of one man’s struggle against increasingly desperate odds, his plight made visceral and powerful by the director’s passion and experience.

The film Fires on the Plain takes place during the closing stages of the war. The Americans are invading Leyte Island in the Philippines and are hot on the heels of demoralised soldiers of the Japanese army, all of whom are looking to evacuate from the island. We see their increasingly desperate struggle from the perspective of an army conscript named Tamura (Shinya Tsukamoto) who is sick with tuberculosis.

He is forced into the field with a grenade by a commander who cannot waste resources on keeping a dying man alive and suggests Tamura blows himself up. Tamura doesn’t want to give up so easily and clings to life. He wanders around the jungle and bounces between broken platoons and brutal battles as everybody heads to the port at Palompon to be evacuated to Cebu but it is a journey that will lead him down a dark path where he will have to hold on to his humanity as he encounters betrayal, extreme violence, and worse…

The film is based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Shohei Ooka and Kon Ichikawa’s seminal 1959 war film and for director Shinya Tsukamoto it has been a passion project he has spent ten years bringing to life. Tsukamoto may be a legendary director and a favourite on the film festival circuit known because of his hyper-violent horror films like Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) and dark dramas like Vital (2003) but making an anti-war film where Japanese soldiers are portrayed as monstrous and weak is a controversial thing and so getting financiers was a tough task. With the money-men backing away from the disturbing subject-matter contained in the story, the lack of money can be seen in the way that Tsukamoto has filmed everything: shot with a digital camera, lots of close-ups of weary faces, battles off-screen, props and sets scavenged from everyday objects and locations and used judiciously. Tsukamoto utilised a small cast and crew and even took up multiple roles on the production including producing, directing, writing, and taking the lead role of Tamura. Despite the lack of resources Tsukamoto has created a truly powerful anti-war film.

Shot on location in the Philippines the film has a distinct beauty. Tamura’s endless trudging through the verdant forest reveals what looks like an untrammelled paradise, an almost impenetrable mass of vegetation made up of trees the darkest of greens and flowers of purple and pink. This beautiful location is the canvas for a film that shows the horror of war as Tamura’s ramblings lead him to discover that the humans crawling around the interior of the forests, little more than emaciated dirty little figures, corrupt everything with death and destruction and madness.

This is not the mighty army full of heroes following brave charges led by sword-wielding officers secure honour and glory. Propaganda has no place in this anti-war film. This is a mass of chaos and ugliness where a war gone wrong has reduced men to their worst selves. Officers brutally beat their men to keep order, scavengers like wily old con-man Yasuda (Lily Franky channeling his manic mirth to create a menacing sociopath) take advantage of terrified child-like younger soldiers like Nagamatsu (Yusaku Mori) who crack under the pressure and turn their rifles on each other. Tamura has to navigate all this and through him we see what has turned men into this rabble.

To survive, Tamura and the increasingly crazed characters he encounters turn on civilians and each other, commit murder and embark upon cannibalism as the film becomes even more bleak. It would be tempting to call this Tsukamoto’s horror sensationalism but the events in this movie are in the book which is based on real life – these soldiers had to survive to get back home somehow. Tsukamoto also interviewed many veterans of the war. If his message is that war is hell then he displays it perfectly here as we see madness consume people.

To show how madness shapes people, Tsukamoto portrays war in all its grisly and miserable detail and goes further in his effort to make an anti-war film and dives into the realm of the hyper-real with his style. When we first see the men they are more or less routed by the Americans and running out of supplies. Their uniforms in tatters, smeared in dirt and blood of battle, the privations of mis-managed resources results in men who are more or less a straggling parade of fly-covered skeletons who are half-delusional, half-starved, and half-heartedly trying to get to safety whilst navigating constant American attack. The attacks come out of nowhere and are genuinely scary, the sudden thunderous crack of bullets zipping through the forest from unseen machine gun positions startled soldiers and audience members, off-screen aircraft menace soldiers who look up in terror (while the audience girds itself for more visual horror) before dropping bombs. Tsukamoto uses his experience making gory movies by splashing a lot of blood around, some of it ending up on the lens, and many limbs are thrown about. In one stand-out scene a crazed crush of Japanese soldiers crawling towards what they perceive to be safety get caught up in a machine gun attack which we see executed in sickening slow motion as arms and faces are torn off. It is a horrifying spectacle that uses gratuitous violence to get audiences sitting bolt upright in their seats and feeling ill as it rams home the terror and pain of the violence. Eventually some of the soldiers just give up from despair or craziness and it feels like Tamaura is trudging through the halls of hell as the dead lay scattered around him in the landscape, the dying and the crazy calling out to each other creating a cacophony of misery.

There is a thread of humanity to carry the audience through this suffering and that is Tamura as our lead character. He is a survivor and our guide through this hellish experience in the green inferno which is the jungle of Leyte but it is less through army-instilled skills and more through dumb-luck and dogged determination which humanises him. Before the war Tamura was a writer and married and it is visions of his wife and a desire to retain his decency and humanity that carries him through encounters with death and disorder. Every scene and detail reveals the sham of military escapades orchestrated and led by unfeeling and callous men, reveals the horror of privations and violence, reveals the damage it can do to the human soul. Tamura and others may survive the war but they are clearly broken and you have to ask if any of the horror you saw was worth the loss of life and the damage done.

If there are any drawbacks then it might be that the relentless violence may put people off. While I did spend some scenes wondering what effect a bigger budget might have had such as allowing Tsukamoto to record events on film rather than digitally so he could get a picture with a fulsome quality but the film is still stunning at times and the digital effect useful. There are great wide-angle shots of Tamura stumbling across a ridge, the endless blue of the sky turning into a burning orange as the sun sets or even more menacing colours as Tamura undergoes starvation-induced delusions, an example of limitations providing inspiration.

As far as anti-war films go, despite the limited budget, it is a visual tour de force thanks to Tsukamoto’s imagination bringing to life the scary sequences of the lead character’s nightmarish disease-fuelled experiences as a rogue Japanese soldier trying to survive World War II as everything falls apart around him. Just by having a political message it differentiates itself from every other film released in the year and for it to be anti-war is important when Japan seems to be sliding into increased militarism, however justified by threats from other countries – it gets us to think.

4/5

I met Shinya Tsukamoto before the movie was screened and he was remarkably laid back. I didn’t get the chance to interview him but I did get my picture taken with him and an autograph which lies safely in a DVD case… I have reviewed a lot of his films and you can see which ones be looking at my profile of the director.

Welcome to my last post of 2015.

2015 has been marked by more of the same as I wrote about and attended films and film festivals. I got work from magazines and other websites. I practiced Japanese. Business as usual. However there are some changes in terms of my future. I have the chance to go to Japan and that has been a goal I have had for a laughably long time but I have been too cowardly to pursue it until now but before that…

The resolutions I made last year were:

My resolutions for 2015

• I will stop being a coward and get this Japan trip underway,
• I will continue to speak and write in Japanese every day and practice my conversation and comprehension skills with friends,
• I will review more films and continue to write in different styles,
• I will investigate the Japanese indie film scene much more,
• I will update this blog’s reviews, pages, and post more images,
• I will try not to bore you (because I really do appreciate those who visit my blog).

In terms of the blog I reviewed something like thirty-three films in 2014 and in an effort to achieve the third resolution I broke that in 2015 with thirty-four :P, most of which was b-movie schlock but I like that my archives are full of weird titles. I added a lot more into my drafts queue but never published them for various reason. I want to review more but getting the time to do so is hard.

My favourite reviews? The Machine Girl, Puzzle, Patema Inverted, As the Gods Will, and Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno, Fires on the Plain, I Am a Hero.

I didn’t review The Martian, Sicarrio, or SPECTRE, which is annoying because they were brilliant films.

Now that I have mentioned reviews, I hit my fifth resolution by revamping the look of the blog, the film review archives, and old review formats. I also combed through some titles and added posters.

My sixth resolution, boring people, well… That’s for others to decide but I have a larger amount of comments than ever before.

Outside of the blog, I did speak and write more in Japanese and that was in part to the fact that I made more Japanese friends and met them on a weekly basis to keep my practice up. I also took more time out during the day to keep writing (especially when a Studio Ghibli film was on television).

Now we get to my resolution about my Japan trip. This year I made a friend who had just returned home after living in Japan and with her encouragement I applied for a visa allowing me to enter Japan some time in 2016. I am slowly working my nerve up to go by doing lots of overtime to build up money and studying Japanese extra hard. I’m surrounded by people who are being supportive and offering advice. It will be difficult to leave people behind but this is a big opportunity which will help me grow as an individual.

My resolutions for 2016

• I will go to Japan,
• I will continue to review films.

I’m keeping it simple. 2016 will be the year I go to Japan.

I would like to thank everyone who has visited my blog and commented on it and I hope you continue to come back and share your opinions and film experiences with me plus your support.

2016 is on the horizon and I hope that there’s more peace and harmony and happiness in the world and we can share it.

Goodbye, 2015, goodbye. I have had a lot of happy memories this year and I hope to make more next year in 2016.

Happy New Year!

100 Yen Love   

百円の恋 「Hyaku-en no Koi」

Running Time: 113 mins.

Release Date: December 20th, 2014

Director: Masaharu Take

Writer: Masaharu Take (Screenplay),

Starring: Sakura Ando, Hirofumi Arai, Miyoko Inagawa, Saori, Shohei Uno, Tadashi Sakata, Yuki Okita,

Website   IMDB

The sports film is a popular genre because most of us participate or are interested in sports. It is also popular because sport offers an arc of development for the main protagonist who journeys from the bottom to the top through training, usually for a make-or-break final match. 100 Yen Love works with this formula and in a year when boxing films have made a comeback with Southpaw (2015) and Creed (2015), it proves to be a strong and distinctive drama thanks to a terrific performance from leading lady Sakura Ando as Ichiko, a girl who goes from zero to not quite hero but is inspirational nonetheless.

What makes Ichiko inspirational?

Our first sight of Ichiko (Sakura Ando) is a slobby 32-year-old (almost) hikikomori sponging off her parents. She lives a messy lifestyle of fast food and video games but all of that is infringed upon when her recently divorced younger sister moves back into the family home with her son. Ichiko’s bad attitude creates tensions with her sister and nephew until the two women fight which makes Ichiko move out and find a place of her own.

With rent to pay and little work experience she is reduced to finding a job at a 100 Yen shop where she works the night shift with a bunch of losers, leches, and lunatics. It is here she keeps encountering a middle-aged boxer named Yuji Kano (Hirofumi Arai) who puts the other men Ichiko knows in the shade with his physicality.

Ichiko is enthralled with him and whenever she passes the local boxing gym she watches Yuji practice. He may not be a good boxer in reality but he is interested in her and it isn’t long before the pair dating. Alas, their relationship is rocky and worse is in store for Ichiko as others in her life take advantage of her. Ichiko will have to overcome the negativity of those sharing her life as well as her own low self-esteem which makes her value herself at 100 Yen. Boxing might just be the ticket to becoming a champion.

As far as boxing films go the story comes off as rather unambitious, a little love story with no major millionaire making title fight at the end, but director/writer Masaharu Date aims to deglamourise the film clichés, turning the story from a potential pugilistic pot-boiler into a very Japanese character study which presents a pretty frank picture of how people devalue themselves and the poor treatment women may get from others.

100 Yen Love is Ichiko’s story and it is a chance for lead actor Sakura Ando to showcase her talents as an actor in total control of her body and mind. Many viewers will be familiar with Ando from her performance as psychotic and highly charismatic cute cult leader in Love Exposure (2009) but here, when we first see Ichiko we see a belligerent slob going nowhere fast. It is easy to be dismissive of her due to the way she treats herself and others with a passive-aggressive manner, barely smiling, and always on the verge of snapping back angrily at others interactions. Ando’s physicality channels inner lassitude and ire as she walks around with a permanent slouch, moving around jerkily less with clear direction and more like being lost in a fog of sheer resentment for the world.

As tempting as it is to write off the character it is a mistake to see Ichiko as a bad person and Ando’s superior acting reveals Ichiko’s weaknesses.

We follow Ichiko as she ventures outside of her comfort zone, gets a job and a boyfriend, and she reveals herself to be embarrassingly and touchingly naïve and hopeful in embarking in what are clearly foreign things for her. She lets others take advantage of her and puts up with foul co-workers. The men are downright awful and one has a mean case of malignant narcissism and evil intentions. A horrific rape scene transpires where she pleads with her attacker about how inexperienced she is. If work sucks, her love life is pretty rotten. She desperately tries to placate Yuji, who is himself a resentful and immature character fading into mediocrity at boxing. He makes horrid comments to keep Ichiko on edge because he doesn’t respect her and proves to be a faithless at times. Ando’s acting exposes how fragile Ichiko actually is after all of the hostility demonstrated and serves as a crucial thread for us to follow as she transforms from that early expressive and surly person emanating negative energy, to uncertainty with her caged body language and submissive looks. She ably reveals a devastatingly awful truth: she is desperate to please and willing to put up with anything and the men in her life are willing to pile on a whole load of awfulness onto her. It is a terrible combination and one that is unsustainable.

At the midway point in the film we have seen a parade of scenes of degradation leavened with dabs of dubious humour but the rot of self-hatred has long been there and the backstory has been perfectly shown. We saw it in the early scenes with her family and the inner angst of the character that Ando’s body language translates for the screen. Despite being in her thirties Ichiko is like a hormonal teenager, a person who stopped growing and thanks to her increasingly awful demeanour, alienated those around her and thus became alienated from others making her bad manners worse. A vicious cycle grew and soon Ichiko’s sense of worthlessness became ingrained as rejection and resentment built.

Everything is presented in a semi-serious manner with black humour and Ando’s acting making things bearable, funny at points. More importantly, all of this leads organically into Ichiko taking up boxing to better herself: her bad past, lack of direction in life and a combination of incidents we have seen has led to an overwhelming sense of frustration which has made her commit to the sport which offered her direction and focus, people who are willing to support her and help her discover her true potential and reach it when those in her past would abandon her. It is a genius lay up for the film to knock the story out of the park with a combination of montages done to upbeat music as Ichiko trains like a woman determined to win at all costs. Her goal? Prove herself to others, overturn all of the horrid things that she has experienced, and most importantly, prove to herself that she can be better.

Again, Ando transforms magically before our eyes from the hostile but timid overweight and ungainly girl at the start to a sleek and gamine lady, toned and tough, hair cut short. Her movements become much more focussed and direct, her attitude opens up and she has an energy that is infectious. We watch her train hard and get involved in the process, willing her to be better. The results are almost immediate. She scares those men who used her and provides support to others. The confidence, competence, and competition are dazzling and a joy to behold after seeing all of her uncertainty and self hate.

What some may not realise until the final fight is that Ichiko is a girl who lacks encouragement. At some point before we meet her she has lost hope and others lost interest in her unless it was for cheap thrills. She has had enough. Ichiko uses boxing as a way to take back control of her life. A dramatic flashback when she is in the climactic bout reveals the traumatic incidents of the past that are pushing her. She can take the damage, we know that, but most revealingly she needs comfort as well. The hints were always there. Ichiko may have liked Yuji but what he really became fascinated by when she watched boxing was the sense of sportsmanship, that two fighters can hug each other at the end of a match despite hurting one another. That’s what she needed, people to embrace her and not reject her even when she hurt them.

She gets it at the end of the film.

We see those around her watch her fight and their reactions clearly show that they are re-assessing her for the determination and grit she has displayed to get to the end and the reckless courage to step into the ring and fight shows she has dignity. 100 Yen Love? Ichiko’s stock has risen by the end of the film and seeing her come out standing is satisfying and inspirational.

The filming style is grungy and immediate, the acting is straight from the hip and heart, and the script strips away all the meet-cute clichés of the expected love story and imagines what it is really like to be a thirty-something woman in Japan who uses sport to better herself. In the process of doing this Date a stirring tale of a come-back kid we can all root for.

4.5/5

Also, fun fact, Creephyp composed and performed the film’s theme song, “Hyakuhachi en no Koi” which can be heard at the end of the film (it’s a pretty miserable song despite the hyper melody) and they are a key part in two of Daigo Matsui’s film, How Selfish I Am! (2013) and Our Huff and Puff Journey (2015) since they inspired the two film’s story, made the music for them and even appeared in them.

This is one of my huge reviews where I basically explain how I saw the entire movie. I apologise if I sent you to sleep the film itself is really good, probably one of the best J-movies I saw last year and I recommend it.

Yakuza Apocalypse: The Great War of the Underworld was at many of last year’s international film festivals and it has finally made its way to Britain via the UK anime distributor Manga Entertainment. It starts its cinema run from January 06^th and it will be screened at various cinemas across the country. To see if your cinema is going to play it and to book tickets, check the film’s UK website.

Yakuza Apocalypse: The Great War of the Underworld   

極道大戦争「Goku dou dai sensou」

Release Date: June 20^th, 2015 (Japan)

UK Release Date: January 06^th, 2016

UK Distributor: Manga Entertainment

Running Time: 125 mins.

Director: Takashi Miike

Writer: Yoshitaka Yamaguchi (Screenplay),

Starring: Hayato Ichihara, Riko Narumi, Lily Franky, Reiko Takashima, Kiyohio Shibukawa, Sho Aoyagi, Mio Yuki, Pierre Taki, Denden, Yayan Ruhian, Yuki Sakurai,

Website IMDB UK Website

The film is the latest from Takashi Miike, famous for titles such as Audition (1999) and the Dead or Alive gangster series. His early films consist of madcap exploitation productions but in recent years he has courted the mainstream with remakes and adaptations such as 13 Assassins (2010) and As the Gods Will (2014). With Yakuza Apocalypse he heads back to the more extreme cinema he is famous for. I have seen the film and it is fun but it takes a while to get going. When it does get going Miike does show he still has that magic.

Synopsis: Akira (Hayato Ichihara) is inspired the by fearsome reputation of the so-called “invincible” yakuza boss Genyo Kamiura (Lily Franky) to become a yakuza himself. What he finds is not what he expected. His fellow gangsters don’t play by old-school rules of loyalty and honour. Even worse, they treat him like a fool and his sensitive skin means he cannot tattoos which makes him the laughing-stock of the criminal underwold. Things change when Akira gets caught up in an assassination of his boss Kamiura leads to the revelation that Kamiura is a bloodsucking vampire and things get even crazier when Kageyama inherits those vampiric powers and must battle a brutal gang of scary monsters and superfreaks…

I would have posted this on Anime UK News so a larger audience could have read it but the website has been down since December 31^st. I’ll have a review of it ready for next week.

I posted this news story last year on Anime UK News but with the date getting closer a reminder might be in order (apparently, this screening has been hugely popular):

The two live-action Attack on Titan movies will play at Derby’s QUAD Cinema on January 22^nd from 8:45 pm. Tickets for the screening of the films are already on sale now and can be purchased at the cinema’s site.

The films adapt Hajime Isayama’s hit manga and were directed by Shinji Higuchi and he is famous for being director of special-effects heavy films like The Floating Castle (2011) and The Sinking of Japan (2006). Reviews already released state that the story has been reimagined and characters have been changed so go into this with an open mind. The titular titans are said to be really creepy and they have been brought to the screen by splatter film director Yoshihiro Nishimura. I have reviewed a number of his works including Helldriver (2011) and Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (2009).

The film is screened as part of its Satori Screen series which highlights East Asian cinema. Other titles that have featured as part of Satori Screen have included the live-action Rurouni Kenshin (2012) and the Satoshi Kon film Paprika (2006).

Manga Entertainment UK are releasing this one and they are going all in with screenings for films in cinemas across the UK as can be seen for their big roll-out for Yakuza Apocalypse.

Attack on Titan     

進撃の巨人 ATTACK ON TITAN「Shingeki no Kyojin: Attack on Titan」

Release Date: August 01^st, 2015 (Japan)

Running Time: 98 mins.

Director: Shinji Higuchi

Writer: Yusuke Watanabe, Tomohiro Machiyama (Screenplay), Hajime Isayama (Original Manga),

Starring: Haruma Miura, Hiroki Hasegawa, Kiko Mizuhara, Kanata Hongo, Rina Takeda, Ayame Misaki, Jun Kunimura, Satomi Ishihara, Pierre Taki, Nanami Sakuraba, Takahiro Miura,

Website IMDB

Synopsis: 100 years ago, an-eating titans appeared out of nowhere and drove human civilization to the brink of collapse. The last remnants of humanity built a city behind a series of giant walls, bigger than the largest titan known to man, to defend themselves and for 100 years they have lived in peace. But then, one day, a titan bigger than any seen before appears and destroys a wall letting a flood of titans descend upon humanity. Eren Jaeger (Haruma Miura) and his “sister” Mikasa Ackerman (Kiko Mizuhara) join the fight against the titans…

Attack on Titan: End of the World      

進撃の巨人 ATTACK ON TITAN エンド　オブ　ザ　ワールド　「Shingeki no Kyojin: Attack on Titan – Endo obu za Wa-rudo」

Release Date: September 19^th, 2015 (Japan)

Running Time: 87 mins.

Director: Shinji Higuchi

Writer: Yusuke Watanabe, Tomohiro Machiyama (Screenplay), Hajime Isayama (Original Manga),

Starring: Haruma Miura, Hiroki Hasegawa, Kiko Mizuhara, Kanata Hongo, Rina Takeda, Ayame Misaki, Jun Kunimura, Satomi Ishihara, Pierre Taki, Nanami Sakuraba, Takahiro Miura,

Website   IMDB

Synopsis: Eren Jaeger (Haruma Miura) is tasked with sealing a hole in a wall that the Titans are flooding through but he is swamped by the enemy despite the help of Shikishima and others. Even Armin (Kanata Hongo) is in trouble as a titan swallows him but a new, black-haired titan appears and begins to help the human forces…

Third Window Films are going to release three great films from legendary director Takeshi Kitano this year and the first of those films is Hana-bi. It has been at least over a decade since I last saw it but I still remember parts of it clearly and its impact on me at the time was pretty profound considering what went from a random DVD purchase shot to near top of my most respected films of all time and I went and bought a poster. I think now is the perfect time to get reacquainted…

Hana-bi is an award-winning classic. It took the Golden Lion at the 1997 Venice Film Festival and was named Best Non-European Film at the 1997 European Film Academy Awards and now thanks to Third Window Films it’s available on Blu-ray with a new 2K master from Office Kitano. Here’s more information on the film that was available on a press release:

Hana-bi   

花火「Hana-bi」

Release Date: January 24^th, 1998 (Japan)

UK Release Date: January 11^th, 2016

UK Distributor: Third Window Films

Running Time: 125 mins.

Director: Takashi Kitano

Writer: Takashi Kitano (Screenplay),

Starring: Takeshi Kitano, Kayoko Kishimoto, Ren Osugi, Susumu Terajima, Tetsu Watanabe,

Synopsis:  Former Police officer Nishi feels responsible for the shattered lives of his loved ones. His partner Horibe has been crippled in a disastrous stakeout, a colleague is shot dead by the same villain, and his own wife has a terminal illness. In debt to a yakuza loanshark, Nishi conceives a bank robbery to provide for his partner, help the dead cop’s widow, and take one last holiday throughout Japan with his wife and share a final taste of happiness… A highly original crime drama written, directed and starring Takeshi Kitano.

Extras:

The first 1000 copies of each feature cardboard slipcases with new illustrated

artwork by Marie Bergeron supported by Filmdoo’s Film Creativity Competition.

30 minute documentary from the film’s original release

Interview with Takeshi Kitano from the film’s original release

New Audio commentary by film critic Mark Schilling

Happy weekend, dear readers!

Welcome to the first trailer post of 2016. It’s a long one but I got it done over the course of two evenings. I’ve watched five films since the year started, most of them spaghetti westerns from the Sartana series and the 1969 film And God Said to Cain… I have watched two Japanese films – Yakuza Apocalypse and Uzumasa Limelight, both from 2015. I’ve also played Fallout 4 although I have stopped that because my Japanese lessons start next week. Anyway…

I posted news on the theatrical release of Yakuza Apocalypse, Attack on Titan, and the Blu-ray release of Hana-bi. 2016 has started off pretty well for fans of Japanese cinema!

What’s screening in Tokyo’s cinemas this weekend?

Kizumonogatari I: Tekketsu-hen   

傷物語I 鉄血篇「Kizumonogatari I: Tekketsu-hen」

Release Date: January 08^th, 2016

Running Time: 60 mins.

Chief Director: Akiyuki Shimbo, Director: Tatsuya Oishi

Writer: N/A (Screenplay), NisiOisin (Original Creator),

Animation Production: SHAFT

Starring: Hiroshi Kamiya (Koyomi Araragi), Maaya Sakamoto (Shinobu Oshino), Yui Horie (Tsubasa Hanekawa), Takahiro Sakurai (Meme Oshino),

Website ANN MAL

I’ve watched different strands of the Monogatari anime adaptations but I need a guide to put it all in order since they were animated out of synch.

Synopsis from ANN: Kizumonogatari is the third volume in NisiOisin’s Monogatari book series and is a prequel to Bakemonogatari. The novel tells the story of how protagonist Koyomi encounters the female vampire that would turn him and his journey to return to his normal life.

Garakowa -Restore the World- / Vitreous Flower & Destroy the World D.backup   

ガラスの花と壊す世界「Glass no Hana to Kowasu Sekai」

Release Date: January 09^th, 2016

Running Time: 67 mins.

Director: Masashi Ishihama

Writer: Fumihiko Shimo (Screenplay), Otono Shimura, Suyuli Hiraume (Original Creator),

Animation Production: A-1 Pictures

Starring: Ayane Sakura (Dorothy), Risa Taneda (Dual), Yumiri Haamori (Remo),

Website ANN MAL

Synopsis from MAL: A floating space without gravity where an infinite number of lights shine in different colors: The “Box of Wisdom.” Inside of this box, there are multiple worlds, multiple timelines, and there used to be many different people. This is where Dual and Dorothy were fighting with enemies called “Viruses.” Worlds infected by viruses must be erased. That is the duty, the job of these girls. However, one day, Dual and Dorothy feel the presence of a new Virus. Arriving at the scene, they see a girl being attacked by Viruses. After saving the girl, the duo wait for her to awaken so they can ask who she is, where she came from, and where she is going. Finally, when the girl opened her eyes, she gave her name, Rimo, and whispered only one sentence… “I must return to the flower patch…”

KING OF PRISM by PrettyRhythm   

Release Date: January 09^th, 2016

Running Time: N/A

Director: Masakazu Hishida

Writer: Jou Aoba

Animation Production: Avex Pictures

Starring: Tetsuya Kakihara (Koji Mihama), Tomoaki Maeno (Hiro Hayami), Toshiki Masuda (Kazuki Nishina), Shinichiro Miki (Jin Norizuki),

Website ANN MAL

Synopsis from ANN: The Prism Show unit Over The Rainbow succeeds in its debut. Aiming to become like the boy band, more students enroll in Edel Rose. Hiro and the others begin practice for the Prism King Cup, an event that is held once every four years. However, a rival called “Schwarz Rose” appears… The boys fight to become Prism King, the one who can make girls’ hearts throb the most.

Kumagawa Tetsuya K-Ballet Company “Swan Lake” in Cinema   

熊川哲也 Kバレエ カンパニー 「白鳥の湖」 in Cinema「​ Kumagawa Tetsuya K-Bare Kanbani- “hakuchou no mizuumi” in Cinema」

Release Date: January 09^th, 2016

Running Time: 135 mins.

Artistic Director: Tetsuya Kumagawa

Writer: N/A

Starring: Sachiko Nakamura (Odette/Odile), Yusuke Osozawa (Siegfried),

Website

No trailer

Synopsis: Another of Tetsuya Kumagawa’s ballet troupe’s performances is captured for audiences who want to watch it in a cinema. This one is “Swan Lake” and the performance was filmed last year.

Isha Sensei   

いしゃ先生「​ Isha Sensei」

Release Date: January 09^th, 2015

Running Time: 105 mins.

Director: Jiro Nagae

Writer: Mika Abe (Screenplay),

Starring: Aya Hirayama, Takaaki Enoki, Yukiko Ikeda, Yuka Ueno, Kaito Hoshino, Emi Shirasaki,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis: Chikako Shida (Aya Hirayama) is the daughter of a school principal named Sojiro (Takaaki Enoki) in a small village. She lost her mother at birth because their small village didn’t have a doctor and this tragedy sparked the dream in Sojiro that Chikako becomes a doctor. Chikako achieves this dream and returns home.   

Jinsei no Yakusoku   

人生の約束「​ Jinsei no Yakusoku」

Release Date: January 09^th, 2015

Running Time: 120 mins.

Director: Kan Ishibashi

Writer: Mika Abe (Screenplay),

Starring: Takeshi Kitano, Toshiyuki Nishida, Yosuke Eguchi, Yutaka Takenouchi, Eiko Koike, Akira Emoto, Tori Matsuzaka, Yuka,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis: Yuma Nakahara (Yutaka Takenouchi) works in the IT field and has made a success of himself through hard work but when he is called by his former friend and co-worker, Yuma is drawn back to his small hometown and his life changes as he gets involved in a festival.

Pink and Gray   

ピンクとグレー「​ Pinku to gure-」

Release Date: January 09^th, 2015

Running Time: 119 mins.

Director: Isao Yukisada

Writer: Ryuta Horai, Isao Yukisada (Screenplay), Shigeaki Kato (Original Novel)

Starring: Yuto Nakajima, Masaki Suda, Kaho, Yuya Yagira, Yukino Kishii, Makita Sports, Jingi Irie,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis: Rengo Shiraki (Yuto Nakajima) and Daiki Kawata (Masaki Suda) have been friends since childhood and they both love movies so they go into acting. Rengo becomes popular and Daiki gets left behind. Despite tension they remain in contact and it turns out that when Rengo dies Daiki sees it. Questions arise as to whether Rengo committed suicide or if he was murdered and now that Daiki is becoming popular due to the scandal, did he have something to do with it…

Rouhei banka ikyou ni ikiru   

老兵挽歌　異郷に生きる「​ Rouhei banka ikyou ni ikiru」

Release Date: January 09^th, 2015

Running Time: 103 mins.

Director: Masayuki Hayashi

Writer: N/A

Starring: N/A

Website

No trailer

Synopsis: This documentary looks at the lives of the veterans who fought against the Chinese communists to secure the independence of Taiwan and all the controversies that entails.

Their Distance   

知らない、ふたり「​ Shiranai, futari」

Release Date: January 09^th, 2015

Running Time: 106 mins.

Director: Rikiya Imaizumi

Writer: Rikiya Imaizumi (Screenplay),

Starring: Ren, Fumiko Aoyagi, Hanae Kan, Minhyun, JR, Tateto Serizawa, Haruka Kinami,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis: Leon (Ren) is a young man who earns his living as a shoemaker. Shy and keen to avoid others, he spends his days working although he does go out to a park he loves. This is where he sees a Korean woman named Sona (Hanae Kan) passed out and sleeping on a bench. This is a case of love at first sight because Leon keeps thinking about the girl but his co-worker at the shoe shop, Kokaze (Fumiko Aoyagi), has feelings for him…

Song Dreamers   

ソングドリーマーズ☆「​ Songu dori-ma-zu」

Release Date: January 09^th, 2016

Running Time: 98 mins.

Director: Shintaro Sakurai

Writer: Takaaki Ezura (Screenplay), Koki Yoshizawa (Original Story)

Starring: Shinichi Hashimoto, Keisuke Minami, Toshiyuki Someya, Ryu Kiyama, Yuya Noda, ZiZi, Shunya Ohira,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis: Uta no Prince-sama is real in this movie about cute guys goin to talent school to become idols for legions of female fans. Lead character Seiji (Shinichi Hashimoto) signs up to the agency that runs popular male idol group “4U” and undergoes lessons in singing and dancing to become an idol!!!

Yakuza and the Constitution   

ヤクザと憲法「​ Yakuza to Kenpou」

Release Date: January 02^nd, 2016

Running Time: 96 mins.

Director: Takouji Hijikata

Writer: N/A

Starring: N/A

Website

Synopsis: This documentary follows members of the Azuma-gumi yakuza group which is in Osaka for Tokai TV and exposes the world of these guys. It was originally broadcast in March last year.

Shinjuku Midnight Baby   

新宿ミッドナイトベイビー「​ Shinjuku  Middo Naito Beibi-」

Release Date: January 09^th, 2015

Running Time: 104 mins.

Director: Kazuhiro Teranishi

Writer: Kazuhiro Teranishi (Screenplay/Original Novel),

Starring: Haruna Yabuki, Tomoko Nakajima, Britney Hamada, Yukimi Watanabe, Hidetsugu Ohara, Shimako Iwai,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis from the Montreal Film Festival: Akira, son of government minister Machiko, is in a gay relationship with Toru, one of her political supporters. These two young men have decided to undertake the first same-sex marriage in Japan, despite a rigidly enforced legal ban. They are guided through this political and emotional minefield by Masaru, a hard-of-hearing lawyer who stands firmly behind them. But who exactly is Masuru and what is his relationship with the intrepid duo?

Two short films come next and they use the same trailer.

Binetsu

微熱「​ Binetsu」

Release Date: January 09^th, 2016

Running Time: 30 mins.

Director: Masato Ozawa

Writer: Masato Ozawa (Screenplay),

Starring: Mikan Ogino, Sasaki Yuma, Ayami Yamano

Website

I met and interviewed director Masato Ozawa before the screening of his film Remiges (2013) but I didn’t write up my notes or publish the articles. He’s a nice chap which stands in contrast to the films he makes which are all about hard issues…

Synopsis: Toshio was a marathon runner in college but his dream was shattered due to a training accident. Now he spends his time gambling, driving his family to misery. Yuu, Toshio’s daughter, dreams of playing the piano but she is abused by her father and her mother displays no emotions. What will become of these three?

Zenryoku! E n ja michi.

全力！えんじゃ道。「​ Zenryoku! E n ja michi.」

Release Date: January 09^th, 2016

Running Time: 23 mins.

Director: Yukihisa Shichiji

Writer: Yukihisa Shichiji (Screenplay),

Starring: Akira Ichimura, Yoshihisa Shiazaki, Kai Sakamoto, Naoto Nishi,

Website

Synopsis: A group of guys question their future.

Japanese Movie Box Office Results for this Week:

Star Wars The Force Unleashed (2015/12/18)

Eiga Youkai Watch: Enma Daioh to Itsutsu no Monogatari da Nyan! (2015/12/19)

Orange (2015/12/11)

Haha to Kuraseba (2015/12/11)

007 Spectre (2015/12/04)

Eiga Chibi Maruko-chan – A Boy from Italy – (2015/12/23)

Sugiara Chiune (2015/12/05)

Creed (2015/12/23)

Girlz und Panzer der Film  (2015/11/21)

Kamen Rider X Kamen Rider Ghost & Drive: Super Movie War Genesis  (2015/12/11)

Hana-bi   

花火「Hana-bi」

Release Date: January 24^th, 1998 (Japan)

UK Release Date: January 11^th, 2016

UK Distributor: Third Window Films

Running Time: 125 mins.

Director: Takashi Kitano

Writer: Takashi Kitano (Screenplay),

Starring: Takeshi Kitano, Kayoko Kishimoto, Ren Osugi, Susumu Terajima, Tetsu Watanabe,

IMDB

Takeshi Kitano is one of the major figures in the Japanese movie industry. He graduated from television to the film scene in the 1980s with a role in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (1983). His real impact was felt in 1989 with Violent Cop, the film with which he established himself as a director of crime tales. Soon, his presence became synonymous with the Japanese hardman but it is arguable that his best films don’t feature him on the screen at all as people who have seen A Scene at the Sea (1991) and Kids Return (1996) may attest. When Kitano is present on screen he sizzles with barely restrained energy and coolness and a cracked sentimentality of sorts. No film epitomises this more than Hana-bi (1997), a title where his writing and directing reached its heights of brilliance.

Hana-bi is ostensibly about the fallout of a stakeout gone catastrophically wrong and its effects on the main character, Yoshitaka Nishi (Takeshi Kitano) but it’s really about the man’s love for his friends and his wife Miyuki (Kayoko Kishimoto).

When we first meet him he is staking out a psychotic criminal’s apartment with his partner and best friend Horibe (Ren Osugi). Nishi’s wife Miyuki is ill with leukaemia. The two, unfortunately, are used to tragedy since the death of their daughter at a young age. The tough assignment and an ailing wife is what prompts Horibe to suggest that Nishi visit Miyuki in hospital. While Nishi checks in on her the stake-out turns into a disaster as Horibe is shot and left paralysed another cop is wounded and one killed.

This spike of violence radiates out to many others, the cops at the scene, the wives and children at home. Nishi is affected really badly. He is plunged into a pool of guilt and sees his only way of emerging from it is by trying to fix the broken lives of his loved ones and to do this he needs money. Nishi concocts an audacious plan to rob a bank. He intends to provide for his partner, help the dead cop’s widow, and take one last holiday throughout Japan with his ill wife and share a final taste of happiness.

This puts him on the radar of a Yakuza loan-shark and his ex-colleagues in the police…

Hana-bi is pure Kitano from the taciturn macho central character with hidden emotions he plays (all acted in Kitano’s usual deadpan manner), the sudden and sharp moments of shocking violence and savagery that are couched in stillness and light-hearted comedy as part of his use of contrasting genres and it is all rolled out with an austere aesthetic Kitano favours.

Almost immediately the viewer is thrown off kilter as the stake-out is withheld from the audience for a considerable length of time. Instead we are shown people recovering from the losses incurred. Nishi visits a widow, Horibe talks about his new life in a wheelchair, Miyuki is home from the hospital. When the violence is shown it is displayed in the form of fragmentary flashbacks told out of synch through elliptical editing and a staccato script with the inclusion of Yakuza loan-sharks to muddy the water even further. We see the results of the violence before the action, the emphasis on the emotional pain of the characters rather than the gunplay which might normally dominate other films. Once the narrative of the movie despatches with the actual stake-out the narrative remains defiantly non-linear as the story splits itself into showing what happens to the various characters and Nishi and Miyuki go on their final trip.

Hana-bi becomes meditative at this point and increasingly melancholic as the editing and script calm and become stiller, presenting longer sequences with which the viewer can be absorbed by. The camera usually frames faces and bodies full on and without fuss, scenes usually without too much movement. Dialogue is still hard to come by but the emotions and motivations are clear. It is here that the film engages in a moving and sentimental portrait of a couple in a loving relationship and people allowing themselves to rely on others.

Nishi and Miyuki’s journey is one fraught with bouts of brutal violence as the Yakuza dog the couple. That Nishi is a violent man is made clear from earlier in the film and he despatches with all would-be aggressors with sudden and frightening efficiency, no sadism involved if Kitano’s almost expressionless face says anything.

This violence is shocking but it is clear that this isn’t the point of the film. We take more from seeing Nishi and Miyuki’s innocent games and their holiday together. They travel to the north of Japan taking in picture postcard sights such as Mount Fuji, a traditional garden, an inn, a shrine, and beaches. They play card games and puzzles and instead of cloyingly sentimental dialogue professing love, they take photogaphs share cakes, help each other out of a fix, laugh at each other’s goofs, and remain close. When Miyuki, seemingly made childlike by the tragedies she has endured and silent throughout the film, finally speaks it is at the end of the film and a heart-breaking affirmation of her love and an acknowledgement of his and an acceptance of everything that has happened and will come next. Nishi, that taciturn violent man, finally embraces her. We knew we’d get to this moment we just had to keep looking.

Balancing out this journey filled is a parallel narrative charting the recovery of Horibe. After his life falls apart we expect that suicide will be coming to join the list of tragedies but Nishi sends a care package to his best friend, an expensive art set. It is a gift that brings the man back from the brink of death and allows him to come to terms with his life. Art allows Horibe to channel his feelings into surreal and colourful paintings of people and animals with flowers for heads. Horibe’s paintings¹ act as a Greek chorus of sorts, telling the audience what the characters will do and bringing themes to the screen, the pictures of families watching fireworks, mother, father and daughter echoing that empty space in the lives of both Horibe and Nishi.

The sense of loss, the absence of a child in particular, is in this film. Painful reminders are scattered in many different scenes, not just the paintings. There are discarded shoes of a child and the tricycle in front of Nishi’s apartment, a man and his grandson at a shrine, the girl with the kite who Miyuki and Nishi play with, the two adults tasting the family life they missed out on. These moments, together with the constant games the couple play and their evident, though unspoken concern for each other help build the sense that Nishi and his wife Miyuki share a love that is unshakeable and that the two are of one mind which helps deliver the overwhelming sense of love and softens events.

It has been over a decade since I last saw it but with Third Window Films releasing Hana-bi on Blu-ray this week following a 2K restoration overseen by Office Kitano I got to watch it over again. Revisiting films always holds the threat of disappointment but Hana-bi soared above my cloudy memories and breached my lofty expectations – I have long regarded this as a great of modern Japanese cinema. With the benefit of years more experience of watching films and in living life I was able to enter this beautifully tragic drama and engage with it a lot more and found that it reveals the profound depth of sadness and peaks of joy in a relationship of absolut trust and sacrifice and Kitano is skilled enough that he doesn’t have to over-egg or embellish the story. This elegiac film is depicted in a sensitive style that contains horrific violence but more beauty and a moving depiction of love.

Third Window Films have put together a great package so whether you are new to the film or already have it on DVD, I’d recommend picking this up!

5/5

¹ Painted by Kitano himself

Hana-bi took the Golden Lion at the 1997 Venice Film Festival and was named Best Non-European Film at the 1997 European Film Academy Awards and it is now available to own on Blu-ray with a new 2K master from Office Kitano.

Extras:

The first 1000 copies of each feature cardboard slipcases with new illustrated artwork by Marie Bergeron supported by Filmdoo’s Film Creativity Competition.

30 minute documentary from the film’s original release

Interview with Takeshi Kitano from the film’s original release

New Audio commentary by film critic Mark Schilling

Happy weekend, readers!

2016 is off to a flying start with lots of movies with lots being released and in all genres but so far nothing I have written about has grabbed me as something to track down at international festivals. Speaking of festivals, I have three to write about and quite urgently. The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme, Brick Lane Japanese Film Festival, and Rotterdam International Film Festival are all launching soon and I haven’t written a word despite having done the research. A combination of Fallout 4 (20 hours – too many since video games are procrastination – clocked since January 03^rd) and mismanaged time has seen me let my schedule slip. Apologies. I also started helping out with film festivals and getting a bit more work. I can’t apologise for that because I enjoy helping out with film festivals ;)

What did I post this week? A review for the Takeshi Kitano film Hana-bi which I awarded 5/5 for the great story and fantastic visuals. It is on Blu-ray and has been released by Third Window Films.

What’s released this weekend?

Sinbad: The Magical Lamp and the Moving Island   

シンドバッド 魔法のランプと動く島「Sinbad: Mahō no Lamp to Ugoku Shima」

Release Date: January 16^th, 2016

Running Time: 50 mins.

Director: Shinpei Miyashita,

Writer: Hiroyuki Kawasaki (Script Supervision), Kaeko Hayafune (Script)

Animation Production: Nippon Animation

Starring: Tomo Muranaka (Sinbad), Momoko Tanabe (Sana), Tadashi Miyazawa (Najib), Nao Nagasawa (Ali), Takeshi Kaga (Captain Razak),

Website ANN MAL

This is the sequel to an animated film released last year.

Synopsis from ANN: Sinbad and his friends run afoul of a storm while riding on the ship Bahal. Ali sights an island, which the ship heads toward to make repairs. Sinbad and Sana board a dinghy and land on the island. Sana sees a vision of a magical lamp, and Sinbad and the others set out to find it.

Something Like, Something Like It   

のようなもののようなもの 「No Yona Mono no Yona Mono」

Release Date: January 16^th, 2016

Running Time: 95 mins.

Director: Yasukazu Sugiyyama

Writer: Masaki Horiguchi (Screenplay)

Starring: Kenichi Matsuyama, Keiko Kitagawa, Katsunobu Ito, Pierre Taki, Denden, Ryohei Suzuki,

Website    IMDB

According to psycho-drama, this is a sequel to Yoshimitsu Morita’s debut film “Something Like It” from 1981.

Synopsis: Rakguo Master Shinkome (Isao Bito) is set to retire and asks Shinden (Kenichi Matsuyama) to find a former disciple, Shintoto (Katsunobu Ito), who has disappeared. Shinden visits ex-disciples in his search for Shintoto.

The next part of the synopsis comes from the Tokyo International Film Festival:

Shinden is an overly serious rakugo comic storyteller apprentice. He encounters his senior, Shintoto, who had given up rakugo to live a more carefree lifestyle. As Shinden deals with various struggles, he learns how to live a more appropriate, enjoyable life. Lifetime employment and the security of working for a major corporation have ended, so now it’s difficult to be assured of happiness, regardless of age…In spite of that, we want to convey to all of the “Something Like It” people of today just how wonderful it is to leave yesterday behind, and positively strive for a better tomorrow.

Slit Mouth Woman in LA   

口裂け女 in L.A.「​ Kuchisake Onna in L.A.」

Release Date: January 16^th, 2015

Running Time: 104 mins.

Director: Akira Hirose, Hiro Kay, Kazuya Ogawa, Takeshi Sone

Writer: Akira Hirose, Hiro Kay, Kazuya Ogawa, Takeshi Sone (Screenplay),

Starring: Lauren Taylor, Megumi Ageishi, Courtney Bandeko, Stefanie Estes, Amelia Gotham, Eiji Inoue,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis IMDB: The rumor of Slit mouth woman is blasting in LA. Claire (Lauren Taylor) sees the nightmare of her every night. She met the professor of the urban legends research and talk about the phenomenon. She finds out that the incidents are not just Slit mouth woman but the other urban legends from Japan. The professor assumes that some of the homicides are relates to Japanese Urban Legends and ghosts, which are actually happened in LA. A few days later, she scared of illusion of Japanese Urban Legends and realizes that she herself is turning into the woman.

Yoshimoto Shinkigeki Eiga `Saiyuki’   

よしもと新喜劇　映画「西遊喜」「​ Yoshimoto Shinkigeki Eiga `Saiyuki’」

Release Date: January 16^th, 2015

Running Time: 56 mins.

Director: Kazuki Kano

Writer: Takashi Matsumoto (Screenplay),

Starring: Medaka Ikeno, Suchi, Hiroshi Yoshida, Shiya Matssura, Ai Sakai, Reina Ikehata, Yumi Suenari

Website    IMDB

Synopsis: Journey to the West gets remade by a popular comedy troupe called “Yoshimoto new comedy” so we see comedians play the roles of Goku (Hiroshi Yoshida), Sanzo (Suchi) the priest and more as they head to India to look for Buddhist scriptures. Along the way they meet allies and supernatural creatures… or at least that’s what’s meant to happen. Instead they get magicked away to Taiwan in 2015, and need the help of a beautiful woman named Lingling (Reina Ikehata) to help them get back on track.

Enishi: the Bride of Izumo    

縁 The Bride of Izumo「Enishi: the Bride of Izumo」

Release Date: January 16^th, 2016

Running Time: 110 mins.

Director: Hiroshi Horiuchi

Writer: Hiroshi Horiuchi (Screenplay)

Starring: Nozomi Sasaki, Yuta Hiraoka, Toshiya Isaka, Lily, Shunya Isaka, Toshie Negishi, Issei Ishida, Shiro Sano,

Website    IMDB

Cinematography by Christopher Doyle and there are f*cking idols in ths one. Come on Japan!

Synopsis: Maki Iizuka (Nozomi Sasaki) is an editor of a wedding magazine in Tokyo and she is going to get married to Kazunori Nakamura (Yuta Hiraoka) but when her grandmother dies Maki has to sort out possessions. One such possession is a box made from an empress tree which contains a white bridal Kimono and marriage registration forms. The name “Soichi Akiguni” is on the form and so Maki goes to her hometown of Izumo to find out more about the man. This is where she meets a handsome young fisherman…

Vauxhall Rideshow – kyôfu no haiko dasshutsu!!   

ボクソール★ライドショー　恐怖の廃校脱出！「Bokusoru raidosho kyofu no haiko dasshutsu!」

Release Date: January 16^th, 2016

Running Time: 25 mins.

Director: Koji Shiraishi

Writer: Koji Shiraishi (Screenplay)

Starring: Koji Shiraishi, Shigeo Ohsako, Natsumi Okamoto, Erena Watanabe, Chika Kuboyama,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis: Idols go to a school located somewhere in the mountains to film a programme and get attacked by guys who look like they stepped out of a freakshow. It’s a 4DX movie so that means that all of a person’s senses are put into action as audience member’s sit in seats that movie, smell things connected to scenes and hear and see stuff. What they will feel? I have no idea. Rumbling seats and damp clothes from spilled drinks… and fear, presumably.

Ku-jin   

空人「Ku-jin」

Release Date: January 16^th, 2016

Running Time: 115 mins.

Director: Yuichi Onuma

Writer: Yuichi Onuma, Takehiko Mintao (Screenplay),

Starring: Tadashi Okuno, Kaori Takahashi, Susumu Hasegawa, Katsuya Kubota, Kenji Yoshioka,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis from IMDB: In the summber of 1945, Katsuo Hashimoto applies for the special attack corps. Overhearing a rumor that an attack would be ordered soon, Katsuo feigns illness, causing his friend Toshio to unexpectedly take his place. Katsuo is left with the words, ‘Please, take care of my sister,’ as Toshio disappears into the summer sky. 60 year later, Japan has long since lost the war. Katsuo, who has been struggling with his for many decades is diagnosed with pancreas cancer, and given a year and a half to live. Accepting his imminent death, he travels to the Reiryu Mountains in Tendou City, Yamagata, where Toshio’s family temple is located to atone for his mistake.

Futari no shikeishuu   

ふたりの死刑囚「Futari no shikeishuu」

Release Date: January 16^th, 2016

Running Time: 85 mins.

Director: Reika Kamata

Writer: N/A

Starring: N/A

Website

Synopsis: A documentary about two men condemned to die on death row. Despite being convicted of grisly murders they are said to have committed in the 1960s doubts remain and their families have campaigned for retrials. The actor Tatsuya Nakadai narrates things.

6600 Bolt   

6600ボルト「6600 Boruto」

Release Date: January 16^th, 2016

Running Time: 120 mins.

Director: Takashi Honji

Writer: N/A

Starring: N/A

Website

Synopsis: A documentary about a musician and artist named Yamabe Zenjiro a.k.a. YAMAZEN. Due to suffering an electrical shock of around 6600 volts as a teenager, he lost his left eye and his nose but that didn’t stop him from becoming a musician. He was filmed over a period of time from the age of 57 to 60.

Japanese Movie Box Office Results for this Week:

Star Wars The Force Unleashed (2015/12/18)

Eiga Youkai Watch: Enma Daioh to Itsutsu no Monogatari da Nyan! (2015/12/19)

Kizumonogatari I: Tekketsu-hen (2016/01/08)

Orange (2015/12/11)

Bridge of Spies (2016/01/08)

Jinsei no Yakusoku (2016/01/09)

Pink and Gray (2016/01/09)     

Haha to Kuraseba (2015/12/11)

007 Spectre (2015/12/04)

Eiga Chibi Maruko-chan – A Boy from Italy – (2015/12/23)

Shunji Iwai’s anime feature film The Case of Hana and Alice will be screened in

London on February 27^th during the Asia House Film Festival 2016. The venue it will be screened at is the Regent Street Cinema, which is located near Oxford Circus, The film will be preceded by a short and both will be shown from 15:00 and expected to finish at 17:00.

I wrote a preview about this film in December 2014 and I’m still excited by it since it is the prequel movie to Shunji Iwai’s wonderful 2004 coming-of-age film　Hana & Alice which was the break-out title for two totally talented actors Yu Aoi (Megumi in Rurouni Kenshin, and Tanyu in Mushi-shi) and Anne Suzuki who respectively starred as Alice and Hana, two school girls in an intense friendship who both experience love for the first time. Hana to Alice: Satsujin Jiken tells the story of how the girls first met and it is apparently through the world’s smallest murder case.

The Case of Hana & Alice    

花とアリス 殺人事件「Hana to Alice: Satsujin Jiken」

Release Date: February 20th, 2015

Running Time: 98 mins.

Director: Shunji Iwai

Writer: Shunji Iwai (Screenplay/Original Creator),

Starring: Yu Aoi (Tetsuko Arisugawa), Anne Suzuki (Hana Arai), Ryou Kazuji (Kotaro Yuda – a man who holds the key to the murder mystery), Haru Kuroki (Satomi Hagino-sensei – Hana and Alice’s homeroom teacher), Tae Kimura (Yuki Tsutsumi – the ballet classroom teacher),

Synopsis from Asia House website

Newly arrived in small-town suburbia with her divorced mother, middle-school age transfer student Tetsuko Arisugawa (Arisu or ‘Alice’ for short) finds herself the victim of bullying by her classmates and seeks solace through dance. She soon learns of an urban myth about a mysteriously vanished former student called Yuda (Japanese for ‘Judas’) who was allegedly murdered by four of his classmates. Hana, a reclusive girl who lives in a house bedecked with flowers next door, seems to hold the key to the mystery, and together the pair soon embark on a wild and unpredictable series of suburban escapades.

The festival website lists the ticket prices:

Single film ticket prices: Adults £11; Senior/Student/Unemployed/Associate cardholders £10; Children under 16: £7. Tickets for this film should be purchased on the Regent Street Cinema website.

The 2016 edition of the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme launches in two week’s time and lasts from February 05^th until March 26^th as it visits different venues across the UK. It starts at the ICA in London and visits various cities across England, Wales, and Scotland as cinemas from Edinburgh to Bristol play host to the Japan Foundation’s showcase of a selection of Japanese films which capture the lives of people across the generations. These various stories are a mixture of live-action and animation, drama and comedy and there are classics to some of the most contemporary titles.

Here’s the line-up:

The Cowards Who Looked to the Sky    

ふがいない僕は空を見た「Fugainai Boku wa Sora wo Mita」

Running Time: 142 mins.

Director: Yuki Tanada

Writer: Kosuke Mukai (Screenplay), Misumi Kubo (Novel)

Starring: Tomoko Tabata, Kento Nagayama, Masataka Kubota, Mieko Harada, Takahiro Miura, Miharu Tanaka Takashi Yamanaka

Website     IMDB

The Cowards Who Looked to the Sky is regarded as a really good drama but that should come as no surprise to anybody familiar with the director Yuki Tanada who has made a string of great films like One Million Yen Girl, Mourning Recipe and last year’s Round Trip Heart. It stars Tomoko Tabata (Blood and Bones, The Hidden Blade), Kento Nagayama (Crime or Punishment?!?), Masataka Kubota (13 Assassins), Takahiro Miura (Rolling), and Mieko Harada (Helter Skelter).

Synopsis: Anzu (Tomoko Tabata) is a depressed housewife who lives with a nagging mother-in-law and indifferent husband. When she attends an anime convention in cosplay she meets a teenager named Takumi (Nagayama). The two start an affair at Anzu’s home. At this point, those already in Takumi’s life go through emotional upheaval of their own as a classmate (Tanaka) confesses her love for him and his friend Fukuda (Kubota) finds himself at the mercy of a loan shark who has come to collect his mother’s debts. This is just the start of the emotional turmoil for all characters involved.

Yuki Tanada will be in the UK for Q&A’s and will attend the following screenings:

ICA, London (6 and 9 February),
Watershed, Bristol (8 February),
Phoenix, Leicester (11 February)
QUAD, Derby (12 February)

A Farewell to Jinu    

ジヌよさらば ~かむろば村へ~ 「Jinuyo Saraba ~ Kamuroba Mura e」

Running Time: 121 mins.

Director: Suzuki Matsuo

Writer: Suzuki Matsuo (Screenplay), Mikio Igarashi (Original Manga),

Starring: Ryuhei Matsuda, Fumi Nikaido, Sadao Abe, Takako Matsu, Toshiyuki Nishida, Hairi Katagiri, Seminosuke Murasugi, Suzuki Matsuo Shima Ise, YosiYosi Arakawa, Yuko Nakamura, Suzuki Matsuo,

Website     IMDB

Director Matsuo Suzuki and actor Ryuhei Matsuda have worked together on the hilarious otaku love-story Koi no Mon (2004) and they are back eleven years later with what looks like another funny film.

Synopsis: Takeharu Takami (Ryuhei Matsuda) worked as a bank teller until he became allergic to money. In an effort to avoid using money at all Takeharu moves to a small village in the Tohoku region. This place is peopled by some strange characters.

Pecoross’ Mother and Her Days   

新大久保物語「Shin Ookubo Monogatari」

Running Time: 113 mins.

Director: Azuma Morisaki

Writer: Akune Tomoaki (Screenplay), Yuichi Okano (Original Manga)

Starring: Ryo Iwamatsu, Mitsuko Baisho, Naoto Takenaka, Kiwako Harada, Kensuke Owada, Toshie Negishi, Ryo Kase

Website　IMDB

I can remember writing about this back in November 2013 and not thinking much of the entertainment value but it has steadily wowed critics and earned its way onto various film festival programmes. It has turned out to be a bit of a sleeper hit.

Synopsis: Laid-back baby boomer Yuichi (Ryo Iwamatsu) is a middle-aged manga artist and singer-songwriter when he isn’t at his salaryman day job or watching out for his elderly mother. Suffering from increasing dementia since her husband’s death, Mitsue (Harue Akagi) is a constant source of comic energy or annoyance for Yuichi, and he and his son must soon decide if they should put her in a home for the elderly. Jumping back in time, we see how Mitsue (Harada) tracked the tumult of the latter half of the 20th century, being raised as one of 10 brothers and sisters, surviving the war, and having to push her alcoholic husband (Kase) along in life.

Cheers from Heaven   

天国からのエール「Tengoku kara no eru」

Running Time: 114 mins

Director: Makoto Kumazawa

Writer: Masaya Ozaki, Kimiko Ueno (Screenplay),

Starring: Hiroshi Abe, Nanami Sakuraba, Shuhei Nomura, Masato Yano, Rino Higa, Mimura, Hitomi Kyan,

Website  IMDB

This is a film from 2011 and it is based on the true story of Hikaru Nakasone who spent the last days of his life to helping youngsters.

Synopsis: Hikaru (Hiroshi Abe) owns a bento shop and he uses it to allow some high-schoolers to practice their music. He goes further and builds a studio under his store. The kids grow fond of Hikaru but he has kept his terminal illness a secret from them, his family and friends.

Noriben – The Recipe for Fortune   

のんちゃんのり弁「Nonchan noriben」

Running Time: 107 mins

Director: Akira Ogata

Writer: Akira Ogata, Takuji Suzuki (Screenplay), Kiwa Irie (Original Manga)

Starring: Manami Konishi, Yoshinori Okada, Rio Sasaki, Jun Murakami, Sayaka Yamaguchi,

JFDB  IMDB

This is one for food lovers and stories of independent women. It’s all about a middle-aged lady who kicks her useless husband to the kerb and opens up a restaurant.

Synopsis: Komaki (Manami Konishi) is a 31-year-old woman who leaves her jobless husband behind and move back to the working class neighbourhood she grew up in with her daughter Non-chan. Money is tight but when the ‘noriben’ lunch box (a “bento” featuring toasted “nori” (seaweed) on rice) that she packed for Non-chan becomes a huge hit at school, Komaki sees opening her own bento shop as a way to secure her independence.

A Japanese Tragedy

日本の悲劇「Nihon no higeki」

Running Time: 116 mins

Director: Keisuke Kinoshita

Writer: Keisuke Kinoshita (Screenplay),

Starring: Yuko Mochizuki, Yoko Katsuragi, Masami Taura, Keiko Awaji, Nadao Kirino, Shinichi Himori, Tanie Kitabayashi,

IMDB

This one comes from 1953 and was directed by Keisuke Kinoshita, a contemporary of Akira Kurosawa. Kinoshita’s legacy has seen a resurgence over the last few years since his filmography has been restored and toured the festival circuit. It is a haha-mono, a story based on the struggles of a mother who sacrifices everything for her ungrateful children and it paints what the website describes as “a bleak portrait of post war Japan through the story of a mother’s self-sacrifice.”

Synopsis: Having lost her husband in the war, Haruko (Yuko Mochizuki) struggles to bring up her ungrateful materialistic-minded son and daughter. Despite her countless sacrifices, including selling her land and even her body, her now grown-up children reject their mother, driving her to despair.

The Elegant Life of Mr Everyman    

江分利満氏の優雅な生活「Eburi manshi no yûga-na seikatsu」

Running Time: 102 mins

Director: Kihachi Okamoto

Writer: Toshiro Ide (Screenplay), Hitomi Yamaguchi (Original Novel)

Starring: Keiju Kobayashi, Michiyo Aratama, Eijiro Tono, Jerry Ito, Michino Yokoyama, Tadao Nakamura, Akemi Kita, Hiroko Minami, Keiko Yanagawa,

IMDB

The Elegant Life of Mr Everyman is from the 1960s and adapted from a magazine series/novel from Hitomi Yamaguchi and is one of Toho’s salaryman comedies, entertainment and a commentary on Japanese society. The director is Kihachi Okamoto who is famous in the West for directing Sword of Doom. It looks inventive not least because it plays with the medium of film and features “animation and audacious editing, this idiosyncratic and inventive film is a timeless treatment of life in postwar Japan.”

Synopsis: Eburi (Keiju Kobayashi) is drunk on the town and mouthing off which two magazine editors find entertaining and so they get Eburi to promise them two articles on his middle class. The next day, Eburi wakes up and remembers that he owes the journalists articles but he comes to a conclusion that his everyday middle-class life is not all that interesting…

Uzumasa Limelight   

太秦ライムライト 「Uzumasa Laimulaito」

Running Time: 103 mins

Director: Ken Ochiai

Writer: Hiroyuki Ono (Screenplay),

Starring: Seizo Fukumoto, Chihiro Yamamoto, Hiroki Matsukata, Masashi Goda, Hirotaro Honda, Hisako Manda,

Website  IMDB

This film has been picked up for distribution by Third Window Films and it will be released on home video formats later this year. Expect a review soon.

Synopsis: A moving, nostalgic portrait of the men behind the golden age of chanbara (sword-fighting dramas and films), Uzumasa Limelight goes behind the scenes of the distinctive film genre for which Japan is famous. A professional extra named Kamiyama (real-life kirare-yaku Seizo Fukumoto) has devoted 50 years of his life as a kirare-yaku in sword-fighting movies produced at Kyoto’s Uzumasa Studios. A master of the art, he lives to die–or more exactly “to be cut”–and show a beautiful, spectacular death on screen. Now an elderly man, Kamiyama lives very modestly but has earned immense respect from his peers, some of them movie stars. When the studio where he works decides to discontinue its chanbara productions, Kamiyama finds himself at a loss. Hope arrives in the form of a young girl named Satsuki, who soon becomes Kamiyama’s disciple. Will the art of dying by the sword live on?

The Letter   

手紙「Tegami」

Running Time: 121 mins

Director: Jiro Sono

Writer: Teruo Abe, Yukako Shimizu (Screenplay), Keigo Higashino (Original Novel)

Starring: Takayuki Yamada, Kazue Fukiishi, Tetsuji Tamayama, Erika Sawajiri, Mitsuru Fukikoshi, Mitsuko Ishii,

IMDB

The film comes from the 2003 novel of the same name by the best-selling writer Keigo Higashino (his books like The Devotion of Suspect X have been published in the UK). It’s billed as a tear-jerker since its story is about two brothers, one a convicted killer and the other a student, their struggle to make better lives for themselves and the obtacles they face. It shows how Japanese society can punish not just the criminal but the criminal’s family through things like shame.

Synopsis: Tsuyoshi and Naoki are two brothers who have always looked out for each other since they lost their parents. When older brother Tsuyoshi becomes unemployed, he is driven to commit a robbery in order to help Naoki with his university tuition fees and accidently murders. Undergoing a rough life as the brother of a murderer, Naoki begins to despise his sibling for the trouble he caused.

Being Good   

きみはいい子「Kimi wa iiko」

Running Time: 121 mins.

Director: Mipo O

Writer: Ryo Takada (Screenplay), Hatsue Nakawaki (Original Novel)

Starring:  Kengo Kora, Machiko Ono, Chizuru Ikewaki, Michie Kita, Mei Kurokawa, Kazuya Takahashi,

Website   IMDB

Mipo O is a director/writer mentioned here, first in 2010 with Quirky Guys and Gals and lately with The Light Shines Only There which was one of my favourite films of 2014/5 and it made its way into my top ten. Her latest film is the adaptation of the book Kimi wa ii ko (You’re a Good Kid). The book is by Hatsue Nakawaki which won the 2012 Tsubota Jōji Literature Award. The book is a collection of five stories about child abuse and people trying to prevent it, each story occurs in the same town and on the same rainy afternoon. The film adapts two stories into one:   Santa no konai ie (The House where Santa Doesn’t Come) and Beppin-san (Pretty Girl).

Synopsis: Tasuku (Kengo Kora) is a new primary school teacher struggling to deal with his class who is constantly on the receiving end of concerns from the children’s overly-protective parents. Despite feeling out of his depth, when he discovers that one of his pupils is being abused by their parents, he decides that he must do something to help. Meanwhile in the same city, Masami (Machiko Ono), a woman who appears to be a good mother, can’t help lashing out at her own child.

Miss Hokusai    

百日紅 ～Miss HOKUSAI～ 「Sarusuberi ～Miss HOKUSAI～」

Running Time: 93 mins. 

Director: Keiichi Hara

Writer: Miho Maruo (Screenplay), Hinako Sugiura (Original Creator),

Starring: Anne Watanabe (O-Ei), Yutaka Matsushige (Tetsuzo/Katsushika Hokusai), Shion Shimizu (O-Nao), Kumiko Aso (Sayogoromo), Kengo Kora (Utagawa Kuninao),  Gaku Hamada (Zenjiro/Keisai Eisen), Jun Miho (Koto),

Website  ANN   MAL

Miss Hokusai is an award-winning film I wrote about last year in a trailer post packed with information and links. The film is directed by Keiichi Hara who has worked on the Japan Academy Prize-winnerSummer Days with Coo (2007), a film about a kappa and the suburban family he lives with, and Annecy double winner (Jury’s Special Distinction and the Audience Award) Colorful (2010) , a dark but ultimately life-affirming story about suicide and the afterlife.

Synopsis (adapted from the filmmaker’s website): The time: 1814.

The place: Edo, now known as Tokyo. One of the highest populated cities in the world, teeming with peasants, samurai, townsmen, merchants, nobles, artists, courtesans, and perhaps even supernatural things.

A much accomplished artist of his time and now in his mid-fifties, Katsushika Hokusai can boast clients from all over Japan, and tirelessly works in the garbage-loaded chaos of his house-atelier. Short-tempered, utterly sarcastic, with no passion for sake or money, he lives with the third of his four daughters, outspoken 23-year-old O-Ei. She has inherited her father’s talent and stubbornness, and very often she would paint instead of him, though uncredited. Her art is so powerful that sometimes leads to trouble. “We’re father and daughter; with two brushes and four chopsticks, I guess we can always manage, in a way or another.”

Decades later, Europe was going to discover the immense talent of Tetsuzo. He was to become best known by one of his many names: Katsushika Hokusai. He would mesmerize Renoir and van Gogh, Monet and Klimt.

However, very few today are even aware of the woman who assisted him all his life, and greatly contributed to his art while remaining uncredited. This is the untold story of O-Ei, Master Hokusai’s daughter: a lively portrayal of a free-spirited woman overshadowed by her larger-than-life father, unfolding through the changing seasons.

Anthem of the Heart   

心が叫びたがってるんだ。「Kokoro ga Sakebitagatterun Da.」

Running Time: 119 mins.

Director: Tatsuyuki Nagai

Writer: Mari Okada (Script),

Starring: Inori Minase (Jun Naruse), Kouki Uchiyama (Takumi Sakagami), Sora Amamiya (Natsuki Nido), Yoshimasa Hosoya (Daiki Tazaki),

Website     ANN    MAL

Director Tatsuyuki Nagai and writer Mari Okada specialise in telling coming-of-age stories in anime and their greatest collaboration is arguably anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day. Reviews for this one have been very good and it has been picked up for UK distribution by All the Anime.

Synopsis from the official English-language website: Jun is a girl whose words have been sealed away. She was once a happy girl, but because of a [certain thing] she said when she was very young, her family was torn apart. One day, the egg fairy appeared in front of her and sealed away her ability to talk in order to stop her from hurting anybody else. Since this traumatic experience, Jun lives in the shadows away from the limelight. But, one day she is nominated to become an executive member of the “community outreach council.” On top of that, Jun is also appointed to play the main lead in their musical…

Tale of a Butcher Shop   

ある　精肉店　の　はなし「Aru Seiniku-ten no Hanashi」

Running Time:  108 mins.

Director: Aya Hanabusa

Website   JFDB

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNoTgjv7GmU

Synopsis: the Kitades and their family-run butcher shop in Osaka are the focus of this documentary. It is the place where they have been raising and slaughtering cattle, and selling the meat for over 100 years. Due to their trade they are Buraku people and thus discrimated against. When the film gets to the family, they have made the decision to shut down the slaughterhouse. This one is not for the faint of heart since animals are shown being slaughtered.

I’ll Give it My All…Tomorrow    

俺はまだ本気出してばいだけ「Ore wa Mada Honki Dashite nai Dake」

Running Time: 105 mins.

Director: Yuichi Fukuda

Writer: Yuichi Fukuda (Screenplay), Shunju Aono (Original Manga)

Starring: Shinichi Tsutsumi, Ai Hashimoto, Katsuhisa Namase, Takayuki Yamada, Gaku Hamada, Renji Ishibashi

This is a laid back slacker comedy given legs by Shinichi Tsutsumi being a remarkably lazy father and the various amusing reactions he gets for his lackadaisical ways. The drama part of the film isn’t so nearly as engaging as the more comedic parts and the film ultimately has a middle-of-the-road feel. It’s based on Shunju Aono’s manga and it has a fine cast from Shinichi Tsutsumi (One Missed Call, Why Don’t You Play in Hell), Ai Hashimoto (Another, The Kirishima Thing), Takayuki Yamada (Thirteen Assassins), Gaku Hamada (Foreign Duck,See You Tomorrow, Everyone) and Renji Ishibashi (Ninja Kids!!!).

Synopsis: Middle-aged Daikoku (Shinichi Tsutsumi) is a bit of a sad-sack father whose high school daughter Suzuku (Ai Hashimoto) has given up on him. Living with his father Shiro (Renji Ishibashi) he decides to follow the slogan “Find your true self!” and quits his job at a company to become a manga artist. In reality, he becomes a part-time warrior, playing video games and working at a fast-food place. He will achieve his goal, but it will just take a while…

The festival starts in London and lasts from February 05th to March 26th and will visit various venues across the UK which are listed here:

– ICA, London

– Exeter Phoenix, Exeter

– Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Aberystwyth

– Watershed, Bristol

– Queen’s Film Theatre (QFT), Belfast

– QUAD, Derby

– mac birmingham, Birmingham

– Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA), Dundee

– Filmhouse, Edinburgh

– Showroom Cinema, Sheffield

– Phoenix, Leicester

– Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal, Cumbria

– Broadway Cinema, Nottingham

Each cinema offers different times and prices which you can check when you search for the films.

Happy weekend, readers!

I haven’t watched any films this (I have stopped playing Fallout 4) week but I have watched anime in the form of Ergo Proxy. I posted about the Asia House Film Festival screening The Case of Hana and Alice and then the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme (and I went through after the initial post to get rid of some syntax errors) I’ve got four upcoming releases to review and post so stay tuned. Seven films to write about this weekend which meant I got this done over a few hours. With the help of Anime News Network and IMDB. I just forgot to post this on the weekend…

What was released this weekend?

PERSONA3 THE MOVIE #4 Winter of Rebirth   

Release Date: January 23^rd, 2016

Running Time: 105 mins.

Director: Tomohisa Taguchi

Writer: Jun Kumagai (Script)

Animation Production: A-1 Pictures

Starring: Akira Ishida (Makoto Yuki), Megumi Toyoguchi (Yukari Takeba), Miyuki Sawashiro (Elizabeth/Chidori Yoshino), Hikaru Midorikawa (Akihiko Sanada),

Website ANN MAL

Synopsis from ANN: Sinbad and his friends run afoul of a storm while riding on the ship Bahal. Ali sights an island, which the ship heads toward to make repairs. Sinbad and Sana board a dinghy and land on the island. Sana sees a vision of a magical lamp, and Sinbad and the others set out to find it.

Nobunaga Concerto    

信長協奏曲（ノブナガコンツェルト）「Nobunaga kyousoukyoku」

Release Date: January 23^rd, 2016

Running Time: 126 mins.

Director: Hiroaki Matsuyama

Writer: Masafumi Nishida (Screenplay), Ayumi Ishii (Original Manga)

Starring: Shun Oguri, Kou Shibasaki, Takayuki Yamada, Kaho, Osamu Mukai, Natsuka Ogawa,

Website    IMDB

This one is an adaptation of a manga and a continuation of the television dorama.

Synopsis from IMDB: Saburo (Shun Oguri) is a high school student good in sports, but not very good with his studies. One day, Saburo travels back in time and arrives in the Sengoku period of 1549. There, Saburo meets Nobunaga Oda who looks and sounds just like Saburo. Nobunaga Oda is the son of a warlord and magistrate of the lower Owari Province. Nobunaga Oda though is physically weak and he asks Saburo to take his place. Then, Saburo as Nobunaga Oda attempts to unify the country of Japan.

Valentine Nightmare    

バレンタインナイトメア「​ Barentain Naitomea」

Release Date: January 23^rd, 2016

Running Time: 75 mins.

Director: Yasumasa Konno

Writer: Yasumasa Konno (Screenplay), Ivory Dice (Original Video Game)

Starring: Kaho Mizutani, Haruka Imou, Yoshiaki Miyagi,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis: High school students go on a graduation trip. They become gripped with fear by the spirit of a dead classmate. Their classmate committed suicide on Valentine’s Day, one year ago. She left behind the words “Let’s meet one year later.” The students must overcome their fear and find out the truth behind the tragedy that took place one year earlier.

Shuriken Sentai Ninninger vs. ToQger The Movie: Ninjas in Wonderland    

手裏剣戦隊ニンニンジャーＶＳ烈車戦隊トッキュウジャーTHE MOVIE「​ Shuriken Sentai Ninninja tai Ressha Sentai Tokkyūjā」

Release Date: January 23^rd, 2015

Running Time: 64 mins.

Director: Shojiro Nakazawa

Writer: Kento Shimoyama (Screenplay), Shotaro Ishinomori (Original Concept)

Starring: Shunsuke Nishikawa, Gaku Matsumoto, Kaito Nakamura, Yuka Yano, Kasumi Yamaya, Riria Kojima,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis from Crunchyroll: The Ninninger and ToQger teams must join forces to defeat the villainous Dark Doctor Maburo, a mad scientist with a child-like personality and an obsession with ninjas.

Okaasan, iikagen anata no kao wo wasurete shimaimashita

お母さん、いい加減あなたの顔は忘れてしまいました「Okaasan, iikagen anata no kao wo wasurete shimaimashita」   

Release Date: January 23^rd, 2016

Running Time: 102 mins.

Director: Michiro Endo

Writer: N/A

Starring: AZUMI, Chie Endo, Michiro Endo, THE STALIN

Website    IMDB

Synopsis: The Stalin were a punk rock band formed in June 1980, by leader and vocalist Michiro Endo. It was disbanded in 1985 and Endo went on to make new bands but The Stalin remained very influential for many years. Endo turned sixty in 2011 and went on a tour. It was around the time that the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred. Michiro Endo is a native of Fukushima and a socialist activist according to Wikipedia and so he went back to his hometown and visited family to it, in the face of in Fukushima to survey the damage and was inspired to start the charity “PROJECT FUKUSHIMA!” This documentary chronicles his efforts.

LOVE! LOVE! SING!    

LIVE!LOVE!SING! 生きて愛して歌うこと　劇場版「LOVE! LOVE! SING! Ikite itoshite utau koto gekijouban」

Release Date: January 23^rd, 2016

Running Time: 100 mins.

Director: Tsuyoshi Inoue

Writer: Nobuyuki Isshiki (Screenplay)

Starring: Anna Ishii, Koki Maeda, Kaho Minami, Shido Nakamura, Rie Tomosaka, Kanji Tsuda, Momoka Kinoshita

Website    IMDB

Synopsis: The film involves former elementary school classmates from Fukushima who became separated by the March 11^th Great East Japan Earthquake reuniting to go dig up a time capsule from their schoolyard. The cast is made up of actors and idols.

The Reunion: Forbidden Love   

再会　禁じられた大人の恋「Saikai: Kinjirareta Otona no Koi」

Release Date: January 16^th, 2016

Running Time: 70 mins.

Director: Yusuke Narita

Writer: Shuji Kataoka (Screenplay),

Starring: Asami Kumakiri, Kengo Ohkuchi, Yasukaze Motomiya, Yurika Akane, Madoka Arai, Chie Suzuki, Tomoka Takeda, Yuya Tokumoto,

Website    IMDB

Synopsis from IMDB: Yumiko (Asami Kumakiri) is a housewife in an unsatisfying marriage. A former lover named Koji (Kengo Ohkuchi) appears (like, he moves into the same street!) and the flames of passion leap up…

Japanese Movie Box Office Results for this Week:

Star Wars The Force Unleashed (2015/12/18)

Eiga Youkai Watch: Enma Daioh to Itsutsu no Monogatari da Nyan! (2015/12/19)

Paddington (2016/01/15)

Orange (2015/12/11)

Seasons/Les Saisons (2016/01/15)

Kizumonogatari I: Tekketsu-hen (2016/01/08)

In the Heart of the Sea (2016/01/16)

Bridge of Spies (2016/01/08)

Pink and Gray (2016/01/09)     

Jinsei no Yakusoku (2016/01/09)

The Glasgow Film Festival takes place from 17-28 February at the Glasgow Film Theatre and there are four Japanese films that are set to be screened over that time. None of these are premieres and all of them have been on the festival circuit throughout the entirety of 2015 but if you haven’t seen any of these on the big screen then this is your chance. There are two live-action and two anime films but there are many similarities from the year made to the fact that every film has a supernatural element to it.

I have not seen any of these since three of them have home cinema releases planned for this year and I thought I can wait but I have friends who have seen them all and they have recommended The Boy and the Beast.

Here are the films:

The Boy and the Beast    

バケモノの子 「Bakemono no Ko」

Running Time: 128 mins.

Director: Mamoru Hosoda

Starring: Koji Yakusho (Kumatetsu), Shota Sometani (Kyuuta – Teen), Aoi Miyazaki (Kyuuta – Young), Haru Kuroki (Ichirohiko – Young), Yo Oizumi (Tatara), Lily Franky (Monk Momoaki), Mamoru Miyano (Ichirohiko – Old),

Website   IMDB    ANN    MAL

Mamoru Hosoda’s latest film has been a box-office smash and a darling of both critics and audiences. Many people I know who have seen it rate it highly. If you are a fan of Hosoda’s previous works like The Wolf Children, Summer Wars, and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time I think it would be safe to say that this one is worth watching what with the excellent animation, voice actors, and more.

A lonely boy named Kyuta is on the run from his family in Tokyo’s Shibuya ward following the death of his moter. He finds that there is another world, the bakemono realm, Jutenkai. Typically, the human world and Jutenkai do not meet and humans aren’t welcome in the world of the monsters but the boy gets lost in the bakemono world and becomes the disciple of a lonely bakemono named Kumatetsu (Yakusho) who takes the boy under his wing and renames him Kyuuta (Miyazaki/Sometani).

When Marnie was There    

思い出のマーニー 「Omoide no Mani」

Running Time: 103 mins.

Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi

Starring: Kasumi Arimura (Marnie), Sara Takatsuki (Anna), Hitomi Kuroki (Hisako), Susumu Terajima (Kiyomasa Oiwa), Yo Oizumi (Dr. Yamashita), Nanako Matsushima (Yoriko), Kazuko Yoshiyuki (Baaya),

Website    IMDB   ANN    MAL

This is supposedly the last film from Studio Ghibli and it is directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi, the chap who helmed Arrietty. The film is an adaptation of a book written by British novelist Joan G. Robinson which was published in 1967. The setting has been updated and it has moved from Britain to modern Japan.

Synopsis: A twelve-year-old girl named Marnie (Kasumi Arimura) has journeyed to a small coastal town in Hokkaido from her native Sapporo to better cope with her asthma. She is staying with relatives and leads a solitary existence because she finds it hard to deal with other children due to a dark incident in her past. One day, she sees a western-style house that the villagers refer to as Marsh House and spies a mysterious blonde girl named Anna (Sara Takatsuki) in the windows. She heads over to hee and the two become friends but Anna has a dark secret…

Journey to the Shore   

岸辺の旅 「Kishibe no Tabe」

Running Time: 128 mins.

Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Starring: Tadanobu Asano, Eri Fukatsu, Masao Komatsu, Yu Aoi, Akira Emoto,

Website   IMDB

Kiyoshi Kurosawa has adaptated the 2010 novel Kishibe no Tabi by Kazumi Yumoto and while it is no Tokyo Sonata it earned him the Best Director prize in the Un Certain Regard category when it screened at Cannes. The film is an elegiac drama and has earned a reputation that suggests an audience might come away feeling this is profound or dull. It has a great cast such as lead actor Tadanobu Asano, star of Vital, Ichi the Killer, and Gohatto and Watashi no Otoko. Eri Fukatsu is the leading lady who put in a star turn in the crime drama Villain.

Synopsis: Mizuki’s (Eri Fukatsu) husband Yusuke (Tadanobu Asano) disappeared for three years. Then one day, he comes back and asks Mizuki to go on a journey with him visiting all of the places he went to and all of the people he met while he was travelling. Mizuki begins to understand why Yusuke went on his journey.

Love and Peace   

ラブ＆ピース 「Rabu&Pisu」

Running Time: 117 mins.

Director: Sion Sono

Starring:  Hiroki Hasegawa, Kumiko Aso, Tohiyuki Nishida, Kiyohiko Shibukawa, Eita Okuno, Makita Sports, Erina Mano, Megumi Kagurazaka, Miyuki Matsuda

Website     IMDB

If you want spectacle then go and see this film. It comes after a series of heartfelt drama and looks like Sono’s return to his slightly nuttier roots. It is supposedly based on a script that Sono wrote many years ago, around the time of Suicide Club. Taking the lead is Hiroki Hasegawa, the mad cinephile in the yakuza movie comedy Why Don’t You Play in Hell? and Kumiko Aso, the waif running around in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s horror film Pulse. The film distributor Third Window Films will release it on DVD later this year.

Ryoichi (Hiroki Hasegawa) once dreamed of becoming a punk rocker but he became a timid salaryman at a musical instrument parts company. Life is calm but he has feelings for an office lady (Kumiko Aso) he can’t express and he feels he wants more from his circumstances which is when fate strikes!

One day, he randomly buys a turtle and names it Pikadon. A series of events occur and Ryoichi’s dreams of being a rock star might be about to come true! However, it might also lead to the end of the world…

Tickets went on sale on Monday. To find out more about times and prices, please visit the festival website.

The Rotterdam International Film Festival has started and lasts from January 28th to February 07th and there is a large contingent of Japanese films programmed, quite possibly the largest I have seen in the few years I have been watching the event. There are a lot of great titles, some of which are considered the best films to be made in 2015 and there is a diverse range of stories. The festival plays host to animation from a range of artists and there are shorts from Takeshi Kitano. Some of these are red hot international premieres while some of the films have been screened at Canadian film festivals already, some in 2014 (so there’s a bit of copy and paste from previous festival trailer posts). As well as contemporary film, there is also a retrospective for the director Masao Adachi who worked during the 1960s.

Here are the films:

100 Yen Love   

百円の恋 「Hyaku-en no Koi」

Running Time: 113 mins.

Director: Masaharu Take

Starring: Sakura Ando, Hirofumi Arai, Miyoko Inagawa, Saori, Shohei Uno, Tadashi Sakata, Yuki Okita,

Website   IMDB

100 Yen Love is a genuinely great film. It stars Sakura Ando in a career-best performance as a woman who goes from zero to boxing hero with all of the genre tropes but done brilliantly and in a rather gritty way. It’s an entertaining and tough watch with a lot of heart thanks to Sakura (one of the best actors in Japan) Ando’s performance.

Synopsis: Ichiko (Sakura Ando) is a borderline hikikomori who lives at her parents’ home but that situation changes when her younger sister divorces and moves back with her child. Ichiko and her sister’s relationship is pretty rocky and so following a fight Ichiko decides to move out and find a place of her own. She takes up a job in a 100 Yen shop but is still pretty miserable with her new life and stuck with unpleasant people for co-workers but while working at her store she keeps encountering a middle-aged boxer (Hirofumi Arai) who practices at a local boxing gym. She is attracted to him and the two start a relationship but after a series of horrible experiences she becomes more interested in boxing, a sport which will fuel the continuing change in her life.

Lowlife Love      

下衆の愛 「Gesu no Ai」

Running Time: 120 mins.

Director: Eiji Uchida

Writer: Eiji Uchida (Screenplay),

Starring: Kiyohiko Shibukawa, Denden. Masahiko Arai, Masato Arai, Kanji Furutachi, Yumi Goto, Aki Hiraoka, Nanami Kawakami,

Website  IMDB

Lowlife Love was brought to life through the owner of Third Window Films selling valuable records from their personal collection and helping to organise a crowd-funding campaign that targeted Western people who like Japanese films (like me, which explains why I backed the Kickstarter). The cast are the type who regularly appear in the releases of Third Window Films so if you like The Woodsman and the Rain and so on, you will dig this. Lowlife Love was at last year’s Tokyo International Film Festival and Rotterdam is its international premiere.

Synopsis from IMDB: Tetsuo (Kiyohiko Shibukawa) is a lowlife. A film director with a small indie hit many years back, yet he has never gotten any further as he refuses to go against his ‘artistic integrity’. He’s a real loser. Despite being in his late 30s, he still lives with his mother and sister, borrowing money off them and scrounging from all he comes in contact with. This includes his best friend Mamoru (Yoshihiko Hosoda), who makes porn films with him for dodgy characters in order to make money, as well as the film actors’ school they’ve setup to exploit their students as well as for him to sleep with wannabe actresses. He’s a real jerk. Then one day two new students come to his school: Minami (Maya Okano), a naive and fresh girl from the countryside who wants to be an actress and Ken (Shugo Oshinari), a scriptwriter who has been living overseas. Tetsuo sees something in Minami and feels she has what it takes to be a real star and Ken has a brilliant script which could be the fantastic new project…

Sharing

Running Time: 94 mins.

Director: Makoto Shinozaki

Writer: Makoto Shinozaki, Zenzo Sakai (Screenplay),

Starring: Asuka Hinoi, Kinuo Yamada, Ryudai Takahashi, Tomoki Kimura, Kumi Hyodo, Takuji Suzuki,

IMDB

I first saw this at the 2014 Vancouver International Film Festival and then it disappeared. I am happy to see this crop up again since it looks interesting and was described as psychological Cronenberg-like film which is a description that you almost never see to describe contemporary Japanese films. It’s different and different is good. The lead is played by Kinuwo Yamada and she has appeared in Villain (2010), Confessions (2010) and There’s Nothing to Be Afraid of (2013).

Synopsis: Eiko (Kinuo Yamada) is a psychology teacher in a university. She lost her husband in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami and this pushes her to research cases of individuals who claim to have had precognitive dreams about the disaster. One of her students, Kaoru (Asuka Hinoi), is a member of the drama club, and is writing a stage a play about the disaster. The two become so engaged in their projects that it pushes friends and colleagues away from them as they become more extreme n their work…

Ow   

丸「Maru」

Running Time: 89 mins.

Director: Yohei Suzuki

Writer: Yohei Suzuki, Yukiko Koyama (Screenplay),

Starring: Kaoru Iida, Masatoshi Kihara, Shu Ikeda, Sari Kaneko, Hitomi Karube, Rock Murakai, Shoji Omiya, Shigeko Tanaka

Website    IMDB

This sci-fi mystery was also at the 2014 Vancouver International Film Festival.

Synopsis: Tetsuo is unemployed and stuck in his famiy home with his girlfriend Yuriko. Things seem bad when he finds out that his father lost his job a month ago  but they get weirder and even tragic when a mysterious orb descends from the sky, infiltrates the house and starts scrambling the brains of anyone near it. A police investigation ends in chaos and it is left to a reporter named Deguchi to discover just what is going on!

TOO YOUNG TO DIE!   

TOO YOUNG TO DIE!　若くして死ぬ「Too Young To Die! Wakakushite Shinu」

Running Time: 125 mins.

Director: Kankuro Kudo

Writer: Kankuro Kudo

Starring: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Tomoya Nagase, Machiko Ono, Rie Miyazawa, Nana Seino, Aoi Morikawa, Arata Furuta, Kenta Kiritani, Yoshiyoshi Arakawa,

Website IMDB

This one gets released in Japan this year so it’s a big scoop for the festival.

Synopsis from Rotterdam: Even before the bus in which he was sitting falls into the ravine, 17-year-old Daisuke (Ryunosuke Kamiki) has already put in an appearance in hell. There, the singer of a local rock band made up of three demons with black-lined eyes and horns on their heads, lists all the sins he has committed. For instance he once borrowed a cable and gave it back all knotted up. And he committed suicide: a deadly sin.

Kankuro Kudo, who also made a name for himself with several bizarre scenarios for his compatriot Miike Takashi (Zebraman), portrays the Buddhist underworld in this frenzied and absurdist comedy as a theatrical mud bath in which rock musicians battle to be allowed back to their earthly existence. So it’s a demonic musical since Daisuke signs up to a band, because above all else, Daisuke wants to kiss his great love, if need be reincarnated as a sea lion.

The Shell Collector   

シェル・コレクター「Sheru Korekuta」

Running Time: 89 mins.

Director: Yoshifumi Tsubota

Writer: Yoshifumi Tsubota (Screenplay), Anthony Doerr (Original Short Story),

Starring: Lily Franky, Ai Hashimoto, Sosuke Ikematsu, Shinobu Terajima.

Website  IMDB

The Shell Collector is released at the end of this month. It has a great cast and positive critical buzz

Synopsis from Rotterdam: Based on the short story by Anthony Doerr, with The Shell Collector Tsubota Yoshifumi sketches the life of a blind shell collector who can only survive in solitude. He doesn’t meet any people. Only one man visits occasionally to bring him shopping in exchange for money. Occasionally the shopping is also accompanied by letters from his son, but they remain unopened for now. Just like the shellfish he collects so obsessively, the man doesn’t want to know anything about the world outside his own surroundings.

Tsubota, however, slowly introduces uninvited changes in the man’s life: a contagious disease, a woman washed ashore looking for another life, a new kind of shellfish with a poisonous sting that is sublimely hallucinogenic. All these changes not only put the survival techniques of the collector to the test, but also our own ideas about the relationship between man and nature.

The Dork, the Girl and the Douchebag  

Running Time: 141 mins.

Director: Yosuke Okuda

Writer: Yosuke Okuda (Screenplay),

Starring: Nao Omori, Ken Mitsuishi, Asami Usuda,

Website  IMDB

Synopsis from Rotterdam: Roishin is an unpleasant sort. He chats up young women, puts something in their drinks and then sells them on to pimps. He’s a perverted little gangster, that Roishin, played by filmmaker Okuda Yosuke himself. One day he falls into the trap of a man who traffics women. He finds a woman in his home and trades her, but it turns out that the woman belonged to the Yakuza boss Hideo. Now he has to pay a huge debt to Hideo.

Okuda is obviously a lover of old Yakuza films – as shown by his Tiger competition film Tokyo Playboy Club (IFFR 2012). But he also gives his films his own hallmark. The stylised violence of the genre films is more unpleasant and real here. Reports about how realistic that violence was spread from the set through Japan by Twitter. There’s one scene in which Roishi breaks a bottle on his forehead and what we see is not make-up or digital effect. Okuda is obviously a filmmaker who is willing to sacrifice a lot to make his films a success.

The Whispering Star

ひそひそ星「Hiso Hiso Boshi」

Running Time: 100 mins.

Director: Sion Sono

Writer: Sion Sono

Starring: Megumi Kagurazaka, Kenji Endo, Yuto Ikeda, Mori Kouko,

IMDB

The Whispering Star was originally created and screened as part of an art exhibition which had the theme of dystopia running through it. The film was shot in different locations in the Fukushima prefecture, turning depopulated and irradiated areas into a futuristic landscape that speaks of hopelessness, pollution, and abandonment. It stars people who live in the areas and Sion Sono’s wife.

Synopsis: A spaceship shaped like a Japanese bungalow careens through the galaxy. It carries a humanoid robot named Yoko (Megumi Kagurazaka), a sort of interstellar UPS delivery person. Her job is simple: to distribute packages to human beings scattered across sundry planets. But with so much spare time between deliveries, Yoko begins to wonder what’s in those packages.

Three Stories of Love    

恋人たち 「Koibito-tachi」

Duration: 140 mins

Director: Ryosuke Hashiguchi

Writer: Ryosuke Hashiguchi

Starring: Atsushi Shinohara, Toko Narushima, Ryo Ikeda, Ken Mitsuishi, Lily Franky

Website   IMDB

Three Stories of Love has been topping the end of year lists for many critics who specialise in Japanese films. It looks like a heady combination of comedy and drama rooted in strong writing that gives us the everyday lives of three people experiencing romance and frustration.

Synopsis: Three protagonists, a bereaved bridge-repairman, an unhappy housewife with creative ambitions and an elite gay lawyer live lives full of love and loss. Their lives are largely separate, but briefly intersect.

Gonin Saga    

GONIN サーガ「Gonin Sa-ga」

Duration: 130 mins

Director: Takashi Ishii

Writer: Takashi Ishii

Starring: Masahiro Higashide, Kenta Kiritani, Masanobu Ando, Koichi Sato, Anna Tsuchiya, Naoto Takenaka, Rila Fukushima,

Website    IMDB

Gonin Saga is another film that has been on the top ten lists of film critics. It has a good pedigree since it comes from Takashi Ishii, a veteran manga artist and filmmaker who specialises in hardboiled crime stories. Gonin Saga is a continuation of one of his best films as we revisit the story but through the eyes of the children of the original characters. The cast includes a range of talented young actors like Masanobu Ando, Masahiro Higashide, and Anna Tsuchiya.

Synopsis from the Vancouver International Film Festival’s website: Ishii Takashi’s Gonin (VIFF 1995) set the standard for neo-noir yakuza movies with its tale of five down-on-their-luck men taking on a powerful yakuza gang, the Goseikai—and facing deadly reprisals. Twenty-years-later, the sequel Gonin Saga brings this story up to date. Some of the original mavericks had families: Hisamatsu, for example, left a wife and son. Hisamatsu’s son Hayato (new star Higashide Masahiro) has an honest, crime-free life but is best friends with Ogoshi’s son Daisuke, who’s still working as a bodyguard for the gang. It all kicks off when a reporter asks Hayato’s mother to reveal the truth about the original attack on the Goseikei—and soon history is threatening to repeat itself.

Sayonara      

さよなら「Sayonara」

Running Time: 112 mins.

Director: Koji Fukada

Writer:  Koji Fukada, Oriza Hirata (Screenplay),

Starring: Bryerly Long, Hirofumi Arai, Geminoid F, Makiko Murata, Yuko Kibiki, Nijiro Murakami,

Website   IMDB

The first ever movie with an android as one of the stars. It is a collaboration between Japanese playwright Oriza Hirata and the leading robotics scientist Hiroshi Ishiguro who works at Osaka University and the film was directed by Koji Fukada (Hospitalité, Au revoir l’été).

Synopsis: The population of Japan is being evacuated due to radioactive contamination. Tanya (Bryerly Long) is a foreign refugee with an illness so she will be among the last to leave while healthier Japanese escape. She has an android named Reona (Geminoid F) who supports her in her final days as everyone around her leaves.

Happy Hour    

ハッピーアワー「Happi- Awa-」　

Running Time: 317 mins.

Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Writer: Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Tadashi Nohara, Tomoyuki Takahashi (Screenplay)

Starring:  Rira Kawamura, Hazuki Kikuchi, Maiko Mihara, Sachie Tanaka, Shuhei Shibata, Ami Kugai, Sachiko Fukunaga, Reina Shiihashi,

Website IMDB

Happy Hour  is a strong drama that uses its long running time to allow the audience to get absorbed in the minutiae of the everyday lives of a group of thirty-something female friends. I would be interested in hearing about people’s experiences with it.

Synopsis: Fumi (Maiko Mihara), Akari (Sachie Tanaka), Sakurako (Hazuki Kikuchi), and Jun (Rira Kawamura), are four friends. These ladies are in their late 30s and are in relationships of varying sorts but not everybody is happy and so when Jun reveals that she is getting a divorce, well, this kicks off a train of dramatic events that make the women re-evaluate their lives.

An    

あん「An」

Running Time: 113 mins.

Director: Naomi Kawase,

Writer: Naomi Kawase (Screenplay), Tetsuya Akikawa (Original Novel),

Starring:  Masatoshi Nagase, Kirin Kiki, Kyara Uchida, Etsuko Ichihara, Miki Mizuno, Taiga, Wakato Kanematsu, Miyoko Asada.

Website   IMDB

Synopsis: After getting released from prison Sentarou (Nagase) worked hard to become the manager of a dorayaki bakery store. An older woman, Tokue (Kiki), is hired to work at the store, making the sweet red bean paste that fills the dorayaki. Her sweet red beans become popular and the store flourishes, but a rumour spreads that Tokue once had leprosy.

Pieta in the Toilet      

トイレノピエタ「Toire no Pieta」

Running Time: 120 mins.

Director: Daishi Matsunaga

Writer: Daishi Matsunaga (Screenplay), Osamu Tezuka (Part of an Original Manga that inspired script),

Starring:  Yojiro Noda, Hana Sugisaki, Lily Franky, Saya Ichikawa, Shinobu Otake, Rie Miyazawa,

Website  IMDB

From the festival website: The story about the dying young artist is based on the diary kept by the famous comic strip/manga artist Tezuka Osamu (creator of Astro Boy) in the last weeks of his life. Tezuka also died of stomach cancer, but not at a very young age (61).

Synopsis: Hiroshi (Yojira Noda) once had ambitions of being a painter but has given up and now works cleaning office windows. That’s not the worst thing that has happened to him because he has found out that he has three months left to live because he has stomach cancer. It is during these final months that he meets a high school student named Mai (Hana Sugisaki) who believes in him and his art and refuses to give up on him…

Masao Adachi Retrospective

Masao Adachi was making films around the same time as other new wave directors like Nagisa Oshima and Koji Wakamatsu, writing for them at times and collaborating in other ways. He also he made political and experimental movies. His politics led him to join the Japanese Red Army and travel to foreign countries for a while. Nine of his films are on offer at the festival.

AKA Serial Killer is a fact-based investigation into the a killing spree that took place in 1968 when teenager Nagayama Norio murdered four people with a shotgun stolen from a U.S. Army base.

Artist of Fasting is an absurdist comedy stabbing at the heart of contemporary Japanese society. The story involves various people taking advantage of a man’s unexplained hunger strike.

Galaxy is all about a man who is involved in a car crash which sparks a sepia-tinted cinematic journey into the turbulent mind of the nameless protagonist who summons and distorts figures from his past, present and imagination. Bowl is one of Adachi’s student films and will be screened before Galaxy.

Female Student Guerrilla is considered Adachi’s “pink film” and about ie high-school students who want to stage a revolution.

Gushing Prayer is also about high-schoolers only it’s their use of sex as protest. It descends into violence the story seems set to end with a suicide…

Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War is about Masao Adachi and Koji Wakamatsu’s political journey. On their way back from Cannes Film Festival in 1971, they visited Lebanon to meet the Japan’s Red Army faction and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to shoot a propaganda newsreel film promoting the Palestinian resistance.

Sex Game is another film about sex and radicalism.

The Prisoner/Terrorist is about a Japanese terrorist who is caught and locked up in prison.

Shorts

There are also two shorts from that unique auteur Takeshi Kitano which he created for his latest television show – Asa (4 mins) is about an old man taking a walk in a park and News (5 mins) is about two cops in a car mulling over evidence. If that sounds boring, they become surreal.

Cinéma Concrete (23 mins) directed by Takashi Makino explores the tenuous links of memory and thoughts as he combines musique concrete with imagery that plays with screen depth through layering and superimposing images and shadows

The Throwing Shadows: Short Films programme sees veteran animators brought together to screen their classic short films. Keiichi Tanaami is in town with two shorts, “Why” and “4 Eyes” where he experiments with screening films over each other much like  Toshio Matsumoto who sees “For the Damaged Right Eye” screened. Both men deal with the past, Tanaami looking at psychedelia and Matsumoto looking at contemporary, as in ‘60s, Japan. Mako Idemitsu challenges the patriarchal power structure of Japan as she brings “Inner-Man” and “At Any Place 2” to the festival. Tatsuo Shimamura “Illusion City” which is another animation from the 1960s. Masanori Oe is last but not least as he showcases “Great Society” which sees six simultaneous 16mm projections that mixes newsreel footage into a collage that captures 1960s United States at a fever pitch.

Sound//Vision is a late night programme dedicated to innovative and experimental audiovisual experiences. More from the festival site:

sound//vision kicks off with the expanded cinema performance Throwing Shadows (in collaboration with Tate Film), consisting of Rikuro Miyai’s Phenomenology of Zeitgeist with live soundtrack by Floris Vanhoof, three performances (including Human Flicker) by Jun’ichi Okuyama and the collaboration between filmmaker Makino Takashi and the Belgian improvisation musicians Dirk Serries (guitar) and Teun Verbruggen (drums) to perform Action Direct.

All of these films except in this programme Sound//vision screen tomorrow, the rest over the duration of the festival (apologies for being late). There’s still time to make a selection and see some great titles. To buy tickets and get more information, click on each of the links to visit the pages for each film. This is a fantastic selection as is usually the case with Rotterdam so let me know if you go and see anything and what you think.

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