A new anime feature provides some excellent design work and colour, but is saddled with an overly familiar story and an extended climax which both consign it to the pile of disposable entertainment. It is enjoyable enough to watch, but … Continue reading REVIEW: Bubble (2022)
Sogo Ishii, more recently professionally credited as Gakuryū Ishii, is a pivotal figure in Japanese cinema, but until very recently a lack of international distribution has kept him out of the limelight beyond his own country. He is a pioneer … Continue reading REVIEW: Dead End Run (2003)
A disaffected civil servant in late middle-age (Takashi Shimura) learns that he has terminal cancer and a few months left to live. After the initial shock and panic wears off, he sets out in a last-ditch attempt to find a … Continue reading REVIEW: Ikiru (1952)
I have written in the past about how so many silent features have been lost from cinema’s early years, either being lost in accidental fires – nitrate film is ridiculously flammable, sometimes explosively so – or simply not perceived to … Continue reading REVIEW: Apart from You (1933)
Daiei’s original Gamera franchise limped on into the 1970s, with a much-needed increase in the production budget but a general lack of enthusiasm that sours the experience. This sixth adventure for the giant space turtle and ‘friend to all children’ did not … Continue reading REVIEW: Gamera vs Jiger (1970)
Kameda (Masayuki Mori) is a naïve man who suffers from epilepsy. He returns home to Hokkaido after almost being shot by firing squad in Okinawa. There he meets Taeko (Setsuko Hara), a former mistress to a rich business man, who … Continue reading REVIEW: The Idiot (1951)
A corporate boss lies dead in his own home, bludgeoned to death with a bronze urn. Court-appointed prosecutor Akira Kido (Ken Utsui) thinks he has the killer, the method, and the motive all worked out – all he has to … Continue reading REVIEW: The Black Report (1963)
I just don’t understand,’ mutters a woodcutter (Takashi Shimizu), and he shelters under the half-ruined eaves of the Rashomon gate with a priest (Minoru Chiaki) and a passer-by (Kichijiru Ueda). The woodcutter has just returned from a trial by the … Continue reading REVIEW: Rashomon (1950)
Itinerant runner Chota (Utaemon Ichikawa) takes up a job delivering letters for an Edo period courier company. He immediately falls in love with the owner’s daughter – the lovely Oshun. Romance must wait, however, as a plague strikes the village … Continue reading REVIEW: Tengu Hikyaku (1949)
Artist Ichiro Aoe (Toshiro Mifune) meets pop singer Miyako Saigo (Yoshiko Yamaguchi) in the mountains. She has missed her bus, so he offers her a ride back to her hotel on his motorbike. They are photographed together by an opportunistic … Continue reading REVIEW: Scandal (1950)
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