A middle-aged Mexican wrestler prepares for his most challenging match ever. Meanwhile a Japanese man in polka dot pyjamas wakes up in a room with no doors. The next 90 minutes either make no sense, or a lot of sense, … Continue reading REVIEW: Symbol (2009)
Kazuto (Kazuto Osawa) is an under-confident security guard with a tendency to faint when faced with confrontation. Behind on his rent and facing dismissal from his job for not disclosing his condition, Kazuto runs into his estranged brother Hiroki (Hiroki … Continue reading REVIEW: Special Actors (2019)
Penguin Highway, a 2018 animated feature based on the Tomihiko Morimi novel, represents the best and worst of anime. On the one hand it boasts a richly developed and wonderfully imaginative story that boasts both clever ideas and a warm, … Continue reading REVIEW: Penguin Highway (2018)
The lovestruck manager of a Yokohama development project (Emoto Tasuku) falls in love with a construction worker (Mita Moa), but his affections are not reciprocated. When he childishly steals her name tag from the work site, the worker takes matters … Continue reading REVIEW: Beautiful New Bay Area Project (2013)
Horror films seem to lend themselves to franchises, as audiences crave to revisit the monsters and villains that entertained them so much in the earlier instalments. There is more often than not a gradual drop in quality as these franchises … Continue reading REVIEW: Sadako (2019)
Young street musician Shinji Taki (Akira Kobayashi) wanders into the northern Japanese city Hakodate and straight into the affairs of local mob boss Akitsu (Nobuo Kaneko). Taki gets assigned to force a nearby family to vacate their house so that … Continue reading REVIEW: The Rambling Guitarist (1959)
A particular kind of anime fan will likely have a ball with Blame!, a 2017 feature film based on a Tsutomi Nihei manga. Produced with fluid and impressively detailed computer-generated animation, it offers a serious science fiction story backed up with … Continue reading REVIEW: Blame! (2017)
In the 1860s Japan is in a turbulent period of transition as the Americans’ gunboat diplomacy forces the country to interact with a broader world. In a Tokyo brothel a grifter named Saheji (Frankie Sakai) overstays with no money, and … Continue reading REVIEW: Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate (1957)
This is one of the more unusual feature film projects that I have seen. In the mid-1980s the independent movie studio New World Pictures, run by the legendary low budget film producer Roger Corman, acquired the American rights to the … Continue reading REVIEW: In the Aftermath (1988)
Wakatasuki, a young employee at an insurance firm, receives a telephone call from a woman asking if her life insurance policy covers her committing suicide. Concerned for her welfare, he rushes to her house only to stumble upon the dead … Continue reading REVIEW: Black House (1999)
