Tag: JAPAN

February 10, 2020 / Drama
February 1, 2020 / Experimental

0cm4 is the philosophical story of a color-blind man called Maeda who decides to have an operation to cure his vision. The problem is that he is not quite sure if he wants to do it, as he thinks that everybody else in the world sees things differently. He’s afraid that after the operation, his world is not going to be the same.

January 13, 2020 / Drama
October 26, 2019 / Animation

Author/illustrator Sanpei Shirato’s Ninja bugei-cho was a popular graphic novel serialized across Japan in the 1960s, well loved by students and leftist radicals for its tale of a young boy’s alliance with a band of ninja during a peasant uprising. Nagisa Oshima takes an experimental approach to adaptation; out of deep respect for Shirato’s artistry (and his usual cinematic prankishness), he films Shirato’s images as they appear on the page, like an anime version of Sans soleil, with the camera hovering and darting over each “scene” to provide movement and life. Adding voices, sound effects, and a narration that connects the plot’s myriad strands, Oshima intervenes in yet another unexpected genre to create a fascinating treatise on cinema, narrative, and action.

October 21, 2019 / Comedy

Popular jazz drummer and actor Frankie Sakai stars in this comic version of the “industrial competition” genre: two tourism companies compete for foreign clients in the run up to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Highlighting the coming internationalization of Japan, the film dramatizes the felt tensions between tradition and modernity, the pressures of the “economic animal” lifestyle, and the energy of high economic growth. The closest Japanese cinema ever came to the full-blown Broadway style musical, with singing and dancing on the streets of Tokyo, music by avant-garde composer and jazzman Toshiro Mayuzumi, lyrics by renowned poet Shuntaro Tanikawa.

October 19, 2019 / Short

Hiroshi Kobayashi is on the run, both away from the police who want him for the murder of his girlfriend Naomi, and towards the yakuza Kimura, from whom he wants to exact revenge for getting her hooked on drugs. The whole film is one long chase scene, shot in wild, semi-abstract patterns so that you’re never quite sure what you’re seeing.

October 14, 2019 / Drama

A forty-year-old office worker, Ishino get good income, nice family and a love affair with girl co-worker. His life is mostly perfect. One day, way home after affair, Ishino run across his neighbor, Sugiyama. They had known each other but not so close . Ishino hadn’t worry that his affair has catch. A few days later, police told Ishino that Sugiyama was arrested on charge of murder and claiming he had met Ishino in that day. If Ishino proved the Sugiyama’s alibi, Ishino’s life will be destroyed. If he give false evidence, Sugiyama will be hanged…

October 12, 2019 / Drama

The story of a young boy, Genta, who bravely takes on life’s challenges in hopes of finding a better life for himself and his struggling mother.