The title of this cartoonishy gruesome sci-fi mashup pretty much tells you everything you need to know about it. There are moments of outlandish humor, social satire, and abject grossness to be sure, but itContinue reading
Category: Japanese Cinema
Intentions of Murder (Shohei Imamura, 1964)
Although frequently discussed as one of Imamura’s masterpieces, I found this perversely twisted domestic melodrama about how Japanese society allows pathetic men to manipulate and control the women in their lives to be rather slow-going.Continue reading
The Insect Woman (Shohei Imamura, 1963)
The direct translation of the original Japanese title is Entomological Chronicles of Japan, which more closely reflects the film’s use of a resilient woman’s struggling life journey as a metaphor for the history of 20th-centuryContinue reading
Pigs and Battleships (Shohei Imamura, 1961)
The wonderfully bizarre title of Imamura’s breakthrough film is a jab at both the corruption of modern Japan and its American occupiers. Mixing dark comedy with melodramatic pathos, this wildly (purposefully?) uneven film charts theContinue reading
Empire of Passion (Nagisa Oshima, 1978)
How to follow up one of the most scandalous art-house hits of all time? If you’re Japanese provocateur Nagisa Oshima, you do more of the same, but different. His followup to In the Realm ofContinue reading
In the Realm of the Senses (Nagisa Oshima, 1976)
Defenders of Oshima’s sexually explicit depiction of an obsessive relationship argue that it is a pure, uncomplicated, and therefore challenging depiction of love fully unleashed from social conformity and moral complications. The problem is thatContinue reading
Dodes’ka-den (Akira Kurosawa, 1970)
Tragically known as the failure that caused the great Kurosawa to attempt suicide, this oddball absurdist comedy-drama about Tokyo slum-dwellers doesn’t stand up with the great director’s better known works, but it is still an intriguing,Continue reading
Twenty-Four Eyes (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1954)
A sentimental favorite in its native country, this story of a dedicated schoolteacher and the pupils who come in and out of her life is also a portrait of the tragic fate of Japan inContinue reading
High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)
An expertly crafted mystery thriller whose story of a kidnapping and its aftermath is woven through with a particularly acute portrait of the decay of modern Japan, High and Low is Hitchcock by way ofContinue reading
Patriotism (Yukio Mishima, 1966)
The controversial Japanese novelist’s lone foray behind the camera produced this 27-minute short film (for 30 years thought destroyed after the author’s suicide) that is infinitely more interesting as psychological insight into Mishima’s personal obsessionsContinue reading