Tag Archives: Japan

A series of ghastly murders is being committed. The one similarity in each of the murders is that a weird buzzing sound is always heard right before the murder occurs. Is the killer invisible or possibly some other incredible creature?
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During the 1950’s, a Tokyo woman from a wealthy family has been pregnant for 20 months while her husband has been missing for a year, apparently after vanishing from inside a locked room. She lives with her mother in a big house that seems to be part of the key for the long delayed delivery. Sekiguchi, a young novelist has a lukewarm interest in the case, sparked by hallucinations or, as they’re called in the film, revelations. The affair is far from private, terrified people ask for police intervention, riot and threaten to break into the house…
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Kousatsu portrays and condemns the oppressive atmosphere of a highly competitive society governed by “hypocritical adults” that prevent young people being young, leading them to commit acts of rebellion and acts of uncontrolled violence or even self-destruct.
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The story is set in 1970 during the time of the first EXPO in Japan. The film’s main figure is a miner who suddenly becomes unemployed because the mine he worked in was shut down. He decides to resettle with his whole family to Hokkaido in northern Japan and start a new life as a farmer.
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This early gem starring the great Mifune Toshiba tells the tale of Katakana Yonetaro aka “The Shark,” a rough-and-tumble horse trader in Japan’s rugged northernmost territory of Hokkaddo.. always ready to drink, fight, gamble and chase women he falls victim to a crooked game with loaded dice. This little-known film captures the wild ways of early Japan after the fall of the shogunate when men had only their own strengths and skills to rely on. A brilliant yet tragic tale that can now be told.
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Follows the fluctuating fortunes of three friends in feudal Japan who are ronin: masterless warriors, who wander from castle to castle, selling their services to whichever lord will fill their rice bowls. These are not the YOJIMBO Super Samurai but rather the rank and file, the spear-carriers. The irony is that even though they use the servants’ entrance, they still feel themselves bound by the samurai code of Bushido; and this tension leads to tragedy.
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In April 1895, the talented young Rentaro Taki comes to Tokyo from his home in Kyushu to enrol in the prestigious National Academy of Music. Hoping to become a pianist, he meets another student there, Yuki Nakano, who shares the same aspirations. With his elder classmate Suzuki’s encouragement, Rentaro practices furiously to perfect his technique, but loses his health in the process. Over the years, his health, as well as his devotion to and achievement level in music, fluctuates, as two friends adjust to the varying roles they can each potentially play in his life. Yuki receives the Japanese government’s first music scholarship to study in Berlin. At the same time, Rentaro composes wonderful music and songs like Bloom in the Moonlight which are still very popular in today’s Japan, while Suzuki quits the music school and becomes a hard labourer due to family crisis.
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Blue Lake Woman tells the story of Nagare, a painter who wanted to commit a lover’s suicide with Mizue, the wife of his friend and patron Takigawa. Growing afraid at the last moment, he doesn’t go through with it – but Mizue sinks to the bottom of Blue Lake. Some time later, Nagare follows an invitation by Takigawa, who claims to have forgiven everything. To Nagare’s shock, Takigawa’s new wife, Ameko, looks exactly like Mizue. While staying as Takigawa’s guest, Nagare becomes haunted by Mizue’s ghost, who wants to be reunited with him at the bottom of Blue Lake…
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Prepare yourself to be either infuriated or fascinated by this French film. There’s no in-between reaction available here.When people talk about seeing a really weird film where nothing happened and the end didn’t make any sense, this is the film they’re probably talking about. I’d call it fascinating, but I’m well aware that I’m probably in the minority.
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A troupe of travelling players arrive at a small seaport in the south of Japan. Komajuro Arashi, the aging master of the troupe, goes to visit his old flame Oyoshi and their son Kiyoshi, even though Kiyoshi believes Komajuro is his uncle. The leading actress Sumiko is jealous and so, in order to humiliate the master, persuades the younger actress Kayo to seduce Kiyoshi.
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