Tag Archives: japanese

Path of the Beast / Shoujo shofu: kemonomichi (1980) Tatsumi Kumashiro, Ayako Yoshimura, Minako Mizushima, Yûya Uchida, Drama, Erotic

path_of_the_beast
Saki lives in a run-down hack with her mom who survives by pushing a food cart from dawn to dusk. Saki has dropped out of school, and when she’s not helping her mother selling noodles in the streets, she’s playing flesh-games with boyfriend Sotoo. In her spare time, the girl also entertains a truck driver named Ataru. She believes her promiscuity is a trait inherited from her mom. Determined to improve her lot in life (she doesn’t want to grow up like her mother), Saki decides to stop seeing the two guys. The sizzling Japanese Tatsumi Kumashiro’s erotic drama
Read More »

Zoom In: Rape Apartments / Zûmu in: Bôkô danchi (1980) Naosuke Kurosawa, Erina Miyai, Yôko Azusa, Yûko Ôsaki, Horror, Pinku, Erotic

0032b25e
Saeko, a somewhat enigmatic young woman, is brutally beaten with a rock and raped by a man wearing a dark-colored mask and black gloves. She eventually recovers, but not long afterwards a series of horrific murders begins occurring in the apartment building she lives in. When it turns out that the victims are badly beaten, then killed and their genitals burned off, Saeko begins to think she has an idea who the killer is, but realizes she may be murdered before she has a chance to expose the maniac.
Read More »

Arakure / Untamed Woman (1957) Mikio Naruse, Hideko Takamine, Ken Uehara, Masayuki Mori, Drama

Arakure (Mikio Naruse, 1957)
Set in the Taish? period of Japan (dating from 1912 to 1926), Untamed follows the fiery Oshima (in a superbly eccentric performance by Takamine) as she passes from one suitor to another, a series of calamities befalling her along the way. Characteristic of Naruse’s work, urban and rural settings are juxtaposed: the moody Tokyo streets against a majestic mountain village. At each point, the various situations Oshima is caught in seem uncannily bound up with her surroundings. It’s worth noting that the film, while not widely known, is singled out for praise by critic Chris Fujiwara.
Read More »

Nora-neko rokku: Onna banchô / Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss (1970) Yasuharu Hasebe, Akiko Wada, Meiko Kaji, Kôji Wada, Action, Crime, Drama

Nora-neko rokku Onna bancho (1970)
Tells the story of Mei, leader of an all-girl biker gang, inadvertently gets involved with a yakuza group’s plot to rig boxing matches because of her boyfriend and a rival gang. When the yakuza tortures and kills some of her members, she comes out of hiding and, with the help of a loner named Ako, seeks revenge.
Read More »

Mangekyô / Kaleidoscope (1999) Naomi Kawase, Shinya Arimoto, Mika Mifune, Machiko Ono, Documentary

Manguekyo (Naomi Kawase, 1999)
Naomi Kawase collaborates with Shinya Arimoto, a Taiyo award-winning photographer she knows from university, to create a photo album of Machiko Ono (who Kawase scouted for her previous feature film Moe no Suzaku) and Mika Mifune (daughter of famous actor Toshiro Mifune) with the idea to contrast these two aspiring actresses, Ono coming from the rural Nara and Mifune from Tokyo. Kawase documents the photo shooting and interviews Arimoto, Ono and Mifune as the work progresses, while the tension between her and Arimoto increases over disagreement on the direction of the project.
Read More »