Tag: Japanese Cinema
Lady Snowblood is Toshiya Fujita’s 1973 Japanese exploitation flick that inspired the likes of Tarantino’s Kill Bill and countless other directors, featuring the beautiful Meiko Kaji, also famous as Lady Scorpion, in the central role as a wronged woman seeking revenge tenaciously. The choreographed action sequences of vivid brutality – where translucent blood is sprayed […]
It goes without saying that director Hideo Nakata is one of the most celebrated filmmakers when it comes to Japanese horror. Having helmed two exceptionally well-received adaptations of Koji Suzuki novels, Ringu and Dark Water, which were also heavily responsible for kicking off the J-horror boom overseas, Nakata has continued exploring the supernatural world in his work […]
For the length of time that zombie movies have been a part of horror, it is only natural that the subgenre would eventually go stale, occasionally requiring a total re-evaluation of the creature design to breathe new life into the genre. As with classics such as White Zombie (1932) becoming obsolete after George A. Romero […]
Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House (1977) is memorable as a haunted house movie which defines itself through a whimsical absurdity forming a reality independent from any conventional filmmaking. It presents a cartoonish vision of our world, strange as the uncanny artificial foregrounds and otherworldly lighting; ultimately resembling a family-friendly film distorted into the surrealism of slapstick horrors. […]
Today I want to talk about a little film called Avatar. No, not the bloated CGI-laden thinly-veiled sci-fi retelling of Disney’s Pocahontas directed by James Cameron Avatar, I’m talking about the 2011 J-Horror movie directed by Atsushi Wada. Sure, it’s the only Japanese horror film with the title but unfortunately, the general headspace for most […]
Biotherapy is a Japanese 1986 sci-fi horror that’s aptly described as a slasher merged into a splatter creature feature. The short movie was released as a project from the limited career of director Akihiro Kashima and it dismays me how we never had the opportunity for more of such fun productions – the splatterpunk scene […]
In this short article, I want to write something about Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure (1997). Yet, I do not want to present a common review, but I want to offer a somewhat more poetic piece on the rather scandalous truth of Kiyoshi’s mystery-horror masterpiece. Cure follows detective Kenichi Takabe (Koji Yakusho) as he is tasked to […]
Susumu Nokoshi once worked for a top foreign financial company. He is now a 34-year-old homeless man, usually found around a park in Shinjuku. He then meets medical school student Manabu Ito, who is looking for volunteers to undergo a surgical procedure known as trepanation. The surgery involves drilling a hole in the skull. Susumu […]
It is safe to say that the global coronavirus pandemic has drastically changed our world and the way we both operate and interact within it. Nowhere has this been more overwhelmingly true than in the film industry. What started with horror fans celebrating their favorite on-brand pandemic themed features has slowly devolved into a mired […]
Pinku Eiga, the taboo territory for many enthusiasts of Japanese Cinema. What exactly is it? Are these pictures merely exploitation flicks? Where to begin with the genre? Let’s explore the intricacies of steamy tales straight from Japan together with Jasper Sharp, a film historian and the author of “Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History […]