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Stairway to the Distant Past is the second film in the Mike Hama Private Investigator Trilogy. If you’ve seen part one The Most Terrible Time in My Life you must seek this out to find out how all your favourite characters are getting on. The films themes are age and family as Mikes mother “Dynamite Sexy Lilly” returns to Yokohama with her strip act many years after deserting Mike and his sister Akane. She reveals who Mikes father is and he sets out to find him. This films DoP deserves an Oscar as the picture is stunningly shot – it reminded me most of the Cinema du Look of Luc Besson and Leos Carax.Read More »
Masatoshi Nagase
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Kaizo Hayashi – Harukana jidai no kaidan o AKA The Stairway To The Distant Past [+Extras] (1995)
1991-2000DramaFilm NoirJapanKaizo Hayashi -
Isao Yukisada – Tojiru hi AKA Enclosed Pain (2000) (DVD)
Drama1991-2000Isao YukisadaJapanYuri and Takumi are brother and sister who faced unusually harsh treatment by their father. An act of brutality keeps them extremely close together until an older couple occupy the house where their secret was buried.Read More »
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Naomi Kawase – Vision (2018)
2011-2020ArthouseAsianJapanJapanese Female DirectorsNaomi KawaseJuliette Binoche finds rapture in the forests of Yoshino
Jeanne (Juliette Binoche) travels to Japan to search for the rare medicinal plant ‘Vision’, which according to legend only appears once every 997 years under special conditions. On her trip, she meets Tomo, a forest ranger, who joins her in her quest and helps retrace her past. Twenty years earlier, in the same forests of Yoshino where Jeanne now hopes to find Vision, she experienced her first true love.Read More »
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Kazuo Kuroki – Kamiya Etsuko no seishun aka The Youth of Kamiya Etsuko (2006)
Drama2001-2010JapanKazuo KurokiWar“Very sweet, wryly funny in spots, but always haunted by war (described sparingly but never shown). It was based on a stage play and betrays its theatrical roots in some of the pacing and staging. It’s slow, perhaps too slow for action film fans, but it’s not boring. Rather, it’s delicate and precise like tea ceremony.Read More »