Renji Ishibashi

Takeru (Renji Ishibashi), a young rebel, is travelling alone in the North of Honshu. He once used to practice pole vaulting but he gave up and became a robber. Along his trip he crosses the path of a young couple doing a performance for a super market. Fascinated by both of them but probably a bit attracted by the mysterious silent girl (Kaori Momoi), he decides to follow them. He starts to realize that they have no other means of communication than their hands and gestures. One night, some young laborers from the town kidnap the girl and rape her. The next morning, Takeru and his friend (Tenmei Kanō) head to the mine in order to find the girl and avenge her.Read More »

Tokoku Kitamura (1868-1894) is a Romantic poet and an advocate of liberalism in the Meiji era. This biopic is centered on New Year’s Day of 1894, when Kitamura is recovering from a suicide attempt. Japan is then under the spell of fervent patriotism because the government wants to build up public support for a war with China. Kitamura’s literary friends and militant comrades come to visit. They wonder why Kitamura wants to kill himself. Kitamura at first refuses to receive them, then he sits down with them and looks back on his days as a civil rights militant, his stormy love life and his ardent but destructive desire to live literature to the full.Read More »

A disabled child of separated parents gets caught up in police espionage due to his uncanny ability to remember license plate numbers.Read More »

Synopsis :
A decadent Count in 1920’s Japan becomes obsessed with the works of the Marquis de Sade. He creates a theatre to show plays adapted from the notorious writers novels, and recruits a variety of theives, prostitutes and low lives to act out his fantasies on stage for the delight of his rich and decadent friends.
In search of new sensations, the nobleman orders one of the actors, on pain of death, to make love to the noblemans wife while he watches. Unfortunately, this incursion of real life into his fantasy world will have dire consequences for the count and his coterie.
Full of startling images and with a gripping storyline, this film is a feast for the eyes and mind. A classic waiting to be discovered.Read More »

Kazuo Kuroki’s international award-winning period drama was produced in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the death of Shozo Makino, “the father of Japanese films.” Set in the 1830s near the end of the age of the samurai, Ronin Gai is populated by an ensemble of colorful characters, social outcasts who patronize a restaurant and brothel on the outskirts of Edo. Among them are prostitutes and masterless samurai reduced to drunkenness and debauchery. The disgraced and disillusioned former warriors get a chance at redemption when renegade samurai invade the area to murder the prostitutes.Read More »

Synopsis
A salaryman and yakuza are each sent by their bosses to a remote Chinese village but discover more then they expected.Read More »

Quote:
Takeru (Renji Ishibashi), a young rebel, is travelling alone in the North of Honshu. He once used to practice pole vaulting but he gave up and became a robber. Along his trip he crosses the path of a young couple doing a performance for a super market. Fascinated by both of them but probably a bit attracted by the mysterious silent girl (Kaori Momoi), he decides to follow them. He starts to realize that they have no other means of communication than their hands and gestures. One night, some young laborers from the town kidnap the girl and rape her. The next morning, Takeru and his friend (Tenmei Kanō) head to the mine in order to find the girl and avenge her.Read More »

Those who know Japanese cult director Takashi Miike only through his shock and gore films – Ichi the Killer and Audition are both absolute classics of the genre – will be in for a surprise with The Bird People of China. Bird People stands as absolute proof that, although Miike will likely always be best known for his more extreme films, the man has a surprising degree of depth to him and is more than capable of turning out world class serious film.Read More »

This was also voted No.55 on 1999’s Kinema Jumpo Poll of Top 100 Japanese Films of All Time.
It’s a samurai film but its style is rather different from those Toei & Daiei jidaigeki in 50s & 60s (probably not surprising as an ATG production), It has a non-heroic (or at least, unorthodoxy) portrait of the protagonist: Ryoma, at times even a parody, with the wry humor everywhere in the film. But it also looks a bit like a documentary, as the film is very grainy and the cinematographer is Masaki Tamura, who’s responsible for the look of many Shinsuke Ogawa & later, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s films. Read More »