Introduction Around three years after delivering his award-winning Harmonium (2016), Koji Fukada is finally back with a new filmic product: A Girl Missing (2020). Can Fukada deliver a narrative as psychologically chilling as Harmonium or will his newest exploration of complex and multifaceted dimension of trauma fail to live up to his prior narrative? Let…
Category: Movies
Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance (1974)
Introduction With Lady Snowblood: Blizzard of the Netherrealm (1973), an adaptation of Kazuo Koike’s popular manga Lady Snowblood (1972 – 1973), Toshiya Fujita created a beautiful, strong demonic woman who turns killing people, with her sharp sword, into an elegant art. Fujita’s sequel about this deadly beauty is, contrary to first narrative, not based on…
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Teruo Ishii is unable to deliver what made the first film so enjoyable: the visual celebration of Ocho Inoshika’s phallic fury.
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A highly relevant narrative that succeeds in underlining the importance of fighting against a-moral system of media manipulation.
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“An amazing exploration of the clash between a sweet youthful romantic desire and the bitter urge of a wounded subject to defend his subjective wounds.”
Goto-san (2021) review [OAFF 2021]
“Gokan expertly reveals the position of the freeter as an attempt to escape the capitalistic machinery but also as a position that most easily falls prey to the ugliest structures of exploitation to keep the profit-focused system going.”
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Imamura’s ‘Black Rain’ is, without a doubt, one of the most important films about the atomic bomb ever made and should be mandatory viewing for anyone who holds the promise of world peace dear.
Short Movie Time: Kyonetsu (2017) [JFFH 2020]
An impressive narrative that, due to its short runtime, leaves the spectator wanting more.
Mio On the Shore (2019) review
A great and visually pleasing narrative about the socially embedded nature of the process of coming-into-being-as-subject.
Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris (1999) review
Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris is, without a doubt, the best film of the Heisei Gamera trilogy.
Gamera 2: Attack of Legion (1996)
A great sequel that delivers everything what Kajju fans desire, but in a less thrilling manner than the first reboot film did.
Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (1995) review
A successful reboot that succeeds in honouring Gamera’s classic past, while also evolving this iconic Kaiju in a meaningful way.
Hotel Iris (2021) review [Osaka Asian Film Festival]
“An artfully composed erotic narrative that plays with the well-known psychoanalytic fact that the relational past of subjects impacts the possibility and appearance of sexual attraction between a man and a woman.”
Ito (2021) review [OAFF 2021]
“A charming exploration about the way in which the other allows a drifting subject to moor his desire and find a direction for his subjectivity within the Other.”
