December (2023) review [Nippon Connection]

A highly moving and emotionally powerful narrative that explores the struggle of a subject to shake of the winter of his subjectivity.

Ox-Head Village (2022) review

A solid horror-movie that pleasantly utilizes a sense mystery to engage the spectator and fluidly integrated unsettling imagery to put the spectator ill at ease and even scare him/her.

Trail Of Blood (1972) review

Ikehiro stylishly celebrates the Matatabi film of the past and offers the chanbara-enthusiast enough sword-fighting action to satisfy him/her.

Rageaholic (2022) review

“A great dystopian narrative that clearly gives expression the director’s fear of certain right-wing tendencies that linger within Japanese society.”

A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse (1975) review

It is via the splatter of blood, the concatenation of sexual acts, and the ghostly revenge that Yamaguchi presents the male spectator his truth: that he, beyond fantasy and desire, is a merely castrated being.   

A Girl On The Shore (2021) review

“Ueda’s engaging film is all about two subjects trying to escape their phantasmatic identification with the notion of trash.”