Jeremy Clarke 23
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Family Values
by Jeremy Clarke. Three recent Hirokazu Kore-eda movies I Wish (2011), Like Father, Like Son (2013) and After the Storm (2016) finally arrive on UK BD/DVD. Most of his art-house feature work has secured a release here, much of it (including these three titles) initially in cinemas. Kore-eda has been described as one of the […]
Have a Nice Day
by Jeremy Clarke. Set in an unnamed provincial town in South China, director Liu Jian’s Have a Nice Day is a bleak vision of a brutal society fuelled by naked self-interest. It’s hard to think of anything in animation or the wider world of cinema quite like it. The plot suggests a gangster film, but […]
Getting Any?
by Jeremy Clarke. Getting Any? (1994) is Takeshi Kitano’s sex comedy, made around the time he was being feted in the UK as the maker of hardboiled yakuza and more lyrical arthouse movies. It didn’t fit the perception of him at the time and never got a UK theatrical release. However, it remains a fascinating […]
The Taisho Trilogy
by Jeremy Clarke. Japan’s Taisho era runs from the period 1912-1926 when the Taisho Emperor held power. He was preceded by the Meiji Emperor in the Meiji era 1867-1912 and followed by the Showa Emperor a.k.a. Emperor Hirohito in the Showa era 1926-1989. We are now living in Emperor Akihito’s Heisei era, ever since 1989. […]
Fires on the Plain
by Jeremy Clarke. The writer Shohei Ooka (1909-1988) is best known for his novel Nobi (Fires on the Plain, 1951), one of a number influenced by his World War Two experiences as a solider fighting in the Philippines. Nobi takes place against the backdrop of the Japanese army falling apart under the American onslaught and […]