Cinema 165
The Deer King
By Jonathan Clements. Supposedly, life has returned to normal in the lands of Aquafa, but there are still unwelcome echoes of the past. The Empire of Zol maintains garrisons of soldiers on Aquafan territory, and plunders the nation’s riches for its own ends. But a new threat arises, fighting the Zolians on an unexpected front. […]
Josee, the Tiger and the Fish
By Jonathan Clements. Struggling to make ends meet, Tsuneo is scrimping together all his spare cash to fund the trip of a lifetime – a graduate posting in Mexico where he can indulge his love of diving. He is so set on this aim that he doesn’t realise that his co-worker Mai is carrying a […]
Irezumi
By Tom Wilmot. By the mid-1970s, the decline of the Japanese studio system had led to the rise of pinku eiga, low-budget soft porn movies that were targeted at a male theatre-going audience. However, this transition towards films dominated by eroticism had already begun almost a decade earlier for auteur filmmaker Yasuzo Masumura. The director had continued […]
Giants and Toys
By Tom Wilmot. As three caramel companies, World, Giant and Apollo duel for market share, fresh-faced World employee Nishi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi) assists his ambitious boss, Goda (Hideo Takamatsu) in making a star out of the rotten-toothed tomboy Kyoko (Hitomi Nozoe), who is to be the face of their space-themed campaign. As each company’s marketing drive […]
The Invisible Man
By Jeremy Clarke. With a title that seems to proclaim, “look at me, I’ve arrived”, Daiei’s The Invisible Man Appears (1949) is a Japanese manifesto, a statement that they can match American movies. Eiji Tsuburaya‘s effects are as good as anything in Universal’s The Invisible Man (1933) and were almost certainly produced at a fraction […]