Tag: cinema

June 22, 2023 · 0 comments

By Tom Wilmot. What is nationality? That is the question at the heart of Go (2001), Isao Yukisada’s award-winning film adapted from Kazuki Kaneshiro’s 2000 novel of the same name. The movie explores the endlessly complex subject of nationality and ethnic belonging, via a coming-of-age story sprinkled with romance. A critical and box office success […]

June 11, 2023 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. They meet one evening on a bridge in Kyoto, like those two samurai heroes of old, Yoshitsune and Benkei, but it has been 200 years since those legendary figures fought in the war commemorated in the Tale of the Heike. Now, in the 14th century, Kyoto is a gutted, ramshackle ruin, worn […]

June 7, 2023 · 0 comments

by Jeremy Clarke. The Police Story trilogy is a landmark of Hong Kong action cinema. As David West points out in his informative essay in the accompanying booklet to Eureka’s welcome 4K UHD release of the three films, the first was the point in Jackie Chan’s career where he broke with period dramas to make […]

June 1, 2023 · 1 comment

By Tom Wilmot. There’s a bomb on the Hikari 109! Tetsuo Okita (Ken Takakura) and his band of blue-collar bombers attempt to extort money from the government, holding the lives of some 1,500 bullet train passengers to ransom. When the National Railway suggests stopping the train to check for an explosive, they learn that the […]

May 20, 2023 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Tom Mes’s new book begins in 2022 with Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car winning an Oscar, followed by a flood of gushing articles about how it was going to “change Japanese cinema.” He notes that this relatively minor art-house film was never going to rock any boats in its native Japan, and […]