Tag: Japan

February 14, 2020 · 0 comments

by Jeremy Clarke. A boxer with no fear of death. Japanese yakuza, Chinese triads. A bag of drugs. A girl sold into prostitution. Director Takeshi Miike’s latest is a potent cocktail of these ingredients, a mass of mayhem orchestrated with his trademark pace, panache and energy. And yet, as its 14th February UK release date […]

February 12, 2020 · 1 comment

By Jasper Sharp. Satoshi Kon’s Millennium Actress uses its heroine to explore themes of subjectivity and spectatorship, with a topic that might at first seem better suited to live action. In all those elements, it bears some similarities with his debut feature Perfect Blue (1997), which pitched the viewer into the fragmenting worldview of a retired […]

February 10, 2020 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. King’s Game is a horror anime. More specifically, it’s a teen-horror anime, in which school-age characters are terrorised by a mysterious killer, called “King.” This self-styled royal murderer doesn’t need a mask or a knife. He (or she or it) speaks through a medium hardwired into the minds of millennials, the mobile […]

February 7, 2020 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Two years ago, this blog ran a spoiler-filled article discussing the end of Makoto Shinkai’s blockbuster Your Name. Now, after the cinema run of Shinkai’s follow-up Weathering with You, we give it the same treatment. The discussion will involve huge SPOILERS for both Weathering and Your Name, so consider yourself warned.

January 29, 2020 · 0 comments

By Jasper Sharp. As is customary, the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan, or Eiren, has just released figures for the previous year’s box office, presenting the opportunity to consider the current state of Japanese cinema as an industry, if not as an art. There is some cause for celebration on this first score, at […]