Gozu is a 2003 cult movie directed by Takashi Miike. Shot on a low budget, Gozu was originally planned for release on DVD but a positive reception at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2003 secured its theatrical release overseas.
Gozu has a reputation for being one of the strangest films ever made, with its ensemble of weird characters and dreamlike storyline. Read more…
Wild Zero is a 2000 zombie horror comedy cult classic directed by Tetsuro Takeuchi, and starring the Japanese garage punk band Guitar Wolf. It borrows many elements from other popular B-movies such as Psychomania and Evil Dead II. Read more…
Perfect Blue is a 1997 anime psychological thriller directed by Satoshi Kon. The film is about Mima Kirigoe, a member of a Japanese pop-idol group called “CHAM!”, who decides to pursue her career as an actress. Some of her fans are displeased with her sudden career change, particularly the stalker named Me-Mania. As her new career proceeds, Mima’s world becomes increasingly reminiscent of the works of Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch and Philip K. Dick: reality and fantasy spiral out of control, and Mima discovers that Me-Mania is the least of her troubles. Read more…
Steamboy is a 2004 Japanese animated film, produced by Sunrise, and directed and co-written by Katsuhiro Otomo. In 1863, scientists Lloyd Steam and his son Edward have succeeded after a lengthy expedition in discovering a pure mineral water which they believe can be harnessed as an ultimate power source in steam engines (the main industrial catalyst of the time). When an experiment in Russian Alaska goes terribly wrong, resulting in Edward being engulfed in freezing gas, a strange ball-like apparatus is seen “born” from the destruction. Read more…
Origin – Spirits of the Past (Gin-iro no Kami no Agito in Japanese) is an anime film produced by Gonzo. It tells the story of Agito, a young boy living in a dystopian Japan set 300 years in the future. This apocalypse was brought about by extensive genetic engineering on trees, conducted at a research facility on Earth’s moon, in order to produce trees capable of growing in harsh, arid conditions. The trees became conscious and spread to Earth in a fiery holocaust, wiping out most of modern civilization and fragmenting the moon. Read more…
Ninja Scroll is a Japanese action thriller anime set in feudal Japan, by critically acclaimed director/writer Yoshiaki Kawajiri.
A team of Koga Ninja is sent to investigate a plague in Shimoda village, but on their way they are slaughtered. The only survivor is Kagero, who is captured and nearly raped by her assailant, a huge stone golem called Tessai. Read more…
Fullmetal Alchemist The Movie – The Conqueror of Shamballa is a 2005 Japanese anime. Directed by Seiji Mizushima and written by Sho Aikawa, it acts as a continuation of the first Fullmetal Alchemist television series.
Dragged from his homeworld of Amestris to a parallel world called Earth, Edward Elric lives in Munich, Germany, in the year 1923. Stripped of his alchemical powers and some of his limbs, he researches rocketry with Alfons Heiderich, a young man who resembles his brother, Alphonse Elric, thinking that if he uses a rocket, he can return to his world. Read more…
Floating Weeds is a 1959 film by Yasujiro Ozu and shot in colour by Kazuo Miyagawa, one of Japan’s most highly regarded cinematographers. It is a remake of Ozu’s own 1934 black-and-white silent film A Story of Floating Weeds (1934). The film takes place during a hot summer in 1958 at a seaside town in the Inland Sea. Read more…
Early Summer is a 1951 drama directed by Yasujiro Ozu and starring Setsuko Hara and Chishu Ryu. Like most Ozu films, Early Summer deals with many issues ranging from communication problems between generations and the rising role of women in post-war Japan. Noriko lives contentedly in an extended family household that includes her parents and her brother’s family, but an uncle’s visit prompts the family to find her a husband. Read more…
Late Spring is a 1949 black and white film drama directed by YasujirÅ Ozu and starring Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara. Many consider this extremely chaste film between a father and his marriageable daughter his finest achievement. The story concerns Noriko, who lives happily with her widowed father and seems in no hurry to get married. Her father, a professor, however, wants to see her settled and conspires with his sister to trick Noriko into pursuing an arranged marriage. Read more…