Japanese Movie Reviews »
Seven Samurai (1954) Movie Review
When watching “Seven Samurai,” one must remember two things: The first is that Asian cinema has been at a great disadvantage to their western counterparts. At a time when Asia was still trying to...
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Sanjuro (1962) Movie Review
Sanjuro is the sequel to Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, and returns star Toshiro Mifune as the title character. In this installment, sword-for-hire Sanjuro stumbles into more trouble — or rather, trouble comes to the shack...
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Down to Hell (1996) Movie Review
Much like the feature length movie that would follow it, the Super 8 short “Down to Hell” needs to be seen to be believed. It’s not that writer/director/camera operator/caterer/janitor Ryuhei Kitamura has created something...
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The Perfect Education (1998) Movie Review
I must confess that I’m reasonably certain I’ve approached the Japanese “Perfect Education” series with the wrong perspective. With “Perfect Education 2″, which I saw and reviewed before the original, I mistakenly took the...
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Stacy: Attack of the Schoolgirl Zombies (2001) Movie Review
The Zombies Attack genre is a burgeoning one in Japan. I’ve only seen a couple of real zombie movies, including “Junk” and “Wild Zero”. And while “Versus” also featured zombies, it was more chop...
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The Perfect Education 2: 40 Days of Love (2001) Movie Review
Apparently if you want a high school girl to be your love slave, all you have to do is kidnap her at the point of a knife, tie her up in your apartment for...
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Hush! (2001) Movie Review
I hate to admit it, but sometimes watching an Asian drama, most notably those from China, Japan, and South Korea, is like watching paint dry, only less productive. Sometimes one can’t help but get...
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Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1988) Movie Review
Tetsuo is a 1-hour film in black and white, and tells the story of an unnamed salaryman (Japanese businessman, played by Tomoro Taguchi), who accidentally runs over a jogger with his car. The man...
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Kite (1998) Movie Review
Yasuomi Umetsu’s one-hour animation, “Kite” (which is actually compiled from 2 25-minute episodes), suffers from what I like to call Dumb Action Movie Clich’s. DAMC is responsible for a lot of the things that...
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Muscle Heat (aka Blood Heat, 2003) Movie Review
Despite sporting a terrible title, Kane Kosugi’s “Muscle Heat” wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. My Bad Action B-Movie Radar perked right up when I read about the film’s bad...
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Zipang (1992) Movie Review
Kaizo Hayasahi’s “Zipang” isn’t bad, it’s just irrelevant. There isn’t really much to say about “Zipang” other than that you will either like it or you won’t. It’s one of those movies that defies...
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Black Magic M-66 (1987) Movie Review
As long as you don’t expect too much, I suppose Masamune Shirow’s 1987 effort, “Black Magic M-66″ isn’t a bad way to spend 45 minutes. At least 8 years before he would blow the...
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Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) Movie Review
Even if you had absolutely no interest in animated movies of any type, Hayao Miyazaki has a way of convincing you to rethink that notion. Miyazaki’s “Kiki’s Delivery Service”, a 1989 feature about a...
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Choice of Hercules (2002) Movie Review
Masato Harada’s new movie “Choice of Hercules” would probably make more sense re-titled as “The Labors of Hercules”. Like the Greek myth before him, Atsuyuki Sassa (Koji Yakusho), a knowledgeable official with a Japanese...
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Onmyoji (aka Yin Yang Master, 2002) Movie Review
“Onmyoji” (or “Yin Yang Master”) is about wizards at a Japanese royal court (circa 1000 A.D.) that do battle for the fate of the current ruling emperor. On one side there’s Seimei (Mansai Nomura),...
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Bounce ko Gals (aka Leaving, 1997) Movie Review
I don’t know what type of box office numbers writer/director Masato Harada gets in his native Japan, but I am almost certain it isn’t astounding. As he did with “Kamikaze Taxi”, a social movie...
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Ping Pong (2002) Movie Review
It must be hard for filmmakers to constantly have to find a new sport from which to form a Sports Movie around. Even the niche sport of curling has been explored in the Canadian...
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Heaven and Earth (Ten to Chi to, 1990) Movie Review
You really have to respect director Haruki Kadokawa for the monumental task of directing a movie like “Heaven and Earth”, which is more enterprise in filmmaking than actual filmmaking. Not really a movie, but...
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Returner (2002) Movie Review
Sometimes there’s just no real reason for a movie to be in the first place. Take the South Korean movie “Resurrection of the Little Match Girl”, and now take the Japanese movie “Returner”. Both...
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Freeze Me (2000) Movie Review
With “Freeze Me”, I’m reasonably certain writer/director Takashi Ishii is trying to make a statement about the hardships of being a woman in contemporary Japan, but the problem is that the film just isn’t...
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