Ichi the Killer, Koroshiya: Episode 0 (2004) Movie Review

Takashi Miike’s infamous splatter-fest “Ichi the Killer” has proved to be a controversial cult favourite, and so it comes as no surprise that it has inspired a spin off in the form of an anime prequel. Although the initial reaction for fans of the original film may be to sigh with cynical...

February 11th, 2005 | Read More

Kyoto Nocturnes: Elegant Slaughter (2004) Movie Review

“Elegant Slaughter” is part one of a five-part anthology set in the Japanese underworld, aka the Yakuza. Part one concerns a Yakuza boss (Keishu Tsumagata) who flees to a late-night restaurant along with his lieutenant Uchida (Manabu Inoue) and a couple of foot soldiers after a rival gangster...

February 10th, 2005 | Read More

Evil Dead Trap 2 (1991) Movie Review

(Movie Review by Erick Kwon) Shy and sullen Aki Otami (Shoko Nakajima) is a projectionist at a fleabag theatre in a rundown and seedy section of town, where she’s haunted by fleeting visions of a small boy whom she spots in various places around the building, though no one else seems to notice...

January 24th, 2005 | Read More

Perfect Blue (2002) Movie Review

Ahhhh, the vagaries of stardom. Plenty of money, private jets, fast cars, an entourage of “Yes” men doing your bidding, and millions of screaming fans. However, fans sometimes become a star’s worst enemy. We’ve all seen news reports of obsessed fans stalking and sometimes harming...

January 14th, 2005 | Read More

Tomie: Forbidden Fruit (2002) Movie Review

“Tomie: Forbidden Fruit” is the fourth in the franchise based on the Japanese manga by popular horror artist Ito Junji, whose unique talent also produced the inspirations for the films “Uzumaki” and “Kakashi”. “Forbidden Fruit” is linked to its predecessors...

January 12th, 2005 | Read More

Ichi the Killer (2002) Movie Review

“Ichi the Killer” is easily one of the most controversial films of the last decade, and its undeniably extreme content has become synonymous with the name of its director, the notorious Takashi Miike. For many, this is the quintessential Miike film, a hyper stylised visceral barrage of over...

January 4th, 2005 | Read More

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds (1984) Movie Review

(Movie Review by Erick Kwon) “Nausicaa” (also known by the longer title, “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind”) is based on the manga series of the same name, written and drawn by the film’s writer/director Hayao Miyazaki. The story is set 1,000 years from now, in a so-called...

December 21st, 2004 | Read More

Nobody Knows (2004) Movie Review

Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda has built somewhat of a cult reputation for off centre, documentary-like dramas, such as his Heaven-set “After Life” and the Dogme style “Distance”, which starred Tadanobu Asano. Although his films have received a considerable amount of critical...

December 18th, 2004 | Read More

Gun Crazy: Vol. 1 – A Woman From Nowhere (2002) Movie Review

(Movie Review by Edward Lee) The world loves a good western. As a matter of fact, Europeans loved them so much that, when distribution problems of the early 1960s made these movies increasingly difficult to import, they started making their own. While starring actors of various nations, most of these...

December 5th, 2004 | Read More

Azumi (2003) Movie Review

Ryuhei Kitamura’s “Azumi” is surprisingly very ordinary, especially considering its 140-minute running length and the movie coming from the director of the hyper zombie epic “Versus”. It can be said that “Azumi” shows the more traditional side of Kitamura, with...

November 30th, 2004 | Read More

Sayonara Jupiter (aka Bye-Bye Jupiter, 1983) Movie Review

When it was announced in the early 1980s that American audiences were returning to Jupiter via “2010″, the Peter Hyams sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking “2001″, Toho decided to give Japanese audiences a trip of their own, and do it before “2010″. The...

November 20th, 2004 | Read More

My Lover is a Sniper (2004) Movie Review

“My Lover is a Sniper” is the third part in a series that started with two TV movies that proved popular enough to warrant a feature on the big screen. The movie stars Miki Mizuno (”Bayside Shakedown 2″) as Kinako, a police Detective who, in the first and second installments,...

November 19th, 2004 | Read More

Destroy All Monsters (1968) Movie Review

Godzilla’s popularity was on the wane in the late 60s, both in Japan and abroad. As a result, Toho management decreed that “Destroy All Monsters” would be Godzilla’s swan song, and ordered a film that would send the big guy out in style. Little did they know that the film would...

November 17th, 2004 | Read More

Giant Monster Gamera (1965) Movie Revie

Toho’s Godzilla series was so successful that Daiei Studios decided they wanted a monster of their own. Probably realizing they couldn’t compete at the adult level with the Big G, Toho aimed somewhat lower, by focusing on the children’s market. The result is a substandard kaiju flick,...

November 14th, 2004 | Read More

Cutie Honey (2004) Movie Review

I suppose it goes without saying that you can’t take a movie called “Cutie Honey” too seriously. And even if you were to mistakenly believe this was a serious superhero movie, one glimpse of the heroine sporting form-fitting pink foam rubber that conveniently leaves a large gap to display...

November 8th, 2004 | Read More

Zatoichi: The Life and Opinion of Masseur Ichi (1962) Movie Review

The itinerant blind swordsman/masseur/compulsive gambler Zatoichi is something of a cinematic institution in Japan. The meek, blind masseuse defending the helpless from evil (using a samurai sword hidden in his walking stick with preternatural skill) and putting the smack down at the local gambling...

November 6th, 2004 | Read More

Three: Extremes (2004) Movie Review

The release of the Asian horror anthology “Three…Extremes” on DVD comes as a bit of a dilemma to international moviegoers who had already seen one of the three stories, Fruit Chan’s “Dumplings”, when it was released earlier in full-length version. As with the original...

November 1st, 2004 | Read More

Casshern (2004) Movie Review

Like “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”, and before that, Mamoru Oshii’s “Avalon”, the Japanese sci-fi film “Casshern” seems to have been built on a foundation of, “It’d be really cool if we did this, and then follow it up with this!” ideas....

October 28th, 2004 | Read More

Godzilla Raids Again (1955) Movie Review

Toho wasn’t going to let a little thing like the title character dying get in their way of making money. Five months after the original “Godzilla” first hit screens, a sequel was quickly made and released out onto an unsuspecting populace. While it is a fairly decent Godzilla film,...

October 27th, 2004 | Read More

Zebraman (2004) Movie Review

You probably won’t find a wackier film than Takashi Miike’s “Zebraman”, a Japanese movie about a loser who discovers that, by making a homemade superhero costume, he can literally transform into his TV idol (who was cancelled years ago) and fight alien invaders. Of course in this...

October 20th, 2004 | Read More