Why are Japanese films so terrible?

Gojira movie feat.Smog Monster (Jap version) = second gratest film of all time. At one point they convene a MAJOR ROCK CONCERT ATOP A MOUNTAIN to dispel the demons of pollution, you think ver kidz are going to save the universe god that's lame, but ROCK CONCERT FAILS!! Only a jumping man in a rubbish rubber suit will do!!

Ring 2 fails to capitalise on the idea of the first film, and ends up in some sort of no mans land of schlocky pseudo horror. Pity. I hear Ring 0 (the prequel) is appalling too.

I of course rather like some Japanese films - and think After-Life is genius. I am looking forward to Battle Royale with more than a bit of interest.

Tokyo Fist = best.film.ever

followed by 7 Samurai

Didn't get much outta Violent Cop at all. He was a violent cop though, truth in titling there...

Godzilla vs Smog Monster, liked that one a bunch back in the day. The kids on the mountain were playing surf music on psychedelic Fenders, right?

Quite Good: "Ghost In The Shell", "Branded to Kill" (or is it "Branded to Thrill"? I mean the one with the hitman who is sexually aroused by the smell of cooking rice), "Violent Cop" (if only for the ending), "Ring" (not as scarey as people say, especially not on my tiny computer screen)

Pants, but bizarre non western pants (and therefore nevertheless interesting): "Roujin-Z" (see robotic beds fight!)

What about when Godzilla does the highland fling? That was funny! Ha ha ha!

I STILL HAVEN'T SEEN PRINCESS MONONOKE. Is there/has there been showings of his new film yet? (something like "wandering spirits" - can't recall right now)

And Ozu makes it hard for me to remember if I've seen a particular film, since every other one is called 'Late Spring' or 'Early Autumn' or 'That Bit Just Before Winter When All The Leaves Have Finally Fallen But It's Not That Cold Yet' or something like that.

Were the Gamera films Japanese or Korean?

I dunno, but it's kinda irrelevant, considering the universality of their wonderful theme song:

You are groovy Gamera
groovy, groovy Gamera

Betcha that Rock concert to stop pollution would've worked if they'd played that!

is anyone familiar with Terayama's cinematic output?
(Emperor Tomatoketchup, where children rule the world and have grown ups as there slaves, and Throw away your books, go out into the streets! which is like a japanese Brecht protest film)

Nothing like eating cornflakes and watching a blind masseuse take out a dozen people in a few seconds with a katana hidden in a cane.

Yes! Mizoguchi is less known than he should be. Other good films of his are "Sisters of the Gion", "The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums", "Women of the Night", "Miss Oyû", "Tales of Ugetsu", "Gion Festival Music", "The Woman of Rumour" and "The Tale of the Crucified Lovers".

Colt Is My Passport very good yeah, def the highlight of that criterion Nikkatsu set

Samurai Wolf I & II. was expecting generic samurai stuff but there was a style to them that raised them above. this was post Fistful of Dollars ('66 and '67) and had obviously taken some cues from that (which, yeah, had itself taken cues from Yojimbo). pleasantly surprised.

i think the only other Gosha i have is Three Outlaw Samurai, his first, and the various others that are available are Yakuza based but I'll see.

in the meantime i have Ju-On and Sister Streetfighter on the way from arrow, to mix things up a bit.

Hideo Gosha is great, he reminds me of a Budd Boetticher or Phil Karlson - unpretentious artisan working in genre cinema whose sensibilities just happen to line up perfectly with his subject matter. Aside from the Samurai Wolf films I've also seen Sword Of The Beast (which was on Criterion) and his masterpiece, Goyokin (which I had to track down on a dodgy dvd). The only yakuza film I've seen of his is Violent Streets, a bit more outré than the swordplay stuff but well worth seeing.

One thing you can find in every one of his movies is the kind of hatred of authority that only a guy who lived through something like Imperial Japan could develop.

I caught Evil Does Not Exist on AppleTV and thought it was better than Drive My Car!

Maybe Hamaguchi needs his own thread?

a Ryûsuke Hamaguchi thread for all your Hamaguchi chat

i have a lot of these now, but they are still releasing new-to-me films that are great. Imai's Revenge (or Vengeance, it seems to have 4 names). looked lovely and that final duel...

written by Shinobu Hashimoto who also did Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Throne of Blood, Harakiri...

think this is the first Imai film i have too (although the imdb page has mostly Japanese names, which probably means limited Western release)

(the other thing I've noticed is that the last 7 or so purchases, from Arrow or Eureka, have all been Toei films)

I recently enjoyed Imai's remarkable Tower of Lilies, telling the grim wartime story of the Himeyuri students.

that got a mention in the extras, yes. Bushido was the only other dvd that came up in a search, but the mini-doc had plenty of clips of things.

and A Story Of Pure Love (1957) is on the list of nuclear films in the doc that accompanied Hiroshima recently.

ju-on. extras include 2 different audio commentaries and about 2 hours of other stuff including period and new interviews with cast and crew. this might take a while... (and this is only part 1)

Went to a free mystery screening at a local theater (same place I saw The Man Who Stole the Sun), which turned out to be Dynamite Don-Don, late-period yakuza comedy by Kihachi Okamoto. Set during the American occupation, rival yakuza clans are warned that there will be serious consequences for continued violence, and so end up establishing a baseball tournament instead. Gotta say this plot maybe didn't warrant 140 minutes, but it was pretty entertaining. They break a lot of the rules of baseball!

gotta love a shop i can walk to which not only has most Arrow releases in stock but which shadows Arrow's sales prices. picked up Dark Water and Irezuma for £9 each on saturday.

treated myself to the criterion zatoichi box for my birthday - 25 (of the 26) zatoichi films, all starring Shintaro Katsu. it's a hefty old thing, and hard to file.

have watched the three films on the first disk and the two b&w ones look so much better than the third. all the rest are colour.

Shintaro produced some of the Lone Wolf & Cub films and is in a bunch of other things i have, which i'll have to revisit. the directors are all unknown to me though. 25 films in about 12 years (the final one 16 years later), one year had 4 zatoichi films released...

also interesting is that Zatoichi meets people from other series along the way - Yojimbo (real, actual toshiro mifune) and the one-armed swordsman.

My guess is that once you're done with that box you won't be wanting to watch any more Zatoichi films for a while.

I love some of Tokuzo Tanaka's horror films and wanted to see his Zatoichi films but I'm not getting that whole set

also bought a 4th version of 47 ronin (after watching ako castle last week), the inagaki version, and The Wanderers, just because it was same ebay seller, by ichikawa and i liked the cover. obvious bootlegs though.

The digital-rental model is pretty weird but if you have the least interest in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's brand of horror, Chime is unmissable, peak stuff. Taut and concise. Crank the volume.

I'll look out for that if it comes to disc someday.

Shadow Of Fire (Shinya Tsukamoto) - This is a small story set in the slums of Japan after world war 2. Like the last few Tsukamoto films, the low budget is showing but it's still quite lush in places, the warm colors of the indoor scenes are lovely. He said that the 7 year old boy in the film showed up to audition of his of accord and that encouraged him to cast the boy.

It's part of a thematic trilogy including Fires On The Plain and Killing, but I'd say Kotoko fits in there too. He made these films because he's afraid Japan will go to war in the near future because it buries it's memories of war trauma, not enough people were encouraged to speak about their war experiences, samurai stories are heavily romanticized and so it seems to him that japan doesn't really understand war and historical violence enough to want to avoid it in the future. But these are very low budget films that didn't have much impact so I wouldn't be surprised if he kept going at this. In the bonus features he does a talk with historian Kota Ishii who written a book about the slums of the 40s (and 50s?)

When I seen Kotoko years ago I was really surprised when Tsuakmoto said it was motivated by his fears about his children's generation going to war, because the film appears to be kind of a semi-biopic about the singer/actress Cocco, who suffered from paranoid delusions about her son being in danger. I was confused by the war scene but later found out that the small crying child who gets his head blown off was Tsukamoto's own son! That's some exposure therapy (though it actually resembles a scene from Tetsuo 2, long before he had children).
I seen Victor LaValle a while ago talk about how when he had a child he immediately felt the urge to write about the worst things that could happen to his child. I don't think people consider or talk often enough about how storytellers and artists frequently are killing and brutalizing their own loved ones in their art to come to terms with what could really happen.

Didn't enjoy Kotoko to be honest - I found it kind of baffling and Cocco's character acted in ways I simply couldn't figure out. I suppose trauma is the explanation but it wasn't well told, for me. Maybe I should revisit.

I liked Kotoko a lot. It was probably the last Tsukamoto film that felt really substantial for me. There aren't any I dislike but I do miss when he was able to get a bigger production. I still haven't been able to see Nightmare Detective 2 or Female (an anthology film he's a part of). Nightmare Detective is probably my least favorite, apparently it's his own deal but it feels like he's a hired hand, you have a couple of actors who look like they're from the idol factory, he said he wanted to make three of them but I doubt that will happen now, I hope the second one is a lot better.

watch Red Angel last night thinking it would be suitable halloween viewing but it was more horrors of war than horror (the cover is possibly deliberately misleading, or i may just have Audition in my head). looked great though and goes well with, say, Fires On The Plain or Human Condition.

now watching it with the commentary, which is one of those that does talk about the scenes as they occur, including pointing out every violation of the 180 degree rule.

working through the zatoichi box and was wondering about the way he held his sword and how realistic that is (handle in fist, blade pointing down). probably stems from the fact it's a sword stick that he uses for walking. anyway turns out it's "zatoichi style"

https://martialtraveler.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/reverse-grip-or-zatoichi-style/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUVkuZjSn6g

Watched the new Toho 4K scan of High and Low last night, mamma mia what a beautiful print.

Just watched Pale Flower, the first Shinoda film I've seen. Great, super New Wave-y. Beautifully shot, so many amazing noir compositions. Other recommendations by him? I know Double Suicide is supposed to be good.

https://i.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExcTIwOHIwOHQ0b2ZqZHdrZnYzMHU2cTc0Y2E2anhzOXBvZWRja3Z5NyZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/pilrB5e5OsVYAXA6sa/giphy.gif

I see Pale Flower was on Michael Mann's Sight & Sound ballot, which totally makes sense.

Double Suicide is good for sure, I love the bunraku pupeteers (as discussed above?). I found Silence a bit of a drag.

I enjoyed Samurai Spy/Spy Hunter sort of a philosophical, noirish low-key action movie.

Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees is fantastic. I'm dying to see Demon Pond (american bluray only so far) and Himiko.

Cherry Trees looks kind of crazy, it's on Criterion so I put it on my watchlist.

I just spent about $1200 on this Himiko poster. The good people at Posteratiti tracked it down for me

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Himiko_Movie_Poster.jpg

tbf that's a pretty amazing poster!

someone put up a translation of Shoichiro Sasaki's 1980 made for TV film Four Seasons: Utopiano on Youtube the other day.
hugely influential on Kore-eda, Tsukamoto, Iwai, Anno, Hosoda etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGWNpmw-2rg

WOW, thank you! also incredible poster, beamish13

second reference today to Owl Castle (shinoda filmography, zatoichi liner notes). which led me to Vintage Ninja website. their top 9 ninja films contains exactly one i've heard of...

still working through zatoichi box, should be done by june...

oh, their ninja list was very specifically 60s b&w films (my favourite)

https://vintageninja.net/9-essentials-of-60s-bw-shinobi-cinema/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0lcmwZBvOw
Gakuryu Ishii (formerly Sogo Ishii) doing adaptation of Box Man for Kobo Abe anniversary.

New Takeshi Kitano short (about an hour) up on prime. I enjoyed it, glad to see him get something released in the West again.

caught a screening of the box man last year. while it isn't _amazing_, it's fun and charming in a "older director keeps doing their thing" kinda way. similar vibe to, say, a new cronenberg movie or something like that.

Good to hear. I didn't see Punk Samurai because it looked too cgi heavy. I seen Isn't Anyone Alive? getting terrible reviews but I thought it was hilarious.

I did get around to watching Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (mentioned above), wow that movie is bonkers. Like a fairy tale by De Sade. Entertaining!

Glad more people are seeing it now. I'm getting worried that there's no sign of a uk bluray of Demon Pond.

popped up in boomkat newsletter yesterday, meiko kaji LP reissue

https://boomkat.com/products/yadokari-shura-no-hana-7

not to my taste...

things i was shockingly old to discover, Japanese film version, the guy in Lone Wolf And Cub is the brother of the guy in all the Zatoichi movies

Tomisaburō Wakayama / Shintaro Katsu

They're in a couple of the Zatoichi films together

here's a link to a pic of the 2nd in the series

https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0423663/mediaviewer/rm3165259776/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

I've become very fond of Tomisaburo, less for Lone Wolf & Cub than the many earthy, mercurial characters he played in Toei yakuza films and the highly entertaining Bounty Hunter trilogy.

very tempted by the Arrow V-Cinema boxset Bullets & Betrayal
don't think I've seen anything that could be classified as V-Cinema but reviews on Letterboxd like "imagine if every movie was 60 minutes long and pure gunfights and cool cars driving around with jazz over the top whilst a crime hunter and a nun team up together" are doing a good job selling it to me!

Saw Tampopo at the NFT this week, just a complete delight.

Tomisaburo was in the first of the Red Peony Gambler films which was this afternoon's viewing, the commentary of which was the start of the rabbit hole (have seen all the Lone Wolf and just finished all the zatoichi films but none of those have commentary otherwise I've known this a lot sooner)

and it turns out the local hmv has a copy of the bounty hunter trilogy in stock so...

imagine if every movie was 60 minutes long and pure gunfights and cool cars driving around with jazz over the top whilst a crime hunter and a nun team up together

yea this tracks