Being an Asian cinema fan of the sort that doesn't speak the language and has never been to any of the countries that spawn the films I steadily devour, there are many times when I just have to assume certain things about Asian cinema figureheads. For instance, from what I've gathered, Kyoshi Kurosawa is a filmmaker with a decent international cult and some level of hometown acceptance in his native Japan. He doesn't make popular cinema as much as appreciated cinema. I assume much like America's Jim Jarmusch and Woody Allen, Hong Kong's Wong Kar Wai, or Korea's Kim Ki-duk, if it wasn't for a smattering of international, critical, and cult acknowledgement, Kiyoshi Kurosawa might not get as many projects off the ground.

One thing is for certain, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's success did not come fast and easy right out of the gate. Before the recognition of The Cure, Kairo, and long before the days when <...Read the entire review

Rokuro Mochizuki made his first mark directing new wave yakuza pictures, a genre that sprung up in the early 90's Japan, largely thanks to Takeshi Kitano's ponderous films about sensitive gangsters who found conflict between their violent lifestyles and criminal loyalties and an innate desire for peace, calm, and/or love. Rokuro Mochizuki's yakuza trilogy, of sorts, Another Lonely Hitman, Onibi: The Fire Within and A Yakuza in Love were some of the best of the genre.

1998's Mobster's Confessions finds him in a slightly different gear. While it does have yakuza, it is more of a con film and its protagonist is a fairly successful schemer who finds himself at the whim of the mob. And, as in Rokuro Mochizuki's yakuza trilogy films, Mobster's Confessions explores the central idea of a criminal (possibly) in love but divided over maintaining his passions or his law breaking lif...Read the entire review

Yajima Kintaro was the leader of a motorcycle gang 10,000 strong. A couple of years ago he gave that up and moved away to settle down withhis new wife. Unfortunately she died in childbirth, and now Yajimaand his infant son Ryu ar...Read the entire review

The pace picks up as well as the action in the third volume of SalarymanKintaro.&nbsp; While the boardroom intrigues of the previous disc wereinteresting, this time the focus swings back to Kintaro and his uniqueway of motivating people.&nbsp; He's been assigned to a construction sitewhere there's a lot of friction with the subcontractors.&nbsp;&nbsp; Canthis previous gang leader succeed where college educated executives havefailed?

Series recap:

Yajima Kintaro was the leader of a motorcycle gang 10,000 strong.&nbsp;A couple of years ago he gave that up and moved away to settle down withhis new wife.&nbsp; Unfortunately she died in childbirth, and now Yajimaand his infant son Ryu are moving back to the city.&nbsp;&nbsp; The ex-gangleader is hired by a large&...Read the entire review

Yajima Kintaro was the leader of a motorcycle gang 10,000 strong.&nbsp;A couple of years ago he gave that up and moved away to settle down withhis new wife....Read the entire review

A Yakuza in Love is a love story, sort of. It is also a comedy, sort of. It is also a gangster picture, definitely. It is one of those genre bending pieces that make it a tad hard to pin down. With a tone that is both silly and fatalistic, director Rokuro Mochizuki (Another Lonely Hitman) just doesn't want to be committed to the standard yakuza film conventions.

Kinichi (Eiji Okuda) is an uncouth and brash yakuza soldier who is growing tired of slogging through the gangster life. While on a stakeout to make a hit on a rival boss in Tokyo, Kinichi becomes enamored with a shy, bumpkin in the city waitress, Yoko (Yuno Natsuo). While he is wining and dining her, which also involves slipping her a mickey, the hit is a failure. Kinichi turns tail and takes a drugged Yoko back to Oksaka.

Back in Osaka, things within the gang are not going well. The boss is terminally ill. Rivals, lead by bo...Read the entire review

Detective Saga (Ryo Ishibashi) is shot while pursuing the assailant of a cult leader that the police were in the process of apprehending, the assailant being a husband whose wife had been brainwashed by the cult. As Saga lay in a tunnel bleeding from his near fatal wounds, someone took his gun and would use it to commit murders across the city.

If this starting point sounds familiar, that is because An Obsession (1997) uses Akira Kurosawa's noir Stray Dog as a reference point. Aside from a few little sly connections, An Obsession is an altogether different film. While Stray Dog used the cop with a missing gun as a device to explore Japan in the era of post-war reconstruction, Shinji Aoyama's An Obsession is looking at a post-Aum Shinriku cult gas attack Japan and, in general, one man trying to fill a void he has found in his existence.

Saga wakes up in the hospi...Read the entire review

Shinji Aoyama you are a madman and I love you. Sometimes the whole auteur theory can make you forget that some directors will try just about anything. Like Howard Hawks helming films that ranged from The Big Sleep, to Bringing up Baby, The Thing, and Rio Bravo. Likewise, my first introduction to Shinji Aoyaya was the slow and subdued arthouse drama Eureka, so that is what I expected from him. But each film I've seen from him since has been in an all together different genre and style, from the psychological horror Em Emblaming, the Maiku Hama mystery A Forest with No Name, and, now, the slyly funny and cinematically frisky gangster flick Wild Life (1997). I wouldnt be the slightest bit surprised if the next Aoyama film I saw was a documentary about the history of polka. It seems you cannot pin the guy down.

Sakai Hiroki (Kosuke Toyohara) is an ex-boxer...Read the entire review

A new wave of gangster films emerged from Japan in the 90's. In the 60's and 70's, Kinji Fukusaku most notably lead the charge by crafting violent crime dramas that reflected the yakuza as outlaws struggling to survive by any means necessary in post-war Japan. Though just as nihilistic as its forebearers, in the 90's, a more somber and internal yakuza film genre began to blossom thanks to the likes the likes of Takeshi "Beat" Kitano (Sonatine, Fireworks), Takashi Ishii (Gonin), Takashi Miike (Ley Lines), and Rokuro Mochizuki (Another Lonely Hitman and A Yakuza in Love).

Onibi: The Fire Within (1996) bears many of the same storytelling elements found in Another Lonely Hitman, which is the only other film by Mochizuki I have seen. Both have the fresh out of jail, aged yakuza protagonist. Both characters enter into odd relationships with a newfound lo...Read the entire review

When you go to a restaurant long enough, the waitresses get to know you. At a place I used to frequent, one of the waitresses was formerly a mortician. It is the kind of thing I'm interested in, so she was always glad to talk about different methods and even let me borrow a few books for weeks on end. The opening text crawl to EM Embalming (1999) offers a brief, rudimentary history of embalming and suggests that the films Japanese audience may need such a synopsis because the art of embalming is a bit more exotic and not practiced as much there as it is in the States or Europe.

Miyako Murakami (Reiko Takashima- Black Angel) is an embalmer. Her latest job is working on the corpse of an influential politician's teenage son, Yoshiki, who (apparently?) committed suicide. But, while performing the autopsy, Miyako discovers a needle in his eye and cannot explain its origins. Things compli...Read the entire review

Arts Magic, a DVD producer that specializes in Japanese films, has startedto release its first anime series with this premier volume of SalarymanKintaro. This series is a bit different than the usual animefare that is released in the states and definitly worth checking out.

Yajima Kintaro was the leader of a motorcycle gang 10,000 strong, buthe gave that up and moved away to settle down with his wife a couple ofyears ago. His wife died in childbirth though, and now Yajima andhis infant son are moving back to the city. The ex-gang leaderis hired by a large construction firm to work as a salaryman: a white collaroffice employee. Yajima approaches this job with the same gusto,and philosophy, that he used to run his gang: kick ass and take names. His straight forward and pragmatic method of dealing with problems, andhis strong w...Read the entire review

While the somber and meditative post modern yakuza film is not new to me, I hadn't seen director Rokuro Mochizuki's entries into the genre. Made notable by the likes of Takeshi 'Beat' Kitano (Sonatine), Takashi Miike (Ley Lines), and Takashi Ishii (Gonin), Rokuro Mochizuki's Another Lonely Hitman (1995) bears all the emotional tones one expects of a new wave gangster picture while having a definite distinctive voice and style from it's director.

Tachibana (Ryo Ishibashi- Audition, The Grudge) does his duty for his clan. After numbing himself with heroin, he impassively performs a hit on the leader of a rival gang and accepts the jail time (10 years) that he is sentenced. But, upon his release, he is a different man in a different (under)world. While he has achieved the status of a respected old timer for his actions, they also proved to be futile- while incarcerat...Read the entire review

In the last half of the sixties, the Japanese film industry found itself in trouble. Shaky economic times and an audience flocking to televison had the film studios struggling to stay alive. One of the things they quickly capitalized on were looser content codes and began offering theatergoers things you couldn't see on tv. So, that is why you ccan say, Nikkatsu Studios was saved by boobies. By specializing in a genre known as "roman porno", they began offering titilating soft core films. So long as they delivered a steady stream of sex scenes, Nikkatsu directors had a lot of creative freedom, resulting in the studio birthing some provocative flesh peddlers.

What makes the Angel Guts series of films stand out is that they are adaptations of manga author Takashi Ishii and includes his first film as a director, Red Vertigo. Over the past decade, he has become a successful director with f...Read the entire review

Bullet Ballet is both a visually viceral experience and a thinking man's action film. Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto [Tetsuo the Iron Man] the film is about a man named Goda [played by the director] who is so distraught after losing his girlfriend to suicide that he decides to find out why she did it.

His search leads him to a particularly nasty street gang that go around Tokyo bullyng and beating everybody up. Goda goes in search of a gun and after a few failures [including assembling a completely inept gun] he finally gets his hands on a real quality piece.

Goda is a bit of an awkward dope. His planning is abysmal and he always ends up being beat up by the gang. And after a while he unwittingly becomes part of the gang.

Funny, serious, fast and off kilter from first frame to last Bullet Ballet is good for the most part just good fun. But despite the pace and the montage editi...Read the entire review

Toshiaki Toyada's 9 Souls is a perfect example of why the Japanese and Asian Film market is so on fire right now. Where else could you see a film about a prison break and follow 9 escaped inmates on a funny and heartbreaking spiritual journey to find the "key to the Universe" which lies buried in a Time Capsule under an elementary school? Certainly not in any Hollywood film these days, but if you did I'm sure that some studio exec would make the "key to the Universe" something other than the metaphor that we all know it to be. There are so many sublime moments in this film that even it's overly long running time (2+ hours) is excusable.

Admittedly, the idea of following around 9 escaped convicts doesn't seem that appealing. If this had been an American film I'm sure that at least one of them would have been innocent, but the men we're following have actually commi...Read the entire review