Another Lonely Hitman / Shin kanashiki hittoman (1995)

Who could possibly pass up a movie called Another Lonely Hitman? As it turns out, the main character is not actually a hitman, but he is most definitely lonely. As part of a yakuza war, Tachibana had assassinated the boss of another gang. Now, after ten years in prison, he is returning to a new …

Kamikaze Taxi (1995)

Kamikaze Taxi suggests either a wild, violent bloodfest or a crazy comedy, but though there will eventually be a lot of death, it doesn't quite fit either of those genres. In the way of Japanese story-telling, we do not even meet the taxi or its driver until fifty minutes into an almost three hour movie …

Maborosi / Maborosi no hikari (1995)

Maborosi is another of those slow, unresolved, contemplative movies that you can either fall in love with or simply quit watching part way through, frustrated by waiting for something to happen. In fact, a great deal happens but, in a long Japanese film tradition, most of it occurs either off-screen or far away from the …

Turning Point / A Mature Woman / Onna zakari (1994)

I came to Turning Point almost at random, expecting from the title another of Obayashi's teen movies. I could not have been more surprised when I found a subtle and complex study of a woman in her forties, which would have been less of a surprise had I seen the Japanese title Onna zakari. Based …

Sonatine (1993)

Sonatine was the first of Takeshi Kitano's movies I ever saw, though I feel certain that I saw it before 1998, the US release date shown on IMDB. But then the scenes I remember most vividly do not occur quite the way I remember them, so my memory may be at fault. Nevertheless, this is …

World Apartment Horror (1991)

Japan's post-war surge to prosperity naturally attracted a number of immigrants, many of whom had come from territories Japan had occupied earlier in the century, especially Korea and Taiwan. Chance has thrown a bunch of them together in a dumpy apartment building that the yakuza want to raze to build something new. Ita is ordered …

Angel Dust / Enjeru dasuto (1994)

Serial killers in the modern sense of the term have been comparatively rare in Japanese films,* though of course there have been no shortage of killings in the chanbara and yakuza genres. Angel Dust is arguably the first Japanese appearance of the serial killer story such as we now know from endless Euro/American films and …

Sumo Do, Sumo Don’t / Shiko funjatta (1992)

Had Sumo Do, Sumo Don't not been #1 on Kinema Junpo's list for 1992, I'd never have bothered to look at it. Unlike Knockout, another sports movie that had similar acclaim, it is exactly the movie you would predict it to be – a fully entertaining, sometimes laugh out loud movie about sports underdogs who …

Tokyo Profile / Portrait of a City / Tokai no yokogai (1953)

To the sound of a jaunty rumba, we see a busy street out the rear of a moving streetcar. A crowd has gathered on the sidewalk, and in the center is Toshiko, a shoe-shine girl, and Michiko, a five year old girl who has gotten separated from her mother. Ueda, a passing advertising sign carrier, …

Crest of Betrayal / Chusingura gaiden: Yotsuya kaidan (1994)

Some re-tellings of the Chushingura story will be about someone not among the final 47 ronin but near them in some way, most notably Samurai Vendetta and Hana, and occasionally there will be a 48th member who somehow misses the final attack. In Crest of Betrayal this 48th ronin is Iemon Tamiya, the man in …