Goemon (2009)

One of the many temptations of the CGI revolution in movie making is to fall into Can You Top This mode. In America, we have seen it in the steadily increasing reliance on effects in the Marvel and DC universe movies, James Cameron's invention of a complete universe like Avatar, so that many actors have …

Glory to the Filmmaker / Kankotu-Banzai (2006)

The second of Takeshi Kitano's “creative” trilogy, Glory to the Filmmaker looks at the problems of the writer-director in the 21st century Japanese film culture. As in Takeshis', Kitano himself has a double persona, but this time it is not a person but a literal dummy. The film opens with the dummy going through a …

Sinking of Japan / Japan Sinks / Nihon chinbotsu (2006)

The Sinking of Japan is about exactly what the title says. There is no obvious metaphor about a changing society or the rise of a new political culture as in sixties movies like The Sun's Burial. Japan is physically sinking under the ocean. This will lead to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, underwater explosions, and the …

Ichi (2008)

Ichi is a wandering goze. Like Shima Iwashita's Orin, she was given to the goze sisters after her mother died, and like Orin was raped and then expelled for having sexual relations with a man. Now she is on the road searching for the man who left her there. But he was also a blind …

Always: Sunset on Third Street / Always san-chome no yuhi (2005)

Of the young Japanese film-makers appearing around the millennium, none has been more completely devoted to CGI development than Takashi Yamazaki. Most of his movies have been built around sci-fi subjects, where we would expect a lot of CGI, reaching some sort of culmination in the recent Godzilla Minus One. In 2005, he rather surprisingly …

Princess Raccoon / Operetta tanuki goten (2005)

With Princess Raccoon as his last movie, Seijun Suzuki concludes a career of eccentricity with by far his most eccentric movie, a fairy tale operetta that defies description. Like any basic operetta, it tells the story of a Prince and a Princess who fall in love but have to overcome various travails to be married. …

Ping Pong / Pinpon (2002)

Japan hadn't had a sports movie as successful as Ping Pong since Sumo Do, Sumo Don't, and I was expecting a similar movie about an underdog team that eventually triumphs. Instead, I found a movie about friendships and character development, told in the flamboyantly entertaining manner of Hong Kong's better known but later Shaolin Soccer. …

Zatoichi (2003)

As Shinji Somai's Kaza-hana indicated in 2000, Zatoichi had not faded from popularity, though the movies ended in 1973 and the follow-up TV series in 1979. Shintaro Katsu's one attempt to revive the character in 1989 had been ruined by scandal and legal problems. Still, Katsu himself had died in 1997 and the rights to …

Happiness of the Katakuris / Katakuri-ke no kofuku(2001)

Shortly after the appearance of the Korean Quiet Family, Shochiku Studios decided to do a Japanese version, which they handed to Takashi Miike. The Korean film had been a Joe Orton-esque black farce in which a series of unexpected deaths at a country inn had gradually turned the family themselves into mass-murderers. This was the …

Casshern (2004)

Sometimes we come across a movie of such significance or uniqueness that, despite its many flaws, it should at least be mentioned in any look at Japanese film and culture. It was only a matter of time before the turn of the century nostalgia for old manga and anime, the spread of CGI, and the …