Inugami (2001)

There are few more complex movies about the meeting of modernity and traditional religious and Japanese folk beliefs than Inugami, though it requires a submersion into a setting as isolated and unusual as in Himatsuri. High in the mountain interior of Shikoku island, the Bonomiya family are preparing to celebrate the 900 Year Rites of …

Marebito (2004)

No one more personified 21st century J-horror than Takashi Shimizu, who wrote and directed the Ju-on movies. Even when not making Ju-on features, he almost never directed outside the horror genre which Ju-on had helped revive and re-define. Marebito is one of the rare exceptions.* In many ways it looks like a Shinya Tsukamoto movie, …

Tokyo Sonata (2008)

Though it was widely seen and written about on its initial release, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Tokyo Sonata is so full of forgotten detail that it is more than worth a second or a third look. While it is the story of a salaryman who loses his job and almost loses his family, it is far more …

Retribution / (2006)

In Retribution, Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns to the roots of Japanese horror movies in which a man is haunted by the ghost of a woman but, as we have come to expect from this director, in a new and more disturbing fashion than the other similar films in the J-horror revival. As in Cure and Charisma, …

Vital (2004)

The story in Shinya Tsukamoto's Vital is quite simple: A medical student Hiroshi is involved in a car crash which kills his girlfriend Ryoko. When he at last returns to medical school, his dissection class several years later finds him working on a body that will eventually turn out to be that of his girlfriend. …

Bright Future /Akarui mirai (2001)

The title of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Bright Future is presumably ironic, since by the end of the move there there seems to be no future for any of the principal characters, unless you consider a jellyfish the major character. Nimuri and Arita are in their mid twenties, working for a cleaning company. Neither seems to be …

Doppelganger / Dopperugenga (2003)

Japanese movies have a long tradition of starting in one direction and then suddenly changing tone to go a completely unexpected way, but rarely have they taken the turns to be found in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Doppelganger. The doppelganger, of course, has long been a subject of horror stories and films, usually in the manner of …

Pulse* / Kairo (2001)

There doesn't seem any easier way to begin than to say that Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse is quite possibly the greatest horror film ever made. In it, he has combined many of the themes of his earlier movies into an engrossing and terribly disturbing horror movie, while doing so without a drop of blood, a creaking …

Obsession / Tsumetai chi (1997)

Though sometimes promoted as a re-make of Stray Dog, Shinji Aoyama's Obsession is anything but that. A policeman does lose his gun, but it is taken from his severely wounded body. A much closer parallel is Cure, which also features a policeman, a serial killer with no discernible motive, a lot of philosophical questioning, very …

So Long, My Partner / Rock is Sex / Saraba aibo (1982)

I looked up a copy of Saraba aibo out of curiosity about Ryo Ishibashi's rock career and discovered a movie full of other curiosities. I expected a roughly made indie feature shot on a shoestring budget, like Burst City (released at about the same time), but found instead a beautifully photographed movie in full Panavision …