Snake of June / Rokugatsu no hebi (2003*)

Some movies you watch and some movies you experience; despite being visually one of the most tightly and carefully crafted movies of all time, Shinya Tsukamoto's A Snake of June is a movie you experience. In a remarkable characterization by Asuka Kurosawa, Rinko seems to be a well-adjusted woman in her thirties. She works as …

Typhoon Club / Taifu kurabu (1985)

Set in the days of a typhoon reaching shore, Typhoon Club uses the storm as a metaphor for the confusions and chaos of early teen life. The result, like a typhoon itself, is dramatic but also confused and confusing to the viewer. Much of this confusion results simply because we have eight principal characters, all …

Gate of Youth / Seishun no mon (1981)

Hiroyuki Itsuki’s eight-volume novel collectively known as Gate of Youth was thought to be so important and so popular when it was written that it was filmed twice before it was even finished in 1994. The first, a six hour and two movie version, appeared in 1975 and 1977. Apparently, producers thought the interest was …

Third / Third Base / Sado (1978)

Seno has a recurring dream about baseball in which he hits a long, long flyball and runs all round the bases but when he reaches home, it has disappeared, so he has to keep running around the bases, hoping that next time the home base will appear. Seno is in a reformatory where he is …

Night of the Felines / Mesunekotachi no yoru (1972)

Normally I would not have bothered with Night of the Felines, but it was in Kinema Junpo’s 2009 list of Top Japanese Films of All Time.* Having seen it now, I’m still at a complete loss as to what to make of it. Most of the available plot summaries in critical commentaries are wrong, including …