"Tetsuo (Tetsuo: The Iron Man)," the 1989 film that made Shinya Tsukamoto internationally famous, was the cinematic equivalent of a jackhammer to the brain: harsh, loud, violent and unrelenting. But this cyberpunk fantasy about a salaryman transforming into a metal monster was also strangely hypnotic to watch and impossible to forget.
More than two decades later Tsukamoto is essentially still the same filmmaker, though he has not always made the same crazed, original film. One proof is "Kotoko," his hallucinogenic drama about a single mother's slide into psychosis that won the Venice Horizons Award at last year's Venice Film Festival, but was treated harshly by the critics.
There were accusations of excess, which is somewhat like complaining to Godzilla about rough play. More to the point, he was charged with being repetitious and long-winded. It was the same as saying he'd become a middle-aged bore.