'Killing': A modern take on a samurai staple
Screening in competition at this year's Venice Film Festival, "Killing" is veteran provocateur Shinya Tsukamoto's first venture into the samurai genre. Made, like most of Tsukamoto's films, on a tiny budget and tight schedule, it does not attempt the scale of classics like "Seven ...
Shinya Tsukamoto and the song of 'Silence'
Since his early films, such as "Tetsuo: The Iron Man" (1989) and "Tetsuo II: Body Hammer" (1992), pioneered the cyberpunk genre with a crazed energy and invention, Shinya Tsukamoto has had a reputation as Japanese cinema's outlaw. While doing the occasional work for hire, ...
'Silence': A test of faith — and of patience
After spending nearly 30 years shepherding his adaptation of Shusaku Endo's "Silence" to the screen, Martin Scorsese may be starting to feel as forsaken as the book's Jesuit protagonist, abandoned by an uncommunicative and apparently uncaring God. The movie has been roundly ignored by ...
'Crazy Thunder Road' is still a mad, but great film
Sogo Ishii — or Gakuryu Ishii, as he now prefers to be known — was just 23 when he released "Crazy Thunder Road," perhaps one of the greatest films to emerge from Japan's punk era (an honor it shares with the director's 1982 follow-up, ...
A militaristic turn for the Japanese film industry
Why have Japanese filmmakers recently been turning out so many films about World War II and its aftermath? The obvious answer is that they're commemorating the 70th anniversary of that war's end, which was marked on Aug. 15. But there are far fewer new ...
War in the jungle and war in Japan
Actor and director Shinya Tsukamoto often takes violence to strange extremes. In his first film, the 1989 horror "Tetsuo" ("Tetsuo: The Iron Man"), a businessman accidentally kills a crazed metal fetishist (played by Tsukamoto himself) with his car and, becoming "infected" by his victim, ...
A second look at bloody WWII novel 'Fires on the Plain'
Japanese war films typically frame themselves as anti-war, even when they glorify the sacrifices made by brave Japanese boys in defense of the homeland, as in the 2013 hit "Eien no Zero" ("The Eternal Zero"). Kon Ichikawa's 1959 war film "Nobi" ("Fires on the Plain") ...
Violent Japanese anti-war film 'Nobi' remake is a contender at Venice festival
One of the most powerful and violent films to be shown at the Venice Film Festival this year, Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto's "Nobi" ("Fires on the Plain"), delivers a stinging anti-war message bathed in blood. A remake of a 1959 classic, the film, shown late ...
The long, bone-chilling gaze of new director Ayumi Sakamoto
Directors have various ways of communicating in interviews — beyond the usual talking points, that is. Koji Fukada drew me geometrical diagrams to explain the intertwining relationships in his coming-of-age drama "Hotori no Sakuko (Au Revoir l'Ete)." Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki sketched me ...
Female anxiety shot from every angle
The Japanese film industry used to be like much of the rest of Japanese society: male-centered and male-run. It made plenty of movies about women and for women, but their directors were all men. That began to change when Naomi Kawase won a Cannes ...
Electric Dragon 80000V Rating: * * * Director: Sogo Ishii Running time: 55 minutes Language: Japanese Now showing What should rockers do when the paunch starts to sag over the jeans and the gray hair starts to glint in the spotlights? Have some self-respect and stop shaking ...
