In 1971 Toho Studios tried its hand at the yakuza chivalry (ninkyo) genre with Hideo Gosha’s The Wolves. For the better part of a decade ninkyo had been dominated by rival studio Toei, which had created a niche with films that often starred Ken Takakura as an honorable yakuza who rigidly sticks to the old-fashioned yakuza code even when surrounded by corruption and ruthless violence. Gosha’s offering, starring Tatsuya Nakadai, doesn’t attempt to stray from this established formula—quite the opposite, in fact—but it does offer a surprising level of character depth and gritty realism that should appeal to fans of yakuza eiga as well as cinema fans in general.

continue »

Permalink      1 Comments

The official website for Shimako Sato‘s K-20: Kaijin Niju Menso Den added a trailer within the past few hours. Thankfully it’s the real deal, not just a teaser. The movie is based on a So Kitamura novel which itself was inspired by Edogawa Rampo’s original source material.

The story is set in 1949 in the fictional capital city of Teito, where aristocrats monopolize most of the wealth. K-20, a mysterious man with the ability to change his appearance frequently targets the rich for his theft. One day he manages to trick police into thinking a circus acrobat named Heikichi Endo (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is the real criminal, leaving it up to Endo to escape jail and prove his innocence.

Meanwhile K-20 targets his next victim, Yoko Hashiba (Takako Matsu)—an heiress whose fiancé is Kogoro Akechi (Toru Nakamura), the famous detective who arrested Endo. But Endo still has a score to settle, and picks a fight with K-20.

continue »

Permalink      0 Comments

In Komori Seikatsu Kojo Club, character actor Arata Furuta plays Komori; an ordinary, middle-aged business executive who’s recently begun to get fed up with people walking all over him. At home his wife and child make him out to be an idiot and at work his subordinates don’t respect him. One day while on a commuter train he reaches his breaking point as a woman makes false accusations about being groped, causing Komori to have his first violent outburst. From that point on he’s filled with an overwhelming sense of justice and becomes determined to completely rid his community of all crime. Before long, enthusiastic supporters start to idolize him and his work.

continue »

Permalink      3 Comments

Here’s the new trailer for Hiroshi Nishitani’s Yougisha X no Kenshin. I posted the first teaser here last month but the new trailer seems to do a better job of conveying the tone of the film and the comedic rapport between Kou Shibasaki and Masaharu Fukuyama. Based on a Fuji TV drama that featured the same two actors, the film centers around a mysterious murder in which the victim’s hand is severely burned but the cause of death is actually strangulation. Detective Kaoru Utsumi (Shibasaki) attempts to corroborate the alibi of the victim’s ex-wife and discovers the woman’s neighbor, a genius high school math teacher named Tetsuya Ishigami (Shinichi Tsutsumi), went to Teito University—the same school as genius physicist Manabu Yukawa, aka “Galileo” (Fukuyama). Knowing it will take a genius to catch a genius she enlists the help of Yukawa to figure out Ishigami’s role in all of it.

continue »

Permalink      1 Comment

The trailer for Rian Johnson’s The Brothers Bloom is now online. In the movie Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo play scam artist brothers that come up with all sorts of elaborate schemes to separate rich people from their money. When they meet a young eccentric heiress named Penelope (Rachel Weisz) they initially plan to scam her, but instead end up enlisting her help on their next con. However, when one of the brothers falls for Penelope things get complicated. Rinko Kikuchi plays a quirky explosives expert appropriately named “Bang Bang” who’s also part of the team. Trailer embedded after the break.

continue »

Permalink      2 Comments