Shadow of Fire (Hokage) screened at the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2024 In the still smouldering embers left by the end of the Pacific War, an unnamed woman (played with unhinged intensity by Shuri) lives alone in a tavern that is one of the only buildings in this black-market district left standing after the…
Gemini (aka Soseiji) first published by Little White Lies, as entry 115 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column By the time Shinya Tsukamoto helmed Gemini (aka Soseiji) in 1999, he had already established for himself an idiosyncratic filmmaking language all his own. His features like Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), its bigger budget 1992 sequel Tetsuo…
Fires on the Plain first published by Little White Lies, as the 41st part of my Cinema Psychotronicum column In Elem Klimov’s extraordinary anti-war film Come and See (1985), the toll of Nazi outrages in Byelorussia was reflected on young protagonist Florya’s face, shown often in harrowing close-up and seeming to age visibly and dramatically in…
Kotoko first published by EyeforFilm “Hang tough, Japan!” exhorts the man on the television set. It is a subtle acknowledgement that production on Tsukamoto Shinya’s Kotoko took place in the shadow of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake – for here, as in Himizu (2011), an isolated individual’s psychodrama unfolds against the backdrop of an entire nation in…
A Snake of June first published by Movie Gazette Strait-laced Rinko (Kurasawa Asuka) and her cleanliness-obsessed husband Shigehiko (Koutari Yuji) eat at different times, barely communicate, and sleep in separate rooms. One rainy morning in June, Rinko receives a package with an envelope marked ‘Your husband’s secrets’, containing photographs of herself masturbating. Other photographs follow, also showing…
Tetsuo II: The Body Hammer first published by EyeforFilm Less a sequel than an alternative reimagining of Tsukamoto Shinya‘s punkishly provocative Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) – which, after all, ended with the imminent destruction of Tokyo – Tetsuo II: Body Hammer gives a completely different interrelationship and back story to its chief antagonists (still played by Taguchi Tomorowo and Tsukamoto),…
Tetsuo: The Iron Man first published by EyeforFilm If punk was the stripped-down, DIY expression of countercultural attitudes, and if cyberpunk explored the relation between individual and technology in a dystopian future, then Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo falls somewhere between the two. For its down-and-dirty, fast-and-furious aesthetic – and Chu Ishikawa’s pounding score – are ripped as…
Japanese me(n)tal-maestro of schizophrenic narratives and urban mindscapes Tsukamoto Shinya has long been one of my favourite directors. Now some of his transgressive oddities are available to be viewed on The Horror Show, including Testuo: The Iron Man (1989), Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992), Tokyo Fist (1995) and Kotoko (2011). Here is a VODcast about…
Tokyo Fist first published by Movie Gazette, 17 Nov, 2004 Japanese auteur Shinya Tsukamoto has a consistency of vision that borders on fixation, ensuring that any of his films are instantly recognisable as his own – but at the same time he operates in a virtual cocoon from the influence of other filmmakers, so that his…
Still travelling the UK now (see here for details), the Japan Foundation’s 2013 touring programme (Once Upon A Time In Japan) is focused on recent films that examine contemporary Japan through the prism of the past, whether personal or public. I have written a round-up of the festival for Film4.com, but am posting a fuller…