Prisoners of the Ghostland first published by VODzilla.co Prisoners of the Ghostland, the first English-language film from prolific genre anarchist Sion Sono (Love Exposure, Cold Fish, Tag), begins with balls. More precisely, with a slow zoom into a coin-operated machine full of brightly coloured gum balls, and a smiling Japanese boy in front of it,…
Love Exposure (Ai No Mukidashi) first published by Film4 Summary: Sion Sono’s Berlinale-winner is a Bible-length blend of the pious and the perverse that puts the rites back into teen rites of passage. Review: “Even a pervert has a life history,” declares epicene 17-year-old Yu Honda (Takahiro Nishijima) to fellow pupil – and girl of his dreams…
The Whispering Star first published by SciFiNow A title reads ‘Saturday’, and we see a tap on a kitchen sink dripping. ‘Sunday’, reads a new caption, and the tap is still dripping. From early on, it is clear that Sion Sono’s The Whispering Star (Hiso hiso boshi, 2015) is going to be concerned with time. As…
TAG first published by Little White Lies, as entry 46 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column “Why did we have to run?” asks a schoolgirl, breathlessly, after she and three friends have just ditched class and raced full pelt all the way to a nearby river. It is a good question. For while this particular act of…
Cold Fish (Tsumetai nettaigyo) first appeared in Sight & Sound, May 2011 Review: In the mid-Nineties, in Japan’s Saitama prefecture, exotic dog breeder Gen Sekine and his common-law wife Hiroko Kazama poisoned at least four people, and then sliced up the bodies. The couple would eventually hang for their crimes, while Yamazaki Nagayuki, an employee…