Monsters Club first published by Little White Lies, as entry 138 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column By the time Monsters Club came out, writer/director Toshiaki Toyoda and the actor Eita had history. After all, Eita made his big-screen debut in Toyoda’s Blue Spring (2001), and then had also starred in his 9 Souls (2003) and…
Blue Spring (Aoi haru) first published by Little White Lies, as the 80th entry in my Cinema Psychotronicum column In the opening sequence of Blue Spring (Aoi haru), with a Graduation Ceremony audible in the background, teenagers Kujo (Ryuhei Matsuda) and Aoki (Hirofumi Arai) pick a lock to the roof area of the single-sex Asashi…
First published by Sight & Sound, March 2017 “What’s the use of losing?” reads text in Toshiaki Toyoda’s documentary Unchain (2000). “There is none.” An Osakan child prodigy at Japanese chess who suddenly quit at 17, Toyoda’s early directing career celebrated Japan’s marginalised male losers. Typical is ‘Unchain’ Kaji, a likably punkish real-life boxer from…