The Life of Oharu (Saikaku ichidai onna) first published by Movie Gazette, 26 Feb, 2004 Kenji Mizoguchi made more than 85 films from 1922 until his death in 1956, and although many of these are now forever lost or destroyed, he was, along with Yasujiro Ozu, the most admired Japanese director of his generation. He…
Six Home Releases from December 2023 first published by Little White Lies, 23 December 2023, as entry 183 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column Includes capsules of: The Fall of Ako Castle, Child’s Play (1988), Murder Obsession, RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop, I Am Waiting, Jules The Fall of Ako Castle (aka Murder Syndrome, 1978) The…
High and Low (Tengoku to jigoku) first published by Movie Gazette in 2005 While involved in a high-stakes bid to take over the shoe company for which he has worked since he was sixteen years old, Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) receives a phone call informing him that his son has been kidnapped, and will be killed if an…
I Live In Fear (Ikimono no kiroku) first published by Movie Gazette in 2005 In the Fifties, Japan seemed a dangerous place to live. Leaving aside its geographical susceptibility to earthquakes, just a decade earlier, with the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it had become the only country ever to have been subjected to nuclear…