Wally Adams

Contributor at EasternKicks

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Articles

The Rapacious Jailbreaker

3 weeks ago | easternkicks.com | Wally Adams

The science, history and above all math of crime cumulate into ferocious fun for prison film fans…When it comes to crime, Masayuki Ueda (Hiroki Matsukata, Blackmail Is My Life) is always a step ahead of others be they rivals or police; if only he could quit stumbling thereby.
Movie review: Yakuza Wives

1 month ago | easternkicks.com | Wally Adams

The defining yakuza movie of its decade also redefined the genre’s aim, air and audience in style…Tamaki Awazu (Shima Iwashita, Double Suicide) — wife of Hitoshi, one of the preeminent Domoto Syndicate’s most prized bosses who’s currently serving a 3-year sentence for doing them big favor — is a lot more than just custodian of her husband’s property and reputation.
Movie reviewThe Adventurers | easternkicks.com

1 month ago | easternkicks.com | Wally Adams

Heroic Bloodshed? Hah! Ringo Lam lifts the veil from the label with a whirlwind tour of deception and betrayal…For audiences as well as directors, that most modern of Hong Kong genre phenomenons known as heroic bloodshed is usually seen and designated through a narrow prism of crime films. Ringo Lam earned a reputation as the genre’s grittiest maestro that way for fare like Full Contact (1992) which for all of their… quirks still used fundamentally conventional triad/police narratives.
Movie review: Love and Crime

2 months ago | easternkicks.com | Wally Adams

Teruo Ishii alternately assembles, crafts, patches and jams together true tales of Japan’s most scandalous crimes of passion…Dr. Murase (Teruo Yoshida, Goké: Body Snatcher from Hell) is a forensic examiner who dispassionately performs daily autopsies. That is, until one dreadful day when he finds the body of his wife before him to be operated on with seminal evidence she was involved with another man.
Yukiko | easternkicks.com

2 months ago | easternkicks.com | Wally Adams

Hip-hop as introspection, cure/cause of anxiety, and maybe even a little fun in an unusual music indie…Yukiko Yoshimura (Rio Yamashita, Penalty Loop) is a 29-year-old primary school teacher nominally living a quite comfortable life.
Tokijiro: The Lone Yakuza

Jan 21, 2025 | easternkicks.com | Wally Adams

Old-fashioned yakuza melodrama presented with artful new-school techniques make for a distinct curiosity…From the plains to the beach sands, wandering gambler or bakutō Tokijiro (Kinnosuke Nakamura, Bushido: The Cruel Code of the Samurai) is on just another journey with his loyal traveling companion Asakichi (Kiyoshi Atsumi, Tora! Tora! Tora!; Tora-san’s Lullaby) to wherever they end up next, staying in inns along the way while also taking jobs from them.
To a Land Unknown

Jan 14, 2025 | easternkicks.com | Wally Adams

A stirringly topical gangster drama opens an unlikely new horizon for Palestinian cinema…Chatila (Mahmood Bakri, Alam) and his cousin Reda (Aram Sabbah) could barely have less in common; or at least they would have little in common if not for the shared refugee limbo status in Athens that binds them and their behavior more closely by the desperate day.
The Bride from Hades

Jan 6, 2025 | easternkicks.com | Wally Adams

Offbeat socialist horror unveils an ambivalently tender, vengeful bride vowing love till death do them join…Hagiwara family scion Shinzaburō (Kōjirō Hongō, Gamera series) has been called to a special gathering for the occasion of the Obōn festival, when the deceased including his older brother are ritually honoured.
Japan Organized Crime Boss

Dec 17, 2024 | easternkicks.com | Wally Adams

A who’s who not of yakuza cinema but boss cinema, taking us on a wild ride out of one era towards another…With a new, prosperous Japan having emerged beyond any last doubt upon her Economic Miracle and new assertion into world politics, yakuza bosses are struggling to catch up with it.
Yin Yang Master Zero

Nov 10, 2024 | easternkicks.com | Wally Adams

A mystical folk hero is brought to extra-extragavant life in a landmark success among Japanese female directors…The thematic face of Japan’s cinema to the outside world — perhaps altogether but for jidaigeki in particular — has always been dominated by the Warring States and Tokugawa periods as the heyday of the samurai, ninja, geisha etc. universally capturing global imaginations.