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2 weeks 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.
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1 month 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Oct 22, 2024 | 
easternkicks.com | Wally Adams
The (thorny, poisonous) flowering of Fukasaku’s style and a Takakura we’d never see again made in full display…There once was a town in Japan called… “a pigsty”; or occasionally, “this dump”; or alternately, “the town occupied by pigs that failed to escape and were left behind.” Whatever one’s preference, the one thing agreed upon was that the town didn’t deserve the recognition or distinction of a name.
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Oct 3, 2024 | 
easternkicks.com | Wally Adams
Masumura strips the spy movie of its glamour for deepened personal and ideological intrigue…Even with Japan deep at war in China and a very probable clash with the West imminent — or perhaps because of it — future prospects couldn’t look brighter for Jiro (Raizō Ichikawa, A Samurai Never Tells a Lie). He has seen a meteoric ascent from Tokyo Imperial University grad with honours to Reserve Officer Cadet School grad to freshly promoted Lieutenant.
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Sep 28, 2024 | 
easternkicks.com | Wally Adams
A yakuza movie for kids?!? And not bad for one at all, while still throwing extra treats to yakuza and music fans…For all the inroads it’s made in the West in the past couple of decades, karaoke — even if a household name and somewhere in every city now — remains in the minds of many and in overall statistics as a niche usually just for select occasions and select people.
