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Another Decade with Takashi Miike is a series of essays on the 2010s films of the Japanese maverick, following Notebook's earlier survey of Miike's first decade of the 21st century.Being in league with Takashi Miike, taking the sensually arrayed and flayed curtains of flesh in stride, has a way of making one think of Claude Rains in Lawrence of Arabia: “It is recognized that you have a funny sense of fun.” When you make it your life’s work to decorate the insides of cinemas with the exploits of desperate, subhuman Yakuza, your idea of the business of law enforcement and especially your idea of heroism are bound to be just as warped as your sense of "fun". Miike’s cop movies are few and far between—he doesn’t get cops and he doesn’t much like them. There’s something about lying to people about the...

Shield of Straw Trailer, Photograph. Takashi Miike’s Shield of Straw (2013) movie trailer, movie image stars Nanako Matsushima, Tatsuya Fujiwara, Takao Osawa, Gorô Kishitani, and Masatô Ibu. Shield of Straw‘s plot synopsis: based on Wara no Tate by Kazuhiro Kiuchi, “Ninagawa is a powerful man in Japanese politics and with top economic connections.His granddaughter is [...]

Continue reading: Shield Of Straw (2013) Movie Trailer: Cops Protect a Suspected Killer...

The Woodsman And The Rain

Stars: Kôji Yakusho, Shun Oguri, Masatô Ibu, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Kengo Kôra, Asami Usuda | Written by Shûichi Okita, Fumio Moriya | Directed by Shûichi Okita

It’s not often that a feel good movie is set in a village that appears to be overrun by zombies, or that the film itself features a film being made about said zombies but then again I’m sure there are not many films like The Woodsman and the Rain. I may have exaggerated about the zombies, but they are integral to the storyline and important to the tale of a Woodsman and a shy film director.

Katsuhiko is the Woodsman, spending his day cutting down trees in a small village in the Japanese mountains. He’s happy with his life and appears to like the serenity that the job provides. When a film crew invade the mountains though to film...

Here’s the first trailer for “Hannibal Rising” director Peter Webber’s latest, the post-World War II set “Emperor”, which finds Matthew Fox and Tommy Lee Jones playing Generals in the aftermath of the war. This is apparently a true story. Or, well, true-ish whenever Hollywood is involved, let’s be honest here. Looks interesting. I’m always a sucker for historical tales about topics that I didn’t know anything about previously, and I certainly had no idea the U.S. Army was considering hanging Japan’s emperor for his role in WWII. As the Japanese surrender at the end of WWII, Gen. Fellers is tasked with deciding if Emperor Hirohito will be hanged as a war criminal. Influencing his ruling is his quest to find Aya, an exchange student he met years earlier in the U.S. Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Isao Natsuyagi, Matthew Fox, Kaori Momoi, Toshiyuki Nishida,...

Roadside Attractions has debuted the first trailer for Emperor, director Peter Webber's true-story drama that offers history buffs a new look at the American occupation of Japan following World War II. Tommy Lee Jones stars as General Douglas MacArthur, who becomes the interim ruler of Japan after Emperor Hirohito surrenders. Matthew Fox plays General Bonner Fellers, an expert in Japanese culture who MacArthur brings in to determine whether or not the Emperor must be punished for his war crimes. Take a look at the latest footage from this drama based on an incredible true story, also starring Eriko Hatsune.

Emperor - Trailer

Emperor comes to theaters March 8th, 2013 and stars Matthew Fox, Tommy Lee Jones, Eriko Hatsune, Kaori Momoi, Toshiyuki Nishida, Masatô Ibu, Nic Sampson, William Wallace. The film is directed by Peter Webber.

Sometimes foreign language films simply exist across an insurmountable cultural divide that renders them indecipherable here. Hitoshi Matsumoto‘s Saya-zamurai [Scabbard Samurai] perfectly exemplifies through an obtusely-constructed first third before hitting its stride. Comically uneven at the start, I was left scratching my head and wondering if I was missing the joke. An old, toothless samurai with an empty scabbard breathlessly and wordlessly runs through the Japanese countryside with his young daughter following closely behind as three assassins – introduced in freeze-frame – arrive to inflict what should be mortal wounds. The attacks excise the would-be killer and victim from their backgrounds, placing them on black as bright red spurts forth from the aging relic’s body in slomotion. The samurai wails in pain, the girl heals him with a special herb, and it all happens again.

This prologue quickly instills a fear that the rest will end up a long and arduous journey...