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The “Detective Team” that swept the world rampages in Tokyo! Chinatown detective duo Tan Len (Wang Baoqiang) and Chin Fung (Liu Haoran), who have settled the case internationally, are from Japanese detective Noda Hiroshi (Satoshi Tsumabuki). He was asked to cooperate in solving a difficult case and flew to Tokyo. This mission is a false accusation of Yakuza leader Masaru Watanabe (Tomokazu Miura), who was charged as a criminal in a closed-room murder case of the Mafia chairman in Southeast Asia. Thai detective and former detective Jack Jar (Tony Jaa) also participates and tries to solve it, but an incident occurs in which Anna Kobayashi (Masami Nagasawa), the secretary of the murdered chairman, is kidnapped. The case is complicated by the involvement of an elite detective, Naoki Tanaka (Tadanobu Asano), who boasts a 100% case resolution rate, and a mysterious wanted criminal, Akira Murata (Sota Sometani). In addition, detectives who are...

While Emiko Hiramatsu is a rather unknown name as a director, one might know her as co-screenwriter on many of Yoji Yamada’s recent narratives, “What a Wonderful Family” (2016), “What A Wonderful Family 2” (2017)). With “Organ”, her second full-length feature, Emiko Hiramatsu takes the responsibility, both as screenwriter and as director, to frame a true war-time story.

“Organ” is screening at the Toronto Japanese Film Festival

Kaede Itakura (Erika Toda) is a senior child-care provider of a so called ‘war-time daycare’. While the safety of the children is of extreme importance to her, the fact that the war-time economy – weapons over words – hinders the true goal of child-care, the nurturing of the children’s sensibility in a cultural environment, affects her just as much.

When Shigeru Wakimoto (Naoki Tanaka), a childhood education researcher and owner of Togoshi daycare center arrives, he doesn’t have good news – the ministry of health and...

Sometimes Takashi Miike's freewheeling imagination spits out something glorious; profane, demented, moving or profound. Sometimes it grinds to a halt, jammed up with abortive experiments like his Masters of Horror entry Imprint and unfortunately, Zebraman 2 is another one of these. It could only have come from Miike - it's shot through with the kind of inspired, childlike madness only he could deliver - but it's also a bloated, directionless mess of a movie, fun while you're forcing it down but liable to leave you wondering why you bothered afterwards.

It starts not long after the first film, where everyman schoolteacher Ichikawa (Shou Aikawa) transformed into the titular superhero to save the world from destructive, body-snatching little green men. He's world famous, but it's taken its toll, with his wife and friends shunning him now he's pursued by fans and news crews round the clock. Then abruptly he wakes up...

Along with the list of films playing in-competition, the Venice Film Festival has announced which films are playing out-of-competition this year. The movies include Ben Affleck’s The Town, Casey Affleck’s Joaquin Phoenix documentary I’m Still Here, Martin Scorsese’s Elia Kazan documentary A Letter to Elia, John Turturro’s Passione, Julie Taymor’s The Tempest as the closing night film, and Robert Rodriguez’ Machete as the opening night film. It’s an eclectic bunch of flicks and they’re just a small sampling of the movies playing out-of-competition. Hit the jump to check out the full list.

The 67th Venice Film Festival will run from September 1 – 11th.

Ben Affleck – The Town

USA, 120′

Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Blake Lively

Casey Affleck – I’M Still Here

USA, 108′ (documentary)

Joaquin Phoenix

Marco Bellocchio – Sorelle Mai

Italy, 110′

Alba Rohrwacher, Donatella Finocchiaro, Elena Bellocchio, Pier Giorgio Bellocchio

Piergiorgio Gay...