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An impotent Japanese man who hasn’t slept with his wife in more than five years receives a house call from her secret lover, who tortures — and arouses — the husband with pungent descriptions of his partner’s vaginal secretions, which he lustfully compares to the stink and stringiness of fermented soybeans. A beautiful woman stricken with panic attacks runs over a familiar pedestrian on her way to buy some mapo tofu, only to discover that her masochistic victim might know how to alleviate her anxiety. A handsome executive who’s sick of his mistress receives a phone call that she’s been abducted, and is forced to listen to her captor ramble on about the missing woman’s carnal appetites as he slurps noodles in a ramen bar where talking is strictly forbidden.

Kôta Yoshida’s 70-minute “Sexual Drive” serves up an explicit yet tasteful triptych of semi-connected shorts, all...

Sexual Drive Movie Review Film Movement Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net, linked from Rotten Tomatoes by Harvey Karten Director: Kôta Yoshida Screenwriter: Kôta Yoshida Cast: Manami Hashimoto, Ryô Ikeda, Mukau Nakamura, Honami Satô, Tateto Serizawa, Shogen, Rina Takeda Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 3/25/22 Opens: April 22, 2022 No film will ever match the conflating […]

The post Sexual Drive Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

If Ryûsuke Hamaguchi satiated your appetite for Japanese triptychs with the best film of last year, and you are now seeking more to devour, look no further. Kôta Yoshida’s Fantasia Fest favorite Sexual Drive, which offers a compact, 70-minute compendium of three stories involving food and sex, will now be arriving digitally on April 22 via Film Movement. Ahead of the debut, we’re delighted to premiere the exclusive trailer.

Led by Manami Hashimoto, Ryô Ikeda, Mukau Nakamura, Honami Satô, Tateto Serizawa, Shogen, and Rina Takeda, Sexual Drive is an unconventional triptych––equal parts thriller, sex comedy, and gastronomy––following the seemingly unconnected lives of three people around Japan and their appetites, both culinary and carnal. In the first story, designer Enatsu worries about his sexless marriage. Next, office worker Akane is recovering from driving-induced panic attacks. In the final third, elite advertising agent Ikeyama wants to end a relationship with his lover.

“If you want to be in the gig, choose one: First, you get beaten up by me or you destroy the bass…” threatens Marutake High’s Oba, the mohawked antagonist who has been gunning for a fight with Kenji, Ota, and Asakura since the very beginning. With one swift unforeseeable action, this deadpan slice of animated mumblecore tears up its already useless rulebook, pours gasoline over it, then sets it on fire. But these flames aren’t what you’d come to expect from a typical fire: this is something altogether more vibrant, more primal; something so freeing it makes the avant-garde look as predictable as the next hit Avex single. Based on Hiroyuki Ohashi’s manga of the same name, “On-Gaku: Our Sound” taps into the unpredictability of Japan’s psych rock heritage, runs freakish with it, and has far too much fun doing so.

“On-Gaku: Our Sound“ is...

Following his dramatic second feature, “Good-Bye Silence”, Kenichi Ugana decided to change styles completely, ending up with a “silly”, distinctly Japanese comedy, which parodies the super hero genre in a way similar to “Hk: Forbidden Super Hero”. The result was quite successful, since “Wild Virgins” screened on festivals all over the world, including the 38th Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival and the 40th Fantafestival, and it has already been picked up by Third Window Films.

When he was a young boy, Mikio Hoshimura believed that super powers can actually save people, instigated by his favorite anime at the time, “Super Virginia”. However, he could not save his ailing mother who died at the time, and the realization turned him into a complete loser, who, at 29-years-old, has no friends, no girlfriend, and is the ridicule of the company he works for, always placed at the bottom of the rankings. The...

“On-Gaku: Our Sound,” an oddball music comedy directed by Kenji Iwaisawa, upends all that is typical of Japanese animation. glutted with mind-bending sci-fi conundrums or elaborate time-slip-body-switching fantasies. But what fuels its easy breakout to western audiences are its bona fide rock references and characters as deadpan as any Aki Kaurismaki cast.

Signs of “On-Gaku” being the year’s biggest dark horse in anime fandom came in September 2019, when it beat “I Lost My Body” and “Children of the Sea” to win the Grand Prix at the Ottawa Animation Festival. It has since been picked up stateside by Gkids and should enjoy wide fest play following its presentation in the Contrechamps Competition section at the Annecy Animation Festival, which just awarded the film a prize for its music.

“On-Gaku,” which simply means “music” in Japanese, was adapted from a revised draft of the cult manga “Ongaku and Manga,” first self-published...

“If you want to be in the gig, choose one: First, you get beaten up by me or you destroy the bass…” threatens Marutake High’s Oba, the mohawked antagonist who has been gunning for a fight with Kenji, Ota, and Asakura since the very beginning. With one swift unforeseeable action, this deadpan slice of animated mumblecore tears up its already useless rulebook, pours gasoline over it, then sets it on fire. But these flames aren’t what you’d come to expect from a typical fire: this is something altogether more vibrant, more primal; something so freeing it makes the avant-garde look as predictable as the next hit Avex single. Based on Hiroyuki Ohashi’s manga of the same name, “On-Gaku: Our Sound” taps into the unpredictability of Japan’s psych rock heritage, runs freakish with it, and has far too much fun doing so.

On-Gaku: Our Sound is...