What a discovery . . . I’m glad this was recommended to me. Kôsaku Yamashita’s powerful 1968 drama belongs to the semi-chivalrous ‘honor and code’ yakuza tradition. Crime clan blood brothers Kôji Tsuruta and Tomisaburô Wakayama are good men caught between conflicting loyalties to family, friends, and the yakuza credo. Clashes of honor lead to unavoidable ‘knives out’ confrontations. It’s as intense as the Japanese classics. The extras offer a refresher in yakuza customs and protocol, with expert guidance from Chris D. and Mark Schilling.
Big Time Gambling Boss
Region A + B Blu-ray
Radiance (UK)
1968 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 95 min. / Bakuchiuci: Sôchô Tobaku; Gambling Den: Gambling Boss; The Great Casino; Presidential Gambling Street Date February 1, 2023 / Available from Radiance (UK) / £16.99
Starring: Kôji Tsuruta, Tomisaburô Wakayama, Hiroshi Nawa, Nobuo Kaneko, Hiroko Sakuramachi, Hideto Kagawa, Michiyo Hattori,Shin’ichirô Mikami.
Cinematography: Nagaki Yamagishi
Production Designer/ Art Director: Jirô Tomita
Film Editor: Miyamoto Shinjirô
Original Music: Toshiaki Tsushima...
Big Time Gambling Boss
Region A + B Blu-ray
Radiance (UK)
1968 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 95 min. / Bakuchiuci: Sôchô Tobaku; Gambling Den: Gambling Boss; The Great Casino; Presidential Gambling Street Date February 1, 2023 / Available from Radiance (UK) / £16.99
Starring: Kôji Tsuruta, Tomisaburô Wakayama, Hiroshi Nawa, Nobuo Kaneko, Hiroko Sakuramachi, Hideto Kagawa, Michiyo Hattori,Shin’ichirô Mikami.
Cinematography: Nagaki Yamagishi
Production Designer/ Art Director: Jirô Tomita
Film Editor: Miyamoto Shinjirô
Original Music: Toshiaki Tsushima...
- 1/21/2023
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
In the history of Japanese cinema, the period drama, whether a chambara or jidaigeki, is a genre which many filmmakers want to explore for themselves at least once during their career, with many of them even building their bodies of work on just these types of features. While many cite directors such as Akira Kurosawa and Masaki Kobayashi as being the most important examples, cinephiles and people familiar with Japanese culture know the genre is far more varied and has a lot more names to offer. One of those directors has to be Hideo Gosha, who already made a strong impression at the beginning of his career with two lasting masterpieces of the genre, “Three Outlaw Samurai” and “Sword of the Beast”. In the years to come, he would continue making strong entries within the samurai genre, such as his two “Samurai Wolf”-movies, both starring actor Isao Natsuyagi as a ronin named Kiba,...
- 12/20/2022
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
In the style of sequels frequently met into Miike’s filmography, “Ambition Without Honor 2” includes Harumi Sone, Hideki Sone and Kojiro Shimizu in the protagonist roles, but does not continue the story of the first part in any way.
This time, the script follows Tetsuya, a young yakuza, member of the Mogami group, who returns to his family along with his sidekick, Yuji, after his adoptive father, Iwasaki, the leader of the homonymous yakuza group, is wounded in an attack from a rival gang. Soon, both his father and the doctor who was treating him, who also happens to be Tetsuya’s brother-in-law, are found dead and the Yamane group, a rival yakuza clan, seems to be the culprits. Tetsuya is torn between his loyalty to the Mogami group and his will to quit them and head the attack of the Iwasaki against the Yamane clan, with his problems becoming more intense when his uncle,...
This time, the script follows Tetsuya, a young yakuza, member of the Mogami group, who returns to his family along with his sidekick, Yuji, after his adoptive father, Iwasaki, the leader of the homonymous yakuza group, is wounded in an attack from a rival gang. Soon, both his father and the doctor who was treating him, who also happens to be Tetsuya’s brother-in-law, are found dead and the Yamane group, a rival yakuza clan, seems to be the culprits. Tetsuya is torn between his loyalty to the Mogami group and his will to quit them and head the attack of the Iwasaki against the Yamane clan, with his problems becoming more intense when his uncle,...
- 12/23/2019
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
Look out! Gamma Gamma Hey! It’s the attack of screaming, arm-waving green goober monsters from a rogue planetoid, here to bring joy to the hearts of bad-movie fans everywhere. Just make sure your partner is agreeably inclined before you make it a date movie — this show has ended many a good relationship, even before the immortal words, “We’ll never make it chief, it’s coming too fast!”
The Green Slime
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1969 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 90 min. / Gamma sango uchu daisakusen / Street Date October 3, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Robert Horton, Luciana Paluzzi, Richard Jaeckel, Bud Widom, Robert Dunham.
Cinematography: Yoshikazu Yamasawa
Film Editor: Osamu Tanaka
Original Music: Charles Fox, Toshiaki Tsushima
Written by Bill Finger, Ivan Reiner, Tom Rowe, Charles Sinclair
Produced by Walter Manley, Ivan Reiner
Directed by Kinji Fukasaku
It’s a summer evening in 1969. Unable to get into a showing of Butch Cassidy...
The Green Slime
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1969 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 90 min. / Gamma sango uchu daisakusen / Street Date October 3, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Robert Horton, Luciana Paluzzi, Richard Jaeckel, Bud Widom, Robert Dunham.
Cinematography: Yoshikazu Yamasawa
Film Editor: Osamu Tanaka
Original Music: Charles Fox, Toshiaki Tsushima
Written by Bill Finger, Ivan Reiner, Tom Rowe, Charles Sinclair
Produced by Walter Manley, Ivan Reiner
Directed by Kinji Fukasaku
It’s a summer evening in 1969. Unable to get into a showing of Butch Cassidy...
- 11/4/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Review by Roger Carpenter
After experiencing huge critical and commercial success with the five-part film series collectively known as Battles without Honor and Humanity, the Toei Company asked director Kinji Fukasaku to continue the series. The original five films were based upon several magazine articles, themselves based upon the memoirs of an actual member of the Japanese mafia, or yakuza. The films proved to be so successful that Fukasaku essentially created a new subgenre known in Japan as Jitsuroku eiga, “actual record films,” or films based upon true tales of real-life adventures. But having run out of material with the first five films, Fukasaku would have to turn to more fictionalized stories as well as new characters if he wanted to continue the series. This three-film series became known as New Battles without Honor and Humanity and, though there have been other films in the series, these are the last directed by Fukasaku.
After experiencing huge critical and commercial success with the five-part film series collectively known as Battles without Honor and Humanity, the Toei Company asked director Kinji Fukasaku to continue the series. The original five films were based upon several magazine articles, themselves based upon the memoirs of an actual member of the Japanese mafia, or yakuza. The films proved to be so successful that Fukasaku essentially created a new subgenre known in Japan as Jitsuroku eiga, “actual record films,” or films based upon true tales of real-life adventures. But having run out of material with the first five films, Fukasaku would have to turn to more fictionalized stories as well as new characters if he wanted to continue the series. This three-film series became known as New Battles without Honor and Humanity and, though there have been other films in the series, these are the last directed by Fukasaku.
- 9/20/2017
- by Movie Geeks
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Considered by many to be director Kinji Fukasaku’s greatest single-film achievement in the yakuza genre, Cops Vs Thugs was made at the height of popularity of Toei Studios’ jitsuroku boom: realistic, modern crime movies based on true stories taken from contemporary headlines. Returning to the screen after completing their Battles Without Honor and Humanity series together, Fukasaku joined forced once again with screenwriter Kazuo Kasahara, composer Toshiaki Tsushima and star Bunta Sugawara to create one of the crowning achievements of his career, and a hard-boiled classic which is still ranked as one of the best Japanese films of the 1970’s.
It’s 1963 in the southern Japanese city of Kurashima, and tough-as-nails detective Kuno (Sugawara) oversees a detente between the warring Kawade and Ohara gangs. Best friends with Ohara lieutenant Hirotani (Hiroki Matsukata), he understands that there are no clear lines in the underworld, and that everything is colored a different shade of gray.
It’s 1963 in the southern Japanese city of Kurashima, and tough-as-nails detective Kuno (Sugawara) oversees a detente between the warring Kawade and Ohara gangs. Best friends with Ohara lieutenant Hirotani (Hiroki Matsukata), he understands that there are no clear lines in the underworld, and that everything is colored a different shade of gray.
- 5/16/2017
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Bloody havoc reigns! Kinji Fukasaku's no-holds-barred vision of ugly violence and uglier politics on the streets of Hiroshima is a five-film Yakuza epic that spans generations. The film amounts to an alternate history of postwar Japan, that puts an end to the glorification of the Yakuza code. The enormous cast includes Bunta Sugawara, Tetsuro Tanba, Sonny Chiba and Jo Shishido. Battles without Honor and Humanity Blu-ray + DVD Arrow Video 1973-74 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 760 min. / Limited Edition Boxed Set Street Date December 8, 2015 / 149.95 Starring Bunta Sugawara, Hiroki Matsukata, Tetsuro Tanba, Kunie Tanaka, Eiko Nakamura, Sonny Chiba, Meiko Kaji, Akira Kobayashi, Tsunehiko Watase, Reiko Ike, Jo Shishido Cinematography Sadaji Yoshida Production Designer Takatoshi Suzuki Original Music Toshiaki Tsushima Written by Koichi Iiboshi, Kazuo Kasahara Directed by Kinji Fukasaku
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
In the 1990s the American Cinematheque was headquartered in various places, but settled for a few years in a large...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
In the 1990s the American Cinematheque was headquartered in various places, but settled for a few years in a large...
- 12/22/2015
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
“It isn’t necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.”
Frank Zappa
For most people nostalgia is just another way of packaging the point of view that, surprise, surprise, the times we lived in were less complicated, better when we were younger. Sometimes that sentiment gets woven into rosy remembrances of past glories or sociopolitical myths built around the alleged pre-Kennedy (or pre-whatever mid-century social upheaval you want to use to fill in the blank) innocence of America and how that innocence was inevitably lost when X, Y or Z happened. And often when we watch movies we loved as kids, when we return to them on our own or in the company of kids whom we hope will be as captivated as we once were, we want nostalgia to be active rather than...
Frank Zappa
For most people nostalgia is just another way of packaging the point of view that, surprise, surprise, the times we lived in were less complicated, better when we were younger. Sometimes that sentiment gets woven into rosy remembrances of past glories or sociopolitical myths built around the alleged pre-Kennedy (or pre-whatever mid-century social upheaval you want to use to fill in the blank) innocence of America and how that innocence was inevitably lost when X, Y or Z happened. And often when we watch movies we loved as kids, when we return to them on our own or in the company of kids whom we hope will be as captivated as we once were, we want nostalgia to be active rather than...
- 3/23/2014
- by Dennis Cozzalio
- Trailers from Hell
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