No man is an island, but for 29 years, until his final surrender in 1974, Hiroo Onoda came as close as any man could. Leading an ever-dwindling band of Japanese holdouts who refused to believe their nation had lost the war, Onoda continued to carry out minor guerrilla attacks on the residents of the small Philippine island of Lubang for almost three decades, until it was just him left, hiding in the underbrush, subsisting on a diet of zealotry and whatever he could scavenge or steal.
It’s a famous, fabulously knotty, semi-surreal story, fraught with allegorical potential, but despite some length and pacing issues, it is somewhat surprisingly made, by French director Arthur Harari, into a potent, satisfying saga of old-school, muscular filmmaking. Part John Ford, part Sam Fuller, the film’s old-fashioned approach is oddly impressive: To tell this kind of story in such blunt-edged, straightforward style is a distinctive...
It’s a famous, fabulously knotty, semi-surreal story, fraught with allegorical potential, but despite some length and pacing issues, it is somewhat surprisingly made, by French director Arthur Harari, into a potent, satisfying saga of old-school, muscular filmmaking. Part John Ford, part Sam Fuller, the film’s old-fashioned approach is oddly impressive: To tell this kind of story in such blunt-edged, straightforward style is a distinctive...
- 7/30/2021
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
“All The Things We Never Said” was one of six projects commissioned by the “Back to Basics” initiative from the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society and China’s Heaven Pictures, which demanded from the participants to shoot a movie on a budget of ¥15 million each. Yuya Ishii wrote a script that focuses on the “inherent” characteristic of Japanese people, who always have trouble communicating their feelings and thoughts, in three days, and started shooting a couple of months later.
“All the Things We Never Said” is screening at San Diego Asian Film Festival
Atsuhisa Yamada, a man in his thirties, is the embodiment of this issue. He works as a librarian, a job that actually requires being quiet at all times, with this tendency continuing when he returns home to his wife and high school sweetheart, Natsumi, and baby daughter, Suzu. Natsumi complains frequently and even insults him to his face,...
“All the Things We Never Said” is screening at San Diego Asian Film Festival
Atsuhisa Yamada, a man in his thirties, is the embodiment of this issue. He works as a librarian, a job that actually requires being quiet at all times, with this tendency continuing when he returns home to his wife and high school sweetheart, Natsumi, and baby daughter, Suzu. Natsumi complains frequently and even insults him to his face,...
- 10/24/2020
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
“Prison is the only place that won’t kick you out no matter how badly you behave,” remarks the ex-con protagonist, who gets no second chances in Japanese society. Directed with piercing insight, emotional depth and true compassion by Miwa Nishikawa, “Under the Open Skies” tells the heartbreaking tale of a pariah whose soul is crushed by systemic discrimination and a world of hypocritical conformity. while likely collecting awards at home and abroad.
Ever since her sophomore feature “Sway” premiered at Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight in 2006, Nishikawa has been a name to watch for riveting, wickedly cynical works. She also excels in drawing morally ambiguous characters: liars and swindlers hiding secrets behind their social standing. Though her technique is no less rigorous, her sixth film treads a new path by rooting for a career criminal from the lower depths who suffers for his honest values. This puts the film in...
Ever since her sophomore feature “Sway” premiered at Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight in 2006, Nishikawa has been a name to watch for riveting, wickedly cynical works. She also excels in drawing morally ambiguous characters: liars and swindlers hiding secrets behind their social standing. Though her technique is no less rigorous, her sixth film treads a new path by rooting for a career criminal from the lower depths who suffers for his honest values. This puts the film in...
- 9/16/2020
- by Maggie Lee
- Variety Film + TV
“How do you feel about the crime you committed? Remorse for the victim?” This question is posed early in Under the Open Sky to an aging figure named Mikami. He is a former yakuza on the verge of release after a thirteen-year prison sentence. As played Kōji Yakusho––the veteran Japanese actor who has collaborated with Hirokazu Kore-eda, Takashi Miike, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and more––he is a man who veers wildly between gentle smiles and utter rage. “Yes. I regret it,” he replies to the prison official. “Getting locked up for that hoodlum.” Mikami explains that the sword attack drew an “unfair verdict.” The official asks a follow-up: “It was a gang war, wasn’t it?” At this moment, Mikami’s voice explodes: “I was a lone wolf and didn’t belong to any family then!” Finally, he throws up his arms, complaining that “it’s no debating this with you.
- 9/13/2020
- by Christopher Schobert
- The Film Stage
This is no “Boyhood” (2014). Unlike Richard Linklater’s sanitized suburban storytelling, Tatsushi Omori‘s coming-of-age tale spins a disturbed – and increasingly violent – take in the lives of three middle school-aged misfits. In this battle for innocence, acceptance and ultimately for survival, Omori’s fourth feature grapples with the difficulties of growing up in a godless wasteland.
Omori sets the tone with the film’s opening scene, wherein two yakuza members wrestle for control in a home for the mentally and physically disabled. The rest of the film only peers deeper into the fringes of society, revolving around three teens: the rebellious Eiji (Masaki Suda), the reckless Taro (Yoshi), and the gentle Sugio (Taiga Nakano). Eiji walks in his brother’s shadow, unable to live to his family’s judo-loving legacy due to his injured knee. He takes out his anger in conspiratorial schemes with Taro, an elementary school drop-out. The...
Omori sets the tone with the film’s opening scene, wherein two yakuza members wrestle for control in a home for the mentally and physically disabled. The rest of the film only peers deeper into the fringes of society, revolving around three teens: the rebellious Eiji (Masaki Suda), the reckless Taro (Yoshi), and the gentle Sugio (Taiga Nakano). Eiji walks in his brother’s shadow, unable to live to his family’s judo-loving legacy due to his injured knee. He takes out his anger in conspiratorial schemes with Taro, an elementary school drop-out. The...
- 8/7/2020
- by Grace Han
- AsianMoviePulse
Korean specialty distributor D.O. Cinema has picked up local rights to Yuya Ishii’s “All The Things We Never Said,” which is bowing at the virtual edition of the Cannes Market, where it is represented by Hong Kong based sales agent Good Move Media.
“Things We Never Said” stars Taiga Nakano, Wakaba Ryuya and Yuko Oshima and is set for a fall festival bow, before theatrical releases confirmed for China, Japan and now Korea. D.O. specializes in releasing Japanese films in Korea and has previously handled several titles by Ishii (“Tokyo Night Sky Is Always the Densest Shade of Blue” and “The Great Passage”).
Jostling for top ranking on Good Move’s virtual slate is “Me and the Cult Leader,” a documentary about coming to terms with the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. Directed by Atsushi Sakahara, it had a triumphant world premiere last week at the Sheffield Doc Fest.
“Things We Never Said” stars Taiga Nakano, Wakaba Ryuya and Yuko Oshima and is set for a fall festival bow, before theatrical releases confirmed for China, Japan and now Korea. D.O. specializes in releasing Japanese films in Korea and has previously handled several titles by Ishii (“Tokyo Night Sky Is Always the Densest Shade of Blue” and “The Great Passage”).
Jostling for top ranking on Good Move’s virtual slate is “Me and the Cult Leader,” a documentary about coming to terms with the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. Directed by Atsushi Sakahara, it had a triumphant world premiere last week at the Sheffield Doc Fest.
- 6/24/2020
- by Patrick Frater
- Variety Film + TV
Directed by Kay Nguyen, Drama Queen follows a stuntman, on the run from the mob, who fulfils a lifetime wish to transition into becoming a woman.
Hong Kong-based sales company Good Move Media has struck a deal with Ho Chi Minh City-based distributor Skyline Media to represent three Vietnamese titles at the Efm, headed by action comedy Drama Queen.
Directed by Kay Nguyen, Drama Queen follows a stuntman, on the run from the mob, who fulfils a lifetime wish to transition into becoming a woman. However, when she enters a beauty pageant to pay for her sick father’s medical bills,...
Hong Kong-based sales company Good Move Media has struck a deal with Ho Chi Minh City-based distributor Skyline Media to represent three Vietnamese titles at the Efm, headed by action comedy Drama Queen.
Directed by Kay Nguyen, Drama Queen follows a stuntman, on the run from the mob, who fulfils a lifetime wish to transition into becoming a woman. However, when she enters a beauty pageant to pay for her sick father’s medical bills,...
- 2/22/2020
- by 89¦Liz Shackleton¦0¦
- ScreenDaily
Having its international premiere at Busan and winning the Audience Award at Tokyo Filmex, “Silent Rain” is a rather interesting production that uses the “love in the midst of memory loss” concept in order to present a genuine Japanese indie drama.
“Silent Rain” is available from Gaga
Based on the novel “The Forest Of Wool And Steel” by Natsu Miyashita, the story follows Yukisuke, a young bio-archaeologist with a bad leg that forces him to leap constantly. He lives a lonely life, only communicating typically with the head professor of his department in the university and a graduate student who also works in the same office, and Koyomi, a young woman who runs a Taiyaki stall he frequents almost daily. Yukisuke is fascinated by Koyomi, and he eventually strikes a friendship with her that is about to bloom into something more, when the girl gets into a car accident that leaves her in a coma.
“Silent Rain” is available from Gaga
Based on the novel “The Forest Of Wool And Steel” by Natsu Miyashita, the story follows Yukisuke, a young bio-archaeologist with a bad leg that forces him to leap constantly. He lives a lonely life, only communicating typically with the head professor of his department in the university and a graduate student who also works in the same office, and Koyomi, a young woman who runs a Taiyaki stall he frequents almost daily. Yukisuke is fascinated by Koyomi, and he eventually strikes a friendship with her that is about to bloom into something more, when the girl gets into a car accident that leaves her in a coma.
- 2/7/2020
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
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