Kubi - Kitano Takeshi

Beat Takeshi tells a bloody and surreal chapter in the Japanese history of power struggles among many samurai warlords in the Sengoku period.

A sadistic, tyrant lord, Nobunaga (Kase Ryo), is in charge, abusing his subordinates and pitting them against one another by promising the positon of next-in-line to rule, while plotting to kill them all. He calls them by their nick names that he himself has given; there's Baldie Mitsuhide (Nakajima Hidetoshi, Drive My Car), there's Monkey Hideyoshi (Kitano) and there's Racoon Ieyasu (Kobayashi Kaoru).

Asano Tadanobu also shows up among an impressive ensemble cast. As expected in a Kitano film, there are plenty of beheadings, violence and absurd humor throughout, as well as epic-scaled battle scenes.

Kitano accentuates the irony of all the shenanigans by playing Hideyoshi, an illiterate samurai warlord who rose from his peasant background to prominence and is seemingly incapable of doing anything without the help of his younger brother and his general Kanbei (Asano). He also ups the inherent homoerotic nature of samurai culture, as warlords are in love and constantly banging each other.

Like his many yakuza films, Kitano takes on the extremely macho conventions of swordplay genre and samurai stoicism, and turns them upside down, presenting a cynical look at the revered, almost mythic Japanese history.

Shadow of Fire - Tsukamoto Shinya

The second part of Tsulamoto Shinya's planned War Trilogy after his Fires on the Plain remake in 2014, Shadow of Fire shows how the war turns young men into PTSD suffering, violent zombies after the war.

The first half plays out like a tight chamber piece, taking place in one small room with a nameless young war widow (Shuri), surviving by selling/trading her body for goods in a partially firebombed house, with a PTSD-suffering young soldier, who clings to her for a good night's sleep, and a young street urchin, to whom she pours out her maternal instinct.

The second half tells of another guilt-stricken returning soldier trying to find redemption with the help of the boy. Stark, and unflinching, the film is masterfully directed and features top-notch acting from everyone involved.

All the Long Nights - Miyake Sho

Based on Seo Maiko's novel, Yoake No Subete, All the Long Nights is a perfectly pitched, calm, novelistic film about human connections and compassion.

Fujisawa (Kanishiraishi Mone) can't hold on to a job because she suffers from an acute PMS and being mercurial. She ends up in a small company making children's science kits in a small town. There she meets Yamazoe (Masumura Hokuto), an antisocial young man, who finds the job mundane and beneath him. He is demoted from his corporate-world job, due to his panic-attack episodes.

Because of their disorders, Fujisawa and Yamazoe slowly build a mutual friendship. All the Long Nights is a beautifully-drawn film where every character shines, and simultaneously a deeply compassionate look at life without much unnecessary drama.

The Box Man - Ishii Gakuryu *Q&A with Ishii

An oddity, based on Japanese Nouveau Roman scribe Abe Kobo's book of the same name, reunites the team behind the cult hit Electric Dragon 80,000 V, namely, Nagase Masatoshi, Asano Tadanobu, and director Ishii Gakuryu, for The Box Man. Just like Abe's perennial masterpiece adaptations Face of Another and Woman in the Dunes, there's much existential musing going on in The Box Man.

'Myself,' played by Nagase, shunned the world of consumerism and turmoil; seeking solitude and anonymity, he lives in the cardboard box with a rectangular hole for the view. Even though he wants to be left alone, there's a fake doctor assassin (Asano) who wants to know the secrets of the Box Man so that he could become like him. And there's Yoko (Shiramoto Ayana), who could be his salvation.

Hefty metaphors and paradoxes abound; likewise, absurd sight gags, as two box men duke out in the street for supremacy.

Lacking some of the crazy kinetic energies of Ishii's earlier films, The Box Man doesn't quite conjure up its magic to be a cult classic, but it's amusing enough for fans of two lead actors.

Whale Bones - Oe Tamakasa

Tech worker Mamiya just got dumped by his girlfriend. In his depressed state, he takes up his colleague's offer to join a dating app.

He meets Aska (J-pop star ano), who turns out to be a high school student, and takes her home. But when he comes out of a bathroom after a shower, he finds that Aska committed suicide by taking pills on his bed with a cryptic message left on the bedside, "Enjoy me while I'm still warm."

Panicked, he wraps her body in a blanket and drives to a mountain to bury her. But her body has disappeared. It turns out, Aska is a major figure in Mimi, a GPS based social app where she 'buries' herself in a 'hole,' recording herself in a liminal spaces in Tokyo and appears in the app for people to find her. She has a big following.

Dealing with urban loneliness, obsession and internet stardom in a social media generation, Oe Takamasa (co-writer of Drive My Car)'s film hits all the right notes with empty, nighttime photography in liminal spaces in Tokyo.

August in the Water - Ishii Gakuryu * Presented in Imported 35mm, Q&A with Ishii

Taking on the grand theme of all life on earth originating from somewhere else in the universe, with technology taking over human form, and computer chips replacing human consciousness, therefore removing the need for physical bodies, the film charts very much in the territory of William Gibson and JG Ballard, yet still feels very Japanese.

Mixing New Age spirituality, animism, astrophysics, and advancement in technology, Ishii Gakuryu's trippy 90's relic, August in the Water, can be seen as the quintessential film for vaporwave - the synth-tinged soundtrack, dolphins, rainbows, dated computer graphics, aliens, and so forth.

Do not miss the opportunity to see this movie in a 35mm print, as it might be the only chance to see this treasure from the 90s in theaters in North America or anywhere else.

Moving - Sômai Shinji *East Coast Premiere of 4K Restoration. Q&A with Actress Tabata Tomoko

The film works largely because of Tabata Tomoko (Ren), a cat-eyed child actor not afraid of delving deep into the physical and emotional journey of acceptance and letting go. Sômai's always moving camera doesn't lose focus on the young heroine and never gets bogged down in cheap sentimentality. The almost silent long sequence two-third of the way, where Ren gets herself lost in the forest at night, is breathtaking.

Parents, however selfish, are not monsters and do care about you and love you. Sometimes it doesn't work out. It might be hard to grasp for a 6th grader.

Children still can count more good memories with their hands and run out of fingers than old people do. Accepting that they can keep only a handful of those memories is tough. Using the backdrop of a fire festival and the power of burning and renewal, Moving is an infinitely wise and beautiful film about growing up.

Mermaid Legend - Ikeda Toshiharu *40th Anniversary

It plays out like a softcore porn in the beginning. But the last 15 minutes of a trident rampage scene, with Shirato Mari covered in arterial spray of about 100 men she killed, is a sight to see. A true cult classic!

Japan Cuts 2024 Preview: Treasure Trove of New and Classic Japanese Films

Japan Cuts 2024 Preview: Treasure Trove of New and Classic Japanese Films

Dustin Chang, Lead Critic; Brooklyn, New York

July 8 2024, 12:02 PM

North America’s largest Japanese film festival presents two weeks of contemporary premieres, including new films from Kei Chika-ura, Takeshi Kitano, Gakuryu Ishii, Shunji Iwai, Sho Miyake and Shinya Tsukamoto.

The program features 31 films, including 5 International Premieres, 10 North American Premieres, 4 U.S. Premieres, 2 East Coast Premieres and 7 New York Premieres, as well as the International Premiere of Shin Godzilla: Orthochromatic.

Special guests include iconoclastic director Gakuryu Ishii, appearing for the East Coast Premiere of The Box Man as well as a retrospective screening of August in the Water; director Noriko Yuasa will appear at the International Premiere of Performing Kaoru’s Funeral, winner of the Japan Cuts Award at the 2024 Osaka Asian Film Festival; and actress Tomoko Tabata will appear at a restoration premiere of Shinji Somai’s undisputed masterpiece, Moving.

The festival runs July 10-21 at Japan Society.

Here are the films I was privileged enough to sample:

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