Two strangers who’ve met on the internet, a young computer expert nicknamed ‘Gun’ (Kazuma Suzuki) and an ageing locksmith known as ‘Key’ (Kenichi Hagiwara), plan to rob the office safe of a businessman with gangster connections. The robbery goes fine but on the way out the lift carrying our heroes gets stuck between floors. As the hours pass and the … Read the rest
Month: May 2017
American Sniper (Clint Eastwood, US, 2014)
Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper), a US Navy SEAL, finds himself torn between two families; his wife Taya (Sienna Miller) who finds herself raising their son and daughter alone and the battlefield comrades who rely on his shooting skills to protect them from a legendary enemy sniper known as Mustafa during four gruelling tours of duty in Iraq. But after an … Read the rest
The Legendary Black Rose (Jeffrey Lau, Hong Kong, 1992)
Two women named Butterfly and Chow (Maggie Shiu and Teresa Mo) are accidentally caught up in a gang murder so try to throw off the cops by blaming the incident on a fictional 1960’s Hong Kong movie heroine known as Black Rose. But the pair are kidnapped by two of Black Rose’s ageing students (Bo Bo Fung and Wong Wan … Read the rest
Safari 5000 (Koreyoshi Kurahara, Japan, 1969)
In dangerous winter weather an obsessive rally driver named Godai (Yujiro Ishihara) narrowly avoids death after a disastrous shunt during the Monte Carlo race. After recovery Godai sets his sights on the big African rally in which he’ll compete with his old adversary and best friend Pierre (Alain Cuny). But as Godai begins training the wives of both men (Ruriko … Read the rest
Buddha’s Palm (Taylor Wong, Hong Kong, 1982)
Long-standing enmities between rival martial arts clans over an ultra-lethal kung-fu move known as Buddha’s Palm, a secret known only to a blind hermit who has sealed himself inside a cave for 20 years with a friendly dragon for company, come to a head when the hermit adopts a young man as his foster son and trains him in the … Read the rest
Savage Wolf Pack (Yasuharu Hasebe, Japan, 1969)
Alaskan hunter Tetsuya (Tetsuya Watari) returns to Japan to discover that his sister has killed herself after being raped by a gang of hoodlums. After rescuing politician’s daughter Kyoko (Meiko Fujimoto) from a vicious motorcycle gang terrorising the locals around a US airbase he realizes these are the same scum responsible for his sister’s death. When Kyoko is kidnapped and … Read the rest
The Rendezvous (Koichi Saito, Japan, 1972)
To the accompaniment of an instantly memorable score an attractive middle-aged woman (Keiko Kishi) sits alone on a park bench watching the world go by – children at play, couples arm in arm strolling past. At the end of the film we’ll come back to this scene and understand its significance but after this intriguing opening we’re on a train … Read the rest
Assault! Jack the Ripper (Yasuharu Hasebe, Japan, 1976)
One rainy night a wimpy pastry chef named Ken (Yutaka Hayashi) reluctantly gives fellow restaurant worker – the dominant Yuri (Tamaki Katsura) – a lift home. But when the pair witness the gruesome death of a woman they’d stopped to help they find themselves sexually aroused by the accident. But what begins as a perverse sexual kink (killing as aphrodisiac) … Read the rest
I Hate But Love (Koreyoshi Kurahara, Japan, 1962)
Popular TV star Daisaku (Yujiro Ishihara), frustrated with his shallow lifestyle, agrees to drive a knackered old jeep 800 miles across country to a remote village to deliver it to the boyfriend of a woman whose love affair with her partner has been conducted entirely by letter. Pursued by his girlfriend/secretary Noriko (Ruriko Asoaka), who thinks the star has taken … Read the rest
Vital (Shinya Tsukamoto, Japan, 2004)
A young man named Hiroshi (Tadanobu Asano) loses his memory in a car crash that kills his girlfriend Ryoko (Nami Tsukamoto). After recovery he enrols at medical school only to discover that the female body he’s dissecting in the mortuary is… well, you can probably guess. As Hiroshi digs into Ryoko’s corpse his memories begin to return and he finds … Read the rest
