Dead Or Alive 2: Birds (2000)

Yakuza assassinations cross-cut with world vision footage of starving children in Africa. CGI birds representing the childhood spirits of our two protagonists. Digital graphics illustrating the geometry of three bullets entering a head at 60 degree angles. A powerful comet sighted against the night sky. The title card “Where are you?” repeated, white text against […]

First Love (2019)

First Love (2019; Hatsukoi) combines a couple of my favourite sub-genres: One Wild Night and Multiple Parties Want One Thing. Directed by the prolific Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike (13 Assassins, Blade Of The Immortal), we follow a young boxer Leo (Masataka Kubota) who goes from shiftless to despondent when he receives some bad news after […]

Blade Of The Immortal (2017)

Blade Of The Immortal (2017; Mugen no jūnin) is a two and a half hour samurai action epic with supernatural undertones and ghoulish flashes of humour and violence befitting the reputation of its director, Takashi Miike (his 100th film as director). It’s about a masterless samurai, Manji (played by Takuya Kimura, wonderfully surly) cursed with […]