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Another day, another oddity from Japan. This time, it comes in the form of trashy, low-budget mayhem under the title The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers. Well, at least that title wouldn’t have you think you were getting yourself into anything other than something off the wall. It’s how off the wall [...]

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If someone told Japanese author Futaro Yamada that his book The Kouga Ninja Scrolls, written in 1959, would become a multimedia explosion some 45 years later, I’m sure he wouldn’t have believed it. But that’s exactly what happened to the material, which is certainly ripe for the picking. A Romeo and Juliet style [...]

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In this satire, Class B believes they are embarking on a field trip until they wake after passing out on their school bus and realize their teacher has been killed. They are hoarded into a military installation where they learn the details of the exercise they’ve been chosen to be a part of. The [...]

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The idea that your entire identity can be lost upon a horrible disfigurement to your face is nothing new to the world of cinema. Films such as Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face and Jess Franco’s The Awful Dr. Orloff have explored these themes before with varying degrees of success. These same themes [...]

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Note: This review is for the original Japanese version

I hold a special place in my heart for Japanese films involving giant monsters laying waste to entire cities. In my younger days, I used to look so forward to Saturday’s when some local station would usually play one of these films on the “Creature [...]

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As a new fan of Koji Wakamatsu, I was really interested in checking out what seems to be his most well-known and controversial film outside of Japan, Violated Angels. Also of note is that the film was inspired by the Richard Speck murders, which happened just one year earlier. I can’t really think of [...]

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After the experimental but ultimately disappointing Loft (review), Kiyoshi Kurosawa is back with Retribution, a crime thriller with ghostly elements akin to Cure and Kairo. While I won’t tout this as Kurosawa’s return to form, it is a culmination of many of his films previous styles, and once again has a lot to say [...]

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Adapting manga to film is nothing new for Takashi Miike, nor are films based around rival factions going to war. What is new to Miike however is the backing of big studios and being given a large budget to work with. Crows Zero is backed by Toho, one of Japan’s biggest film studios. I’m [...]

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Apparently God’s light is finally shining down on me, because a film featuring two of my favorite things in the world, samurai and metal music, have finally converged!! The film is called Metal Samurai, appropriately enough, and it looks like a complete goof, but a fun one at that. Read on for a synopsis and [...]

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I was so impressed after watching Koji Wakamatsu’s Go, Go Second Time Virgin (review) that I’ve really made a point to seek out more of his work as well as read up on him as a director. Firstly, the man was a workhorse, much in the vein of Takashi Miike, making well over 35 [...]

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