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Death Note (English Subtitled) (Hong Kong Version)
Fujiwara Tatsuya (Actor)
| Matsuyama Kenichi (Actor)
| Seto Asaka (Actor)
| Kaneko Shusuke (Director)
A killer of the supernatural kind is on the loose...Before the high-profile film Death Note based on the original manga by Oba Tsugumi became a box-office hit, it already had an army of devoted fans. As for those who have not had the opportunity to check out this manga adaptation yet, it is very likely that they will be positively surprised. The Kaneko Shusuke-directed picture essentially revolves around law student Light Yagami, whose faith in the legal system is severely shaken after he discovers that many criminals can escape the arm of justice without receiving their deserved penalty. As luck would have it, he stumbles upon a thin manual-like notebook titled "Death Note" and picks it up, unaware that it was dropped by God of Death Ryuk.... [read more]
May 3, 2007 Picked By A-Xiang Joe See all this editor's picks
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Yureru (Sway) (DVD) (English Subtitled) (Japan Version)
Odagiri Joe
| Kagawa Teruyuki
| Ibu Masato
| Arai Hirofumi
With the swing of a bridge, the slip of a foot, a woman falls to her death. But is it the bridge that swayed, or man? Yureru gets under the skin, and in a way that's hard to voice. With a simple story that yields complicated emotions, the film defies any kind of standard genre expectation. Though it circles around a court investigation into a woman's death, Yureru is neither murder mystery nor courtroom drama. What the film probes is not the case, but human nature itself, and it is this uneasy exploration into what lies beneath that makes the film so powerful and effective. Mild-mannered and polite to a fault, Minori (Kagawa Teruyuki) selflessly stays put in his quiet hometown to run the... [read more]
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Hana Yori mo Naho (Normal Edition) (Japan Version - English Subtitles)
Okada Junichi
| Miyazawa Rie
| Kagawa Teruyuki
| Furuta Arata
With his 2006 movie Hana (a.k.a. Hana Yori mo Naho), director Hirokazu Kore-eda seems to have joined the recent resurgence of the samurai genre (the most prominent example being Yoji Yamada's samurai trilogy). However, deep down, he still shows the same concern over humanity, such as he has done in his previous acclaimed Nobody Knows. Both Yamada and Kore-eda attempt to restore samurai's human nature against the common notion of their upholding of bushido (the way of the warrior) even at the expense of their lives. Hirokazu Kore-eda's emphasis in Hana is quite different from Yamada's famous trilogy, despite the same background of the decline of samurai in the late Tokugawa period. While... [read more]
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Nobody Knows (Japan Version - English Subtitles)
Terajima Susumu
| YOU
| Kan Hanae
| Kase Ryo
I watch around 20 to 30 films a month. Some are quite good, some are quite bad, most fall in that vast spectrum in between to be mildly enjoyed and gradually forgotten. And then there are the films that stay for long after. Kore-eda Hirokazu's Nobody Knows ranks as one of my all-time favorites for the simple reason that I shed more tears watching it than any other film in my life. There are plenty of more tragically tearjerking movies out there, but Nobody Knows connects exactly because it is so subtle and straightforward in presentation. Without the familiar melodramatic cues or grand messages, the film's painfully realistic progression becomes all the more wrenching and compelling. The... [read more]
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The World Sinks Except Japan (Hong Kong Version)
Kohashi Kenji (Actor)
| Matsuo Masatoshi (Actor)
| Shuuji Kashiwabara (Actor)
| Kawasaki Minoru (Director)
Earth Goes Crazy, Beware of ForeignersStraddling the lines between horrifically bad and insanely genius, The World Sinks Except Japan is either way a film that begs to be seen. Campy, ballsy, and grossly politically incorrect, the film is ostensibly a parody of Sinking of Japan, with equal parts satire and silliness. Directed by Kawasaki Minoru, who seems to have found a niche in wackiness, this wildly uneven film pokes fun at everything from politicians to Hollywood stars. The end result is a very chaotic film-with-a-message that provides more than enough laughs and maybe even some intelligence. From post-apocalyptic anime to kaiju films to disaster flicks, Japanese cinema, more so than any other nation's film output, seems to... [read more]
February 7, 2007 Picked By Sanwei See all this editor's picks
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Stranger Of Mine (Hong Kong Version)
Itaya Yuka (Actor)
| Yamanaka Satoshi (Actor)
| Nakamura Yashui (Actor)
| Kirishima Reika (Actor)
Promoted as the Japanese version of Memento and Pulp Fiction, Japanese new generation director Kenji Uchida's debut feature A Stranger of Mine also plays on a fragmented narrative structure, which is indeed the biggest attraction of the film. Uchida quickly rose to fame with A Stranger of Mine winning the Best Director or Best Screenplay awards at various local film festivals, and the film shared the SACD Screenwriting Award and the Young Critics Award at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. The story starts with a boring office worker Miyata (Yasuhi Nakamura), whose girlfriend Ayumi (Yuka Itaya) deserted him shortly after they moved into an expensive apartment. On a Friday night, his detective... [read more]
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The Happiness of Katakuris (Hong Kong Version)
Takenaka Naoto
| Takeda Shinji
| Sawada Kenji (Actor)
| Matsuzaka Keiko (Actor)
Who knows what the folks at Shochiku were thinking when they asked Miike Takashi to direct their New Year's family film? And who knows what Miike Takashi is thinking ever? But the result was a fabulous sight to behold. A gleeful remake of Kim Ji Woon's black comedy The Quiet Family (1998), The Happiness of the Katakuris is so ridiculous, it's downright lovable, especially when you realize it is most definitely a heartwarming fun-for-all-ages film by Miike standards. Made in 2001, the same year that Miike unleashed Ichi the Killer on an unsuspecting world, The Happiness of the Katakuris takes the cult director's singularly bizarre vision to a grossly underrepresented genre - the black comedy... [read more]
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Memories of Matsuko (Normal Edition) (Japan Version)
Nakatani Miki
| Iseya Yusuke
| Shibasaki Kou
| Emoto Akira
The Magic of Conflicting Form and ContentMemories of Matsuko caught my attention because of Miki Nakatani - I wondered how she could transform from the elegant lady in Densha Otoko into the "disliked Matsuko" (the Japanese title of this film literally translates as "Disliked Matsuko's Lifetime") who makes funny faces despite a miserable life. The superficial flamboyance remarkably contrasts with the gloomy and saddening story. The film's attraction lies in how director Tetsuya Nakashima manipulates the conflict between form and content, and astonishingly imprints Matsuko's pathetic life on the viewers' mind. Matsuko's never ceases to love others, but her love is never reciprocal. Every time when somebody responds to her yearn for... [read more]
November 29, 2006 Picked By Siu Heng See all this editor's picks
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Be With You (Sunflower Cover) (Hong Kong Version)
Takeuchi Yuko (Actor)
| YOU (Actor)
| Nakamura Shido (Actor)
| Takei Akashi (Actor)
I recommend Be With You not because Yuko Takeuchi looks more gorgeous in this movie than in her other films (although I think she really does), nor because I am interested in the news about her marriage with Shidou Nakamura and their subsequent divorce in 2006. The story of Be With You looks like just another romantic melodrama, in which love conquers all things, but the film proves to be more absorbing than many other titles in the genre. Widower Takumi (Shidou Nakamura) lives with his six-year-old son Yuji (Akashi Takei). One day during the rainy season, Takumi and Yuji comes across a woman who looks exactly the deceased mother Mio (Yuko Takeuchi) but has no idea over who she is... The... [read more]
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