Ikka

Nov 8, 2016 — This adaptation of one of the most influential series in manga history is a delirious mix of breathtaking swordplay and pop vulgarity.

One of Japan’s most important filmmakers, Kenji Mizoguchi created a cinema rich in technical mastery and social commentary, specifically regarding the place of women in Japanese society.

Apr 10, 2013 — Teinosuke Kinugasa’s landmark color film is a visual feast that has finally been vibrantly restored.

Nov 20, 2012 — For a brief, shining moment, the genteel Japanese studio mutated into a fun house of grim ghouls and slimy aliens.

Dec 13, 2011 — Just what is it that makes Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter (1966) so different, so appealing? The cherubic hero in the neat powder blue suit, who looks like he was torn out of a yakuza pop-up book? That hauntingly cornball theme...

Aug 23, 2011 — Intimidation: The Weird Dream MakerImpassioned and dedicated craftsman of some of Japanese cinema’s biggest box-office successes and most eccentric off-genre sorties, longtime Nikkatsu studios mainstay Koreyoshi Kurahara (1927–2002) was a filmmaker with two opposite yet inseparable signature points of view....

Oct 26, 2010 — A coming-of-age story about a clique of teenage schoolgirls who will never grow old and a demon spirit in the guise of a spinster who was never young, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s eye-poppingly demented, jaw-droppingly inventive House is 1970s Japanese pop culture...

This Japanese visionary played chaos like jazz in his movies, which included anything-goes yakuza thrillers and daring postwar dramas of human frailty.

Apr 6, 2010 — In “the cinema of flourishes”—as scholar David Bordwell once memorably characterized the long and grand tradition of Japanese filmmaking—few flourish makers have flown so high as Takeo Kimura, longtime Seijun Suzuki collaborator and art director extraordinaire, who died recently at...

Oct 15, 2009 — Full-size sidewalks aren’t very common in outer Tokyo, particularly in the many small residential neighborhoods that surround the city for miles. Likely a holdover from when there weren’t as many cars around and people walked in the roads alongside carts...