Blog Archives

The Crimes That Bind (2018)

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(Ed: some might consider the following review to have some small spoilers. If you’re worried about that, go and catch it at the Japanese Film Festival and then come back and read our review!)

The mundane routine of actual police work has never been something that takes front and centre stage on our screens. From the days of the gumshoe detective, to the Lethal Weapons, to Miami Vice and NYPDCSINCIS, being a detective and hunting killers is exciting, dangerous, … (read more)

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Outrage Beyond (2012)

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My first film at this year’s Sydney Film Festival was Outrage Beyond, the great Japanese director Takeshi Kitano’s follow-up to 2010’s yakuza film Outrage. Set in the same universe of gangsters in pinstripes, black sedans and sudden violence, it picks up the story some years after the events of the first film.… (read more)

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Casshern (2004)

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Well that was a frivolous synopsis for a film that is anything but. Casshern in that form, and, indeed, from the look of the trailer, appears to be nothing more than a pretty, CGI filled actioner.

But although those elements are part and parcel of the flick, Casshern is primarily a long, bleak and bittersweet analysis of the futility of war and the eternal capacity of human beings for intolerance. No, really.

It’s a theme played out in a number … (read more)

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