Deni – Heroic Cinema

Blood of Wolves (2018)

Deni — Fri, 30 Nov 2018 22:31:23 +0000

You only have to do a little digging to come to the understanding that the origins and history of the yakuza aren’t necessarily written in stone. Sources conflict about how they began – as ronin or samurai family retainers, or special police formed to fight organised crime – but most sources can agree that regardless of where they started, their main characteristics involved crime, violence, and their own specific set of codes and rules.

Blood of Wolves maintains this essence … (read more)

Shoplifters (2018)

Deni — Mon, 19 Nov 2018 09:41:47 +0000

Imagine, if you will, a movie where nothing much happens. Now, imagine being captivated by it. Now imagine going away feeling like you just witnessed some of the best, most wonderful cinema you’ve seen in a while. A long while. That feeling? That’s the Kore-eda effect.

Okay, fine, it’s not like Hirokazu Kore-eda is the only director who has the deftness and sensitivity to take the mundane and make it watchable without going over the edge into sentimentality and melodrama, … (read more)

The Crimes That Bind (2018)

Deni — Sun, 04 Nov 2018 06:29:30 +0000

(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)

Mumon Land of Stealth (2017)

Deni — Sat, 28 Oct 2017 21:43:49 +0000

Call it a coming of age story if you want. The Peter Pan of ninjas can play all day and never take things too seriously. Until he has to. Call it a round-about revenge tale, or even a moral play. It is a little Shakespearean in its developments, and its style of humour (and a brilliant momentary break in the fourth wall) certainly does justice to the Bard. Or call it, perhaps most importantly, a serious Japanese contender for Guy … (read more)

A Silent Voice (2016)

Deni — Thu, 13 Apr 2017 23:22:21 +0000

Two thirds psychological study on bullying and disability, one third first love romance (and I’ll use that term very lightly here), A Silent Voice, based on the highly-acclaimed manga by Yoshitoki Oima, plots the unexpected turn that lives can take on, if not the simplest then at least the most uninformed of choices. To its great credit, however, it doesn’t in any way sugar coat the fact that some of those turns can get ugly, can have consequences we … (read more)

Harmony (2015)

Deni — Sat, 25 Feb 2017 07:44:07 +0000

Better living through technology. But at what price? In the best tradition of classic speculative science fiction, Studio 4°C’s animated film Harmony, based on the novel by Project Itoh, examines this question through a mirror darkly. In the future, the world has been reduced by nuclear war and illness into sterile country states complete with regulated borders. Inside those borders, the Admedistration (not a typo) and a militarised version of the World Health Organisation ensure that all good citizens … (read more)

Creepy (2016)

Deni — Wed, 07 Dec 2016 06:56:19 +0000

It’s not that I live on a diet of serial killer movies and thriller novels. I did read Silence of the Lambs once, so I would never consider myself an expert, but for some reason – maybe the title, or maybe the fact that plenty of other Kiyoshi Kurosawa films (like Retribution and Real to name just a couple) have been fairly hair-raising – I did in all honesty expect this 2016 murder thriller Creepy to be far creepier. … (read more)

Empire of Corpses (2015)

Deni — Sat, 19 Nov 2016 11:28:16 +0000

So, I’ve discovered a concept more disturbing than a zombie apocalypse, and of course it’s all thanks to anime. Well, anime and maybe Mary Shelley, and at a guess, cancer. Empire of Corpses was science and speculative fiction author Project Itoh’s (aka Satoshi Itoh) last, unfinished novel. He died of cancer in 2009 at the very young age of 34, and it’s perhaps no surprise that what he was writing immediately before his death was a somewhat hauntingly desperate, slightly … (read more)

Six Four (2016)

Deni — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 07:39:06 +0000

For those who mark time in the West, 1989 was a common year, 365 days long. For Japan however, it was two years in one. The Japanese calendar is based on periods or eras, marked for every year of an emperor. 1989 was the year that Emperor Hirohito, the ruler that had seen the nation both into and out of the Second World War and beyond, died at the age of 87. He passed away on January 7, one week … (read more)

Top Secret: Murder in Mind (2016)

Deni — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 00:11:44 +0000

Director Keishi Otomo, whose brilliant Rurouni Kenshin trilogy was probably one of the best anime/manga adaptations to hit our screens in the last decade, exhibits an equal amount of mastery over thriller genre mise-en-scène in his latest film Top Secret: Murder in Mind, but it seems in this case he perhaps needed a better screenplay writer. Or maybe Japanese action cinema just has to more seriously consider spanning manga/anime adaptations across more than one movie as a default setting, … (read more)

Japanese Cinematic Greats retrospective at BAPFF

Deni — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 23:04:01 +0000

The Brisbane Asia Pacific Film Festival program came out this week, and a read-em-and-weep-for-joy feature has got to be the Transcending the Inevitable: Japanese Screen Legends and their Works with Masters strand. It’s a mouthful of a title but considering the cinematic feast in store it’s probably warranted. 11 of some of the very best post war cinema from Ozu, Mizoguchi, and Naruse featuring their on-screen muses Setsuko Hara (upon whom Satoshi Kon’s fantastic Millennium Actress was partly based), Kinuyo … (read more)

The Boy and the Beast (2015)

Deni — Fri, 01 Jul 2016 02:38:54 +0000

Mamoru Hosada has in some respects done what it seemed next to impossible to do a decade ago — make a name for himself in the Japanese animated feature film space. With the glut of it’s-a-movie-of-the-series films — understandably because that’s where the money’s at domestically — features that find their way beyond Japan’s borders and onto our cinema screens are a little few and far between and there are only a handful of directors known in the mainstream outside … (read more)

Myths & Legends programme at GoMA

Deni — Sat, 10 Jan 2015 02:14:16 +0000

It’s always worth checking out the new three-monthly programmes at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art cinema, and the January to March line up presents a few pearls of Asian cinema that you may want to catch on the big screen, even if you have seen them before (because I don’t know about you, but any opportunity to see Seven Samurai at the cinema is to be taken, as far as I’m concerned):

Kuroneko (1968, dir. Kaneto Shindou) – Sat 31

… (read more)

Lupin III (2014)

Deni — Sun, 02 Nov 2014 02:24:24 +0000

Art thief adventure series Lupin III and frenetic cult director Ryuhei Kitamura (Godzilla: Final Wars, Versus) seems like it could be a match made in heaven. Kitamura is known for his energetic, reality defying, somewhat gaggy but exceedingly enjoyable action movies, and Lupin is known for his energetic, law-enforcement defying, seemingly impossible but somehow charming art heists. The combination in this 2014 live action movie makes for a moderately fun crime thriller that is never too serious … (read more)

Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno & The Legend Ends (2014)

Deni — Wed, 29 Oct 2014 22:54:23 +0000

I’ll be upfront with you; I’m not going to review Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno and Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends separately. Considering how close together their theatrical releases in Japan were, it could be argued they’re just one film with about a month long intermission (if you’re old enough to remember those). Also considering the cliff-hanger Kyoto Inferno ends on Empire Strikes Back style I’d also run a much bigger risk of spoiling far too many things if I … (read more)

Short Peace (2013)

Deni — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 22:49:12 +0000

Although the theme for the Sunrise/Shochiku multimedia project Short Peace was apparently “Japan” it seems to me that the ‘peace’ part of the title is far more telling, because in one way or another each short in this 4-film anthology is about conflict. Not only that, but unless I’m reading far too much into it, there is something to be learned from each of these battles.

The first cab off the rank after the energetically ethereal opening title sequence is … (read more)

Thermae Romae 2 (2014)

Deni — Sat, 25 Oct 2014 23:57:43 +0000

I’ll admit, I decided to go to see the sequel to the surprisingly entertaining Thermae Romae with some trepidation. Basically I’m not a fan of comedies in general, so that I enjoyed the first film made a few of my friends check to make sure I was still the same person. I’m seriously considering not telling them that I enjoyed the sequel almost as much.

Although, perhaps that was a no-brainer. There’s no surprises in this follow up — it’s … (read more)

All-Round Appraiser Q: The Eyes of Mona Lisa (2014)

Deni — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 01:12:52 +0000

One of the joys of the Japanese Film Festival every year for me is discovering the unexpected gem. Film festivals are of course great for those films that you’ve heard about and been dying to see that will likely never make it to your local cinema, but I always make a point of picking a few random films as well — films that I’ve heard nothing about; often films that I don’t even bother to read the synopsis for. Without … (read more)

Kiki’s Delivery Service (2014)

Deni — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 00:36:36 +0000

We’ve probably had this conversation before — the pros and cons of the Live Action Film. When they’re done well, they enhance the source and become another aspect of effective cross-stream marketing that people are happy to pay to see. They win new fans and invigorate the existing ones. But let’s not kid ourselves thinking that any company sinks millions of dollars (or yen in this case) into a film better known in anime or manga out of their sense … (read more)

The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013)

Deni — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 07:28:14 +0000

The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a vision. It might not seem a conventional vision but don’t doubt that’s what it is. Director Isao Takahata, the other genius behind Studio Ghibli, responsible for the delightful My Neighbours the Yamadas (1999) and the gutting Grave of the Fireflies (1988), has done something that perhaps no other major animation director has achieved in recent memory — a complete reinvention of the technique of animation.

If you’ve already seen the documentary Madman have … (read more)