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  • Blaxploitation (7)
  • Films Made Before 2000 (6)
  • So Bad They're Good (3)
  • Animation (2)
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May 28, 2023

"Afro Samurai: Resurrection," Cool Looking Crap is Still Crap

Afro Samurai: Resurrection is a hyper-stylized anime film from 2008. It’s half hip-hop and half chanbara. Unfortunately, it includes the worst of both worlds. It […]
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May 14, 2023

B-Robo Kabutack: Christmas War

I’m 9 minutes and 24 seconds into B-Robo Kabutack: Christmas War and already I am overwhelmed. So many insane things have pummeled my eyeballs, I […]
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March 15, 2023

"Night on The Galactic Railroad:" If Tarkovsky Made an Anime? 

What if Tarkovsky was smacked on the head by an errant boom mic and woke up thinking he was a Japanese anime director? Oh, and […]
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March 8, 2023

Cutie Honey: Too Good To Be Bad

Cutie Honey: The Movie (2004) is too good to be bad. I started watching it in hopes that it would be a typical example of […]
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January 8, 2023

Noboru Ishiguro’s Megazone 23

Megazone 23 is laser-focused on its target market. Everything about the film is carefully arranged to appeal to what I would guess is a 15-year-old boy. […]
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December 14, 2022

Just When You Thought Japanese Films Couldn’t Get Any Stranger, Along Comes Star Virgin

OK. so here is the situation. There is this Japanese movie from 1988 called Star Virgin. It was a straight-to-VHS affair and it is very hard […]
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December 11, 2022

The Wicked City: Live Action vs Anime

I watched the live-action version of Wicked City not knowing that an anime version preceded it. Knowing that the live-action version was based on an […]
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September 4, 2022

Tekkonkinkreet Is One Of The Best Anime I Have Seen

Tekkonkinkreet, made in 2006, is visually extraordinary. The imagery is some of the best I have ever seen in an anime. It ranges from intricately […]
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June 29, 2022

Hideo Gosha’s Three Outlaw Samurai

Three Outlaw Samurai was director Hideo Gosha’s first film. He made it in 1964 and with its release he began a lauded career in the […]
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March 6, 2022

Albert Camus Drives Hiroshi Shimizu’s Suicide Bus

    Live each day as if it were your last is terrible advice. I'm not sure how I would behave if I only had one […]
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January 9, 2022

The Pathological Ravings of Masumura’s Blind Beast

    I don’t know what I can say or what anyone can say about Yasuzô Masumura’s movie Blind Beast except that it is pathological. I don’t know […]
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December 12, 2021

Masumura’s Dark And Bloody Irezumi

​    Despite its appearance Irezumi is not a chanbara (swordplay) film. It shares many of the trappings of the genre, but it is far more brutal than […]
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November 11, 2021

Wild Zero: A Cross Cultural Meat Grinder

In 1954 Godzilla lumbered out of the ocean to deliver the message that the coming nuclear age would bring terrifying consequences, but Japan had already suffered […]
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November 8, 2021

The Role of the Environment in Onibaba and Woman In The Dunes.

Between the films Onibaba, directed by Kaneto Shindo in 1964, and Woman In the Dunes, directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara also in 1964 there are only five characters and two locations. […]
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November 8, 2021

Don’t Miss Gantz

Every cinephile has a film they believe deserved more attention than it received. Mine is the science fiction, thriller Gantz from Japan. This is a wonderfully creative […]
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November 8, 2021

The Female Prisoner Scorpion Series

In the span of just two years, 1972 to 1973, a series of four films were made in Japan by The Toei Company. The first […]
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November 7, 2021

The Hanzo The Razor Trilogy

​With my eyes fixed to the screen I could scarcely believe what was happening. I can’t imagine what I must have looked like as I […]
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November 3, 2021

Voyage into Space: Know Your Target Audience

Imagine a movie made entirely by 8 year old boys. The actors, the editor, the costume designer everyone involved is 8. Then you wouldn’t be […]
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November 1, 2021

Favorite Scenes №18: Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable

In 1973, Shunya Itō released Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable, his third installment in the Scorpion series. The opening of this movie is the most badass […]
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October 25, 2021

Revenge of Mechagodzilla: Thoughts on Kaiju Symbolism

The legacy of Godzilla began in 1954. The history of this still ongoing franchise has been divided into a variety of eras the first of which is […]
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October 23, 2021

Brace Yourself For Hanuman vs. 7 Ultraman

Hanuman vs. Seven Ultraman has to be the most bizarre mixture of sacred and profane, I’ve ever seen. A Western equivalent might be something like Jesus vs. […]
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October 23, 2021

The Crimson Bat, Blind Swordswoman Series

The Crimson Bat Series is based on a manga character created by Teruo Tanashita. There are four films in all. The first two were directed […]
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October 23, 2021

Watari, the Ninja Boy

It is best not to approach Watari The Ninja Boy as narrative. It appears as if the writers intended there to be a chronological story, but it is not discernible. […]
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October 23, 2021

Favorite Scenes №9: Ran

​In 1985 Akira Kurosawa finished his grand-scale opus, Ran. The film is his interpretation of Shakespeare’s King Lear. It is full of spectacular imagery, ornate […]
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