What asian film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

[grim_tales]

Lone Wolf and Cub - Sword of Vengeance (Japan, 1972): 4.5/5

The Criterion transfer looked very good (BD), I was used to the older DVD subtitles that made it clearer who was talking, and sometimes they had notes explaining the meanings of old Japanese terms.

[HungFist]

Nurses' Journal: Nasty File (看護婦日記　わいせつなカルテ) (Japan, 1980) [TV] – 1.5/5
One wouldn’t suspect Shogoro Nishimura was once a fine director, later reduced to a Roman Porno vending machine, watching this soulless soft-core comedy about a nurse and a taxi driver. Shagging and white uniforms follow, with lame comedy in between. That being said, I did not see that nunchaku fight coming, nor the rest of the kung fu action that dominates the film’s last ten minutes. That's something at least.

Women's Native Ground: Bitches' Chain (おんな番外地 鎖の牝犬) (Japan, 1965) [35mm] – 3/5
This was Toei’s first women in prison film, released in wake of the first two Abashiri Prison movies. It was intended to ride the popularity of the Takakura series, but it was also a product of Toei’s B-film line, which aimed to produce more erotically charged companion films to be screened with the studio’s A-films (mainly yakuza pictures). The official synopsis talks about “the joys, sorrows, and abnormal sex in a women’s world concealed from men’s eyes”, which is a good enough description as long as one doesn’t expect steam beyond a tiny bit of nudity and lesbianism. Mako Midori is great as a young woman sent behind bars for murdering treacherous boyfriend Tatsuo Umemiya. The film then unfolds in a mixture of present day prison scenes and flashbacks detailing how she came to shove a knife into Umemiya’s guts. The “men are all pigs” and “patriarchal system is corrupt” message found in many later genre films is very much present here, however, at the same time the film gives an almost motherly portrayal of the prison’s all-female staff who genuinely care for the prisoners (except for one sadistic bitch). Most of the fellow prisoners also turn out to be good people, making this more of a girls’ drama than an outright exploitation film.

[HungFist]

Gambler Biography (博徒列伝) (Japan, 1968) [TV] – 2.5/5
A mediocre all star ninkyo film with almost every notable genre actor from Koji Tsuruta to Tomisaburo Wakayama, Saburo Kitajima, Minoru Oki and Junko Fuji crammed into one picture. Ken Takakura even gets a fanfare upon his entrance. It frankly begins to feel slightly tedious, especially when there's nothing particularly memorable or touching about the film's storyline; however, we do get a good gambling scene and several bursts of grittier than expected violence throughout the film. Also very surprising for a hero played by Tsuruta, the film's protagonist is really letting the bad guys have it, bashing heads against rocks, cutting off fingers, and delivering a few extra kicks and punches at every opportunity.

Return to Women’s Native Ground (続 おんな番外地) (Japan, 1966) [35mm] – 3.5/5
A superior sequel with Mako Midori returning as the same character she played in the first film. She only spends the first 15 minutes behind bars, after which the film turns into a touching tale of a woman trying start again in a cruel world that doesn’t forgive women with a past. Things get even worse when she’s requested to meet a former cellmate’s boyfriend (Kenji Imai), who turns out to be the sleaziest blackmailer scum ever seen in a Toei film. Her only consolation is a bunch other former prisoners from the first film, now released and all trying to start over. This is quite a gripping film, at times emotionally maddeningly manipulative in her downfall, but effective all the same. Midori is fantastic in her role, even if a little too cute to convince as a killer, and the sequences with the discriminated women bonding have a very interesting feminist vibe – at times the film almost forgets men exist at all. At the same time, however, there’s a bit of added entertainment in form of some comic relief (Toru Yuri and Ryoichi Tamagawa), and a prison bath scene with plenty of blink-or-you’ll-miss-it nudity by a group of student and housewife extras Toei drafted with a newspaper announcement promising 7000 yen for a day’s nude work! The film was followed by a loosely connected third entry, called The Pretty Jade, reportedly with no prison scenes at all and Midori playing a different character.

[grim_tales]

Princess Mononoke (Japan, 1997): 4.25/5

Powerful animation with ecology themes, where a boy is infected by a demon boar (?) after it had attacked his village, then has to protect a forest from humans who are making weapons in an ironworks. One of Miyazaki's earlier works.

[grim_tales]

The Boy and the Heron (Japan, 2023): 4.5/5

Really good.

[HungFist]

Blackmail (恐喝) (Japan, 1963) [35mm] – 3/5
A pretty good, if somewhat forgettable, neo noir with Ken Takakura as a young yakuza punk who finds himself alone in the night after two yakuza gangs team up to hunt him down to recover a stolen document. There are some thrilling scenes and stylish cinematography, but the storyline and direction are a bit too basic to sustain momentum throughout the 91 minute running time. Seeing Takakura, best known for his later chivalrous roles, play a selfish blackmailer punk who’s too full of himself, is probably the film’s best selling point. Bad girl Yoko Mihara makes a brief appearance as the anti-hero’s sexy girlfriend. Director Yusuke Watanabe was no stranger to yakuza films, but his most memorable pictures came in the mid 60s when he directed Mako Midori in some of Toei’s best early erotic B-films, such as Two Bitches (1964).

Affair at Twilight (たそがれの情事) (Japan, 1972) [VoD] – 3/5
A melancholic early Roman Porno picture with a yakuza film undercurrent. Kazuko Shirakawa plays a sexually frustrated housewife with recurring erotic dreams of being assaulted by someone more masculine (and deformed!) than her weakling husband. Her fantasies come knocking on the door when a young, violent gang member (Nobutaka Masatomi) invades her home one afternoon. The two become engaged in a love relationship that blurs the line between consensual and forced, and must be kept secret at any cost. This is a very good looking production carrying over the fantastic art direction from Nikkatsu's 60s mainstream cinema. It also manages to craft characters that feel more human and have at least a bit more psychological depth than most films of its kind. One of the characters being a volatile, tormented gangster also helps keeping things more interesting than for example the Apartment Wife series, which this movie admittedly borrows from. Interestingly enough, while the plot is a dead-serious melodrama affair, there’s also a more (darkly) humoristic layer ridiculing masculine incompetence. This type of quality was typical to director Shogoro Nishimura's 60s youth and gangster pictures, whose influence is clearly evident here, but would be lost over the years as he turned himself into a Roman Porno vending machine. This was only his 2nd Roman Porno picture, following Nov. 1971’s Apartment Wife: Affair in the Afternoon that had kicked off the production line seven weeks earlier.

P.S. the film's ending is more fun than what is described in official (pre-production, I believe) synopsis, suggesting this may be another Roman Porno picture that was partially re-written as they filmed, seemingly for the better.

[grim_tales]

Monster (Japan, 2023): 4.25/5

A young boy says a teacher at school hurt him, but there are differing points of view and his mum tries to find out what happened (the teacher, and his Mum), what is the real truth?

[grim_tales]

My Young Auntie (HK, 1980): 4/5

[chazgower01]

City Hunter (シティーハンター) (Japan, 2024) Netflix movie 3.5/5
directed by Yuichi Sato
It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but it’s fun and kinda stylish and full of chauvinistic humor you’d never see in an American production anymore… so I liked it. It helps that two of my favorite Japanese Gravure Idols are in it, the super cute Asuka Hanamura as the cosplay girl the bad guys are after (it's a big role for her!) and Moemi Katayama (who’s now 33, but still looks great) as the fishnet wearing assassin, Scorpion aka Miss Sweater Melons (lol) … also with Misato Morita (excellent as Kaoru Kuroki in the Naked Director TV series) as Ryo’s side kick (sister of his murdered partner).
Ryohei Suzuki seems to have the right charismatic mix to play Ryo, able to go from serious to deadly to goofy in a moments notice and fights acrobatically. And the city of Tokyo looks amazing in this.
I certainly like it better than the Wong Jing/Jackie Chan version… though it has it’s goofy moments as well, here there’s still plenty of fighting, and gun play and blood and action.

[grim_tales]

The Heroic Ones (HK, 1970): 3.5/5

I think this was the first Shaw Bros. film I saw back in the day, feels a bit long at 120 mins, good for the time it was made though. Hampered by poor media presentation of the old HK DVD (Letterbox transfer and poor subtitles)

[HungFist]

Bad City (バッド・シティ) (Japan, 2022) [TV] – 2.5/5
Ten years ago Toei released the hugely underwhelming movie “25” in celebration of the 25th anniversary of V-Cinema. Now Toei is attempting something a tad more ambitious in celebration of genre superstar Hitoshi Ozawa’s 60th birthday. Ozawa stars as a detective thrown behind bars while investigating an underworld conflict involving Japanese and Korean gangsters with hidden links to political figures. Luckily for him, he’s soon out on parole thanks to an untouchable prosecutor who puts together a secret crime fighting unit. This is a rather passable crime film resting on Ozawa’s charismatic shoulders, though one with a plot so complicated that pen and paper may come in handy. It’s also a basher picture with action choreographer gone 2nd time director Kensuke Sonomura marching Ozawa through armies of enemies, many of them armed with baseball bats. And then there’s Tak Sakaguchi, who is the first of the film’s many problems. While Ozawa’s fisticuffs fighting is at least somewhat in line with the film’s gritty crime drama positioning, Sakaguchi doesn’t seem to belong in the same picture with his lighting fast fighting. The same can be said about the hero’s colleague Masanori Mimoto, whose fighting fluctuates between pro and amateur. And then there’s the ending where the film knocks itself out with not one, but two of the dumbest, most clichéd and nonsensical closing scenes in recent memory. It’s still a very watchable film despite all that, but could and should have been better.

Secret Information (密告) (Japan, 1968) [Streaming] – 4/5
Former real life gang boss turned actor Noboru Ando stars in this little known revenge noir, which is one of his best films. Ando plays a bitter gangster just out of prison, quietly searching for the traitor who sent him behind bars eight years earlier. Director Masaharu Segawa is best known for comedy and musical films. He only made three gangster action pictures in his career, all of them highly stylized, and this one coming out as the best. There’s an evident European new wave and Jean Pierre Melville vibe to the film, which is almost experimental in its editing, sound design and minimalism. That being said, it’s still a Toei gangster picture with the expected gunplay, car chases, and a shade of romance. Ando himself fares quite well in a role that doesn’t require big acting or lots of dialogue, but rather draws from his natural charisma and scarred face.