©Courtesy of Fantasia International Film Festival New Yorkers might not even consider this near-future Korean metropolis (a sort of, but not exactly Seoul) a strange and unfamiliar urban dystopia, as director-screenwriter Yoon Eun-kyung intended. Yes, the air quality is awful and it is nearly impossible to find an affordable, livable apartment, thanks a bizarre and…
@Courtesy of NMA Releasing Surely, there are easier ways for fathers and sons to repair their relationships, like maybe tossing around a football in the backyard? Regardless, it will take a grave car accident and a subsequent mythical quest for Franklin (known as Frankie) to finally better understand his father in Canadian director-screenwriter Nick Johnson’s…
©Courtesy of Fantasia International Film Festival At least poor Koyomi Araragi is not a Renfield. As a freshly turned minion, his mistress bestowed full vampire powers on him. Kiss-Shot Acerola-Orion Heart-Under-Blade—truly an anime name, if ever there was one—might even allow him to return to human form, eventually. For now, Araragi must protect her from…
In the fan-favorite anime film, Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama, the simian warrior Hanuman steals the show, because who doesn’t love a big talking monkey? The classic Japanese-Indian co-production directed by Ram Mohan, Koichi Sasaki, and Yugo Sako presents a reasonably faithful adaptation, from an Indian perspective. Over the centuries, the archetypal epic travelled…
©Courtesy of Japan Cuts There is less parental supervision in this film than you see in an average John Hughes movie. Perhaps as a result, these teens hardly spend any time working or studying during their summer break—maybe a little, but not a lot. However, they are not idle slackers. In fact, they keep quite…
©Courtesy of Japan Cuts In Takeshi Kitano’s gangster movies, a lot of fingers get chopped. For this samurai historical epic, he steps up to head-chopping. To be fair, Kitano’s yakuza probably lopped off a few heads of their own, but during Japan’s Sengoku Era, collecting severed heads was the preferred method of proving the death…
©Courtesy of Japan Cuts The compulsions of two hard-living characters reshape the worlds around them in their respective animated shorts. This produces artistic triumph in one case and family tragedy in the other. Yet, Anime fans will be duly impressed by both short films’ artistry and pedigrees. Despite their lengths, Bottle George, from Daisuke “Dice”…
Manga publishing is a ruthlessly numbers-driven business. Success is mostly dependent on sales and reader popularity polls. Nevertheless, it attracts artistic young people, who often keenly sensitive, somewhat neurotic, and even sometimes painfully shy. Those terms certainly describe either Ayumu Fujino or her middle school rival “Kyomoto the Truant.” Several apply to them both. Somehow,…
©Epic Pictures Su-hyuk broods hard, very much like the other titular men in “man” films, like Man on Fire (either of them) and The Man from Nowhere. He too is a jaded man of action, who must rescue an innocent child from a powerful criminal organization. After ten years in prison, Su-hyuk has no intention…
@Courtesy of Studio Ponoc/Netlfix Japanese anime filmmakers have a bizarrely fantastic track record translating British young adult fantasies for the big screen. Studio Ghibli notably adapted Mary Norton’s The Borrowers (as The Secret World of Arrietty), Joan G. Robinson’s When Marnie Was There, and Diana Wynn Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle (loosely, but it still counts),…
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