Eisuke Naito’s adaptation of Rensuke Oshikiri’s cult manga Liverleaf (more popularly known as Hepatica) continues the theme he’s been exploring since his debut – high school students in extreme situations. What makes his new feature different from his former works is that this time the apocalypse is brought to a quiet town. Unfortunately, this is where also the…

A or B plays with game-like mechanisms that make it comparable to Saw (2004) or even the terrific Thai horror 13: Game of Death (2006). Only with less blood. We see Zhong Xiaonan (Xu Zheng) participate in the game where he’s only allowed to choose between two things which will both affect him negatively. While admittedly, none of the high…

In a time when self-referentiality is no longer a theoretical symptom of the time, but its actual mode of existence, it is hard to convince one’s self of any more grand mythologies if one’s not in a mode of nostalgia. Which is why it is not hard for any cultural material of contemporary times to…

Seijun Suzuki has been known for his over-the-top stylistic approach to gangster and yakuza films, most famously with his cult classics Tokyo Drifter (1966) and Branded to Kill (1967). His style, developed over the years of his lengthy career, truly came to a head with Zigeunerweisen, an adaptation of Hyakkei Uchida’s novel Disk of Sarasate. While the film is still overshadowed by…

It is challenging to provide a summary for Queer Fish Lane. It is introduced as a work about travelling “chain-play” performers, Tarugani and Papajo, whose art is a fusion of film and theater. Later, it is revealed that both of them got involved in an incident when Tarugani accidentally took home a chemical aphrodisiac named Tottoro…

Initially, one of the challenges that Neko Atsume House seems to face is how to make a movie from a video game that does not have much goal or narrative. The game from which it is dervived mostly concerns the literal translation of its title – the collection of cats. The game itself has no context. Like…

One night, in the peaceful town of Matangtubig, Batangas, local fisherman Homil Ricarte (Amante Pulido) witnessed a scene at the bridge: two teenage female students were offered an escort home by a group of men. The students refused, but the men insisted. The students agreed in the end. What Homil witnessed has become the first…