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The official website for the live-action adaptation project based on Satoru Noda's adventure manga, Golden Kamuy , has released a main trailer for Golden Kamuy: Hokkaido Irezumi Shuzin Soudatsu-hen (Hokkaido Tattooed Prisoners Scramble Arc) , an upcoming serial drama series that tells a sequel story to the feature film released in January 2024. The clips also confirms that the nine-episode drama will premiere on the Japanese satellite broadcasting station Wowow's Serial Drama W programming block on October 6, 2024 . Kento Yamazaki reprises his role as the protagonist, Saichi Sugimoto, alongside Anna Yamada as the main heroine, Asirpa. In addition to the the 13 main cast members from the film including the two and four members announced in March , seven more additional cat members have been revealed as below: Tetsuzo Nihei played by Takahiro Fujimoto Kazuo Henmi played by Masato Hagiwara Kiichiro Wakayama played by Kiyohiko Shibukawa Tatsuya Nakazawa played by Tomoki Kimura Yasaku Edogai...

Editor’s Note: The following story contains spoilers for “Longlegs” and “Cure.”

The oozy, hypnotic dread of “Longlegs” may be scaring up dreams of “Seven” and “The Silence of the Lambs” as a mid-‘90s-set thriller about the games between a serial killer and an FBI agent. But there’s another movie Osgood Perkins’ Nicolas Cage-starrer (now a record-smashing box office hit for Neon) shares a darker kinship with.

That’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cure” from 1997, a gruesome serial killer tour de force the Japanese director himself was inspired by David Fincher’s “Seven” to make. “Cure,” a dripping-with-atmosphere philosophical crime thriller also about a seemingly psychic (and in this case amnesiac) killer a la Cage’s title character in “Longlegs,” stars the great Koji Yakusho as a Tokyo Metropolitan Police detective on the trail of a string of bizarre slayings that defy explanation. Each crime scene finds the killer close by,...

Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.

At the very least, we can assume Neon’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.

Memories Of Murder (2003)

This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The...

A deep darkness inhabits Kiyoshi Kurosawa's “Cure”, on a philosophical and literal level. It's a serial killer psychological horror that puts forward the idea that our collective social psyche is susceptible to extreme persuasion, with anyone from the most ordinary person to those with a duty of care to the public being capable of clinical, repetitive, removed violence. It follows Detective Kenichi Takabe (Koji Yakusho) through an incomprehensible mystery where a strange epidemic of hypnosis is convincing unconnected people to attack others and slaughter them by carving a large X from their neck to their chest. At the centre of it is the manipulative, enigmatic Kunio Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara), a drop-out university student with apparent amnesia and a trusty lighter that inexplicably casts a spell on whoever looks into the flame. The case is not open and shut; how the phenomenon began remains mostly a mystery, despite the efforts...

Academy Award® Qualifying Short Shorts Film Festival (Ssff) & Asia 2023 announced the jury members of Live Action Competition, Non-Fiction Competition and Smartphone Film Competition supported by Sony's Xperia. Best short award winners of each Live Action and Non-Fiction competition will be eligible for the nomination of the following year's Academy Award®.

Since last year, in order to take a wider view of international perspectives, the judges in the Asia International category will judge the Non-Fiction Competition, and the judges of the Japan Competition will judge the Smartphone Film Competition supported by Sony's Xperia.

Live Action Competition/International Competition Judges：

34 nominated films among 2282 submissions form 97 countries and regions

Maki Sakai (Actor) / Masato Hagiwara (Actor) / Satoko Yokohama (Film director / Screenwriter)

Live Action Competition/Asia International Competition Judges：

23 nominated films among 593 submissions from 22 countries and regions

Live Action Competition/ Non-Fiction Competition Judges：

13 nominated films among 290 submissions from 59 countries and regions

Adam Torel (Producer...

It’s been an incredibly robust and busy year for horror, which also extends to its physical media releases. The good news is that shopping for the holidays is more manageable than ever. The bad news is that the sheer selection available can be overwhelming, to say the least.

To help, here’s a Bloody Disgusting Gift Guide for some of the year’s best horror releases, from brand new 4K upgrades to must-have collector’s editions and beyond. All are packed with extras and special features to make the discs worth adding to your collection.

These 20 releases are perfect for gifting (or receiving), from deep cuts to new releases.

All About Evil (Special Edition Blu-ray)

“When a mousy librarian (Natasha Lyonne) takes over her late father’s struggling movie theater, a series of grisly murders caught on camera will transform her into the new queen of indie splatter cinema.

Exclusive: Aoi Takeya will make his television debut in the HBO Max series Tokyo Vice‘s second season.

He will portray the character of Jason Oki, a Japanese-American member of the US Foreign Service who gets pulled into Jake Adelstein (Ansel Elgort) and his colleagues’ hunt to uncover the secrets of yakuza crime lord Shinzo Tozawa (Ayumi Tanida).

Tokyo Vice is loosely inspired by American journalist Jake Adelstein’s nonfiction firsthand account of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police beat. The crime drama, filmed on location in Tokyo, captures Adelstein’s daily descent into the neon-soaked underbelly of Tokyo in the late ‘90s, where nothing and no one is truly what or who they seem.

Ken Watanabe plays Hiroto Katagiri, a detective in the organized crime division of the Tokyo Police Department who is also a father figure to Jake throughout the series as he helps guide him along the thin and...

Kurosawa Kiyoshi's Cure is one of the very few movies that made me stop breathing. I was in the middle of a full house for a screening at Asian Film Festival of Dallas. My blood ran cold. I started breathing again, but just thinking about it now freaks me out. The Criterion Collection will release Cure on Blu-ray in October 2022, featuring a "4K digital restoration, supervised by cinematographer Tokusho Kikumura, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack," per the official verbiage, as well as a "new conversation between director Kiyoshi Kurosawa and filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi, interviews with actors Masato Hagiwara and Koji Yakusho, interview from 2003 with Kurosawa, trailers and teaser, plus an essay by critic Chris Fujiwara." Jayro Bustamante's horror film from Guatemala, La Llorona, "repurposes...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

HBO Max has released the trailer for “Tokyo Vice,” offering a first look at the upcoming crime series. Loosely adapted from American journalist Jake Adelstein’s coverage of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police’s operations, the series stars Ansel Elgort as Adelstein as he documents the criminal underbelly and culture of police corruption of 1990s Tokyo. Ken Watanabe also stars, alongside Rachel Keller, Ella Rumpf, Rinko Kikuchi, Hideaki Ito, Show Kasamatsu, Tomohisa Yamashita, Shun Sugata, Masato Hagiwara, Ayumi Tanida and Kosuke Toyohara.

The series was greenlit with Elgort attached as the lead in 2019. Emmy winner and acclaimed filmmaker Michael Mann later joined the production, signing on to direct the pilot episode and serve as executive producer for the series. J.T. Rogers serves as series writer, creator and executive producer

“Tokyo Vice” comes from Endeavor Content and Japanese pay-tv broadcaster Wowow. Other executive producers include Adelstein, Elgort, Watanabe, Cretton, Alan Poul, Emily Gerson Saines,...

Tokyo Vice, after pausing production in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic, finally will land at HBO Max this spring. The series starring Ken Watanabe and Ansel Elgort hails from creator and writer J.T. Rogers. The series pilot was directed by Michael Mann.

The second official series order from HBO Max in 2019, Tokyo Vice is loosely inspired by American journalist Jake Adelstein’s nonfiction firsthand account of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police beat. The crime drama, filmed on location in Tokyo, captures Adelstein’s (Elgort) daily descent into the neon-soaked underbelly of Tokyo in the late ‘90s, where nothing and no one is truly what or who they seem. The series will premiere with three episodes on Thursday, April 7, followed by two episodes airing every Thursday until the season finale on April 28.

Watanabe will play Hiroto Katagiri, a detective in the organized crime division of the Tokyo Police Department who is also...

"People like to think a crime has meaning. But most of them don't." Criterion Collection has launched a new trailer for a 4K restoration and re-release of the Japanese horror masterpiece called Cure, from filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa. This originally premiered in 1997, and played at the Tokyo Film Festival, San Francisco & Toronto Film Festivals, though it never had a release in the west until 2001. Praised by Martin Scorsese, it's a "hypnotic & psychological" cinema experience that is "part atmospheric crime film and part philosophical meditation." The story follows a detective investigating a string of gruesome murders where an X is carved into the neck of each victim, and the murderer is found near the victim of each case and remembers nothing of the crime. The film stars Kōji Yakusho, Tsuyoshi Ujiki, Anna Nakagawa, and Masato Hagiwara. As always, there's no better time than to catch up with films like this than now...

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s filmography is a dream—deep, dense, an alternation of consistent through lines and true surprises. Basically just decades of work from one of the greatest filmmakers who has ever lived. My journey, like most others, started with 1997’s Cure, a remarkable synthesis of detective intrigue, horror atmospherics, and Kurosawa’s eye for spaces. Which is a hoity-toity way of saying it will freak you the fuck out.

If you’ve yet to dive, now’s time: ahead of the inevitable Criterion release, Janus Films will release Cure in a 4K restoration starting October 1 at the IFC Center. Their trailer perfectly captures the menacing, creeping vibe of Kurosawa’s masterpiece, which—having seen it on 35mm myself—has perhaps never looked so good. And dig that Scorsese quote! Listen to him, not me—this is one of the greatest horror films ever made.

Find preview and poster below:...

Following his short feature “Voices of a Distant Star”, which won him the Animation Kobe Award along with the Seiun Award for Best Media, director Makoto Shinkai continued his journey into animation, science fiction and love triangles in “The Place Promised In Our Early Days”. The movie, which was awarded Best Animation Film at Mainichi Film Concours, while exploring similar themes, has a much wider scale than his previous works. Similar to other works in Japanese animation, concepts like time, parallel worlds and combining various layers of reality constitute the foundation of a story following the lives of three individuals, but also hints at Japanese history and the nation’s outlook at an uncertain future.

The story takes place in an alternate version of the world, in which Japan not only lost World War II, but was also divided, with its north being occupied by the Soviet Union.

Cast is being finalized on Tokyo Vice, the crime drama loosely based on Jake Adelstein’s 2009 memoir about a crime reporter on the Tokyo Metropolitan Police beat.

Series regulars added include Hideaki Ito (Tokkai), Show Kasamatsu (Flowers and Rain) and Tomohisa Yamashita (The Man from Toronto). Further additions include Shun Sugata (Tomorrow’s Dinner Table), Masato Hagiwara (Tokkai), Ayumi Tanida (The Return), and Kosuke Toyohara (Yakuza and The Family).

They join the previously announced Ansel Elgort, Ken Watanabe, Rachel Keller, Ella Rumpf and Rinko Kikuchi. Michael Mann directed the Tokyo Vice pilot and serves as an executive producer along with J.T. Rogers, Alan Poul, Jake Adelstein, Ansel Elgort, Emily Gerson Saines, Destin Daniel Cretton, Ken Watanabe, Kayo Washio, and John Lesher. J.T. Rogers created and wrote the series.

Endeavor Content and Japanese pay-tv broadcaster Wowow are producing for HBO Max. The show is expected to debut in early 2022.

This Japanese docudrama is an excellent primer on the scary near- meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011. After the earthquake, a tsunami triggered a ‘major nuclear event.’ A group of dedicated engineers struggle against odds to regain control. It’s another 21st Century disaster writ large — we applaud the camaraderie and commitment of the response teams while bureaucratic and political Bs threatens to doom half of Japan. As with last week’s Spacewalker I’m betting that most negative reviews were written by people who saw the English language dub job … in the original Japanese, star Ken Watanabe’s performance is terrific.

Fukushima 50

Blu-ray

Capelight

2020 / Color / 2:39 widescreen / 121 min. / Street Date April 13, 2021 / Available from Amazon / 29.98

Starring: Ken Watanabe, Takumi Saitoh, Kôichi Satô, Tomorô Taguchi, Mark Chinnery, Yuri Nakamura, Justin Leeper, Yasuko Tomita, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Riho Yoshioka, Masane Tsukayama, Masato Hagiwara, Shirô Sano.

Cinematography: Shoji Ehara

Visual Effects...

The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.The success of his latest release, Wife of a Spy (2020), has once again positioned Kiyoshi Kurosawa atop the list of international cinema's most celebrated filmmakers. Continuing what has been an exceptional festival circuit reign in recent years, the Kobe-born director's World War II drama was awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and it is, as Notebook’s Aaron E. Hunt observes, an emblematic feature from Kurosawa, retaining several of the archetypes and tropes he has so often embraced. Indeed, a consistency in distinct systems of narrative and audiovisual expression has been central to Kurosawa's cinema, manifest in films spanning multiple genres and locations and relayed in mutable tones and mesmeric formal motifs. And though it took time to find traction with a global audience, this approach was something...

The film that established Kiyoshi Kurosawa as the master of slow horror is a true masterpiece of J-horror, through a unique approach that combines terror with the serial crime film and an imposing atmosphere with pointy social remarks.

The story revolves around a series of murders occurring in Tokyo. The common elements in the cases are an X carved with blood in the victim’s neck, and the fact that the murderer is found close to the victims, but does not remember a thing. Detective Takabe and psychologist Sakuma are trying to find out what happened, but their research reaches a dead end. Eventually, one man named Mamiya emerges as the common link among the murders.

Instead of resorting to plot twists and reversals, Kurosawa gradually creates a maze that combines terror with confusion, in a tactic that exemplifies the ingenuity of both his direction and writing.

The official website for Tomoyuki Takimoto‘s Soup Opera has been updated with a new full trailer. The film is based on a book by Sawako Agawa of the same title and stars Maki Sakai (40) in her first lead role since announcing her marriage to 28-year-old photographer Shin Suzuki late last year.

Sakai plays Rui, a 35-year-old single woman forced to live alone after the aunt who raised her suddenly decides to get married and move out. Through an unexpected set of circumstances, she winds up becoming roommates with an aging ladies’ man named Tony (Tatsuya Fuji) and a timid younger man named Kosuke (Takahiro Nishijima of the pop group Aaa). Mariko Kaga, Kimiko Yo, and Masato Hagiwara also star.

Prénom-h will be releasing “Soup Opera” in Japan on October 2, 2010.

The official website for Tomoyuki Takimoto‘s Soup Opera has been updated with a new full trailer. The film is based on a book by Sawako Agawa of the same title and stars Maki Sakai (40) in her first lead role since announcing her marriage to 28-year-old photographer Shin Suzuki late last year.

Sakai plays Rui, a 35-year-old single woman forced to live alone after the aunt who raised her suddenly decides to get married and move out. Through an unexpected set of circumstances, she winds up becoming roommates with an aging ladies’ man named Tony (Tatsuya Fuji) and a timid younger man named Kosuke (Takahiro Nishijima of the pop group Aaa). Mariko Kaga, Kimiko Yo, and Masato Hagiwara also star.

Prénom-h will be releasing “Soup Opera” in Japan on October 2, 2010.

Some details and a teaser trailer were finally released today for Tomoyuki Takimoto‘s Soup Opera, months after its official site was first launched. The film is based on a book by Sawako Agawa of the same title and stars Maki Sakai (40) in her first lead role since announcing her marriage to 28-year-old photographer Shin Suzuki late last year.

Sakai plays Rui, a 35-year-old single woman forced to live alone after the aunt who raised her suddenly decides to get married and move out. Through an unexpected set of circumstances, she winds up becoming roommates with an aging ladies’ man named Tony (Tatsuya Fuji) and a timid younger man named Kosuke (Takahiro Nishijima of the pop group Aaa). Mariko Kaga, Kimiko Yo, and Masato Hagiwara also star.

Prénom-h will be releasing “Soup Opera” in Japan sometime this fall.

Sources: Cinema Today, Official website...

Here’s the trailer for Banmei Takahashi‘s Box: Hakamada Jiken, not to be confused with Toshio Lee’s Box!, which is coming out around the same time.

The film is based on a notorious real-life crime which took place in Shimizu, Shizuoka Prefecture and became known as the “Hakamada Incident”. On June 30, 1966, a miso factory is set on fire after the director of the company and three of his family members are stabbed to death in the building. Detective Tatematsu (Ryo Ishibashi) eventually arrests ex-boxer Iwao Hakamada (Hirofumi Arai) for the crime based on some blood-stained clothing and a small cut on his finger. He initially claims innocence, but is forced into confession after being beaten by police and tortured for hours at a time.

Hakamada received a death sentence from Shizuoka District Court Judge Kumamoto (Masato Hagiwara) and lost several appeals in the decades that followed. Kumamoto, now a lawyer,...

Opens Friday, March 7

New York

A convoluted, time-twisting, sexually tinged thriller that owes more than a small debt to "Vertigo", Hideo Nakata's "Chaos" is the sort of intellectual cinematic parlor game that will best appeal to those who like their mysteries as complicated as possible. Resembling "Memento" in its intricacies if not its elegance, the film has already been slotted for an American remake directed by Jonathan Glazer and starring Robert De Niro and Benicio Del Toro. No doubt, the complexities of its plot will be somewhat smoothed out for domestic consumption. The film is currently playing an exclusive theatrical engagement at New York's Cinema Village.

The story begins simply enough, with the kidnapping of the wife of a successful Japanese businessman after the two have had lunch together in a restaurant. We soon learn, however, that the kidnapping is a ruse, staged by Satomi (Miki Nakatani), the wife, with the aid of her handyman Takayuki (Ken Mitsuishi) to better test the fidelity of her husband Goro (Masato Hagiwara). Showing up at Takayuki's house after the "abduction," she willingly submits to his suggestion that he tie her up, with the inevitable kinky sex resulting. But even here, things are not quite what they seem, with the plot further evolving into a nearly indecipherable morass of twists, double-crosses and illusions.

Complicating matters even further, the story is told in nonchronological fashion, providing only the subtlest of hints to clue us in as to the sudden shifts in time. The results demand the closest of attention, with even the most attentive viewers likely to become lost at some point, though the numerous homages to "Vertigo" provide handy reference points.

Ultimately, the willful obfuscation becomes more frustrating than entertaining, and director Nakata ("Ringu" and "Ringu 2") fails to provide enough of a visual style or sustained mood to sustain interest. Not helping matters are the inexpressive performances by the male leads. The beautiful Nakatani, however, demonstrates that she has what it takes to be a femme fatale in the best noir tradition.

CHAOS

A Kino International release

Tidepoint Pictures/Viz Films and Kino International

Credits:

Director: Hideo Nakata

Screenwriter: Hisashi Saito

Producers: Takeo Kodero, Satoshi Kanno, Kimio Hara

Executive producer: Naoki Kai

Director of photography: Tokusho Kikimura

Music: Kenji Kawai

Cast:

Goro Kuroda: Masato Hagiwara

Satomi Tsushima: Miki Nakatani

Takayuki Komiyama: Ken Mitsuishi

Detective Hamaguchi: Jun Kunimura

Running time -- 104 minutes

No MPAA rating...