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A taskforce of honest cops is assembled to tackle the gangsters menacing Kaiko City. Many punches are thrown in choreographed style

Director Kensuke Sonomura started off as a stunt performer and coordinator, so it’s no surprise that his second directorial effort contains lashings of hand-to-hand combat. Indeed, just as the climactic cops v gangsters showdown is about to kick off, elderly lawman Torada (Hitoshi Ozawa) urges everyone not to use silly, unsporting guns, and miraculously both sides agree and go to it with fists and knives. It’s just as well because, hitherto, almost every time someone has fired a gun in anger in this film they have missed the target. Does that mean all those movies where folks hit their target with one bullet are lying? Or is this one, where everyone is pants at shooting, the misrepresentation? Either way, it’s almost enough to make you question...

Stars: Lily Franky, Tak Sakaguchi, Rino Katase, Yoshiyuki Yamaguchi, Mitsu Dan, Masaya Katō, Hitoshi Ozawa, Hideto Katsuya, Masanori Mimoto, Akane Sakanoue | Directed by Kensuke Sonomura

Wataru Gojō CEO of the Gojo Conglomerate is the most powerful man in Kaiko City, the Bad City of the title. He’s just been acquitted of corruption charges and declared his candidacy for mayor in order to go after those he says are really behind the corruption.

As he’s holding a press conference an assassin is hacking their way through members of the Sakurada Yakuza clan. Suspicion falls on the Korean mafia and their enigmatic leader Madam. It may not be a coincidence that their chief enforcer Kim Seung-gi, and Gojō are acquainted.

As open warfare breaks out on the city’s streets the head of public safety Koizumi and Chief Prosecutor Hirayama form an unofficial task force to take Gojō. Unfortunately, the...

The feeling of being trapped, like love, knows no gender. Japanese director Momoko Ando explores this complexity by interspersing unexpected displays of magical realism with a curious reading of romance and sexuality in her directorial debut “Kakera – A Piece of Our Life,” an official entry to the Raindance and Stockholm international film festivals in 2009.

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“Kakera” is based on the manga “Love Vibes” by Erika Sakurazawa. It focuses on Haru, a college student stuck in an an affair with a man who dominates all aspects of their relationship. The monotony of their arrangement gets broken when she meets Riko, a bisexual prosthetist whose blunt approach at life and love gives Haru an opening to leave her boyfriend and their cycle of toxicity.

Haru and Riko are each other’s opposites, both in the inside and the outside. While Riko dons herself in grays and browns, Riko...

[This review initially appeared when the film screened at Germany's Nippon Connection and with the film appearing this weekend at the Shinsedai Festival in Toronto we present it again now..]

If there is one "buzz" film at this year's Nippon Connection it would have to be Momoko Ando's same sex romance "Kakera: A Piece of Your Life". The debut film by the daughter of actor/ director Eiji Okuda (Shoujyo, ) and TV personality and essayist Kazu Ando got its international premiere at last year's Raindance Film Festival in London in September, was quickly snatched up by UK distributor Third Window Films shortly after, and by the end of the year it was being included on a number of Top Ten Best of 2009 critics lists. When any film is so quickly showered with ovations I always get a little suspicious, and going into a film festival I always prioritize my "must-see" list not by buzz, but by films that I may never get a chance to see again, so with that in mind "Kakera" was somewhere on my "maybe" list -...

[Our thanks go out to Chris MaGee and Marc Saint-Cyr at the Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow for sharing their coverage of the 2010 Nippon Connection Film Festival.]

If there is one "buzz" film at this year's Nippon Connection it would have to be Momoko Ando's same sex romance "Kakera: A Piece of Your Life". The debut film by the daughter of actor/ director Eiji Okuda (Shoujyo, ) and TV personality and essayist Kazu Ando got its international premiere at last year's Raindance Film Festival in London in September, was quickly snatched up by UK distributor Third Window Films shortly after, and by the end of the year it was being included on a number of Top Ten Best of 2009 critics lists. When any film is so quickly showered with ovations I always get a little suspicious, and going into a film festival I always prioritize my "must-see" list not by buzz, but by films that I may never get a chance to see again, so with that in mind "Kakera" was somewhere on my "maybe" list -...