News

Takashi Miike will always be an interesting director for me. My gateway into his world was with Audition, but Ichi the Killer teased me into his world of the Yakuza and the Triad. Now with Arrow’s release of Black Society Trilogy we get to see a more controlled set of films, which still aren’t afraid to delve into some surreal Miike ultra violence.

Black Society Trilogy consists of Shinjuku Triad Society, Rainy Dog, and Ley Lines. Although seen as a trilogy, the only thing that actually connects the three are the themes of race, family, and the outsiders.

Shinjuku Triad Society is the tale of two brothers, a cop and a lawyer whose relationship is pulled apart during a war between the Triads and Yakuza. The cop, on the hunt for a killer also in the business of trafficking children’s organs fights to pull his brother out of the world,...

Sometimes Takashi Miike's freewheeling imagination spits out something glorious; profane, demented, moving or profound. Sometimes it grinds to a halt, jammed up with abortive experiments like his Masters of Horror entry Imprint and unfortunately, Zebraman 2 is another one of these. It could only have come from Miike - it's shot through with the kind of inspired, childlike madness only he could deliver - but it's also a bloated, directionless mess of a movie, fun while you're forcing it down but liable to leave you wondering why you bothered afterwards.

It starts not long after the first film, where everyman schoolteacher Ichikawa (Shou Aikawa) transformed into the titular superhero to save the world from destructive, body-snatching little green men. He's world famous, but it's taken its toll, with his wife and friends shunning him now he's pursued by fans and news crews round the clock. Then abruptly he wakes up...