News

An influence on the likes of Takashi Miike and Yoshiaki Kawajiri, director Hideo Gosha has often gone overlooked in the pantheon of Japanese directors, despite his samurai features Sword of the Beast and Three Outlaw Samurai getting the Criterion treatment. Now is a great time to discover his filmography as his 1966 crime drama Cash Calls Hell has been restored and is arriving at the end of the month. Led by legendary actor Tatsuya Nakadai, we’re pleased to exclusively premiere the new trailer ahead of Film Movement’s digital release beginning November 29.

Here’s the synopsis: “Facing the final days of his prison sentence for vehicular manslaughter, Oida (Tatsuya Nakadai) dreads reentering society as a ruined man with no future prospects. Sensing his street smarts, Oida’s cellmate promises him a pile of loot if he tracks down and kills three men whose names are on a list. Reluctantly accepting the task,...

Considered one of the best Japanese movies of the 60s (and all time) Mikio Naruse’s masterpiece is an ode to realism and minimalism, as well as a rather thorough study of the role of women in the Japanese society of the 60s, stripped from any kind of disillusions.

on Amazon by clicking on the image below

Every afternoon, young widow Keiko leaves her small apartment to attend a bar in Ginza, where she entertains entrepreneurs after they finish work. Due to her kind nature, the younger girls at the bar call her “mama”, acknowledging her finesse and beauty as the apogee of their profession. Kenichi, the man in charge of the bar, has feelings for her, but he keeps them hidden, while retaining a respectful distance from her, as much as a meaningless relationship with a young and ambitious barwoman, Junko.

As time changes, girls...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSWe announced today in IndieWire the upcoming launch of our new original podcast! Hosted by arts and travel reporter Rico Gagliano, the first season of the Mubi Podcast will focus on films that have great importance in their home country, but are lesser known by international audiences and critics. We begin with Paul Verhoeven's second feature Turkish Delight and its unique significance during the counterculture movement in 1970s Holland. The episode feaures exclusive interviews with Paul Verhoeven, Monique van de Ven, and Jan de Bont. Check out the trailer above and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts here.Filmmaker Milton Moses Ginsberg, best known for his debut feature Coming Apart (1969) and the horror comedy film The Werewolf of Washington (1973), has died. The Tribeca Film Festival has announced that Steven Soderbergh's latest, the...

Billed as inspired by “The Postman Always Rings Twice”, “Mourning Wife” is essentially a noir drama, and one of the most sensual pink films we have seen recently.

Mourning Wife is available from Pink Eiga By Using the code AMPFriend, you get a 25% price-off on all products of the website including subscription

Tomoko, the wife of a handicapped and impotent man, Mamoru, is tasked with both taking care of him and running their failing printing business on her own. Furthermore, Mamoru’s mother has just died, something that has added to his overall stress, which has led him into a severe kind of depression. Tomoko eventually suggests to hire someone to help her with the printing business, something that eventually happens, despite Mamoru’s protests. Ryuzo is a drifter, who quickly realizes the situation in the house, and the sex-depraved Tomoko cannot do much to counter his advances, with the two becoming lovers.

Each month, the fine folks at FilmStruck and the Criterion Collection spend countless hours crafting their channels to highlight the many different types of films that they have in their streaming library. This April will feature an exciting assortment of films, as noted below.

To sign up for a free two-week trial here.

Monday, April 3 The Chaos of Cool: A Tribute to Seijun Suzuki

In February, cinema lost an icon of excess, Seijun Suzuki, the Japanese master who took the art of the B movie to sublime new heights with his deliriously inventive approach to narrative and visual style. This series showcases seven of the New Wave renegade’s works from his career breakthrough in the sixties: Take Aim at the Police Van (1960), an off-kilter whodunit; Youth of the Beast (1963), an explosive yakuza thriller; Gate of Flesh (1964), a pulpy social critique; Story of a Prostitute (1965), a tragic romance; Tokyo Drifter...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries.NEWSLast weekend the generally derided yet fiercely observed Golden Globes winners were announced 2016, which included La La Land (Best Director, Screenplay, Song, Score and Actor, Actress and picture for a musical/comedy), Moonlight (Best Drama), and Elle (Best Foreign Language film, Best Actress for a drama).Okay, it's not strictly cinema news, but 18 episodes of new moving pictures directed by David Lynch counts as news to us! Showtime has revealed the number of episodes of the upcoming season of Twin Peaks, all directed by Lynch, and that the two-hour premiere of the show will be on May 21, immediately followed by the digital release of the third and forth episodes. Those film professionals who will be in Cannes at the time better plan on skipping their Monday morning screenings!Great news for those, like us, still enamored by celluloid: Kodak has...

Want a nine-hour dose of the truth of existence so harrowing that it will make you feel grateful no matter how humble your situation? Masaki Kobayshi's epic of the real cost of war boggles the mind with its creeping revelations of cosmic bleakness. Yet all the way through you know you're experiencing a truth far beyond slogans and sentiments. The Human Condition Region B Blu-ray Arrow Academy (UK) 1959-61 / B&W / 2:35 anamorphic widescreen / 574 min. / Ningen no jôken / Street Date September 19, 2016 / Available from Amazon UK £ 39.99 Starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Michiyo Aratama, Chikage Awashima, Ineko Arima, Keiji Sada, So Yamamura, Kunie Tanaka, Kei Sato, Chishu Ryu, Taketoshi Naito. Cinematography Yoshio Miyajima Art Direction Kazue Hirataka <Film Editor Keiichi Uraoka Original Music Chuji Kinoshita Written by Zenzo Matsuyama, Masaki Kobayashi from the novel by Jumpei Gomikawa Produced by Shigeru Wakatsuki Directed by Masaki Kobayashi

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The first Blu-ray of perhaps...

This time on the podcast, Ryan is joined by Scott Nye, David Blakeslee, Mark Hurne and Trevor Berrett to present their Blu-ray upgrade wish lists for 2016.

Subscribe in iTunes or RSS.

Episode Links Past Wish List Episodes Episode 63.9 – Disc 3 – Top Criterion Blu-ray Upgrades for 2011 Episode 110 – Criterion Collection Blu-ray Upgrade Wish List for 2012 Episode 136 – Criterion Collection Blu-ray Upgrade Wish List for 2013 Episode 146 – Criterion Collection Blu-ray Upgrade Wish List for 2014 Episode 154 – Criterion Collection Blu-ray Upgrade Wish List for 2015 David’s list Wise Blood Onibaba 4 By Agnes Varda Mark’s list Les Enfants Terribles Viridiana The Adventures of Antoine Doinel Ryan’s list: Monsters and Madmen The Lower Depths Jeanne Dielman Scott’s list Complete Mr. Arkadin When A Woman Ascends The Stairs A Film Trilogy by Ingmar Bergman Trevor’s list An Angel at My Table Pepe le Moko Twenty-Four Eyes Episode Credits Ryan Gallagher (Twitter / Website) David Blakeslee (Twitter / Website) Scott...

The 39th Hong Kong International Film Festival has announced a celebration of the work of Japanese filmmaker Naruse Mikio, on the 60th anniverary of his 1955 classic Floating Clouds. Repast (1951), Daughters, Wives And A Mother (1960) and Scattered Clouds (1967) will we screened alongside Floating Clouds during the festival, in a year that also marks the 110th anniversary of the director's birth.In addition to these four films, eight other works by the director will be screened in Hong Kong during April and May as part of the Hkiff's year-round Cinefan programme. Among those other films are Wife! Be Like a Rose! (1935), Sound of the Mountain (1954), Sudden Rain (1956), Flowing (1956), When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960), Her Lonely Lane (1962) and Yearning...

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

As Ryan mentioned in his excellent summary of recent Criterion-related blogging activity, I’ve spent considerable time over the past couple months watching and learning about the films of Mikio Naruse. Last week, on my Criterion Reflections blog, I summarized those impressions in my review of Naruse’s 1960 masterpiece When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. One thing I didn’t mention there that I discovered though was that Naruse’s films, aimed primarily at a female audience, were typically shown as the first feature on a double-bill, paired with another film intended to be mainly of interest to men in the interest of maximizing attendance at the theater. Though I doubt that Naruse films were ever shown in conjunction with any of the titles included in Eclipse Series 17: Nikkatsu Noir (different studios, mainly), I got my own version of that melodrama/action flick combo when 1960′s Take Aim At The Police Van...

When I came up with the idea to start aggregating the various Criterion Collection related blogs that I read on a somewhat regular basis into a weekly column, I had grand plans to set up reminders for myself, bookmark posts into folders, and produce a compelling weekly blog post for all of you. Unfortunately, the birth of my daughter, and all of the other responsibilities of my life have managed to position themselves between me and that goal. I thought maybe if I switched to a monthly format, that would make things easier, but in reality it just gave me less of an excuse to work on the post. I’ve decided to reboot the column and produce it on a weekly basis. We’ll see if I can keep it going this time. As much as I pretend to be organized and productive, I am really a lazy, lazy guy.

Though he hasn’t quite risen to “blaring headlines” level, Aki Kaurismaki’s name has been generating something louder than a low rumble in terms of buzz over the past few weeks. As our intrepid news reporter Josh Brunsting noted recently, the Finnish auteur’s newest film Le Havre, fresh off its debut at Cannes, was picked up by Janus Films for Us distribution a short while ago. And Criterion announced last month that Kaurismaki’s Leningrad Cowboys films are slated for an October release as the latest addition to the Eclipse Series – a development that caught me and many others by surprise, but one of the most enjoyable sort. Given all that Kaursimaki zeitgeist, it seems only natural for me to wind up my coverage of Eclipse Series 12: Aki Kaurismaki’s Proletariat Trilogy with my third review from the set, The Match Factory Girl. (Here are the links to the first two,...

As some of you may know, my personal blog, Criterion Reflections, serves as my on-going journal (over 2 1/2 years now) of watching all the Criterion Collection films in their order of chronological release, beginning with 1921′s Nanook of the North. This past week marked a milestone of sorts as I finally worked my way through the 1950s and just posted my first review from 1060, of Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face. Next in my queue is a late-career masterwork by Mikio Naruse that was for several years the only title from his long career available legally available on DVD in the USA, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. Criterion remedied that situation earlier this year with the release of Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse, compiling the director’s five extant silent films in one handy box.

In recent weeks, they’ve done us all a service by importing a few...

Above: Street without End. Photo courtesy of the Criterion Collection.

In March the Criterion Collection released a quiet salvo of intervention into the sad state of home video distribution in the U.S. of films by Japanese studio master Mikio Naruse. After just a solitary release of the filmmaker (1960's masterpiece, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, also put out by Criterion) comes an Eclipse-label boxset of early 30s silent films by the director: Flunky, Work Hard! (1931), No Blood Relation (1932), Apart from You (1933), Every-Night Dreams (1933), and Street without End (1934). The set, Silent Naruse, instantly dramatically multiplies the number of titles available to American audiences—though sadly, as Dave Kehr recently implied in his review of the set for the New York Times, it isn't exactly a set of canonical masterpieces bound to invigorate and excite shocked discovery of a foreign master.

But then again, Naruse may be one of the...

Nick Pinkerton in the Voice on Five Japanese Divas, running from tomorrow through April 21: "Rarefied Ozu, bold Kurosawa, saturnine Naruse, magisterial Mizoguchi. The Great Men are here, and then some, but Film Forum's 23-feature series foregrounds other names in the credits: Yamada, Kyo, Tanaka, Hara, Takamine — the women of Japanese cinema's ridiculously fecund postwar Golden Age, when on-screen drama addressed an upended social reality for a national audience that suddenly included many females cashing their first paychecks."

Time Out New York's David Fear offers a "quick primer" on Setsuko Hara ("The Girl Next Door"), Machiko Kyô ("The Chameleon"), Hideko Takamine ("The Icon"), Kinuyo Tanaka ("The Martyr") and Isuzu Yamada ("The Technician").

"Considered a bold feminist statement for 1936 Japan as well as a turning point in his own career, Kenji Mizoguchi's Sisters of the Gion is a perfect showcase for his early muse, Isuzu Yamada," finds Joe Bendel.

"Of...

Early 2007 saw the introduction of both the Eclipse line of DVDs (with the first release, Early Bergman) and the work of Mikio Naruse (with his late-career masterpiece, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs) into the Criterion Collection. Four years later these two threads have intertwined with last week’s release of Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse. It’s another amazing set that perfectly exemplify what makes the Eclipse Series such a distinctive and trustworthy source of new discovery for the adventurous cinephile. These exquisitely rare and fascinating films have been captured on DVD for the first time ever, and offer another angle in which fans of Japanese cinema can observe the development of one of that nation’s most celebrated, but also neglected, film making talents. Mikio Naruse hearkens from the same Golden Age of Japanese film as Yasjiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi, though his work has been much more difficult to find,...

Two days ago, David Phelps and I had the privilege to sit down and talk to Dave Kehr, who we consider to be one of America's best film critics.  Luckily for us all, Kehr is still writing criticism; he currently writes regularly for the New York Times and casually hosts a small and impassioned film discussion community on his website, davekehr.com.  He is now publishing a wonderful book of his criticism from the 1970s and 1980s in a collection called "When Movies Mattered: Reviews from a Transformative Decade", which includes terrific pieces on City of Pirates, Raoul Walsh (re-printed here), Risky Business, Carl Th. Dreyer, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, and many more.  It is essential reading: crisp, clear prose that leads the reader through a film or a filmmaker's work, characterizing and encapsulating, providing evidence simply, accurately, and expressively.  On the occasion of the book's publication, the...

Japanese actor whose forte was courageous, independent, strong-willed heroines

Although Japan had been making films since the beginnings of cinema, Japanese films remained virtually unknown in the west for more than half a century. Shamefully, it has taken almost as long again to recognise the greatness of the director Mikio Naruse, and consequently the remarkable talents of Hideko Takemine, his leading lady in more than a dozen films, who has died of lung cancer aged 86.

In the same way as Kinuyo Tanaka became associated with the films of Kenji Mizoguchi, and Setsuko Hara with those of Yasujiro Ozu, Takemine embodied Naruse's heroines – courageous, independent, strong-willed, conscientious women, faced with misfortune. Naruse once remarked about his female characters: "If they try to move forward even a little, they quickly hit a wall." The director Akira Kurosawa's description of Naruse's films as "looking calm and ordinary at first glance but which...