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Sometimes foreign language films simply exist across an insurmountable cultural divide that renders them indecipherable here. Hitoshi Matsumoto‘s Saya-zamurai [Scabbard Samurai] perfectly exemplifies through an obtusely-constructed first third before hitting its stride. Comically uneven at the start, I was left scratching my head and wondering if I was missing the joke. An old, toothless samurai with an empty scabbard breathlessly and wordlessly runs through the Japanese countryside with his young daughter following closely behind as three assassins – introduced in freeze-frame – arrive to inflict what should be mortal wounds. The attacks excise the would-be killer and victim from their backgrounds, placing them on black as bright red spurts forth from the aging relic’s body in slomotion. The samurai wails in pain, the girl heals him with a special herb, and it all happens again.

This prologue quickly instills a fear that the rest will end up a long and arduous journey...

Hitoshi Matsumoto (Symbol, Dai-Nipponjin) is back! The man made only two films prior to Saya-Zamurai, but he gained instant access to my list of favorite Japanese directors thanks to his excessively dry humor and quirky direction. Matsumoto remained behind the camera for his latest film and toned down the weirdness level a little, but if you are comfortable with his sense of humor there's still heaps and heaps to enjoy here. There's little to none of the weirdness you might have come to expect from Matsumoto's previous films, so people looking for a direct continuation of his earlier work might be somewhat disappointed with this film. Saya-Zamurai draws comparisons to the funnier moments in Kitano's Zatoichi though, while Matsumoto's deadpan humor clearly sets itself apart...

If you liked the down on his luck superhero elements of the Will Smith film Hancock, but weren't as much into the 'gods and love' story that dominated the second half, you should give some attention to Big Man Japan. That is Hitoshi Matsumoto's 2007 Japanese mock documentary about a guy who can grow to gigantic size and fight monsters, but has to deal with a sagging public image. (It was released in Japan as Dainipponjin.) Big Man Japan is weird fun, full of goofy CGI, and has one of the most batshit crazy endings I've seen in some time. (The end really plays with the film's intentional similarity to Ultraman, and given that the rest of the film has things like a giant monster with an eye-tipped penis tentacle, the fact that the end stands out as really crazy should tell you something.) So, naturally, an American studio is...