Seijun Suzuki’s Branded to Kill is not your typical gangster film, nor is it your typical anything. This 1967 film is not just a crime thriller – though it does feature the yakuza and a variety of hitmen – it’s more a fever dream where the boundaries between reality and fantasy blur, creating a cinematic…
Tokyo Drifter (1966) – Review
Planning a career change can be tough, but it’s even tougher when your previous career was that of a yakuza hitman. With Tokyo Drifter, director Seijun Suzuki tackles this fun topic with a vibrant explosion of style and chaos, in a cinematic fever dream that eschews conventional narrative in favour of visual panache.
Black Tight Killers (1966) – Review
If you want proof that the 1960s were a weird and wonderful time, look no further than Yasuharu Hasebe’s Black Tight Killers, a dazzling slice of Japanese cinema that oozes with the stylish excesses of that era. This film is a fever dream of pop art visuals, jarring violence and quirky humour, all set against…
Xanadu (1980) – Review
With financial musical flops like Doctor Doolittle, Camelot and Hello, Dolly! losing millions at the box office, studios became wary of green-lighting more of the same, but then along came a smash hit called Grease, starring Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta. It must have seemed like a great idea to cast Olivia in another musical,…
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990-1993) – Review
In 1984, comic book authors Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird took their love of the superhero genre and gave it a nice, humorous spin on things, borrowing liberally from Daredevil and the Uncanny X-Men while adding the comic tradition of utilizing anthropomorphic animals such as Howard the Duck to provide a nice element of parody….