focus on Japanese language films

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A Scene at the Sea Shigeru (Maki), a hearing-impaired sanitation worker, finds a broken surf board in a pile of garbage. He decides to mend the board and hit the beach. Shigeru anxiously attempts to catch a wave, unaware of the local's heckles and laughter. With the help of his girlfriend Takako (bearing the same hearing impairment), a local surf shop owner…    more      A Snake Of June From Japanese cult director Shinya Tsukamoto (TETSUO: THE IRON MAN) comes A SNAKE OF JUNE (ROKUGATSU NO HEBI). Tsukamoto continues exploring the themes he set up in TETSUO and other works--extreme alienation from both self and other, the changing relationship between man and machine, and the body as the site where these problems are worked…    more      A2 This chilling, fascinating documentary is the follow-up to Japanese director Tatsuya Mori's film A, about the poison gas attack by the Aum Shinrikyo cult on the Tokyo subways that killed hundreds of civilians. In A2, a more expansive but equally thoughtful and provocative film, Mori focuses on the trial of the Aum leader Shoko Asahara…    more      All About Lily Chou-Chou Ah, to be young again and experience anew the horror show that is youth. In Shunji Iwai's ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU there is nothing redeeming about the adolescent years. It's an out-and-out war among teen peers. If viewers were shocked at the frank depiction of sexuality and violence in Larry Clark's KIDS, then they'll flip over LILY…    more      Audition AUDITION is an art-house cult horror film that will be talked about for a long time to come. Ryo Ishibashi stars as Aoyama, a single father who has not dated since his wife died seven years earlier. To help find another woman to bring joy into Aoyama's charmless life, his best friend, television producer Yoshikawa, convinces Aoyama that…    more      Bloody Territories BLOODY TERRITORIES is another action-packed, blood-soaked tale from cult director Yasuharu Hasebe. Set in the murky underworld of late-1960s Tokyo, the film begins as the police force an influential yakuza into breaking up. One group refuses to be deterred, however, and embarks on a dangerous mission to take full control of Tokyo's illegal…    more