“Battle Royale and Japanese Nationalism”

This Japanese Life provides some historical context for Kinji Fukasaku’s film, Battle Royale–including an incident from Fukasaku‘s own life as a student drafted into a munitions factory, writer Yukio Mishima and the Hagakure: “Since the film deliberately omits much of the novel’s WW2-inspired alternative reality, I look at Kitano […]

“Sometimes It Doesn’t Get Better”

In discussing Astron-6’s horror movie, Father’s Day, Dave Pace notes that what seems to make viewers uncomfortable is not the violence but the nudity, the male nudity.  “What I don’t understand is the uncomfortable shifting around and the outright revulsion you will hear for the scenes where you […]