88% (2)  Boy  97 min,  [Drama]  [Nagisa Ôshima]  [09 Apr 1970]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 76%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 100%,   External Reviews
Awards:  3 wins.
Actors:  Akiko Koyama, Fumio Watanabe, Tetsuo Abe, Tsuyoshi Kinoshita
Writer:  Tsutomu Tamura (screenplay)
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  Japanese    Country:  Japan
Plot:  A couple Takeo Omura and Takeko Kaniguchi travel across Japan with their two sons, the eldest, Toshio, who is biologically his but not hers. They are con artists, whose scam is for her to jump alongside moving vehicles feigning being hit and injured, while he, playing the outraged husband, negotiates with the worried driver for an unofficial cash settlement in return for not calling the police reporting the motorist's "guilt". She often does sustain minor injuries from the ruse. She believes that they will continue doing this work until they have enough money to settle down in one place, where he will get a legitimate job. However, he wants to continue the scam indefinitely as he, a veteran, claims that injuries he sustained during the war would prevent him from obtaining that legitimate work. When Toshio reaches age ten in 1966, they enlist him in the con, he now playing the accident victim, with Takeko now playing the concerned mother role. They even manufacture real bruises on Toshio to make the scam more convincing. Like his stepmother before him, Toshio increasingly gets real injuries doing this work. This work takes its toll on their already dysfunctional family, that dysfunction which includes lies, and physical and emotional abuse by both Takeko but most specifically Takeo. That increasing dysfunction is also due to the fact that Takeko learns that she's pregnant again. She wants to keep the baby if only because it will force them to settle down, while he wants her to abort the pregnancy. Toshio has no true perspective of love or life, he only knowing that they need money to live, this work which is the only way he knows to obtain money. He does begin to get a sense that what they are doing is wrong when he witnesses a boy only slightly older than him being extorted for money from older bullies. As an emotional escape, Toshio often thinks about running away, which may not be difficult as his parents allow him free reign while they deal with their own priorities. Toshio also immerses him and his younger brother in a fantasy world where he is an alien from the Andromeda nebula come to Earth to kill all the evildoers of the world.
Rotten Tomatoes:   A family of four lives off of scams in which they pretend to be injured by automobiles. After suffering an injury during the war, the father believes he is an invalid. He and his wife have a 10-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl. The adults pretend to be injured by autos in crowded traffic, blackmailing the fearful motorists with threats to call in the police. When the mother becomes pregnant, the young boy is called on to participate in the schemes. The wife promises her husband she will get an abortion but soon changes her mind without telling him. One motorist welcomes police intervention after an incident, frightening the father that his scam will be exposed. They live in separate hotels until the coast is clear, but the young boy is questioned by police. He maintains his silence as he fears his family will be put in jail in this symbolic drama. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi
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80% (2)  Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance  83 min,  Not Rated,  [Action, Adventure]  [Kenji Misumi]  [23 Aug 1973]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 79%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 82%,   External Reviews
Actors:  Fumio Watanabe, Gô Katô, Tomisaburô Wakayama, Tomoko Mayama
Writer:  Kazuo Koike (manga), Goseki Kojima (manga), Kazuo Koike (screenplay), Kazuo Koike (story), Goseki Kojima (story)
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  Japanese    Country:  Japan
Plot:  In this first film of the Lone Wolf and Cub series, adapted from the manga by Kazuo Koike, we are told the story of the Lone Wolf and Cub's origin. Ogami Itto, the official Shogunate executioner, has been framed for disloyalty to the Shogunate by the Yagyu clan, against whom he now is waging a one-man war, along with his infant son, Daigoro.
Rotten Tomatoes:   The first in a series of six films based on the long-running manga concerns Ogami Itto (Tomisaburo Wakayama), a shogun's executioner who is framed by the Yagyu clan and forced into exile as a wandering assassin for hire. After the killing of his wife by the Yagyus, Ogami gives his young son Daigoro the choice between instant death (a ball) and the life of the ronin (a sword). As the child reaches for the sword, father and son's fate is sealed to a life of violence and tragedy. Wheeling Daigoro through the countryside in a baby cart rigged with deadly weapons, Ogami comes to a town held hostage by brigands, where he is to stop a planned assassination. The final duel between Ogami and the Yagyu man at dawn is exhilarating and beautifully filmed. Although extremely violent and gore-drenched, the series remains highly stylized and remarkably intelligent. The first two episodes of the series were edited together and released in the U.S. as Shogun Assassin. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
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75% (2)  The Street Fighter  91 min,  X,  [Action, Crime, Thriller]  [Shigehiro Ozawa]  [01 Nov 1974]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 71%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 80%,   External Reviews
Actors:  Etsuko Shiomi, Fumio Watanabe, Goichi Yamada, Shin'ichi Chiba, Yutaka Nakajima
Writer:  Steve Autrey (english version), Kôji Takada (screenplay), Motohiro Torii (screenplay)
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  Japanese    Country:  Japan
Plot:  Terry is a tough, mercenary, master of martial arts. When an important business magnate dies, leaving billions to his daughter, the Mafia and Yakuza try to hire Terry to kidnap the daughter. When they refuse to meet his exorbitant price, then try to kill him to conceal their secret plans, he promptly offers his services to protect her. Much ultra-violent martial-arts fighting action, as expected, ensues. This also includes a subplot of a family's bloodfeud with Terry over a disputed debt.
Rotten Tomatoes:   While most martial arts films focus mainly on showing the moves, strikes and blows of the combatants, they don't show the logical consequences of these battles in any detail. The Streetfighter does, and it won an "X" rating for violence when it was released to the U.S. in 1975. This cult film and its three sequels are thought to be particular favorites of American director Quentin Tarantino. Sonny Chiba stars as Terry, a mercenary hired by the Yakuza and Mafia to kidnap a wealthy heiress. The mobs refuse to pay his large fee for the job, and he immediately changes sides. Much of the violent and gory action takes place aboard an oil tanker; though injured, Terry still takes out at least half of his many opponents.
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77% (1)  Death by Hanging  117 min,  [Comedy, Crime, Drama]  [Nagisa Ôshima]  [08 Dec 1971]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 77%,   External Reviews
Awards:  1 win.
Actors:  Do-yun Yu, Fumio Watanabe, Hôsei Komatsu, Kei Satô
Writer:  Michinori Fukao, Mamoru Sasaki, Tsutomu Tamura, Nagisa Ôshima
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  Japanese    Country:  Japan
Plot:  A Korean man is sentenced to death by hanging, but he survives the execution. For the following two hours, his executioners try to work out how to handle the situation in this black farce.
Rotten Tomatoes:   This sad tale, based on a true story of a Japanese-born Korean student who raped and killed two girls in 1958 and was then hanged in 1963 when he reached maturity, is turned by director Nagisa Oshima into a black farce reminiscent of the darkly satirical, anti-authoritarian films of Luis Buñuel. The film opens with the hanging of the criminal, but the noose fails to kill him. Instead he gets amnesia, and the executioners and officials reenact the crime, hoping to jog his memory and prove that he is guilty. Soon they begin to identify with their roles, and the line blurs between the crime and its reenactment. The film ends as a bitter indictment of Japanese nationalism, capital punishment, and Japanese institutional prejudice against Koreans. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi
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71% (1)  Night and Fog in Japan  107 min,  [Drama]  [Nagisa Ôshima]  [09 Jan 1985]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 71%,   External Reviews
Awards:  1 win.
Actors:  Fumio Watanabe, Hiroshi Akutagawa, Masahiko Tsugawa, Miyuki Kuwano
Writer:  Toshirô Ishidô, Nagisa Ôshima
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  Japanese    Country:  Japan
Plot:  Long takes and a highly theatrical visual approach combine to form a tense and confrontational look at the decline of a socialist student activists' movement in Japan.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Widely regarded as the most personal of director Nagisa Oshima's three 1960 films, Night and Fog in Japan centers around a gathering of former student activists, all of which protested the signing of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. Preferring to let go of the past, the old protestors had regrouped for a mutual friend's marriage, and maintained a peaceful atmosphere until the last of their old companions arrives and immediately begins hurling accusations. Now a fugitive, the party crasher denounces the party as a charade and claims that those in attendance betrayed their own ideals in exchange for personal security. Before long, all pretenses of a happy reunion are thrown aside, and the marriage is reduced to an all-out brawl. Oshima himself was once a student protestor, and the film served as an open display of his disappointment with Japan's left-wing political movement meant to illustrate how those who once united in hopes of making a positive chance in Japanese society have denigrated into bickering, weak-minded versions of their former selves. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi
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