Kōji Yakusho
Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest film The Third Murder is a complex, rewarding legal thriller that is a notable departure from his usual humanist approach to character studies.
Oh Lucy! is an inventive and poignant story that’s remarkably relatable, touching on loneliness and the sometimes outrageous lengths one will go to to escape the world and discover one’s own happiness.
To try and properly describe The World of Kanako is quite a tough feat. So far I have a mix of the youth-filled slaughter of Battle Royale, the rapid-fire non-linear editing of John Boorman’s Point Blank, and the grittiness of Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, smashed together in a blood soaked blender and left to sit in the sun. The World of Kanako is a brutal, convoluted and pop-culture infused neo-noir which punctures a bandage-wrapped fist in the face of decency in delivering its twisted story.