Takeshi Kitano
Here’s an ice-cold take: movies nowadays are too damn long. Obviously, this is all relative;…
In Kids Return, the warmth of Kitano’s brand of brotherhood glows on the palate long after the acidity of his cynicism has subsided.
Sonatine, Takeshi Kitano’s riff off the Yakuza genre, helped him gain an audience outside of his native Japan. Read our review to learn more.
Japanese cinema has a distinctive style that has been consistent since the days of silent film, when directors where drawing from classic kabuki theater to inform their burgeoning filming style. That is not to say that there’s anything limiting about a cultural pattern in Japanese cinema, seeing as they have given the film world anime, jidaigeki, yakuza, cyberpunk and multiple other notable sub-genres. One recognizable aspect of Japanese cinema is the use of seasons in certain films:
Nowadays it’s fair to say “gangster films” are in a league of their own, no longer thought of as sub-genre of the action film. Thus freeing them to operate on an entirely new frequency in the model created by earlier classics such as The Godfather or Goodfellas. These movies are indeed classic but have you ever thought about organized crime outside of the United States?