It’s tough enough adapting a stage play into a movie at the best of times, but when it is set in a different culture and language it’s a hard one to pull off for a mainstream audience to get behind and enjoy. Writer/director Kenji Yamauchi’s movie At The Terrace, which seems the nearest thing to … Continue reading
When it comes to sexually explicit movies there is often a fine line between art and pornography, and in Berlin Drifters, director Kôichi Imaizumi crosses it back and forth throughout the movie. This tale of two Japanese gay men who are essentially trying to find their own very different ways in Berlin is told through a whole … Continue reading
One of the most surprising facts to come out of first time filmmaker Itako’s intriguing documentary about the whole culture of young Japanese rent boys, is that they were also so relatively normal and matter-a-fact about their profession that they had all chosen as an easy way to make money. Most of the 10 boys … Continue reading
Japanese writer/director Naoko Ogigami’s latest movie is a delightfully sensitive family story that puts a refreshing slant on the continuing dialogue about the transgender community that is the focus of more and more films these days. 11-year-old Tomo (an enchanting and rather sanguine Rin Kakihara) has a single-parent mother who has a habit of suddenly … Continue reading
This Eden is hardly the biblical ‘Garden of God’ but a small tacky Bar in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district where some very enthusiastic but totally untalented Drag Queens put on Shows. The opening scenes of the movie are in the Bar where Miro the frustrated Choreographer is trying to put this clumsy set of performers through … Continue reading