Japanese
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Boys For Sale
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…
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Close Knit
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…
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Funeral Parade of Roses
This is a re-issue of the seminal edgy Japanese arthouse movie from 1969 that for a very long time was unavailable in the U.S. even though is was one of major influence for Stanley Kubrick when he made A Clockwork Orange. It is very loosely based on the ancient Greek legend of Oedipus (the…
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At The Terrace
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…
