Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (Japan, 1981)

A teenage delinquent schoolgirl named Izumi Hoshi inherits her father's Yakuza clan.

Sailor Suit sounds like it could be a slapstick comedy but the film is way more serious than you'd think, and while there's of course some comedic elements we're given an honest portrayal of what it would be if a young school girl suddenly had to take control over a Yakuza clan. It's an early example of how a huge pop idol also became a massively popular actress, due to how singer Hiroko Yakushimaru plays the lead role. 

Many cool scenes, a great balance between violence and Japanese quirkiness and a fantastic ride through 1980's Tokyo, Sailor Suit is a time capsule full of Yakuza satire.

Genre: Action/Romance

Hiroshima Mon Amour (France/Japan, 1959)

A French woman and a Japanese man have an affair while she is in Japan making a film about peace and the impact of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, The man, an architect, lost his family in the bombing. She recalls her lover during the war, a 23 year-old German soldier who later died. Despite the time they spend together, her attachment appears minimal and they go forward into the future.

Given that I have a seemingly insatiable fascination and interest in the atomic bombings during WWII, Hiroshima Mon Amour feels like one of the essential classics. The film pioneered the idea of having flashbacks to create a nonlinear storyline, and when we're taken back to the destruction and burning fields of Hiroshima it's done with stark realism and nothing sugar coated. It's also wild to see the place a couple of years after the explosion in scenes taking place around the wounded city. 

Genre: Drama/Romance

Vengeance Is Mine (Japan, 1979)

Iwao Enokizu is a middle-aged man who has an unexplainable urge to commit insane and violent murders. Eventually he is chased by the police all over Japan, but somehow he always manages to escape. He meets a woman who runs a brothel. They love each other but how long can they be together?

As a big fan of Shohei Imamura (Black Rain), seeing him tackling the story of a real life serial killer was a no brainer. It's not exactly for the faint of heart due to the grisly acts of rape and violence toward women, and it can be a bit draining. If you've seen a film about Ted Bundy, this has some of that same style of following a psychopath and being horrified by the fact that people like this can exist anywhere, and on the outside they look just like anyone else. 

Genre: Crime/Drama

The Neighbour No. 13 (Japan, 2005)

Jûzô Murasaki is a boy miscast in his classroom, being frequently abused, tortured, beaten and humiliated by the bully Tôru Akai and his gang of juvenile punks. After years of repression, rejection and fear without facing Akai, he develops a psychopathic dual personality with a violent alter-ego. While living in the apartment 13 of a tenement building, he becomes unable to control his violent dark personality, who plots an evil revenge.

Based on a manga, The Neighbour No. 13 serves us a mysterious case of underdog turned villain. An interesting story which grabs you right off the bat though it looses some steam and some later scenes starts to drag, even so, it's a story of revenge that you'll want to finish and maybe question who you want to see come out on top. Not too bloody but rather spooky due to the hidden, unreliable and unpredictable dark side of Murasaki.

Genre: Horror/Thriller

Late Autumn (Japan, 1960)

Family and friends of the late Shuzo Miwa have gathered for his annual memorial service, this one marking the seventh anniversary of his passing. Three of his long time friends - married Shuzo Taguchi, married Soichi Mamiya, and widowed Seiichiro Hirayama - have long known and admitted to each other that they have always been attracted to his widow, Akiko Miwa, who they believe has gotten even more beautiful as she has matured. The three friends take it upon themselves to find a husband for the Miwa's now twenty-four year old daughter, Ayako Miwa, who they believe as beautiful as her mother, and who, as a pure innocent, deserves a good husband. 

I will try not to write a whole speech proclaiming how perfectly Yasujiro Ozu composes his shots or how his color system of choice makes characters and carefully placed objects glow, but instead be thankful for the wealth of movies he gave us. Late Autumn has that grainy yet incredibly defined and mesmerizing colorization, much like Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), and here it blends together with Ozu's tranquil film style very naturally. I guess the visuals overshadows the plot, though it's not disappointing by any stretch. Definitely a film one should go through when the Akira Kurosawa filmography has been exhausted and Ozu is next in line. 

Genre: Drama

The Third Wife (Vietnam, 2018)

In 19th century rural Vietnam, fourteen-year-old May is ready to become the third wife of a wealthy landowner. Little does she know that her hidden desires will take her by surprise and force her to make a choice between living in safety and being free.

The Third Wife marks an amazing debut by director Ash Mayfair, who for 4 months lived in a rural village in preparation for the film and to get all the customs and details right. Ash commands the camera with great confidence and you could never have thought that this is her first feature film, but she perfectly blends a disturbing tale of underage marriage with the beautiful countryside of Vietnam. The tempo is consistently composed, yet the emotional waves inside of young May are growing higher and higher. 

By some it would be considered art-house, but I hope that term doesn't scare away people from experiencing a film which is in the vein of Tran Anh Hung (Cyclo).

Genre: Drama

Serpent's Path & Eyes of the Spider (Japan, 1998)

Who knew that in 1998, we got a Japanese precursor to Park Chan-wook's Vengeance-trilogy, only this time it's a duo. 

Both directed in the same year by everyone's (you horror connoisseur's out there) favorite Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and both dealing with the ever returning, never-dying theme of revenge. I mentioned Chan-wook because Serpent's Path especially feels like a huge inspiration for his Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005), only here we got a much higher body count. Serpent and Spider very much goes hand in hand, sharing some of the same actors and how they deal with the possibility of being able to exact pain on those who've ruined your life, and in some instances it gets way darker than Chan-wook's films. 

The two stories are also like different branches on the same tree, where in Spider a man discovers a darker side of himself after exacting revenge on his daughter's killer, and in Serpent a man enlists a friend to help him identify and exact revenge upon his daughter's murderer. Kurosawa manages to juggle the films plot elements not to close to each other and finds their own personalities with ease, the only thing the viewer know is that someone is going to pay for a heinous crime.

Genre: Drama/Crime

Daughter of the Nile (Taiwan, 1987)

The eldest daughter of a broken and troubled family works to keep the family together and look after her younger siblings, who are slipping into a life of crime.

Watching a film by Hou Hsiao-hsien (Café Lumière, The Assassin) is like opening a bottle of Taiwan's finest movie magic. His restrained and subtle way of shooting scenes feels like a must-have in our contemporary cinematic hell of exaggerated editing, simplified storytelling and dumbed down characters for the masses. Daughter of the Nile spoils us with a beautiful portrayal of life in 1980's Taipei's neon-soaked street-corners and crowded bars. We get to see just how close the danger lies even to those who should be far from it. 

Hou is a big name in Asian film circles, but I'm certain that if he would have been a western filmmaker his films would make a much larger splash and be acclaimed by a much larger audience. Now they sort of lives on as an old reminder of how Taiwan made films in ways critics praise directors for in modern times.

Genre: Crime/Drama