Project A-ko is one of the most unusual anime offerings of all time. Originally conceived as an episode of the hentai series Cream Lemon, it changed direction during production into a comedy that riffs on any number of anime conventions in general – giant robots, questing aliens, and schoolgirl heroines – and lampoons a number of specific titles to boot. [...]

We don’t often get an opportunity to compare the US and Asian releases of a Hong Kong flick, but fortunately, we were able to snag an import copy of the all-region Tai Seng DVD of Johnny To’s 1993 The Heroic Trio before it went out of print (and before Miramax acquired the US rights to the film, rendering import purchases [...]

Editor’s Note: This entry completes our trio of retro reviews, but we hope to have a brand new one of The Host coming your way soon. – Mazinga The way of the Yakuza is to wear red clothes or white. Avant-garde Japanese director Seijun Suzuki has earned a reputation for injecting his trademark unconventional style into even the genre films [...]

Few directors boast a resume as varied and long as the late Kinji Fukusaku. Known primarily in the U.S. for one of his last films, Battle Royale (2000), Fukusaku helmed over sixty films during his 42-year career. Among them are a fair amount of yakuza films; Fukusaku is remembered primarily as a staunch anti-authoritarian, and many of his films display [...]

Editor’s note: Since Musashi brought it up, we’re reposting reviews from our previous incarnation, Destroy All Monsters, of a couple of the flicks he mentioned.  We’re kicking things off with Masahiro Shinoda’s Pale Flower. — Mazinga ‘Nihilism’ is a word that comes up a lot with regards to Masahiro Shinoda’s Pale Flower…fittingly so. The vast majority of yakuza film play [...]

Sometimes a movie is a lot like popcorn – light, fluffy, and not very filling, but tasty enough to be enjoyable. The 1999 Hong Kong action flick Gen-X Cops is one such film. While by no means a cinematic masterpiece, it provides plenty of attitude and action. As might be expected from a film produced by Jackie Chan, Gen-X Cops [...]

Long-time readers will remember (and given the appalling scarcity of my reviews recently, only long-time readers are likely to remember anything of mine) my appreciation for both exploitation flicks and cheapo DVDs – preferably together. Happily, I recently obtained a couple of DVDs for less than $4 each. One, which I plan to review presently, is the awesome 1980s Chuck [...]

[rating:2] <!–[if !mso]> <! st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } –> Every major city has its own collection of unique urban legends; often these myths involve the city’s rarely-seen nether regions. Alligators and giant rats inhabit New York’s sewers; cults meet in the catacombs of Rome and Paris. And in Tokyo’s labyrinthine subway system, ghosts cross the border between our world and the next. [...]

[rating:4] On October 15th and 16th Viz released into theaters the second live-action Death Note movie, following up its May theatrical release of the first film. My review of the second live-action Death Note movie is going to be much like my review of the first. Death Note II: The Last Name is a direct continuation of the first movie, [...]

About midway through Sebastian Gutierrez’ entertaining vampire flick Rise: Blood Hunter, the lead bloodsucker asserts something to the effect of “Sex and murder are the only real pleasures man has left.” But in the world writer/director Gutierrez creates, those are actually the only pleasures left to vampires, much to their cost. They can’t eat food, hold no love for their [...]

A supremely skilled fighter wanders the Earth, like Caine in Kung Fu, looking for the ultimate battle in Death Trance, a rip-snorting action film directed by Yuji Shimomura, action director for Versus, and featuring Versus lead Tak Sakaguchi as action director and leading man. The 2005 film is available on DVD in the United States courtesy Media Blasters. Sakaguchi plays [...]

One of the nice bonuses of 2007’s Quentin Tarantino / Robert Rodriguez tribute to low-rent cinema, Grindhouse, was a flurry of DVD releases of exploitation movies.  One notable set was a batch of “Welcome to the Grindhouse” double feature DVDs by BCI / Eclipse, which offered similarly themed genre pictures along with a “grindhouse experience” of titles and trailers.   [...]

[rating:4] On May 20th and 21st, Cinemark did America a favor and performed a two-night showing of the first live-action Death Note movie. The 2006 film has been floating around in bootleg, Hong Kong (and now official) releases, but this was the first and only time it was shown in an American theater. I probably don’t need to explain the [...]

Centurion sent us another review – this time for the mixed martial-arts flick Redbelt. Gotta admit, I’m really curious about this one – I dig MMA and David Mamet in equal measure, so a David Mamet flick about MMA is right up my alley…and according to Centurion, it’s actually pretty good… So…without further ado…

Our good friend Jason (aka ‘Centurion’ for old-skool Yellow-Menace / Destroy-All-Monsters visitors) sent us this short-but-sweet review of the new Iron Man movie. Much to the surprise of some of my friends, I didn’t read comic books when I was growing up. I watched cartoons like other kids, but I never really got into the whole comic thing. I knew [...]