Director Peter Webber (Girl With the Pearl Earring) has a new project coming up called Emperor that looks at the tension and confusion in Japan immediately after their surrender in World War II. The film will star Lost’s Matthew Fox as a man named General Bonner Fellers (or “boner feeler” as he was doubtless known in his junior high), who served General Douglas MacArthur as his leading expert on all things Japanese. Basically he was the 40s military version of kids that are really into manga and video games. Being the leading expert on Japan was a pretty important role in this particular moment in history, however, as Fellers ended up being the guy who had to decide whether or not Emperor Hirohito should be tried and hanged as a war criminal. That’s some pretty grave stuff, but Fox won’t have to handle the dramatic load alone. THR is reporting that veteran actor Tommy Lee Jones has now signed on to the project to portray General MacArthur. Emperor producer Gary Foster says of the choice, “Tommy will bring strength, intelligence and gravitas to the portrayal of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, a legendary American hero.” Gravitas is a good word to use there. Jones is one of those actors that just lends a certain weight to every role he takes, no matter how ridiculous the movie around him might be. I’m sure his familiar presence will add quite a bit to this historical drama. Hell, at this point he’s practically a legendary [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Sion Sono’s films have never really been aimed at a wide audience, but few directors are as capable as he is of making the ugliest things beautiful. Case in point is his latest film, Guilty of Romance. Izumi is the docile wife of a successful romance novelist who saves all of his energy and emotion for his books and readers. Her entire life is in service to him as her daily duties include making sure his shoes are ready for him at the door and his meals are ready for him at dinnertime. She’s also expected to compliment his naked body even though he’s never interested in sharing it with her in any meaningful way. Seriously, the scene where he shows her his penis, fishing for reassuring words, and then tells her she can touch it if she wants is just awkward and painful to watch. But when she steps out of her normal life to get a job and find her own worth she discovers a deviance she never expected… both outside her home and inside herself. She meets Mitsuko, a professor by day who moonlights as a prostitute, and the two of them descend into a very dark hole together. And that’s not a euphemism. Okay, maybe it is.

The premise of Ben-To is a simple one: being a student is hard, money is tight, and if you want cheap food, you’re going to have to fight for it. The tone seems far less Battle Royale and more Lucky Star, but that’s because a situation where poor students turn to fisticuffs in order to get at discounted food demands to be a broad comedy. Thanks to Twitch, we can share the teaser for the forthcoming Anime series, so check it out for yourself:

Yoshino (Hikari Mitsushima) is lying to her friends, her parents, and herself, and if she’s not careful it just might get her kil– wait, scratch that. Too late. Her friends and family believe she’s dating and in love with the flashy and wealthy Masuo (Masaki Okada), but that’s not the truth. He barely tolerates her pushy and trashy ways but puts up with her strictly for the sex. The other man in her life is Yuichi (Satoshi Tsumabuki), a guy she met online who pays her for sex even as he begins to develop feelings for her. She cancels her plans with Yuichi one night after convincing Masuo to hang out instead, and as the couple drives away a frustrated and angry Yuichi speeds after them. The next day Yoshino is found dead at the bottom of a ravine. What follows is part murder mystery, part love story, and part exploration into the hearts and minds of those left behind. Two men become suspects. A father and a grandmother begin to crumble beneath the weight of crushing guilt. And an impossible romance grows for a couple with little chance of seeing it blossom. Identifying the villain and victim amidst the emotional chaos is never as simple as it seems.

It didn’t take long after the character of Wolverine got added to the X-Men back in 1975’s “Giant Size X-Men #1” for him to take the pop culture world by storm and become one of the most beloved and prolific characters in comic book history. By the time 1982 rolled around, the character was so big that he was ready for his first solo title, and so a Chris Claremont-penned Frank Miller-penciled four issue mini-series was released seeing the character travel to Japan, get engaged to a woman named Mariko, and battle some modern day samurai. That first Wolverine in Japan storyline showed the most human side of the character we had seen yet, and over time it has become pretty seminal. That’s why the upcoming sequel to X-Men Origins: Wolverine, adapted to the screen by The Usual Suspects writer Christopher McQuarrie and simply titled The Wolverine, will be drawing on it heavily for inspiration. But we’ve known all of that for a while. What is the new news on the development of this project? The Wolverine used to be a highly anticipated upcoming film back when Darren Aronofsky was attached to direct, but once he dropped off the hype machine died down quite a bit. The last we heard about it, 3:10 to Yuma director James Mangold was most likely to be stepping into Aronofsky’s shoes, and shooting would most likely begin in fall. That news was met with a collective “meh” from the online world, so we haven’t [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Sawako (Hikari Mitsushima) isn’t quite leading the life she always wanted in Tokyo. She’s been there for five years and like clockwork is on both her fifth job and fifth boyfriend… neither of which she’s all that thrilled about. The job sees her walked over by her male bosses and abused by little kids, and her private life finds her playing second fiddle to her boyfriend’s daughter, Kayoko (Kira Aihara). Her co-workers tell her to leave Kenichi (Masashi Endo), but she thinks she doesn’t really deserve any better. “We’re both lower-middles,” she says. How can she possibly hope for more? Clearly, Sayako is no bundle of sunshine. She gets a call from home letting her know that her father is gravely ill and she’s needed to help with the family business, a freshwater clam packing company. Her impulse is to say no as she left home for a reason, but she reluctantly lets Kenichi talk her into returning home with both him and his rude daughter in tow. Once there she goes to work trying to keep the factory afloat in her father’s absence, but it won’t be easy. If her door-mat attitude wasn’t bad enough she’s also forced to confront townspeople she offended, deal with her boyfriend’s wandering eye, and accept the guilt of her last words to her father those many years ago.

Welcome to the fifth and final installment of Guest Author month at Criterion Files: a month devoted to important classic and contemporary bloggers. This week, David Ehrlich, whose bimonthly column Criterion Corner was a favorite at Cinematical, takes on Paul Schrader’s incredible biopic Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. Tune in next week as Adam Charles returns Criterion Files to its usual rotation, and in the meantime you can take a look at the previous entries from guest contributors here. Infamous Japanese iconoclast Yukio Mishima once said “I still have no way to survive but to keep writing one line, one more line, one more line…,” a sentiment which suggests that his eventual suicide came only once his creative resources had run dry. Yet, as Paul Schrader’s sublime film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters so fluidly illustrates, Mishima ended his life with a self-administered sword thrust to the chest not because he was out of words, but rather because the page had never been a sufficient canvas for his artistic expression, or one to which he had ever intended to confine himself.

Watch enough foreign language movies and you’re bound to develop some (usually incorrect) perception of that particular country’s citizens. Korean people are more likely to kick you than they are to smile. French folks will cheat on each other at the drop of a pastry. There are no schools for acting in Thailand. You get the idea. Japanese films are no different and in fact offer up more than one assumption about the culture. And no, they don’t all have to do with lactation or the enticing aroma of girls’ underwear. Some are about the overwhelming fear that Japanese society appears to have towards its own children. The youth of the nation are alternately dangerous to others (Battle Royale) or to themselves (Suicide Club), but the one constant is the complete lack of connection or understanding the adults have for their teenage counterparts. It’s an intriguing idea and one writer/director Tetsuya Nakashima (Kamikaze Girls) has decided to embrace with his latest movie, Confessions. His film is far more subtle than those mentioned above, but no less dangerous or dark, and he melds it seamlessly with another popular theme in Asian cinema…

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

Great movies come from all around the world, and so do great DVDs and Blu-rays. Import This! is an irregular feature here at FSR that highlights discs and/or movies unavailable in the US that are worth seeking out for fans of fantastic cinema. We’ll cover movies both foreign and domestic, new and old, and while some discs will require region-free players others will play on any DVD or Blu-ray machine. The one thing they’ll all have in common is their status as damn fine films and/or solid entertainment currently unavailable in the US but well worth importing into your collection. It’s 2012 and Roland Emmerich and the Mayans are screaming “told ya so!’ at the top of their lungs to anyone who’ll listen. Why? Because a large comet is heading towards Earth, and it’s mere hours away from impact. A lone electric wheelchair moves silently through empty city streets until its driver spots the only other sign of life… an open record store. Inside are two men talking music as the world is about to end. In particular they’re discussing a long-forgotten punk band called Gekirin and their song “Fish Story.” A song that just may save the world… Read on after the jump for more reasons that make this disc and movie worth importing…

The seventh annual Another Hole In the Head Film Festival is currently running in San Francisco from July 8th through the 29th. It’s a genre fest featuring domestic and international horror, sci-fi, and exploitation films, and it just may be the first and last chance to see some of these on the big-screen. There are thirty-two films at the fest this year, and we’re trying to see and cover as many as possible. (And by we I mean me…) Grotesque – directed by Koji Shiraishi, Japan; upcoming screenings 7/16 5pm, 7/18 7pm, 7/22 5pm Synopsis: A physician in serious risk of breaking his Hippocratic oath kidnaps a young couple and proceeds to torture them physically, sexually, and emotionally. No, really. That’s pretty much it. Check out our review after the jump…

The seventh annual Another Hole In the Head Film Festival is currently running in San Francisco from July 8th through the 29th. It’s a genre fest featuring domestic and international horror, sci-fi, and exploitation films, and it just may be the first and last chance to see some of these on the big-screen. There are thirty-two films at the fest this year, and we’re trying to see and cover as many as possible. (And by we I mean me…) Death Kappa – directed by Tomo Haraguchi, Japan; upcoming screenings 7/17 7pm, 7/29 7pm Synopsis: Who’s up for a giant monster movie? And by giant monster of course I mean old school style with a man in a suit trashing his way slowly through a miniature set… but let’s rewind. A young woman returns to her home town just in time to witness a car full of drunken punks run down her grandmother. As if that’s not bad enough the fools also knock the town’s Kappa shrine into the water. (What’s a Kappa? It’s a cucumber-loving goblin with a turtle shell, a beak, and a bald plate on his head. Oh, and they love sumo wrestling.) Unsurprisingly, this brings the Kappa to life, and after a brief detour into violence to dismember the punks the Kappa settles in for some singling and dancing with our heroine. Until a mad scientist’s granddaughter shows up with her plan to create an army of half fish/half human super soldiers and inadvertently detonates an atomic [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

The seventh annual Another Hole In the Head Film Festival is currently running in San Francisco from July 8th through the 29th. It’s a genre fest featuring domestic and international horror, sci-fi, and exploitation films, and it just may be the first and last chance to see some of these on the big-screen. There are thirty-two films at the fest this year, and we’re trying to see and cover as many as possible. (And by we I mean me…) Samurai Princess – directed by Kengo Kaji, Japan; upcoming screenings 7/15 5pm Synopsis: Tokyo Gore Police screenwriter Kengo Kaji makes his directorial debut with this tale of samurais, androids, and body modification gone awry. A mad scientist (as if there’s any other kind) is harvesting bodies for parts and organs used to create fighting machines designed for slaughter. A disgraced monk fights fire with fire mechanized flesh with mechanized flesh and designs his own superior samurai in the body of a Japanese porn star. As an extra bit of oomph he infuses his creation with the souls of eleven women who had been raped and murdered to help make this particular samurai princess a vehicle bent on revenge. Of course, just because your primary goal is retribution doesn’t mean you can’t take time for a long, slow, naked, flesh-filled sex scene. Right? Check out our review after the jump…

The seventh annual Another Hole In the Head Film Festival is currently running in San Francisco from July 8th through the 29th. It’s a genre fest featuring domestic and international horror, sci-fi, and exploitation films, and it just may be the first and last chance to see some of these on the big-screen. There are thirty-two films at the fest this year, and we’re trying to see and cover as many as possible. (And by we I mean me…) Alien vs Ninja – directed by Seija Chiba, Japan; upcoming screenings 7/21 5pm, 7/25 7pm, 7/28 5pm Synopsis: Ninjas battle in feudal Japan (or at least what appears to be feudal Japan), but a fireball across the sky signals the arrival of a much more dangerous enemy. An alien creature has arrived and he’s hungry… for sushi! See, they’re uncooked Japanese people. Anyway, humanity’s future rests on the skills of the Ultra Ninja gang, but they’ve never faced a foe like this before. Check out our review after the jump…

By making it all the way to the Final Four, these films have proven their supremacy, but only one can survive through to the Championship for a chance at eternal glory (that comes around every four years). Spirited Away is already coming into the round as the giant slayer by taking down Return of the King, but City of God took down a favorite of its own in Pan’s Labyrinth. Two underdogs that have proven victorious. Now, one of them has to go home before the big dance. Who will it be?

After the bout between Amelie and The Dark Knight, the most anticipated fight of this round is without a doubt Spirited Away and Return of the King. Both have huge followings, both are critically acclaimed, and both are truly brilliant works of art. The experts are stumped as to what will be the magic bullet in choosing one film over the other, except the fanboy aspect that remains loyal to Middle Earth. However, there’s also a fanboy aspect that remains loyal to Miyazaki. Going in, it’s anyone’s game.

In what might be my favorite pairing of the entire tournament just for the sheer double feature potential, the legendary Miyazaki sees his masterpiece Spirited Away boldly represent Japan against the iconic Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier and his Antichrist. Child-like wonder and abject terror. A perfect pairing. Chaos reigned over the cult gross-out of Human Centipede and the spirit-filled animated adventure beat the lesser-known film Moolaade, but both films actually have a fight this round. Let’s see what happens.

As if to mimic the soccer world, Cameroon is heavily out-gunned here in the Movie World Cup. Miyazaki’s Spirited Away is beloved the world around and considered a modern classic, but Moolaade is a truly great film in its own right. It will be difficult for it to pull out a victory, but it should be sought out and seen nevertheless.

Thanks to the Fantastic Fest at Midnight slate of films at this year’s SxSW, greatest idea the festival has ever had by the way, I was able to see a Japanese vampire film called Higanjima. Would it be another title from the far east that struck my fancy, or would this vampire film just plain suck? Rimshots upon request.

This week’s film features two Japanese teenage girls who meet, get physical, and eventually develop strong feelings for each other. And just like that, I’ve succeeded at giving those of you who know me a wholly incorrect representation of the movie.