DVD/Blu-ray Review: The Woodsman And The Rain – A Film By Shuichi Okita

A gentle story of a local woodsman who forms a friendship with a young director of a zombie film!

In The Woodsman and the Rain (Kitsutsuki to Ame), 60 year-old lumberjack Katsu (Koji Yakusho) is about to undergo a life changing experience, but is at first reluctant to have his run of the mill life interrupted by a film crew that arrives in his hometown to shoot a zombie movie.

Director Shuichi Okita (The Chef of South Polar, City Boys’ Film Noir) shows the normal everyday life of a woodcutter, Katsu and how it changes when he is asked to help out the young withdrawn director, Koichi (Shun Oguri) by assisting with location scouting since he is a local and knows the

DVD Review: Hara-kiri: Death Of A Samurai – A Film By Takashi Miike

An epically beautiful film!

Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer) follows up his martial-arts-heavy 13 Assassins with a more thoughtful, contemplative film that considers the role of ritual suicide in the ranks of the Samurai in 17^th Century Japan. Hara-Kiri: Death of A Samurai, a remake of the Yasuhiko Takiguchi 1963 classic,  is told in most part by two long flashbacks, the movie tells the tale of a young unemployed samurai, Motome Chijiiwa (Eita), who is forced to commit ritual suicide by cutting open his stomach (seppuku) as punishment for