Pasha's Film Reviews Etc.

T he Christmas come and gone, but there’s a way to prolong the atmosphere. Here’s my 5 favourite Christmas themed horror films that will plunge you into the dark world of Santa impersonators, dark carols and blood on snow. 5. BLACK CHRISTMAS (2006 remake) The original BLACK CHRISTMAS of 1974 predated HALLOWEEN by four years and was officially the first movie featuring a prank calls killer. There were so many of those in the years to come! But here I wanted to talk about the 2006 remake,a flim with cheesy gory fun, inventive kills, dumb victims and a killer twist! The plot is simple – several hot female students are haunted and being dispatched one by one by a killer called Billy who had killed and ate (!!!) his mother many years ago on Christmas Day. Now he has escaped the mental hospital and is back to his old tricks. Crawling between the walls he relentlessly stalks his victims and in his imagination, by killing them, he turns them into the members of his future fami...

6/10 Here is an unusual love story. Misako is a film interpreter, who writes a visual description for visually impaired moviegoers. Masaya is a famous photographer whose sight has almost completely deteriorated. She is an artist, he is a critic. When their personalities collide something special is born. The director Naomi Kawase has excelled at making documentaries, and her latest film RADIANCE, whilst being fiction, has adopted the documentary style. The ever shaking camera struggles to find focus, but it is a perfect approach to the story about visually impaired people. By the end of the film you get a little taste of what it’s like to not be able to see the world clearly or even see it at all. The story is slow and the dialogue is minimalistic, apart from the scenes where the visually impaired viewers criticize Misako’s work, and when she and Masaya go head to head over scene interpretations. The romantic plot unfolds naturally and the chemistry between the ch...

  6/10 Kokone lives parallel lives. When she is awake she is a high school student, who is getting ready for her exams and making the next big step in her life. When she  is asleep she is a magical princess, Ancien, who can make any wish come true by typing them into her magical tablet. When these two worlds collide, family secrets are revealed and the past comes knocking at her door.   Kokone has to reconcile her two worlds, and find the place where she truly belongs. This is first feature length theatrical film of Kenji Kamiyama, who came from directing many TV anime, his previous works being Ghost in the Shell and Eden of the East. He worked as a character designer for many projects, and has a unique, recognisable style. His storytelling, however, can be confusing for the unprepared. In a long running series there is plenty of time to fill in the gaps, in a single feature things unexplained can create confusion. Switching between the real...

9/10 A suspect in a double homicide is on the run. Police knows his identity, but it seems the man they are looking for has undergone extensive facial surgery and has changed his name. With the storytelling split between three suspects we get a charismatic hitchhiker, a dock worker and a gay man, all with mysterious pasts… but the story is not about them, it's about people beside them. Three tales of love, suspicion and mistrust. And murder, of course. Based on a successful novel, RAGE is a perfectly structured piece of work. The only connection between the three sets of characters is the murder we are introduced to in the beginning. There is a father played by Ken Watanabe, who will do anything to save his daughter from her shameful past, but can any man truly love her unless he has something to hide? A successful businessman hiding his gay persona  is reluctant to fall seriously  in love, but when a mysterious stranger comes along he struggles with trust issu...

8/10 Tanaka and Mitsuko are brother and sister who are trying to reconcile their terrible past. When Mitsuko is imprisoned for neglecting her baby daughter, Tanaka throws himself into the investigation of a terrifying murder case. A family of three has been slaughtered a year ago and the culprit is still at large. Interviewing one person after another, looking for a hidden clue that could be a motive for the murder, Tanaka slowly but gradually approaches the terrifying truth... TRACES OF SIN is a labyrinthine movie that examines many characters who represent many levels of the social ladder in Japanese society. Focusing on the lives of the outcasts and the choices they have to make to adapt, the story slowly unravels the motives behind the crime, leading to some spectacular revelations.  There could have been much gore in the film, but the filmmakers have chosen to “tell” rather than “to show”, focusing on the characters’ emotions instead. This creates far more u...