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‘Yakuza Apocalypse’ Movie Review – is the greatest yakuza vampire movie ever made

Yakuza Apocalypse is the greatest yakuza vampire movie ever made. It also appears to be the only yakuza vampire movie ever made, and if Miike’s surreal, violent, hilarious and unashamedly bonkers film is anything to go by, it will probably be the last.

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‘Yakuza Apocalypse’ Movie Review – recaptures the spirit of Miike’s earlier work that made him famous

Yakuza Apocalypse: The Great War of the Underworld (Gokudo Dai Senso) Directed by Takashi Miike Screenplay by Yoshitaka Yamaguchi 2015, Japan Prolific Japanese genre auteur Takashi Miike returns to his gonzo roots with Yakuza Apocalypse, a genre mashup about a yakuza boss named Kamiura (Lily Franky) who’s assassinated by a coffin-toting English-speaking, Japanese, Django-wannabe gunslinger …

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‘Ace Attorney’ is king among game-to-movie adaptations

I’ll come right out and say it: Takashi Miike’s Ace Attorney, based on the first entry of the popular Capcom video game series, is the single-best cinematic adaptation of a video game property of all time. Now some of the more snide readers out there will no doubt think that this a pretty low bar to clear. There’s at least a partial truth to that: the current all-time champion of video game (henceforth VG) movie critical acclaim is 2001’s Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, coming in at a cool 44% on Rotten Tomatoes (not that the RT metric is reflective of quality in any capacity, but that’s another discussion for another time). While the movie was a watershed moment from a technical standpoint (it had some of the most impressively detailed CGI in movie history up until that point), the consensus was the the film wasn’t engaging enough on an emotional level to be any good. The fact that it went way over budget and single-handedly killed off Square’s film production arm certainly didn’t help matters. As with anything, numbers don’t lie, but they don’t tell the whole truth either.

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Fantasia 2014: ‘The Mole Song’ marches along to Miike’s unique tune, for better or worse

This latest effort is very much a hodgepodge of various ideas to shock and awe all cobbled together to make a two-hour long festival of insanity. In other words, Miike and the writers throw everything they can think of on the wall and leave it up to the audience to see what sticks and what does not. With a film that tosses in gags, both visual and verbal, at the rapid pace evidenced here, it comes as no surprise that not everything will land.

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Takashi Miike’s ‘Audition’ getting American remake

The cult horror classic Audition, Takashi Miike’s breakout film from 1999, is getting the Hollywood treatment with an English language remake planned to shoot this fall. Deadline reported Friday that the remake will be produced by Mario Kassar (Terminator, Rambo) and directed by Richard Gray (the upcoming The Lookalike and Sugar Mountain). Miike’s film, based …

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‘Lesson of the Evil’ Movie Review – has a teacher, students and the audience live a nightmare

Few things in life are as shocking or unsettling as the betrayal of someone in whom one’s profound trust was invested. Close friends and relatives are two prime examples, but so are figures, such as priests (who have been caught in the spotlight for very un-Christian acts in recent years) and teachers.

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Fantasia 2013: Opening Film, Plus Bryan Singer and Simon Boswell Announced As Guests

From the press release: Following last week’s first wave of programming announcements, the Fantasia International Film Festival is proud to unveil several additional highlights, before their July 9th Press Conference, where they’ll be unveiling the full 120+ film lineup! Official Opening Night Film – Takashi Miike’s Shield of Straw (North American Premiere) Hot off its …

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‘For Love’s Sake’ Movie Review – Miike’s most good natured film in quite a while

For Love’s Sake Directed by Takashi Miike Written by Ikki Kajiwara, Takayuki Takuma, Takumi Nagayasu Starring Emi Takei, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Takumi Saito, Sakura Ando Welcome to an alternate reality Tokyo of 1972,  and adolescent student Ai (Emi Takei) has fallen deeply in love with the forehead scarred bad-boy Makoto (Satoshi Tsumabuki), a violent and uncompromising young hooligan whom Ai idolises as her …

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‘Hara-Kiri’: Gut-wrenching drama

Hara-Kiri Directed by Takashi Miike Screenplay by Kikumi Yamagishi 2011, Japan In a review of Japanese director Takashi Miike’s 2002 film Dead or Alive, The AV Club described his style as “splatterpunk,” and frankly they were not exaggerating. However, in recent years Miike’s films have grown and matured in their dramatic power, combining a punk-influenced …

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Fantasia 2012: Takashi Miike’s ‘For Love’s Sake’ melts brains

For Love’s Sake aka Ai to makoto aka The Legend of Love & Sincerity Written by Takayuki Takuma, Ikki Kajiwara, Takumi Nagayasu, Directed by Takashi Miike Japan, 2012 Fantasia imdb This year, Fantasia pulled out all the stops to kick off the Festival with a bang – several bangs. They unveiled a new interactive screen that displays …

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Fantasia 2012: Mike Ryan’s Most Anticipated Films

For those that are confused (which would obviously include me) the column that has the url: http://www.popoptiq.com/fantasia-2012-mike-ryans-five-most-anticipated-films/ is actually my column on the five films that I am most upset to be MISSING. This is my column on five seven films that I am most looking forward to: 1) Takashi Miike (For Love’s Sake and …

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Festival du Nouveau Cinema: ‘Hara-kiri Death of a Samurai’ powerful and affecting

Hara-kiri: Death of a Samurai Directed by Takashi Miike Japan, 2011 Moving from one genre to the next with ambition and passion, Miike’s newest effort is always worth a look. His newest film is an adaptation of the famed novel, Yasuhiko Takiguchi, which depicts one samurai’s false claim for seppuku at Lord’s home and the …

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Fantasia 2011: ‘Ninja Kids!!!’ earns its three exclamation points as a light-hearted romp

Ninja Kids!!! aka Nintama Rantarô Written by Yoshio Urasawa, based on the manga Rakudai Ninja Rantaro by Soubee Amako Directed by Takashi Miike Japan, 2011 This year the Fantasia Film Festival have been running screenings they call “My First Fantasia” to encourage the next generation of obsessed film geeks. The screening of Ninja Kids!!! was …

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