Directors in Focus: Kim Sung-soo | City of the Rising Sun (1998)

Director: Kim Sung-soo

Notable Cast: Jung Woo-sung, Lee Jung-jae, Lee Beom-soo, Han Go-eun, Park Ji-hoon, Lee Ki-yeol, Park Sung-woong

In the late 90s, with the great success of Beat, Kim would follow up quickly, just a year later, with another Jung Woo-sung starring vehicle, titled City of the Rising Sun. What makes this title unique, among many other things, is that Jung co-starred alongside Lee Jung-jae, which would be a bromance that would blossom beyond the screen and hold up well over the years, as Jung and Lee have been friends ever since, and the two would end up directing their own films just in the past few years. Needless to say, they have a chemistry like no other, which is one of this work's very best elements. The two are simply electrifying together and light up the screen from start to finish. The style that Kim had been building up over the previous two directorial efforts would reach maximum impact here. This concoction of machismo, a bumping soundtrack, and visuals to the max make up a film that is certainly style over substance, but the style is oh so magical, and I cannot help but be enraptured by it all.

Violent Cop (1989)

Director: Takeshi Kitano

Notable Cast: Takeshi Kitano, Maiko Kawakami, Makoto Ashikawa, Shiro Sano, Sei Hiraizumi

Kitano's debut comes out of the gate swinging with this fast-paced bloodbath of a gangster film. It doesn't really focus on the aspect of gang members, like his latter works, but he (Kitano) as the cop, is just as, if not more crazy than any gangster in the entire story. Mixing this violence with Kitano's trademark dark humor, you easily get one of Kitano's very best works to date.

Initially I thought the film was sort of lacking, despite the strong opening, as the scenes that unfold are pretty mundane and repetitive, but quickly realized we were just on the beat with Kitano's character, no pun intended. It's designed to show that even in the most simple situations, his handling of crime doers is far above and beyond the law, making his extremes later on very believable. How he hadn't been fired before is beyond me, but I just went with it.

Onibaba (1964)

Director: Kaneto Shindo

Notable Cast: Nobuko Otowa, Jitsuko Yoshimura, Kei Satō

J-horror is something I've always been pretty fond of since I was a teenager; Ju-On, Ringu, the works of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and so on have always gotten under my skin and really stuck with me in a lot of ways that horror films elsewhere haven't managed to do. I guess I can also add to that, I am not truly a horror genre fan although there is quite a bit I do like in the whole never-ending pool of cinema out there. I've been interested in checking out some of the earlier stuff, and this is very, very early ('64), and is essentially a pre-cursor to what was to come out of Japan. So does it live up to its reputation? I would say yes, although I do have a few problems, but first, the good!