Showing posts with label Shinya Tsukamoto. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shinya Tsukamoto. Show all posts

Thursday, July 9, 2020

Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto (2020)


When it was announced that Arrow Video was going to be releasing a box set of auteur director Shinya Tsukamoto films, it was incredibly hard to get the staff here at Blood Brothers to focus. Oddly enough, I was perhaps the one that was the least versed in the director and I was still ecstatic to leap into this set, titled Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto. The most daunting thing about the set was not burning our way through the ten films included with it, but trying to convey our thoughts on the immensity of this set. Thus, to cover all ten films and go over the actual release itself, we decided to divvy up the films. Ten films, three writers, one insane director. So, please, accept our apologies for the size of this article, but it was inevitable. This is a massive set to cover and we wanted to at least attempt to do it justice. Each film will feature its rating at the end of its section and then the box set rating will be at the very end.

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Fires on the Plain (2014)

Director: Shinya Tsukamoto

Notable Cast: Shinya Tsukamoto, Lily Franky, Tatsuya Nakamura, Yusaku Mori, Yuko Nakamura

Being completely upfront before we move on with this review: 1) I have not seen the original film, which this film only loosely takes notes from I hear, and 2) I have not read the original novel. That out of the way, I have seen every single Shinya Tsukamoto film to date (save Hiruko the Goblin, which is changing very soon). Going into this film as a huge Tsukamoto admirer, to the point that he is in a three-way tie for my favorite director, I had quite the expectations. Needless to say, I wasn't let down by his newest outing whatsoever, and it was great to see Tsukamoto finally make that film on the horrors of war that he has wanted to for years. Fires on the Plain is a very gory, and harrowing look at men who aren't on the front lines, but rather haunted by their unfamiliar surroundings that quickly consume them and morph these soldiers into very different beings, capable of the unspeakable.