April Film News

There are times in your life when the question comes along: what would a film look like wherein a man looks out from a box? Thankfully, Third Window have us covered as they've announced the release of Gakuryu Ishii's The Box Man, starring man of the (and all) moment(s), Tadanobu Asano. The latest release from the director of The Crazy Family and Punk Samurai will be hitting shelves and digital June 30th.

Radiance's July slate of films has ben announced and includes another Yusaku Matsuda film, The Beast to Die, which I have to say has me just by their blu-ray cover!

A small Arrow release snuck in recently, too, The Invisible Swordsman (dir Yoshiyuki Kuroda), which will be gliding in on 24th June.

Finally, the Queer East film festival will be hitting London between 23 April to 18 May. Full details here, but it's that man Asano again, starring in Takeshi Kitano's most recent Kubi that's headlining on April 23rd and seats are still available for the showing at the BFI Southbank... snag them while you can.

The Box Man

A man with a cardboard box over his head wanders the streets of Tokyo. Peering at the world through a peephole, he incessantly writes down in a notebook what he can see. The photographer Myself spots the man and is fascinated. He decides to do the same thing and become a box man himself. But his path to get there is not easy; countless challenges and dangers lie in wait. They include a fake doctor who wants to rob him of his box-man identity; a military man who seeks to use him for the perfect crime; and a mysterious woman who does everything she can to seduce him. Can Myself achieve his dream of becoming a box man?

The Beast to Die

Deeply scarred by what he witnessed on battlefields across Asia, a young war photographer (Yusaku Matsuda, Yokohama BJ Blues) returns to the bustling streets of Tokyo, plotting a series of brutal murders and robberies that are mere warmups for an unprecedented bank heist. Searching for an accomplice, he finds the short-fused and equally disenfranchised Tetsuo (Takeshi Kaga, Death Note). Directed by Toru Murakawa (The Game Trilogy) from a venomous script by Shoichi Maruyama (Yokohama BJ Blues), this unsettling dark thriller was Yusaku Matsuda’s farewell to his 1970s action hero persona.

The Invisible Swordsman

In Edo-era Japan, Sanshiro diligently hones his sword-fighting technique at the kendo dojo, but no amount of practice can hide the fact that he is both clumsy and cowardly. When his samurai father falls prey to a gang of murderous phantom thieves while on night watch duties, Sanshiro is drawn to the banks of the Sanzu River that separates the worlds of the living and the dead. Here he encounters a strange being that introduces itself as a Shokera. The otherworldly apparition offers advice on how Sanshiro can avenge his father with the aid of a mysterious potion with the power to turn him invisible. But first Sanshiro must gather the ingredients, and his father's killers might be closer to home than he thinks.