Zombie Ass: The Toilet of the Dead (2011)

Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead (2011) poster
Rating: ★★
Gonzo Japanese Horror/Zombie Ass Parasites

Completely insane gonzo Japanese horror that feels like it is made by a mad scat fetishist involving parasites that emerge out of people’s asses. The film is driven by its outrageously perverse imagery but for all that is haphazard and incoherent when it comes to explanatory rationale

Zebraman (2004)

Zebraman (2004) poster
Rating: ★★
Japanese Superhero

Head-scratching effort from Japan’s Takashi Miike about a schoolteacher who gains superpowers after putting on a costume from his favourite superhero tv series. Miike never seems to be mounting a parody, while the film is too low-budgeted to ever work in terms of kick-ass superheroic action

Yuki: Snow Fairy (1981)

Yuki: Snow Fairy (1981) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Young Goddess Comes to Earth

A very rare anime film about a fairy who descends to Earth from the heavens and takes the side of downtrodden peasants in standing against a greedy landowner and a demon god

Your Name. (2016)

Your Name. (2016) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Cross-Time Bodyswap

Makoto Shinkai is a rising name of acclaim in anime. This starts as a regular light and fluffy piece about a boy and a girl who keep waking up in each other’s bodies but then expands out into a wholly different story, gaining unexpected emotional depths as it does

YatterMan (2009)

YatterMan (2009) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime TV Series in Live-Action/Gonzo Giant Robot Heroics

Takashi Miike conducts a live-action adaptation of a 1970s anime tv series with completely madcap results. The effect is like drowning in multi-coloured candyfloss flavoured with LSD

Yakuza Weapon (2011)

Yakuza Weapon (2011) poster
Rating: ★★
Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film/Yakuza With Cyborg Attachments

Another Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film about a Yakuza heir who is blown apart by rivals and then rebuilt with cyborg attachments

Yakuza Apocalypse (2015)

Yakuza Apocalypse (2015) poster
Rating: ★★½
Gonzo Yakuza Vampire Film

Japan’s Takashi Miike gained a cult with a series of films that went to extremes or crossed way over taboo lines; his films from the mid-2000s have become more experiments that produce a head-scratching “huh?”. Case in point being this Yakuza vampire film that frequently feels like much of it was being made up on the spot

X (1996)

X (1996) poster
Rating: ★★½
Anime Superheroics

Anime involving a superheroic battle for the fate of the world. Dazzling eye candy but too many characters and subplots make things confusing

World Apartment Horror (1991)

World Apartment Horror (1991) poster
Rating: ★★
Strange Apartment Building Comedy/Haunting

After making the groundbreaking anime Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo then chose to direct this oddity – a live-action comedy about a frustrated Yakuza enforcer trying to evict an apartment of foreigners that turns into a horror film in its last third

Wolf Children (2012)

Wolf Children (2012) poster
Rating: ★★★★
Anime/Werewolf Children

Mamoru Hosoda proves himself as one of the major directors in anime with this tender, lovely and enormously affecting work about a mother raising two werewolf children.

The Wings of Honneamise (1987)

The Wings of Honneamise (1987) poster
Rating: ★★★½
Anime/Alternate World Spacelaunch

Little-seen but beautifully made anime set in an alternate timeline where a young man becomes the volunteer for the first space launch

Wicked City (1987)

Wicked City (1987) poster
Rating: ★★★★
Anime/War with Demon Dimension

Anime from Yoshiaki Kawajiri about a war with a demon dimension that falls halfway between H.P. Lovecraft and a hard-boiled detective thriller and brims over wit fascinatingly pathological sexual imagery

A Whisker Away (2020)

A Whisker Away (2020) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Girl Transforms Into a Cat

A sweet and quite lovely anime where a girl befriends the boy she pines after being offered a mask that transforms her into a cat body – only to then have her own body stolen

When Marnie Was There (2014)

When Marnie Was There (2014) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Ghost Story

A ghost story from Studio Ghibli – although rather than any Western equivalent that sets out to scare the pants off us, this is a sweetly tender story of friendship between two girls. The result more than capably approaches some of Hayao Miyazaki’s best

What to Do With the Dead Kaiju? (2022)

What to Do With the Dead Kaiju (2022) poster
Rating: ★★
The Aftermath of a Giant Monster Attack

An amusing take on the Japanese Monster Movie that takes place in the aftermath of a monster battle as various government agencies debate what do with the carcass of a giant monster lying in the countryside

Weathering With You (2019)

Weathering With You (2019) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Girl Who Can Control Weather

From Makoto Shinkai who made Your Name., a lovely anime about a girl who can control the weather

Warning from Space (1956)

Warning from Space (1956) poster
Rating:
Japanese Alien Visitors Film

The first Japanese entry in the great alien invader fad of the 1950s. Nothing great but it does boast the awesomeness of starfish-shaped aliens

War of the Gargantuas (1966)

War of the Gargantuas (1966) poster
Rating: ★★
Japanese Monster Bash

From Ishiro Honda, the creator of Godzilla, this bizarrely features two giant Frankenstein monsters battling it out. A fairly typical Japanese monster movie of its era featuring cheesily ridiculous rubber monsters, copious mass destruction and a largely irrelevant human element

Visitor Q (2001)

Visitor Q (2001) poster
Rating: ★★★½
Catalogue of Perversions/Mysterious Visitor/Black Comedy

One of the key films in the cult of Takashi Miike that has been frequently banned for its taboo-defying outrages in which a mysterious visitor causes a family household to descend into perverse extremes

Village of Dreams (1996)

Village of Dreams (1996) poster
Rating: ★★
Mischievous Twins' Childhood/Magical Realism

Japanese Coming of Age tale about two mischief-making twin brothers growing up in the 1940s

Vexille (2007)

Vexille (2007) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Future Android Japan

Anime film about an android-overrun future Japan that resembles another episode of the Appleseed franchise

Varan the Unbelievable (1958)

Varan the Unbelievable (1958) poster
Rating:
Japanese Monster Movie

Japanese monster movie from the same team that created the original Godzilla. The English-language version has simply kept the effects scenes and cut everything else, replacing it with scenes of the US military ordering the Japanese about

Vampire Hunter D (1985)

Vampire Hunter D (1985) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Post-Holocaust Vampire Hunter

Cult anime about a monosyllabic vampire hunter moving across a hallucinatory post-apocalyptic dispatching mutants and vampires

Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (2009)

Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (2009) poster
Rating: ★★★½
Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film

Completely insane Japanese film that wades in gore while playing everything up at a level of demented cartoonish absurdity. Possibly the most delirious movie-watching fun it is possible to have

Vampire Bride (1960)

Vampire Bride (1960) poster
Rating: ★★
Vengeful Creature/Japanese Horror

Rather drab and cheap Japanese horror film about a disfigured actress who returns to life as a hairy vampire creature to exact vengeance. Not without its schlocky appeals, the hairy vampire bride looks more funny than threatening

Vampire (2011)

Vampire (2011) poster
Rating: ★★★★
Serial Killer with a Blood-Drinking Fetish

Technically not a vampire film at all, rather about a kind and caring serial killer with a blood-drinking fetish who frequents suicide support boards looking for victims. A remarkable film, shot in a plain, unaffected manner and managing to discover an extraordinary intimacy between the characters

Uzumaki (2000)

Uzumaki (2000) poster
Rating: ★★★
Spiral Obsession and Mutations/Japanese Horror Film

Surreal Japanese horror film in which the world is taken over by spiral patterns. A strange and trippy film.

Urotsukidoji II: Legend of the Demon Womb (1989)

Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Demon Womb (1989) poster
Rating: ★★½
Anime/Perverse Demon Wars

The first of two OVA sequels to the anime classic Legend of the Overfiend, this lacks the perverse imagery of the original

Unico (1981)

Unico (1981) poster
Rating: ★★★½
Anime/Young Unicorn Boy's Adventures

aka The Fantastic Adventures of Unico Japan. 1981. Crew Director – Toshio Hirata, Screenplay – Masaki Tsuji, Based on a Story by Osamu Tezuka, Producer – Shintaro Tsuji, Music – Ryo Kitayama, Art Direction – Akio Sugino. Production Company – Sanrio. Plot The gods are jealous of the young unicorn boy Unico who can bring […]

Tomie (1999)

Tomie (1999) poster
Rating: ★½
Japanese Ghost Story

Another Japanese horror film that stands heavily in the shadow of Ringu. Directed without much style and often uninteresting to the point of being dull, it is hard to tell from this that you are watching a film that inspired eight sequels

Tokyo Tribe (2014)

Tokyo Tribe (2014) poster
Rating: ★★
Near-Future Gang Warfare

Shion Sono is a director who has gained cult acclaim in recent years. This astonishes with the brashness of his approach, set among the street gang warfare of the near future where all of the dialogue is delivered in rap. On the other hand, the film lacks the budget to sustain such energy

Tokyo Gore Police (2008)

Tokyo Gore Police (2008) poster
Rating: ★★★
Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film/Cops vs Bio-Mechanoid Mutants

One among the 00s spate of gonzo Japanese splatter films. The film exists as a series of outlandishly over-the-top and absurdly entertaining splatter and bizarrely cartoonish bio-mechanoid transformation

Tokyo Ghoul (2017)

Tokyo Ghoul (2017) poster
Rating: ★★
Manga Adaptation/Secret World of Ghouls

Live-action adaptation of a manga about a teenager who becomes part of a secret world of flesh-eating ghouls. The set-up comes with some imagination but the film suffers from an uninvolving story and a reliance on unconvincing CGI

Tokyo Fist (1995)

Tokyo Fist (1995) poster
Rating: ★★★
Boxing, Body-Piercing and Masochism

Shinya Tsukamoto returns to the repressions of his earlier Tetsuo: The Iron Man in this frenetic, ultra-violent work about a downtrodden salaryman who reconnects with life by allowing himself to be beaten up in the boxing ring. This feels like Raging Bull remade by David Cronenberg

To the Solitary Me Who Loved You (2022)

To the Solitary Me Who Loved You (2022) poster
Rating: ★★★½
Multiverse Film/Anime

Multiverse films are all the in-thing in superhero films right now. This anime is a treatment of multiverse themes far away from superheroics that works beautifully in its sophistication of ideas

The Time Traveller: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2010)

The Time Traveller: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2010) poster
Rating: ★★
Japanese Time Travel Film

A live-action film based on a popular Japanese young adult novel that has been filmed multiple times before. This is a rather dull film that fails to do anything terribly interesting with its time travel premise

Time Slip (1981)

Time Slip (1979) poster
Rating: ★★★½
Soldiers Thrown Back in Time to Feudal Japan

Highly entertaining Japanese film about modern soldiers thrown back to feudal Japan and deciding to overthrow the shogunate

Time of Eve (2010)

Time of Eve (2010) poster
Rating: ★★★½
Anime/Cafe for Androids

Fascinating anime about a cafe for androids. Imagine a cross between an Isaac Asimov Robot story and Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes. The film opens up in a series of episodes that tell stories of human-robot relations that hold a lovely tenderness

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) poster
Rating: ★★★★★
Man-Machine Fusion

Extraordinary directorial debut from Japan’s Shinya Tsukamoto, a frenetic, fetishistic and surreally deranged vision of man-machine fusion that feels like David Lynch having gone away and done a crash reading course of William Gibson

Terror of Mechagodzilla (1976)

Terror of Mechagodzilla (1976) poster
Rating: ★★★
Japanese Monster Bash

The fifteenth Godzilla film, the last of the classic series, featuring a return of Mechagodzilla from the previous film. Original director Ishiro Honda returns to the series and reclaims it from the juvenile focus it had taken over the last few films to make the best entry of the 1970s

Terra Formars (2016)

Terra Formars (2016) poster
Rating: ★★★
Mutated Insects on Mars

Takashi Miike delivers a completely madcap film about evolved cockroaches on Mars being fought by astronauts who take doses of mutagenic serum to give them insect-based super-powers

Tekkonkinkreet (2006)

Tekkonkinkreet (2006) poster
Rating: ★★★★
Anime/The Lives of Street Kids

Anime about two homeless boys living in an inner city neighbourhood. The background artwork has a stunning degree of detail such that the city almost becomes its own character

Taro, The Dragon Boy (1979)

Taro, The Dragon Boy (1979) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Young Boy's Adventures

Likeable and charming Japanese anime for children about a young boy of hubris who sets out on a series of adventures

Tamala 2010 (2002)

Tamala 2010 (2002) poster
Rating: ★★
Demented Anime/Girl Cat's Space Adventures

Grungy low tech anime that comes out like a sarcastic version of Hello Kitty

Tales from Earthsea (2006)

Tales from Earthsea (2006) poster
Rating: ★★★★
Anime/Epic Fantasy

Hayao Miyazaki’s son Goro more than capably takes up his father’s mantle in a beautiful adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea books

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013)

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2015) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Japanese Fairytale

Studio Ghibli adaptation of a classic Japanese folktale from Hayao Hiyazaki’s mentor Isao Takahata. This is a slower, very different film than Hayao Miyazaki’s, the animation designed like a traditional Japanese woodprint. Never quite soars like Miyazaki’s films do but not without its charms

Sweet Home (1989)

Sweet Home (1989) poster
Rating: ★★½
Gonzo Japanese Haunted House Film

Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa has developed a reputation for his intensely uncanny and deeply unfathomable horror films. This is one of his earlier works, a much more straightforward haunted house film that in its more bizarre moments attains the whacked-out dementia of the cult Japanese film House

Suzume (2022)

Suzume (2022) poster
Rating: ★★★★
Anime/Quest to Close Portals

Beautifully made anime about a young girl and a three-legged chair on a quest to close a series of portals across Japan and prevent unimaginable chaos emerging

Summer Wars (2009)

Summer Wars (2009) poster
Rating: ★★★★
Anime/Amok A.I./Family Saga

Beautifully made Mamoru Hosoda film about a rogue A.I. taking over a social media network. A film that is also a heartwarming work about family togetherness

Summer Time Machine Blues (2005)

Summer Time Machine Blues (2005) poster
Rating: ★★★★
Japanese Time Travel Comedy

Witty and enormously clever Japanese time travel film. This readily homages Back to the Future but has a great deal of original fun of its own creating a series of hilarious temporal conundrums. One of the most entertaining films I have seen in some time

Suicide Club (2002)

Suicide Club (2002) poster
Rating: ★★
Programmed Mass Suicides

Japanese horror film that launched the name of Shion Sono and is attention grabbing but proves an unfathomable mix of mass suicides, mysterious websites that predict the deaths and a pop band seemingly controlling it all

Strange Circus (2005)

Strange Circus (2005) poster
Rating: ★★★½
Twisted Disfigurement Story

Japanese director Shion Sono has emerged as an increasingly worthwhile name in recent years. This is an admirably twisted and perverse work that leaves you flabbergasted

Steamboy (2004)

Steamboy (2004) poster
Rating: ★★★★
Steampunk Anime

Sixteen years after making Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo returns to direct a full-length anime, making a Steampunk work that is dazzling in its epic quality and vistas of mass destruction

Starship Troopers: Invasion (2012)

Starship Troopers: Invasion (2012) poster
Rating: ★★★
War with Aliens/Anime

The importation of anime director Shinji Aramaki to helm the latest Starship Troopers film provides dazzling animation and hardware, along with some hard, furious military action that easily outstrips all the other films. On the other hand, the film never goes beyond being about soldiers shooting up bugs

Spriggan (1998)

Spriggan (1998) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Alien Artefact/Psychic Kid Amok

Katsuhiro Otomo overseen anime about the discovery of Noah’s Ark, an alien artifact that gives a child vast psychic powers in a swathe of destruction not dissimilar to Akira

Spirited Away (2001)

Spirited Away (2001) poster
Rating: ★★★★★
Anime/Afterlife Bathhouse

One of the masterpieces of Hayao Miyazaki, a gentle, beautiful work of anime set in an afterlife bathhouse where Miyazaki’s range of extraordinary creatures and quiet tenderness finds something that Western fantasy rarely ever comes near

Space Pirate Captain Harlock (2013)

Space Pirate Captain Harlock (2013) poster
Rating: ★★★½
Anime/Space Opera

The brooding space pirate Captain Harlock is one of the famous anti-heroes in manga and anime. Harlock gets a big screen revamp here from Shinji (Appleseed) Aramaki, one of the most amazing of modern anime directors, who delivers a series of epic space battles with a breathtaking beauty

Space Cruiser Yamato (1977)

Space Cruiser Yamato (1977) poster
Rating: ★★½
Anime Space Opera

Anime film spun off from a popular Japanese tv series. Despite crude animation, this has a colourful vigour and taps the same space opera vein as Star Wars, which came only three months earlier

Space Battleship Yamato (2010)

Space Battleship Yamato (2010) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime TV Series in Live-Action/Space Opera

A live-action remake of the 1970s anime series Space Cruiser Yamato made with stupendous effects, although now much of the plot has been rendered familiar by assorted Star Wars copies

Son of Godzilla (1968)

Son of Godzilla (1968) poster
Rating: ★★★
Japanese Monster Bash

The eighth Godzilla film featuring the introduction of his son Minya in a shameless pitch for juvenile audiences. The series is no longer taking itself seriously, although ends up more likeable than some of the other entries of this period

Slit Mouth Woman in L.A. (2014)

Slit Mouth Woman in L.A. (2014) poster
Rating: ★★
Japanese Horror Anthology

Another version of the popular figure from Japanese urban legend, which has appeared in a number of films. This is an anthology where four Japanese directors have come to L.A. to shoot a series of strictly average short horror tales, not all of which feature the Slit Mouth Woman

The Sky Crawlers (2008)

The Sky Crawlers (2008) poster
Rating: ★★★★
Anime/Cloned Flyers

From Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell fame, an anime that seems a mix of Biggles and Never Let Me Go, all taking place in an alternate world. The film is exquisite in its detail

Sinking of Japan (2006)

Sinking of Japan (2006) poster
Rating: ★★
Japanese Disaster Movie

Big-budget modern Japanese remake of a 1970s disaster movie in which Japan starts to catastrophically sink into the ocean. Despite revisiting the original with CGI spectacle, this is a film in which hardly anything interesting happens

Short Peace (2013)

Short Peace (2013) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime Anthology

An anthology of short anime pieces from various directors, including creator Katsuhiro Otomo, the cult creator of Akira. The four episodes vary from historical to fantasy to futuristic warfare and, as with any anthology, vary in quality from the okay to the watchable

Shin Godzilla (2016)

Shin Godzilla (2016) poster
Rating: ★★★½
Giant Atomic Monster

The 29th of the Japanese Godzilla films. Coming after the longest gap in the series to date, this functions as a complete reboot of the original. Godzilla is reconceived as a fearsome creation amid epic mass destruction and what are hands down the best effects of any film in the series

Sharing (2014)

Sharing (2014) poster
Rating: ★★
Premonitions of Disaster

I went to see this on the description that called it a horror film about premonitions of disaster but far less interestingly it is a fictional attempt to analyse people’s attempts to grieve over the Fukushima Disaster – not uninteresting but with little interest in being a fantastic film

Secret of the Telegian (1960)

Rating: ★★½
Teleporting Super-Villain

Toho Films of the 1960s are best known for the Godzilla films and assorted monster bashes. This is one of their non-monster films, part of a spate of mutant supervillain films concerning a villain who has invented a teleportation machine and is using it to exact revenge

Seance (2000)

Seance (2000) poster
Rating: ★★★
Medium/Kidnap Thriller

Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa conducts a remake of the British thriller Seance on a Wet Afternoon. Where the original was a mundane film that depicted a kidnap scheme involving a fake medium, Kurosawa builds this out as an actual ghost story

Scary True Stories (1991-2)

Scary True Stories (1991-2) poster
Rating: ★★½
Japanese Ghost Stories

A trio of Japanese tv movies that retell supposedly true life ghost stories

Sadako vs Kayako (2016)

Sadako vs Kayako (2016) poster
Rating: ★★
Ring/Grudge Series Crossover

The two most popular Japanese horror franchises of the last 15 years come together to fight it out. Both series work on the provision of intensely uncanny effect but brought together the result is diluted at best, while aspects have to be altered in order to make the two merge together in one story

Sadako 3D (2012)

Sadako 3D (2012) poster
Rating:
Ring Sequel/Japanese Ghost Story

The original Ring was a classic, an eerie ghost story that was a success that spawned a series of copies right around the Asian region. Here the Ring cycle has been rebooted in a heavy letdown that abandons all of the creepy atmospherics of the original for a series of pop-up CGI effects

Roujin Z (1991)

Roujin Z (1991) poster
Rating: ★★★½
Anime/Rampaging Hospital Bed

Katsuhiro Otomo written anime that functions as a parody of the school of Transformer robots as the artificially intelligent hospital bed of a geriatric becomes a giant ramshackle colossus rampaging through the city

Robot Carnival (1987)

Robot Carnival (1987) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime Anthology of Robot Tales

One of the earliest works from Katsuhiro Otomo, the cult director of Akira, although he only contributes one episode to an anthology of anime tales with the common theme of robots. The collection contains some impressive and visually striking episodes

Robo Geisha (2009)

Robo-Geisha (2009) poster
Rating: ★★★
Cyborg Geisha/Gonzo Bio-Mechanical Transformations

Part of the fad for gonzo Japanese splatter films we had in the late 00s, featuring absurdly over-the-top splatter effects and demented action sequences.; Concerning cyborg-enhanced geisha who wade into battle going through a deliriously silly range of bio-mechanical transformations

Ring 2 (1999)

Ring 2 (1999) poster
Rating: ★★★½
Cursed Videotape/Haunting/Japanese Ghost Story

The second of the Japanese Ring/Ringu films where director Hideo Nakata improves over the original with a series of eerie scares if a frequently incomprehensible mishmash of story ideas

Ring (1998)

Ring (1998) poster
Rating: ★★★
Cursed Video Broadcast/Japanese Ghost Story

Kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story) that was a huge hit, spawning several sequels and an English-language remake, not to mention a horde of imitators. For all its reputation, the film is often crude nevertheless does evince an eerie atmosphere

Ring 0: Birthdays (2000)

Ring 0: Birthdays (2000) poster
Rating: ★★
Haunting/Psychic Powers/Japanese Ghost Story

The third of the Japanese Ringu/Ring films. A new director means a different approach but what also becomes apparent is that the original was never intended as a series and the attempts to further draw it out result in a confusing mishmash of ideas