Killer Motel (2012)

Killer Motel (2012) poster
Rating:
Japanese Horror/Murderous Moteliers

An obscure Japanese film about a backwoods motel where things get very strange – the hosts slaughtering the guests, a zombie wandering around. The film comes with a decided WTF element to it, the least of which is actually trying to work out what is going on

Mass Effect: Paragon Lost (2012)

Mass Effect: Paragon Lost (2012) poster
Rating: ★½
Anime/Videogame Adaptation

Another instance of a computer game or film franchise turning to anime to conduct a spinoff. While Mass Effect has an impressive reputation on the console screen, the film here is a dull piece that only comes in around the level of a production line animated tv episode

Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo (2012)

Evangelion 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo (2012) poster
Rating: ★★
Anime/Invasion by Vast Alien Machines

Third of the Neon Genesis Evangelion reboot films. These films are frustrating – filled with stunning scenes of mecha battling cryptic alien machines but baffling as to what is going on

Dead Sushi (2012)

Dead Sushi (2012) poster
Rating: ★★★½
Man-Eating Sushi Amok/Gonzo Japanese Horror

Completely insane Japanese film about man-eating killer sushi. A film that has a whacko anything goes lunacy to it, resulting in some of the most surreally crazed monster movie scenes that this author has seen in some time

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

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.

Patema Inverted (2013)

Patema Inverted (2013) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Two Worlds With Gravity in Opposing Directions

This anime has a surprising number of similarities to Upside Down, which was released one year earlier, both being set in two different worlds where gravity in each operates in the opposite directions and of the forbidden relationship between a boy and a girl from either world

The Complex (2013)

The Complex (2013) poster
Rating: ★★
Japanese Ghost Story/Haunted Apartment

Hideo Nakata will always be known as the director of the original Ring. Here he revisits the kaidan eiga in the story of a haunted apartment but the show falls apart after a confusing Sixth Sense-type twist mid-film

Iron Man: Rise of Technovore (2013)

Iron Man: Rise of the Technovore (2013) poster
Rating: ★★
Anime/Marvel Comics Superhero

Released at the same time as Iron Man Three, this seems set to reverse the lacklustre string of Marvel animated films by employing an anime director. There are action scenes that kick every other Marvel animated film out of the park and lots of Marvel fanservice cameos even if it still doesn’t quite come together

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

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

The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (2013)

The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (2013) poster
Rating: ★★★
Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki Documentary

Fascinating documentary about Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki … Although there is not much coverage of his older material, this offers fascinating insight into the working processes of the amazingly genteel, often frank Miyazaki who seems a fount of creativity and youthful vigour

Library Wars (2013)

Library Wars (2013) poster
Rating: ★★★
Future War Between Libraries and Censors

Fahrenheit 451-esque work set in a future where libraries have to create private armies to defend themselves from the highly militarised forces of censorship. I had some major problems with the credibility of the social scenario but this Japanese Young Adult film works rather well on screen

Real (2013)

Real (2013) poster
Rating: ★★
Dreamscape Film

A Japanese-made variant on the dream incursion theme of Inception. Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is noted for his bafflingly surrealistic horror films but in working in a genre like science-fiction that requires an implied explainability, he makes a far less interesting film

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

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

Ghost in the Shell: Arise (2013-2014)

Ghost in the Shell: Arise (2013-2014) poster
Rating: ★★★★
Cyberpunk Anime

Reboot of the Ghost in the Shell series in a quartet of prequel stories. This funnels the essence of Cyberpunk superbly, creating a conceptually dazzling world with cyborgised security services fighting terrorists hacking people’s brains

Ju-on: The Beginning of the End (2014)

Ju-on: The Beginning of the End (2014) poster
Rating: ★★
Japanese Ghost Story

The Japanese Ju-on/The Grudge series has produced twelve different films to date – this was the tenth of them. Newcomer Masayuki Ochiai has some effective touches but the series is running out of original moves

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

Appleseed Alpha (2014)

Appleseed Alpha (2014) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Post-Holocaust Cyborg Action

Shinji Aramaki returns to the Appleseed franchise for a third time with this prequel. Though it abandons the Cyberpunk milieu, Aramaki crafts action scenes with a stunning realism

Kiki’s Delivery Service (2014)

Kiki's Delivery Service (2014) poster
Rating: ★★
Young Witch's Adventures

NOT the Hayao Miyazaki film but a live-action version based on the same books, made by Takashi Shimizu of the Jun-on/The Grudge films fame. Replicating Miyazaki in live-action would seem a futile endeavour from the outset and expectedly this lacks the sweet emotional uplift of his version

Parasyte Part 1 (2014)

Parasyte Part I (2014) poster
Rating: ★★★
Body-Snatching Shapeshifting Parasites

Live-action adaptation of a manga about the war between factions of body-snatching parasites that are capable of rearranging their host’s bodies. This plays out as a madcap version of The Thing relocated to a Japanese high school and filled with wild, outlandish transformation effects

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

Puzzle (2014)

Puzzle (2014) poster
Rating: ★★
Sadism and Torture Games in a Japanese High School

This starts as a standard Japanese high school drama but takes a turn for the twisted where it doesn’t exactly venture into Saw territory but certainly somewhere that has taken inspiration from it. Alas, everything gets lost in a second half that is burdened by an excessively complicated and non-linear plot

Ow (2014)

Ow (2014) poster
Rating: ★★
Mysterious Alien Object

This begins fantastically well – the appearance of a mysterious alien object that paralyses everybody who looks upon it – only to take a major nosedive in its second act where we promptly realise that the filmmakers didn’t have a clue where to take the story after that

Over Your Dead Body (2014)

Over Your Dead Body (2014) poster
Rating: ★★★
Roles From a Play Haunt Their Actors' Lives

The most sustained film Takashi Miike has made in some time. In this case, he adapts Yotsuya Kaidan, the most famous of all Japanese ghost stories, which has been filmed multiple times, but rather than offer a straight telling also adds a layer where the story comes to replay itself among the actors in the play

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

Attack on Titan II: End of the World (2015)

Attack on Titan II: End of the World (2015) poster
Rating: ★★
Live-Action Anime Adaptation/Invasion by Giants

Sequel the demented Attack of Titan with its wild images of humanity under attack from mindless giants that bite their heads off, which was shot back-to-back and released a few months later

Attack on Titan (2015)

Attack on Titan (2015) poster
Rating: ★★★
Live-Action Anime Adaptation/Invasion by Giants

The live-action adaptation of a popular manga series, this comes with a completely WTF premise about humanity defending itself from an invasion by a horde of misshapen giants that like to bite people’s heads off

Psycho-Pass (2015)

Psycho Pass: The Movie (2015) poster
Rating: ★★½
Anime/Future Crime Prediction Force

Film spinoff of an anime series about a future police force that uses a system to monitor the brains of the populace for the potential to commit crime. Reminiscent of Minority Report, this is not uninteresting, although falls short of being another Appleseed or Ghost in the Shell

Anthem of the Heart (2015)

Anthem of the Heart (2015) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Girl Cursed With Being Unable to Speak

Sweet and tender anime about a young girl who has a curse placed on her that causes her to lose her voice and how this actually allows everyone around her to voice things they don’t say.

The Empire of Corpses (2015)

The Empire of Corpses (2015) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Alternate Victorian England Based on Frankenstein Technology

Fascinatingly original anime set in an alternate history Steampunk version of Victorian England that has developed a technology based on Frankenstein’s corpse resurrection experiments

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

The Boy and the Beast (2015)

The Boy and the Beast (2015) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Boy Becomes Apprentice to a Beast Warrior

If Hayao Miyazaki ever follows through on his threat to retire, the one most likely inheritor would be Mamoru Hosoda. This is a perfectly enjoyably film that is sort of The Karate Kid by way of Disney’s The Jungle Book

Parasyte Part 2 (2015)

Parasyte Part 2 (2015) poster
Rating: ★★★½
Body-Snatching Shapeshifting Parasites

Parasyte Part 1 was a manga adaptation filled with wild effects sequences – imagine The Thing relocated to a Japanese high school. This sequel is an even better film that expands the characters and ideas in quite fascinating directions

Harmony (2015)

Harmony (2015) poster
Rating: ★★★★
Anime/Disquiet Utopia

Anime set in a disquiet utopia where the populace is monitored by cyber implants. Almost completely eschewing the usual action scenes of sf anime, this tells a strong, intelligent and character-driven story

Ghost in the Shell (2015)

Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie (2015) poster
Rating: ★★
Cyberpunk Anime

Another anime film in the Ghost in the Shell series, this was a theatrically released fifth episode of the Ghost in the Shell: Arise reboot series

Cinderella Game (2016)

Cinderella Game (2016) poster
Rating: ★★
Deadly Elimination Card Game

Bizarre Japanese copy of Battle Royale by way of American Idol where a group of schoolgirls from a singing competition are trapped on an island where they must play a deadly card game

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

Bloody Chainsaw Girl (2016)

Rating: ★★★
Chainsaw-Wielding Schoolgirl Battles Mutant Cyborgs

Another of the gonzo Japanese splatter films about a schoolgirl who tries to go about her schoolday while fighting off mutant cyborgs with the chainsaw she carries

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

The Red Turtle (2016)

The Red Turtle (2016) poster
Rating: ★★½
Animation/Castaway Befriends Turtle Woman

Studio Ghibli’s first ever international co-production. A desert island castaway fantasy, this makes interesting comparison to the recent Robinson Crusoe/The Wild Life, even if both films are poles apart in style. This is dialogueless, spare and contained with a minimalism of plot and drama

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

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

Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV (2016)

Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV (2016) poster
Rating: ★★★½
Anime/Computer Game Adaptation

Anime film released to accompany the latest version of the computer game. This is dazzling, epic-sized animation, mocapped in photorealistic detail that wows the eye on a scale that Western animators never come near. Less convincing is the setting that mixes standard fantasy with modern technology

Mary and the Witch’s Flower (2017)

Rating: ★★★
Anime/Young Witch

The third film from former Studio Ghibli employee Hiromasa Yonebayashi. Yonebayashi is seen as the carrier of Hayao Miyazaki’s mantle, so much do his films look like lost Miyazaki works. This is sweet and amiable, even if it never hits the emotional heights Miyazaki does

Lu Over the Wall (2017)

Lu Over the Wall (2017) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Mermaid Girl

An appealingly charming anime about the friendship between a lonely boy and a mermaid. She gains legs whenever music is playing and they form a pop band together

Meatball Machine: Kodoku (2017)

Meatball Machine: Kodoku (2017) poster
Rating: ★★
Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film/Bio-Mechanoid Mutations

Meatball Machine was a film filled with bizarre bio-mechanical transformations battling it out. It started off the gonzo Japanese splatter genre, filled with mind-boggling mutations, over-the-top splatter, a surreal sense of humour and an obsession with schoolgirls in panties. This is a sequel. directed by that film’s effects creator

Fullmetal Alchemist (2017)

Rating: ★★
Anime in Live-Action/Magician Heroes

Live-action adaptation of the popular manga and anime series. Despite having a reasonable budget thrown at it and treating the source material with fathfulness, this looks awkward on the screen

Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (2017)

Godzilla Planet of the Monsters (2017) poster
Rating: ★★
Anime/Japanese Monster Movie

The 30th Japanese Godzilla film, this is the first anime Godzilla film and the first in a trilogy. More disappointingly, it is more a space opera and planetary adventure than it is ever a Godzilla film

Before We Vanish (2017)

Before We Vanish (2017) poster
Rating: ★★★
Japanese Alien Invasion Film

Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa is known for his intensely uncanny and bafflingly cryptic horror films. Here he makes an alien invasion film, although a minimalist and very different one that proves quite fascinating

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

Genocidal Organ (2017)

Genocidal Organ (2017) poster
Rating: ★★★★
Anime/The Manipulation of Language to Create Genocide

An extraordinary anime adapted from Project Itoh, a conceptually challenging concerning a villain who can manipulate language to drive populations to genocide

Blade of the Immortal (2017)

Blade of the Immortal (2017) poster
Rating: ★★½
Immortal Samurai/Manga Adaptation

Takashi Miike’s 100th film, the adaptation of a manga about an immortal samurai. Miike bookends the film with awesome sequences with his hero battling hundreds of opponents but the film in between drags

Batman Ninja (2018)

Rating: ★★★
Batman Anime

This gets full marks for a WTF set-up, an anime that imagines Batman and most of the villains transplanted back to feudal Japan. There is fun to seeing the familiar characters reinterpreted in terms of Japanese imagery

Bleach (2018)

Bleach (2018) poster
Rating: ★★
Manga Adaptation/Monster Hunter

The live-action adaptation of a manga about a teenager who inherits the powers of Soul Reaper and is thrust into a battle against monstrous supernatural entities

Godzilla: The Planet Eater (2018)

Godzilla: The Planet Eater (2018) poster
Rating: ★★
Anime/Japanese Monster Movie

The concluding chapter in the trilogy of Godzilla anime films. This reintroduces two familiar monsters but takes a long time to build to the monster bash we have come to see

Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle (2018)

Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle (2018) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Japanese Monster Movie

The second of the anime Godzilla films and a much more successful film than its predecessor. The reconceptions of some of the classic monsters has a dazzling ambitiousness while Godzilla appears with all the ferocity it should have had in the first film

Mirai (2018)

Mirai (2018) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Boy Meets Family from the Future and Past

Beautifully made Mamoru Hosoda film that was nominated for the Best Animated Film at Academy Awards about a young boy jealous of the loss of parental attention that the arrival of a baby sister brings who is then visited by her future self and travels through time to meet his family at different periods in time

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

Earwig and the Witch (2020)

Earwig and the Witch (2020) poster
Rating: ★★★½
Anime/Witch’s Apprentice

Charming anime from Hayao Miyazaki’s son Goro about a young girl adopted into a witch’s strange household. The occasion where Studio Ghibli made the switch over to computer animation

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

The Door Into Summer (2021)

The Door Into Summer (2021) poster
Rating: ★★★
Time Travel

Robert Heinlein’s time travel novel gets a surprisingly faithful adaptation from Japan. This keeps the story’s double structure that tells one story and then with considerable conceptual dexterity reveals another hidden in the margins

Belle (2021)

Belle (2021) poster
Rating: ★★★½
Anime/Beauty and the Beast in Virtual Reality

A beautiful anime from Momoru Hosoda that retells Beauty and the Beast and spins it in SF terms as tale about a girl who finds fame as a singer in Virtual Reality

Homunculus (2021)

Homunculus (2021) poster
Rating: ★★½
Manga Adaptation/Man Can See Inner Traumas

Takashi Shimizu, the director of the Ju-on/The Grudge films, conducts an adaptation of a manga about a man who undergoes a trepanning operation and emerges able to see people’s inner traumas given symbolic expression

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

Fullmetal Alchemist: Final Transmutation (2022)

Fullmetal Alchemist: Final Transmutation (2022) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime in Live-Action/Magician Heroes

The concluding chapter of the trilogy of live-action Fullmetal Alchemist films, this follows the manga’s storyline closely and brings the series to an epic conclusion

Drifting Home (2022)

Drifting Home (2022) poster
Rating: ★★½
Anime/Apartment Building Drifts Out to Sea

Peculiar but very nicely made anime about a group of children who go on a fantastical journey in an abandoned apartment building that is washed away to sea

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

Bubble (2022)

Bubble (2022) poster
Rating: ★★
Anime/Mysterious Bubble Covers Tokyo

Anime in which Tokyo is covered by a mysterious energy bubble of alien origin and of a group of defiant youths who live on in its midst until the appearance of a mystery girl

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

Fullmetal Alchemist: The Revenge of Scar (2022)

Fullmetal Alchemist: The Revenge of Scar (2022) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime in Live-Action/Magician Heroes

The first of two sequels to the live-action Fullmetal Alchemist. The first felt uninspired but this and the third film expand the saga and its storyline out with considerable depth

Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Godzilla Minus One (2023) poster
Rating: ★★★½
Japanese Monster Movie

The 33rd Japanese Godzilla film and the one to receive the greatest acclaim of any in the series so far, including the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. This takes the series back to the beginnings

The Boy and the Heron (2023)

The Boy and the Heron (2023) poster
Rating: ★★★
Anime/Boy Enters Otherworld

The twelfth film from Hayao Miyzaki at age 82, a quasi-autobiographical if a slightly less classic work. A renaissance of many Miyazaki themes as a boy follows a heron though into a strange fantasy otherworld

Once Upon a Crime (2023)

Once Upon a Crime (2023) poster
Rating: ★★
Fairytale Detective Story

A very strange Japanese-made blend of fairytale and detective story that takes place in the realm of fairytale where Little Red Riding Hood turns detective to solve a murder at Cinderella’s ball

Maboroshi (2023)

Maboroshi (2023) poster
Rating: ★★½
Anime/Town Caught in a Timeloop

Anime that is a variant on Groundhog Day about a town that becomes caught in a time pocket following an industrial accident with the residents forced to live in the same day