Horror Favourites – Sonomura Kensuke
- Interview
Alex Humphrey- 1
- 6 minutes read
Having started on 6 February, it is rolling into 34 cinemas nationwide, revisiting favourite spots from Plymouth right up to Orkney – and this year cranking things up with two brand-new stops inGreater Manchester!
Kurosawa Akira’s Rashomon (1950), a film that helped introduce Japanese cinema to the world, is a prime example of the ambiguity inherent in comprehending the human self. In the film, conflicting eyewitness testimonies highlight self-deception, as the truth becomes increasingly unclear. Films such as this show how the notion of the self can be easily shaped through imagery and subjectively reconstructed in relation to others by those who perceive it. The films at JFTFP26 under the banner ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You: The True Self in Japanese Cinema’ offer mirror images of the world we inhabit, centring on the theme of the true self and the quest to understand it.
From serious social dramas (A Bad Summer) to laugh-out-loud comedies (ANGRY SQUAD: The Civil Servant and the Seven Swindlers; Strangers in Kyoto); from sci-fi (Adabana; The Real You) to horror (Missing Child Videotape); from classics (Conflagration) to recently released films (Petals and Memories; The Final Piece), and including an incredible new work from Miike Takashi, one of Japan’s most internationally acclaimed filmmakers (Sham), the programme guarantees something for everyone.
Ghost Killer directed by Sonomura Kensuke, action director of the acclaimed Baby Assassins films, with a screenplay by their writer and director, Sakamoto Yugo, is a thrilling and kinetic action film which delivers sharp humour, high-octane martial arts, and a surprisingly heartfelt story of redemption and unlikely partnership.
University student Matsuoka Fumika (Takaishi Akari) drunkenly trips in the street after an unsuccessful date. Pulling herself up, she notices a bullet casing lying on the ground and picks it up. When she returns home, she is shocked to see the ghostly owner of the empty bullet, Kudo Hideo (Mimoto Masanori), a legendary assassin who was recently murdered.
Terrified and in disbelief, Fumika discovers that by holding Hideo’s hand, she is granted lethal combat skills she never had. But Hideo has unfinished business – to find out who killed him – and only Fumika can help. Very reluctantly, she lends the hitman her body to investigate, but soon finds herself embroiled in a war between rival business factions and drawn into the orbit of Kagehara (Kuroba Mario), Hideo’s former protégé who harbours secrets of his own…
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[…] 6 April. Combining martial arts spectacle with supernatural comedy, the film comes from director Kensuke Sonomura and writer Yugo Sakamoto, the creative team associated with the cult hit Baby Assassins […]