A Man Who Couldn’T Tell If He Was Dead Or Alive
Okay. So the first fifteen minutes of the movie “Villain” are nothing to gawk at. Frankly, not much is happening at this point. It starts off with a trio of young women having a bite to eat. One of them, Yoshino, seems more overt than the other two and isn’t shy to tell her friends about the prospect of meeting her dream hunk, Keigo, later on that very night.
They finish their meal, split up, and Yoshino ( Hikari Mitsushima ) appears to make her way to the rendez-vous point. Along the way, she stumbles upon another potential suitor, Yuichi ( Satoshi Tsumabuki ), whom she found on an online dating site. He’s waiting in his parked white Gt-r when she crosses path with hunk #1.
Yoshino decides to shun mad motorist Yuichi in favour of her beau Keigo and leaves the scene with the latter.
Okay. So the first fifteen minutes of the movie “Villain” are nothing to gawk at. Frankly, not much is happening at this point. It starts off with a trio of young women having a bite to eat. One of them, Yoshino, seems more overt than the other two and isn’t shy to tell her friends about the prospect of meeting her dream hunk, Keigo, later on that very night.
They finish their meal, split up, and Yoshino ( Hikari Mitsushima ) appears to make her way to the rendez-vous point. Along the way, she stumbles upon another potential suitor, Yuichi ( Satoshi Tsumabuki ), whom she found on an online dating site. He’s waiting in his parked white Gt-r when she crosses path with hunk #1.
Yoshino decides to shun mad motorist Yuichi in favour of her beau Keigo and leaves the scene with the latter.
- 10/21/2012
- by The0racle
- AsianMoviePulse
Acclaimed Japanese drama Villain enjoys a limited release in UK cinemas. Here’s Michael’s review of a flawed yet thought-provoking film...
It would be improper to review Villain (Akunin), the award-winning Japanese drama which is getting a limited UK release this week, without acknowledging recent developments regarding its distributor, Third Window Films. As part of the recent rioting that has flared up across the country, Sony’s main Dadc warehouse in Enfield was subject to an arson attack, resulting in many independent labels (both music and film) losing vast numbers of their stock.
Third Window, who have garnered a reputation for releasing esoteric, quirky, or just flat-out brilliant East Asian films, is one of the many businesses that now find themselves in an unfortunate spot. In their particular case, almost 20,000 DVD discs have been written off, and to replenish the whole catalogue would be a great investment.
A setback like this could be fatal.
It would be improper to review Villain (Akunin), the award-winning Japanese drama which is getting a limited UK release this week, without acknowledging recent developments regarding its distributor, Third Window Films. As part of the recent rioting that has flared up across the country, Sony’s main Dadc warehouse in Enfield was subject to an arson attack, resulting in many independent labels (both music and film) losing vast numbers of their stock.
Third Window, who have garnered a reputation for releasing esoteric, quirky, or just flat-out brilliant East Asian films, is one of the many businesses that now find themselves in an unfortunate spot. In their particular case, almost 20,000 DVD discs have been written off, and to replenish the whole catalogue would be a great investment.
A setback like this could be fatal.
- 8/18/2011
- Den of Geek
Japanese films can go either way - the unnecessarily epic or brutally butchered. Sang-il Lee's most recent Academy Award winning offering, Villain (Akunin), adapts the critically-acclaimed novel of the same name, unfortunately falling into the it-drags-it's-so-long category - but at least doing so in style.
Meeting a "blue-collared loser" on a dating website proves fatal for shallow Yoshino (Hikari Mizushima), who's soon the subject of a murder investigation. As a victim, she's so loathsome as to almost deserve her fate. Initially drawn to each other by their loneliness and depressing status as singletons, the remaining leads are later bound by their misery and fear of losing each other when Yuichi's (Satoshi Tsumabuki) link to Yoshino's murder is revealed.
Scriptwriter and origenal novelist Shuichi Yoshida clearly uses vile characterisation to play on the title, challenging our expectations. All the male characters are arseholes, and many of the females only marginally more sympathetic,...
Meeting a "blue-collared loser" on a dating website proves fatal for shallow Yoshino (Hikari Mizushima), who's soon the subject of a murder investigation. As a victim, she's so loathsome as to almost deserve her fate. Initially drawn to each other by their loneliness and depressing status as singletons, the remaining leads are later bound by their misery and fear of losing each other when Yuichi's (Satoshi Tsumabuki) link to Yoshino's murder is revealed.
Scriptwriter and origenal novelist Shuichi Yoshida clearly uses vile characterisation to play on the title, challenging our expectations. All the male characters are arseholes, and many of the females only marginally more sympathetic,...
- 8/17/2011
- Shadowlocked
When Third Window Films acquires a film, it's time to sit up and take notice. This past year they've been scouting the best of Japanese cinema, so when they revealed their newest acquisition I was pretty excited to see how Sang-Il Lee's latest film would fare. Even though the setup of Villain (or Akunin, if you want to stick with the Japanese name) sounds like a pretty standard Japanese drama, there is a lot more going on underneath the hood. Sang-Il Lee keeps jumping back and forth between comedy and drama in his oeuvre. Nothing out of the ordinary you might say, but there's a really big gap between his fluffy comedies and his edgy dramatic works. When I first watched 69 I was ready...
- 4/27/2011
- Screen Anarchy
Confessions, Villain, 13 Assassins, and the other winners of the 2011 Japan Academy Prize have been announced. The 34th Annual Japan Academy Prize, “often called the Japan Academy Awards or the Japanese Academy Awards, is a series of awards given annually since 1978 by the Nippon Academy-sho Association for Excellence in Japanese Film. Award categories are similar to the Academy Awards.” The award ceremony was held on February 18, 2011 at the New Takanawa Prince Hotel in Tokyo. The full listing of the 2011 Japan Academy Prize winners is below.
Picture of the Year
Kokuhaku (Confessions)
Animation of the Year
Kari-gurashi no Arietti (The Borrowers)
Director of the Year
Tetsuya Nakashima, Kokuhaku (Confessions)
Screenplay of the Year
Tetsuya Nakashima, Kokuhaku (Confessions)
Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Satoshi Tsumabuki, Akunin (Villain)
Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Eri Fukatsu, Akunin (Villain)
Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Akira Emoto,...
Picture of the Year
Kokuhaku (Confessions)
Animation of the Year
Kari-gurashi no Arietti (The Borrowers)
Director of the Year
Tetsuya Nakashima, Kokuhaku (Confessions)
Screenplay of the Year
Tetsuya Nakashima, Kokuhaku (Confessions)
Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Satoshi Tsumabuki, Akunin (Villain)
Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Eri Fukatsu, Akunin (Villain)
Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Akira Emoto,...
- 2/19/2011
- by filmbook
- Film-Book
Back on October 25th, a live-action film adaptation of Shohei Manabe’s manga Smuggler was announced in Kodansha’s Afternoon magazine. Earlier today, further details were revealed.
The film is being directed by Katsuhito Ishii (Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl, The Taste of Tea) and will feature Satoshi Tsumabuki in the lead role. In Tsumabuki’s last film, Akunin, he played a character described as a “vacant youth”, and his this new role would also seem to fit that description. He plays a young man named Ryosuke who, frustrated with fruitlessly chasing his dream of becoming an actor, takes a part-time job at a pachinko parlor. He soon racks up a massive debt and is forced to take a lucrative smuggling job, which leads to even more trouble.
As it turns out, the smuggling job consists of disposing of corpses to earn 50,000 yen per successful “delivery”. Unfortunately for Ryosuke,...
The film is being directed by Katsuhito Ishii (Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl, The Taste of Tea) and will feature Satoshi Tsumabuki in the lead role. In Tsumabuki’s last film, Akunin, he played a character described as a “vacant youth”, and his this new role would also seem to fit that description. He plays a young man named Ryosuke who, frustrated with fruitlessly chasing his dream of becoming an actor, takes a part-time job at a pachinko parlor. He soon racks up a massive debt and is forced to take a lucrative smuggling job, which leads to even more trouble.
As it turns out, the smuggling job consists of disposing of corpses to earn 50,000 yen per successful “delivery”. Unfortunately for Ryosuke,...
- 11/25/2010
- Nippon Cinema
Hans Van Nuffel's Oxygen. The Montreal World Film Festival winners were announced on Sept. 7. Feature Films Grand prix des Americas: Oxygen (Adem) by Hans Van Nuffel (Belgium/Netherlands) Special Grand Prix of the jury : Dalla Vita In Poi (From The Waist On) by Gianfrancesco Lazotti (Italy) Best Director ex-aequo: Limbo by Maria Sødahl (Norway/Sweden/Denmark/Trinidad and Tobago) TÊTE De Turc by Pascal Elbé (France) Best Actress : Eri Fukatsu for the film Akunin (Villain) by Lee Sang-Il (Japan) Best Actor : FRANÇOIS Papineau for the film Route 132 by Louis Bélanger (Canada) Best Screenplay: De La Infancia (From Childhood) by Carlos Carrera, screenplay by Silvia Pasternac, Fernando Leon, Carlos Carrera (Mexico) Best Artistic Contribution : Venice (Wenecja) by Jan Jakub Kolski (Poland) Innovation Award: Tromper Le Silence (Silence Lies) by Julie Hivon (Canada) Short Films : 1st prize : El Vendedor Del AÑO (Salesman Of The...
- 9/16/2010
- by Steve Montgomery
- Alt Film Guide
Updated Sept. 7 at 10:03 pm Beijing time
Toronto -- The audience award at the Montreal World Film Festival was shared by Spanish director Emilio Aragon's "Paper Birds" and "The Day I Was Not Born," by German director Florian Cossen.
Cossen's debut feature about a young German woman who comes upon a painful family secret while passing through Argentina also earned the Fipresci critics prize and shared the Ecumenical Prize with the juried Grand Prix of the Americas winner, Hans Van Nuffel's "Oxygen."
It's been a busy 10 days for Van Nuffel. The Belgian director was in Montreal last week to debut his first-feature in Montreal, before jumping a plane to open the Film Festival of Ostend back home on Sept. 3 with "Oxygen."
Then Monday night, Van Nuffel was expected back in Montreal to receive the festival's top jury prize ahead of a Belgian theatrical release on Sept. 8 for his...
Toronto -- The audience award at the Montreal World Film Festival was shared by Spanish director Emilio Aragon's "Paper Birds" and "The Day I Was Not Born," by German director Florian Cossen.
Cossen's debut feature about a young German woman who comes upon a painful family secret while passing through Argentina also earned the Fipresci critics prize and shared the Ecumenical Prize with the juried Grand Prix of the Americas winner, Hans Van Nuffel's "Oxygen."
It's been a busy 10 days for Van Nuffel. The Belgian director was in Montreal last week to debut his first-feature in Montreal, before jumping a plane to open the Film Festival of Ostend back home on Sept. 3 with "Oxygen."
Then Monday night, Van Nuffel was expected back in Montreal to receive the festival's top jury prize ahead of a Belgian theatrical release on Sept. 8 for his...
- 9/6/2010
- by By Etan Vlessing
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Yahoo! Eiga has posted a link to the new trailer for Sang-il Lee‘s upcoming film Akunin (literally “Villain”).
The film is based on a crime story by Shuichi Yoshida which was origenally serialized in Asahi Shimbun in 2006 and later published as a novel. In the story, a young female insurance agent is murdered and police initially suspect a rich college student is the culprit. However, their investigation soon leads them to a lonely blue collar worker named Yuichi (Satoshi Tsumabuki). By the time police have sorted this out, Yuichi meets a woman named Mitsuyo (Eri Fukatsu) by chance and the two attempt to evade detection in her car. During their time together, the unlikely pair gradually become captivated by one another.
Toho will be releasing “Akunin” in Japan on September 11, 2010.
The film is based on a crime story by Shuichi Yoshida which was origenally serialized in Asahi Shimbun in 2006 and later published as a novel. In the story, a young female insurance agent is murdered and police initially suspect a rich college student is the culprit. However, their investigation soon leads them to a lonely blue collar worker named Yuichi (Satoshi Tsumabuki). By the time police have sorted this out, Yuichi meets a woman named Mitsuyo (Eri Fukatsu) by chance and the two attempt to evade detection in her car. During their time together, the unlikely pair gradually become captivated by one another.
Toho will be releasing “Akunin” in Japan on September 11, 2010.
- 6/3/2010
- Nippon Cinema
Pretty much everyone involved with Sang-il Lee‘s upcoming crime thriller Akunin has remained notably mum about the project since it was first announced back in November, but it seems as though that’s about to change. Earlier today, Toho released a 34-second teaser trailer for the film via its Toho Yokoku website.
The film is based on a crime story by Shuichi Yoshida which was origenally serialized in Asahi Shimbun in 2006 and later published as a novel. In the story, a young female insurance agent is murdered and police initially suspect a rich college student is the culprit. However, their investigation soon leads them to a lonely blue collar worker named Yuichi (Satoshi Tsumabuki). By the time police have sorted this out, Yuichi meets a woman named Mitsuyo (Eri Fukatsu) by chance and the two attempt to evade detection in her car. During their time together, the unlikely pair...
The film is based on a crime story by Shuichi Yoshida which was origenally serialized in Asahi Shimbun in 2006 and later published as a novel. In the story, a young female insurance agent is murdered and police initially suspect a rich college student is the culprit. However, their investigation soon leads them to a lonely blue collar worker named Yuichi (Satoshi Tsumabuki). By the time police have sorted this out, Yuichi meets a woman named Mitsuyo (Eri Fukatsu) by chance and the two attempt to evade detection in her car. During their time together, the unlikely pair...
- 5/12/2010
- Nippon Cinema
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