Genkina hito’s Top Ten Films of 2019 and He Says Goodbye to a Tumultuous Year

Welcome to my penultimate post of 2019

This is a melange of things including my New Year’s Resolution and my top ten films of 2019 rolled into one.

We’re about to start a new decade and I think we all managed to hold on to our collective sanity having lived through an era of austerity, unprecedented corporate greed and malfeasance and political extremism with fascism and chauvinist/supremacist politics back in vogue. Of course, we’ve been here before many times in the past such as the 30s and 50s so we can beat this. All it takes is organising, holding officials, business and media to account and protecting our democratic institutions.

I Am a Hero アイアムアヒーロー Dir: Shinsuke Sato (2016)

I Am a Hero   

I am a Hero FIlm Poster

アイアムアヒーロー「Ai amu a hi-ro-」

Release Date: April 23^rd, 2016

Running Time: 126 mins.

Director: Shinsuke Sato

Writer: Akiko Nogi (Screenplay), Kengo Hanazawa (Original Manga)

Starring: Yo Oizumi, Masami Nagasawa, Kasumi Arimura, Miho Suzuki, Yu Tokui, Yoshinari Okada, Nana Katase,

Website    IMDB

I Am a Hero is the best zombie film to have come out in a long, long time or at least since 28 Days Later (2002) when Danny Boyle sent fast-running infected across the streets of London. Much like the aforementioned title, I Am a Hero has zed-heads that tear across the screen and they are very scary to behold and much like the classic titles of the zombie genre such as George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1978) it features some social commentary. Also, unlike tongue-in-cheek J-horror zom-comedies like Stacy: Attack of the Schoolgirl Zombies (2008) and Big Tits Zombie (2010), I Am a Hero is serious and rooted in our world and gleefully slaps it sideways in a gory horror film that does justice to its source.

Japanese Films at the Fantasia International Film Festival (July 12th – August 02nd)

The Fantasia International Film Festival starts in Montreal next week on July 12th and runs until August 02nd. The selection of Japanese films is simply stunning with titles from Miki Satoshi, Takashi Miike,  Nobuhiko Obayashi, Sion Sono and more. However, there are a selection of indie film titles that look absolutely killer as well.

This is the 22nd edition of the festival and it has become a focal point for filmmakers, festival programmers, journalists, and audiences eager to see a diverse slate of films before they hit the DVD or internet and take part in film culture. There are lots of guests and great experiences to be had and a chance to get involved with dictating which films get the hype behind them, so please choose Japanese, and try some of the titles listed here.

So what’s lined up?

Feature-Length Fiction Films at Nippon Connection Film Festival 2017

The Nippon Connection Film Festival takes place from May 23 to 28, 2017 and it will be held in Frankfurt am Main. The organisers released details of the 100+ short and feature length films that will be screened and there are many top titles that audiences can see to get a perfect snapshot of the myriad of stories and talents that the Japanese film industry is producing. There are a whole host of premieres and these will be shown in the presence of many directors and actors who will introduce and talk about their work to the audience. 

There are some really great films to be seen and a couple of head-scratchers based on the quality but there should be something for everyone. On top of the films, there are also many cultural events to be had at the festival which will be detailed below along with some brief information on the venues.

What is on the programme, then? This is a quick preview but there’s a lot. I’ll break it down into sections and you can view trailers and more details for each on the films by clicking on the links:

I Am a Hero, Sharing, Zutto Mae Kara Suki Deshita: Kokuhaku Jikkou Iinkai, Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Dark Side of Dimensions, Sound! Euphonium the Movie: Welcome to the Kitauji High School Concert Band, The Sun, and other Japanese Film Trailers

Hello dear readers!

I am feeling very, very tired today. I attended a film festival last night and watched Cesium and a Tokyo Girl (2015) and then attended an after-party where I met the director and his translator and had a few drinks – mostly apple juice! I didn’t get home until late and that was after heading to a Chinese take-away and didn’t get to sleep until past midnight. I’m staying up late again to write this after wasting a whole Saturday. Tomorrow… I will go to a cinema to see Ran (1985). This week, I posted about the DVD/Bluray release of Uzumasa Limelight (2014) and the screening of Adrenaline Drive (1999) at the Japanese embassy.

What’s released in Japan this weekend?

I Am a Hero Live-Action Trailer

As a fan of the manga I Am a Hero I had been cautious in getting my hopes up for this one since the horror genre has been in the doldrums in Japan with a mixture of dumb low-budget, badly-made schlock and funny but low-budget badly-made schlock dominating the output (as I have been discovering over a long summer/autumn/winter of splatter films). When there is something other than monsters and zombies its pretty idol girls getting chased around by ghosts or psychos.

Zombie films in particular are pretty bad. The list of good Japanese zombie is a pretty short one as far as I’m concerned. Perhaps it’s a good thing that this is based on a best-selling manga and the approach to the film is to turn it into A-grade survival panic horror” movie as Anime News Network reports.

I am a Hero アイアムアヒーロー Manga

I am a Hero アイアムアヒーロー 

Author: Kengo Hanazawa

Launched in 2009, 16 volumes and currently ongoing.

I am jaded when it comes to zombies.

Zombies are everywhere in the West. They dash along cinema screens in horror movies like World War Z and they shamble across small screens in video games like Resident Evil and television series The Walking Dead, anime like Highschool of the Dead, and even reality TV shows like the BBC’s I Survived a Zombie Apocalypse.

I watch them but I am beginning to get weary of it all.

Gone are my teenage years when I first experienced the existential and visceral terror of the horror and bleak social commentary that Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead carried. Today it’s all a shooting gallery or dramas about snarky teenage zomboys and zomgirls and romance for the iPad generation.

It has been a long time since I was thrilled by zombie apocalypse
scenario. There is one exception. I have been reading Kengo Hanazawa’s manga I am a Hero since 2013 and each volume has proven to be a thrilling and scary read.

I Am a Hero Cover