Japanese action star Tak Sakiguchi makes a welcome return to the screen in this stripped-down action thriller that sees a deadly super soldier forced out of seclusion and back to his old ways of precision destruction. After a somewhat sluggish first act that insists on laying down unnecessary context and backstory, the action in Re: Born kicks into gear and never lets up, showcasing some brutal close-quarter combat to rival anything emerging from Asia right now. Director Yuji Shimomura has collaborated with Tak on numerous occasions, directing him in 2005’s Death Trance as well as serving as action director on Versus and Yakuza Weapon, in addition to working on big budget projects including Gantz: Perfect Answer and Library Wars. Together with acclaimed fight choreographer...
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- 9/25/2016
- Screen Anarchy
Humankind’s collision with otherworldly life forms can make for unforgettable cinema.
This article will highlight the best of live-action human vs. alien films. The creatures may be from other planets or may be non-demonic entities from other dimensions.
Excluded from consideration were giant monster films as the diakaiju genre would make a great subject for separate articles.
Readers looking for “friendly alien” films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), It Came from Outer Space (1953) and the comically overrated Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) are advised to keep watching the skies because they won’t find them here.
Film writing being the game of knowledge filtered through personal taste that it is, some readers’ subgenre favorites might not have made the list such as War of the Worlds (1953) and 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957).
Now let’s take a chronological look at the cinema’s best battles between Us and Them.
This article will highlight the best of live-action human vs. alien films. The creatures may be from other planets or may be non-demonic entities from other dimensions.
Excluded from consideration were giant monster films as the diakaiju genre would make a great subject for separate articles.
Readers looking for “friendly alien” films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), It Came from Outer Space (1953) and the comically overrated Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) are advised to keep watching the skies because they won’t find them here.
Film writing being the game of knowledge filtered through personal taste that it is, some readers’ subgenre favorites might not have made the list such as War of the Worlds (1953) and 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957).
Now let’s take a chronological look at the cinema’s best battles between Us and Them.
- 7/13/2014
- by Terek Puckett
- SoundOnSight
Director: Shinsuke Sato. Review: Adam Wing. For those of you that don’t know, let’s cast our minds back to how it all began. In a nutshell - big black balls. Gantz and its sequel Gantz: Perfect Answer are based on a hit manga series created by Hiroya Oku. Directed by Shinsuke Sato, Gantz stars leading Japanese actors Kazunari Ninomiya (Letters from Iwo Jima) and Kenichi Matsuyama (Death Note, Detroit Metal City). After an accident on a train platform, recently deceased childhood friends Kei and Kato find themselves transported to an empty apartment populated by several confused strangers and a mysterious black ball known as Gantz. The big black ball issues them a set of strange suits, instructing them to exterminate "dangerous aliens" from Earth in a series of bloodthirsty games. They are given high-tech weaponry, and the opportunity to collect points depending on how many aliens they kill.
- 1/24/2012
- 24framespersecond.net
There’s a decidedly oriental tinge to this year’s Gold Coast Film Festival. Jiang Wen’s extremely successful rice-noodle Chinese comedy western Let The Bullets Fly (which had its premiere at the Brisbane International Film Festival – read my review Here) has been chosen as the opening night film and there’s a ‘Cool Japan’ line-up which features the Australian premieres of Makoto Shinkai‘s (Voice of a Distant Star) exquisitely rendered anime Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below - a nostalgic and mystical adventure concerning family loss which firmly places the young director in a league with the laudable likes of manga masters Katsuhiro Ohtomo, Mamoru Oshii and Hayao Miyazaki. On the non-animated front we have the welcome return screenings of Anh Hung Tran‘s Sydney Film festival favourite Norweigan Wood and Takashi Miike‘s kinetic Seven Samurai throwback 13 Assassins. Two further manic manga adaptations, Shinsuke Sato...
- 11/21/2011
- by Oliver Pfeiffer
- Obsessed with Film
The 2011 Sitges Film Festival, held 6-16 October on the Catalan coast of Spain, is finalizing its lineup, which now includes Francis Ford Coppola's Twixt, Kevin Smith's Red State, and the return of Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, who will be presenting their new piece Livide. In addition, The Thing (2011) has been named as the closing movie.
Be sure to visit the official Sitges Film Festival website for more info!
Official In-Competition Fantàstic Selection
Another Earth: a story of redemption revolving around a young girl traumatized by a tragedy in her past, and who will find the answer to her innumerable questions in a bizarre phenomenon, the appearance of a closely orbiting replica of the Earth. This film by Mike Cahill was one of the big winners at Sundance 2011.
The Divide: Xavier Gens, director of Frontieres, is back with the apocalypse as a banner to show the...
Be sure to visit the official Sitges Film Festival website for more info!
Official In-Competition Fantàstic Selection
Another Earth: a story of redemption revolving around a young girl traumatized by a tragedy in her past, and who will find the answer to her innumerable questions in a bizarre phenomenon, the appearance of a closely orbiting replica of the Earth. This film by Mike Cahill was one of the big winners at Sundance 2011.
The Divide: Xavier Gens, director of Frontieres, is back with the apocalypse as a banner to show the...
- 9/24/2011
- by The Woman In Black
- DreadCentral.com
The New York Asian Film Festival has announced that its tenth anniversary edition will open on July 1 with the North American premiere of Yoshimasa Ishibashi's Milocrorze: A Love Story ("one solid slab of psychedelia," promises the festival; image above) and close on July 14 with the New York premiere of Na Hong-Jin's The Yellow Sea (aka The Murderer), which has just screened at Cannes in Un Certain Regard (see the roundup).
There'll be two Centerpiece Presentations, Benny Chan's Shaolin, with Andy Lau, Nic Tse and Jackie Chan, and Takashi Miike's Ninja Kids!!! — which, you may remember Danny Kasman caught in Cannes, and got quite a nice kick out of it, too. The festival will also be screening Miike's "director's cut" of 13 Assassins.
There'll be three special focuses. First off...
Wu Xia: Hong Kong's Flying Swordsmen
Tsui Hark's Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame...
There'll be two Centerpiece Presentations, Benny Chan's Shaolin, with Andy Lau, Nic Tse and Jackie Chan, and Takashi Miike's Ninja Kids!!! — which, you may remember Danny Kasman caught in Cannes, and got quite a nice kick out of it, too. The festival will also be screening Miike's "director's cut" of 13 Assassins.
There'll be three special focuses. First off...
Wu Xia: Hong Kong's Flying Swordsmen
Tsui Hark's Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame...
- 5/31/2011
- MUBI
The Tribeca Film Festival has the stars. The New York Film Festival has the award winners. But the New York Asian Film Festival has the coolest, boldest, and strangest genre movies, and that's why it holds a special place in my heart. While most festivals specialize in quote-unquote arthouse fare, Nyaff brings the Asian mainstream -- the stuff that would almost never play here otherwise -- to America.
We're big fans of the Nyaff at IFC and we're looking forward to another excellent edition this year. The lineup was just announced and it looks stacked. It includes a few superb films I saw at last year's Fantastic Fest, including the entertaining exploitation documentary "Machete Maidens Unleashed" from "Not Quite Hollywood" director Mark Hartley. The stuff I'm jazzed to see for the first time includes the world premiere of Takashi Miike's "Ninja Kids!!!" (their exclamation points, not mine), "Ocean Heaven,...
We're big fans of the Nyaff at IFC and we're looking forward to another excellent edition this year. The lineup was just announced and it looks stacked. It includes a few superb films I saw at last year's Fantastic Fest, including the entertaining exploitation documentary "Machete Maidens Unleashed" from "Not Quite Hollywood" director Mark Hartley. The stuff I'm jazzed to see for the first time includes the world premiere of Takashi Miike's "Ninja Kids!!!" (their exclamation points, not mine), "Ocean Heaven,...
- 5/31/2011
- by Matt Singer
- ifc.com
One of the biggest and most eagerly awaited Japanese blockbusters for some time arrives in the form of the explosive science fiction thriller “Gantz”, adapted from Oku Hiroya’s ongoing manga. Having already made it to the small screen as a cult hit anime, which controversially had to be censored during its original airing due to graphic content, the live action version sees director Sato Shinsuke (“Sands’ Chronicle”) taking the reins, with a script from Watanabe Yusuke, who previously worked on the sprawling “20th Century Boys” adaptation. Split into two parts, with this first instalment being followed by “Gantz: Perfect Answer”, the films are slick, big budget affairs with an impressive youth-friendly cast headed by Arashi boy band member Ninomiya Kazunari (also in “The Lady Shogun and her Men”) and popular actor Matsuyama Kenichi (known for the “Death Note” series, and who recently starred in “Norwegian wood”), with female eye...
- 5/17/2011
- by James Mudge
- Beyond Hollywood
The Gantz: Part II: Perfect Answer Movie Trailer has premiered. Shinsuke Sato‘s Gantz: Part II: Perfect Answer (2011) stars Kazunari Ninomiya, Kenichi Matsuyama, Kanata Hongô, Natsuna Watanabe, and Yuriko Yoshitaka. Gantz: Part II: Perfect Answer‘s plot synopsis: Part II continues were Part I left off where “after trying to rescue a man on the subway tracks, two teens wake up in a room dominated by a mysterious black sphere that sends them to hunt down and kill aliens hiding on Earth”. We previously posted the Gantz (2011) Movie Trailer for Part One. The movie trailer starts out slowly but then the action kicks in around the half way point. I wish there were english subtitles for this movie trailer but the viewer gets the feeling that there is internal strife in the protagonist’s group.
More about this sequel:
In the sequel (which was preceded, of course,...
More about this sequel:
In the sequel (which was preceded, of course,...
- 3/9/2011
- by filmbook
- Film-Book
Here is what I'm assuming is the latest preview for the upcoming 2-part live-action adaptation of Hiroya Oku's Gantz and the closest thing to a genuine trailer that's been released so far. Mercifully, this one is completely free of morning show graphics, talking head reaction boxes, and chatty announcer voices yapping over the best parts.
The films star Kazunari Ninomiya as as Kei Kurono and Kenichi Matsuyama as Masaru Kato, two college students who die in a train accident only to be brought back to life by a mysterious black sphere known as Gantz. Equipped with advanced weaponry and special suits that give them superhuman abilities, they're forced to carry out alien assassination missions, earning "points" toward eventually buying their freedom. However, various incidents along the way complicate matters. Additional cast members include Yuriko Yoshitaka as Kurono's girlfriend Tae Kojima, Kanata Hongo as a young veteran of the Gantz world named Joichiro Nishi,...
The films star Kazunari Ninomiya as as Kei Kurono and Kenichi Matsuyama as Masaru Kato, two college students who die in a train accident only to be brought back to life by a mysterious black sphere known as Gantz. Equipped with advanced weaponry and special suits that give them superhuman abilities, they're forced to carry out alien assassination missions, earning "points" toward eventually buying their freedom. However, various incidents along the way complicate matters. Additional cast members include Yuriko Yoshitaka as Kurono's girlfriend Tae Kojima, Kanata Hongo as a young veteran of the Gantz world named Joichiro Nishi,...
- 6/10/2010
- Nippon Cinema
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