"Actor: Masahiko Tsugawa"

• The Sun's Burial | DVD | (26/05/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Set in the post-war slums of Osaka The Sun's Burial follows the lives and fates of the denizens of this hellish ghetto. Pimps prostitutes drug addicts vagrants hustlers and gangsters struggle to survive amidst the poverty and decay of 1950's Japan. Unflinching in it's portrayal of life in these slums the film goes beyond a documentary-style realism to achieve a garish lurid Cinemascope aesthetic that is at once repulsive and yet mesmerising. It's a pitiless and dispassionate portrait of a living hell that lurks behind the facade of a prosperous new Japan a place where everything - food sex even blood - is simply a commodity to be stolen and sold.

• The Geisha House | DVD | (11/11/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A moving and entrancing exploration of a culture that has fascinated the Western world for centuries, Kinji Fukasaki's Geisha House was released in 1998, presaging a flurry of literature and memoirs that have helped to broaden our understanding of the geisha's role in Japanese society. Set in the late 1950s, when geisha culture was threatened by moral crusades, it tells the story of Omacha (Miyamoto Maki), a young girl who sees the geisha life as a way to lift her poverty-stricken family from their hand-to-mouth existence. Through her eyes, we see the protocols and complex financial relationships which dictate the running of the geisha house. Fukusaki's film is a work of great delicacy with moments of hypnotic beauty, and his tender direction, often touched with a sense of wonder, fills the screen with lovingly constructed scenes. At its heart is the poignant situation of the women who must sacrifice their normal relationships to live an ambiguous life in which they are a key part of society while being kept, for the most part, on its periphery, like perpetual mistresses. On the DVD: Geisha House is presented with subtitles in widescreen anamorphic format. The string-laden Dolby Digital stereo soundtrack is occasionally overpowering. The only extra is a short, text biography of Fukusaki. --Piers Ford

• Yakuza Box Set | DVD | (17/04/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Three tough thrillers from the acclaimed director of 'Battle Royale'. Graveyard Of Honour: Rikio Ishikawa is a brutal street thug who is drawn into the powerful Kawada gang in 1946 Tokyo. His insubordination and rebelliousness encourage him to start his own Yakuza family but he decides the easiest way would be to challenge his own Godfather whom he brutally attacks. This disrespect to his boss brings the ultimate form of disgrace upon himself and his 'family'. For his own