"Actor: Narumi Kayashima"

• Violence at High Noon | DVD | (28/07/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  One of Oshima's most powerful and controversial films. Telling the brutal story of real-life rapist and serial murderer Eisuke (Kei Sato) and his relationship with his protective schoolteacher wife Matsuko (Akiko Koyama) and his only surviving victim Shino (Saeda Kawagushi) Oshima takes the format of the 'real-life crime' drama and uses it as a canvas to lay bare the lost idealism and decay in postwar Japan. Although the action takes place in a seemingly idyllic rural setting Oshima's portrait of humanity is as dark violent and uncompromising as the urban wastes and hellish ghettos of Naked Youth and The Sun's Burial. Never presenting Eisuke as anything less than a monster Oshima goes further to suggest how such deviancy and (specifically male) violence reflects an amoral and corrupt modern society. Part thriller part reaction against the austere Japanese cinematic tradition with avant-garde experimentation and grim social commentary Violence At High Noon is fresh and as fearsome today as when it was first released.

• Rhapsody In August | DVD | (14/04/2000) from £15.93   |  Saving you £0.06 (0.40%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Japanese grand master Akira Kurosawa's eloquent examination of the nuclear holocaust in Nagasaki as seen though the eyes of a survivor and her four grandchildren 44 years after the event. The grandmother recalls the history of her family and Japanese society. As she searches for an understanding of the past she falls into despair over the loss of her husband in the blast as its anniversary draws near.