"Actor: Ogawa Mariko"

• Branded To Kill | DVD | (26/02/2007) from £10.78   |  Saving you £9.21 (46.10%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Generally agreed upon to be Suzuki's finest work the film charts the progress of 'Number 3 Killer' Hanado an ice-cool Japanese hitman who get more than he bargained for when he agrees to make a hit for a beautiful girl. On the run and in danger from all sides Hanado must ultimately face the 'No.1 Killer'... A surreal and stunning fusion of '60's pop-aesthetic yakuza thriller raucous sex perverse desires staggering violence and delirious nightmare Branded To Kill is a unique thriller and a towering work of Art. Nikkatsu the studio that financed the film found the film was so intense and incomprehensible that Suzuki was immediately fired! Today it is regarded as his masterpiece.

• 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