2025! What a year! I earned my Master’s, adopted two kittens, I’m working, and I’ve watched a lot of films.
Over a year ago, I made a conscious decision to abandon franchise films, and I went on what can best be described as a journey through films that few others have ever seen before. I have always been, when it comes to the kind of media I engage with, very independent, shall we say, but I feel that I took this iconoclastic attitude (snobbish, some might allege), to a new level.
Someone I was working with for a short stint during my Master’s program was talking about how we see things through the lens of ideology, and that it is important to understand that there is more out there; What are you not seeing?
I believe that this is the central question, and the crux of why I fled popular culture: What am I missing? What is everyone else missing? What is out there?
While I have always been an independent spirit (snob), what I now describe as a journey didn’t really start as a conscious effort until sometime after my friend let me borrow his ancient DVD copy of Sex & Fury 1973. I remember remarking to him one time, kind of off-hand, that I wanted to get into Japanese pinku eiga, and I wanted to watch Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion 1972.
As Hollywood deteriorates (this is a rabbit hole deeper than War & Peace and The Brothers Karamazov combined that I will avoid completely), I set off to explore foreign lands.
I already had a background in French cinema and J-Horror, and the same friend mentioned earlier introduced me to Italian giallo films, which is his great love. Following that prologue, I set my sights on Japan.
It is worth pausing here to express gratitude to my small party of cinephiles, as each of us shares distinct yet adjacent interests; where we each speak a slightly different language, but understand each other just the same.
My journey through Japanese pinku eiga (“pink films”) led me to such treasures as Tokyo Decadence 1992, the wonders of the legendary Reiko Ike, into yakuza films and the brilliant and disturbed minds of Shinya Tsukamoto and Hisayasu Sato. These directors have become extremely important to me, and I will pause here and illuminate both.
Shinya Tsukamoto is best-known for directing the visual assault known as Tetsuo: The Iron Man 1989, which I had previously seen, but I did not realize that he made other films until I discovered A Snake of June 2002 through a list on Letterboxd of The Best Japanese Pink Films, which I worked off of as a guide. I loved it so much after buying it for $5 on my Amazon account that I wanted it on disc, and that meant getting the Solid Metal Nightmares Arrow box set for my birthday.
Starting in the summer, and up to a few weeks ago, I have seen nearly every single film that Tsukamoto has made except for Tetsuo III, Hiruki the Goblin, and Nightmare Detective. Of his diverse and thematically important works, in which he explores the encroachment of technology on the body (similar to Cronenberg), he also has a separate yet adjacent concern: The devastating impact of violence on both the individual and society. This is where Tsukamoto really shines, and this thesis has generated three phenomenal and vital films: Bullet Ballet 1998, which is my personal favorite; Killing 2018, and Shadow of Fire 2023. Shadow of Fire is notable for being an incredibly explicit indictment of the actions of the Japanese military during World War II. The Japanese do not talk about World War II, to the point where even the most well-known work on that period, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Rupert Nix, must be read between the lines.
But Shadow of Fire is not the only film that Tsukamoto was brave and bold to make. His collaboration with singer Cocco, Kotoko 2011, is a harrowing portrait of a woman suffering from severe, untreated psychosis. The film is told from her perspective, and many critics do not understand that a significant portion of the film is completely unreal and a manifestation of her delusions. The film was so disturbing to me that I had to watch K-Pop Demon Hunters 2025 afterward.
Bullet Ballet, for its turn, flips Taxi Driver 1976 on its head. It tells the story of a man seeking revenge on a group of delinquent teenagers for giving his girlfriend a gun that she used to kill herself. Critics didn’t care for it because they felt that Tsukamoto was just doing Tetsuo again. The truth is that the film is much, much deeper than its opening title card and Tetsuo-like percussive soundtrack lets on. About halfway through the film, as Goda fails to purchase a Chief Special and enlists machinists to fabricate gun parts, Tsukamoto turns his attention to the kids, who have hopes and dreams of their own. Goda realizes this, too, and he tries to save them from gang life. But one of the kids makes a fatal mistake.
What I find fascinating about this film, and why I can’t stop thinking about it, is that it truly explores the cascading consequences of violence in a way that, to my knowledge, no other film has done. In an essay by Liam Easely that I found during my research on the film, the gun is described as a “hot potato.” Anton Chekov be damned. That is why the film is titled Bullet Ballet: Everyone is dancing around this dangerous object of annihilation. The essay discussed how the film might be about nuclear weapons during the Cold War, but I think that the true value of the film lies closer to the surface, as the children are forced to endure the immutable force of what they have wrought.
Most interesting, too, is that Easely writes about how the gun is intended to symbolize a kind of immaturity, a degradation of the individual; the idea that mature people do not need guns. This is exactly the attitude that I had when I watched Le Samourai 1967 last week. What a doofus, I thought, as Costello was gunned down by the cops in the nightclub. Tsukamoto really put the whole Incel with a gun thing into perspective.
This was refreshing to me as an American, as someone who abhors violence. There was a Canadian philosopher I saw a video of one time, I forget his name, who said that people who have nothing, who are nothing, express themselves through violence. People who are capable of expressing themselves through other, more constructive means, have no use for violence. This perspective is invaluable to me as an American; it is not a perspective America is capable of expressing, and it is why Bullet Ballet left such an impression upon me.
The other great director that I discovered is Hisayasu Sato, whose work leaves a very different impression. Sato’s films hew close to my personal tastes, and exist right at the axis between Weird, Horny, and Scary. He channels, by turns, David Cronenberg and Michael Haneke, and has a keen eye for eroticism. His work often touches upon technology, surveillance, alienation, and how they foreclose meaningful relationships. Mistaken identities, weird stuff, and the consequences of technology are heavily featured in his work.
His most famous works, as far as I can tell, are Love – Zero = Infinity 1994, The Bedroom/An Aria on Gazes 1992, and Splatter: Naked Blood 1996, which is well-known for being extremely gross. I saw Splatter first, then Celluloid Nightmares 1988; not long after that, I found Pervert Ward: S&M Clinic 1989, Love – Zero, and The Bedroom. Other people that I follow online pointed me to Survey Map of a Paradise Lost 1988 and Turtle Vision 1991. Each time, I was intrigued, aroused, and occasionally creeped out. A perfect combination.
While his films aren’t as thematically deep as Tsukamoto’s, they are still meaningful as a reflection of our direction as a society, and how difficult it is to find intimacy amidst the steady encroachment of surveillance and alienating technology. On another level, Sato’s films are sexy. He is positioned firmly within the pinku eiga tradition, and he uses that platform to explore his themes, but even separated from all of that literary mumbo-jumbo, his films are hot, and in my book, that counts for something, above and beyond his cyberpunk-adjacent aesthetic.
Thus far, Tsukamoto and Sato are the two main directors that I have explored in depth through this journey, and are the ones I am most equipped to talk about, but there is yet more here. In my film journal, I wrote a lengthy entry comparing In the Realm of the Senses 1967 with Crash 1996. I said that, while Cronenberg embraces the erotic, Oshima seeks the total reduction of sex to the act itself, and, over the course of the film, steadily dehumanizes his characters. Oshima removes the eroticism, and eventually the sex becomes boring, even repulsive; not only to the other characters, but even to the audience. The booklet accompanying the Criterion release explicitly explains that Senses is not a pinku eiga. Next year, I will be exploring much more of Oshima’s work.
The journey continues. When I have more to add, I will stop and write a second entry. I think that, especially with Tsukamoto, I have seen what I was missing. I know that I don’t know, as Socrates had said, but I do know where I need to go next. From pinku eiga to Shinya Tsukamoto and beyond.
This endeavor is worthwhile. I learn a lot, about other cultures, about new ideas, and I gain a fresh perspective on things I have felt for a long time. I enjoy using my literary background to engage with a different medium, and I am excited for what I will be watching next year. The answer to What is out there? is very exciting. I even found a Senegalese director named Ousmane Sembene, who made a trilogy of films in the 70s that were released by Criterion. Senegal! Who has seen a film from Senegal!? I have, I am proud to say, and that is what makes this journey worthwhile. I have seen a Czech film as impressive as The Wizard of Oz! I have seen a German animated film about cats! To quote Roy Batty, “I have seen things you people wouldn’t believe.” That’s the true objective. And I am succeeding.
The journey continues...
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