TOKYO DRIFTER. (1966) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

MUBI Selects - Friday 24th April 2015

The weekend is over, time to relax, wind down after the hard slog of the week.Refuel your brain with sophistication andour latest selection of  MUBI Selects.

In our latest weekly 'Mubi Selects' we've teamed with MUBI the purveyors of great cinema online curating a great selection of cult, classic, independent, and award-winning movies. It's an international community discovering wonderful intelligent thought provoking films MUBI is your passport to those great films.

MUBI unleash great new films every week and in our MUBI Selects we've picked  a selection of those great movies  help you enjoy that lazy weekend you desire...

I Love Beijing (2000)| Ning Ying

Asia and China especially have delivered some intriguing filmmakers Ning Ying is one of the '5th Generation' however she hasn't attracted the fame that other 5th generation like Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. She is more modest but some say more naturalistic visionary of her country finding the bleakness, the hope and the toll of modernisation of China.Its a tale of wandering Beijing Taxi driver who drives the streets adrift aimlessly adrift looking for women like Beijing looking for its identity as tradition fades, future uncertain. I love Beijing may have not aged well but captures the emptiness of life in that decade.


Youth Of The Beast (1963) | Seijun Suzuki

He's was given the boilerplate of action but gave the world satire pop-art gangster films, Seijun Suzuki helped mould the 'Yakuza' movie.Japanese New Wave? Possibly,brutality that came with the urban myth of the Yakuza can be seen here but you feel it was a production made under constant state of agitation. Youth Of The Beast tells the tale of a mysterious stranger who muscles his way into rival gangs in The Tokyo underworld which is now overan with violence. Flamboyant, absurd,hallucinatory, trademark Suzuki.


The Conformist (1970) | Bernardo Bertolucci

Masterpiece is the first thing anyone says when someone mentions The Conformist.It's Italian filmmaking goes French New Wave in the perfect example of wartorn Italy and the power of ideology. As a weak man becomes a patsy of fascism sent out to assassinate is old teacher a now political dissident. Beautiful cinematography a style that would inspire many great films that followed this from Godfather to Blade Runner.


Why not give up on those expensive chain coffees once a while, to enjoy the weekend and every day great films at MUBI? click below to get more info on the other fantastic films on offer...

Blu-ray Masters Of Cinema Review - Youth Of The Beast (1963,Yajû no seishun)

Seijun Suzuki's cult-following film Youth Of The Beast To Join Eureka's Master Of Cinema Family

Eureka! Entertainment have announced the release of YOUTH OF THE BEAST [Yajû no seishun], the breakthrough film from Suzuki, the director of such '60s New Wave Japanese classics as Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill. Starring Jô Shishido, the iconic star of countless Suzuki and Nikkatsu Films pictures throughout the 1960s, this is the first release of the cult film, and will be released on Blu-ray in a Dual Format (Blu-ray & DVD) edition on 27 October 2014.

Right on the heels of the riotous Go to Hell, Bastards: Detective Bureau 2 3, Seijun Suzuki unleashed what would come to be seen as his true breakthrough, the film that would cement "the Suzuki sensibility": Youth of the Beast [Yajû no seishun]. A kaleidoscopic fantasia that contains "youth" and "beast" only insofar as 1963 pop/youth culture was that violently upstart thing, — not unlike the yakuza?

And so Youth of the Beast is a yakuza tale with a premise like Akira Kurosawa's Yôjinbô, but denuded of an easy definition of which side is which. It stars Suzuki's iconic '60s regular Jô Shishido, with his dare-you-to-call-them-out artificial cheek implants like new acting blasphemy. There are drug-addled whores, gunfights in a new colour apocalypse, and at least one alien landscape: the sudden mind-searing eruption of a sulphur yellow desert like an action-figure playset with overspill of unbridled lust...

Suzuki's infectious go-for-broke energy is assisted by a telephoto lens that serves at once as phallus and yoni in the masterful, Minnelli-worthy 'Scope framing. His film would go on to inspire John Woo's forthcoming remake titled Day of the Beast; Nikkatsu have in recent times deemed this movie one of their treasures. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Youth of the Beast in a Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) edition based on their new HD master.



Youth Of The Beast will arrive in glorious 1080HD on blu-ray with improved optional English subtitles,as the release is in dual format so even the DVD has had an upgrade too. The whole package comes with a 36 page booklet featuring a new essay by Frederick Veith, and rare archival imagery making this release an essential release for fans of Japanese crime genre get your copy from 27th October 2014.

Pre-0rder/Order Youth Of The Beast [Masters of Cinema] Dual Format (Blu-ray & DVD) (1963)

Blu-ray Review - Branded To Kill (1967)