meta: Violence

Never before available for English-speaking audiences, Gakuryū Ishii's raw and rousing micro-budget motorcycle mini-epic heralds what was to come in his future films

A functionally competent follow-up to the cult classic, but when your ancestor is a cult classic, you want more than just functional follow-up

This off-kilter 1981 comedy about a girl inheriting a crew of not-very-competent yakuza is an oddball masterwork that zags when you think it'll zig

A deeply unappreciated David Lynch-esque jolter, from two major writers of anime live-action adaptations; a horror-feminist project that deserves reexamination with fresh eyes

A classic 1980s Japanese horror effort, a ferocious Dario Argento homage that invents at least as much as it borrows or nods at

A wildly stylized project that bodes well for future trans-Pacific productions -- but which might have been just as good without being wildly stylized

Kei Fujiwara's sequel to 'Organ' ends up being more merely unpleasant than unsettling

Kei Fujiwara's symphony of sickness drowns you face-down in its excesses and lingers for a long time to come afterwards

Suehiro Maruo's rendition of Edogawa Rampo's tale of wide-gauge decadence is both delirious and spot-on in its look and feel

An all-new anime adaptation of Hiroaki Samura's classic long-running manga gets it right at last

Twenty years later, Ryūhei Kitamura's pulp-horror gumbo of Lucio Fulci, Sam Raimi, George Miller, and everything in between remains a micro-budget, J-indie milestone

Gakuryū Ishii's head-on collision between gang-war and punk-rock exploitation pictures still explodes on impact decades later

Twenty years later, Gakuryū Ishii's revisionist samurai legend still dazzles and jolts like few other movies of its kind

Shinya Tsukamoto's seething, psychedelic adaptation of Edogawa Rampo's work remains one of his best films

Shinya Tsukamoto's grimy underworld odyssey about a man obsessed with the weapon that killed his girlfriend is more potential than payoff

Shinya Tsukamoto's blood-soaked, bare-knuckled psychodrama gives us two men in competition for a woman -- but it's the woman who wins

Blackly funny, rollicking, and spectacularly animated, the adaptation of Q Hayashida's equally off-the-wall manga is another high point for Netflix's anime coproductions

That very rarest of breeds: a truly adult show

A gorgeous homage to everything from Meiko Kaji's femme-violence films to 'Black Lagoon', but it's too top-heavy with plot and not resourceful enough about its own best ideas

Even longtime Takashi Miike fans were alienated by this mix of Miike's fetishes, 'Slaughterhouse-Five', and William S. Burroughs's space-age shamanism, but it deserves fresh eyes and open minds