Exclusive: BAFTA Award nominee Takehiro Hira (Shōgun, Gran Turismo) and Japanese Academy Award winner Akira Emoto have rounded out the cast of Searchlight’s Rental Family directed by Hikari (Beef) and starring The Whale Best Actor Oscar winner Brendan Fraser and Mari Yamamoto (Pachinko).
Cameras are now rolling in Japan, with production to wrap around May. A release date has not been set.
Deadline first told you about the project, which follows a lonely, down-and-out American actor (Fraser) living in Tokyo. He starts working for a Japanese “rental family” company to play various stand-in roles in other people’s lives. Along the way, he forges some surprising human connections and discovers unexpected joys within his built-in family.
“It’s an absolute dream to bring Rental Family to the world,” said Hikari. “I am truly so thankful for my collaboration with my partners at Searchlight and Sight Unseen and for their never-ending support,...
Cameras are now rolling in Japan, with production to wrap around May. A release date has not been set.
Deadline first told you about the project, which follows a lonely, down-and-out American actor (Fraser) living in Tokyo. He starts working for a Japanese “rental family” company to play various stand-in roles in other people’s lives. Along the way, he forges some surprising human connections and discovers unexpected joys within his built-in family.
“It’s an absolute dream to bring Rental Family to the world,” said Hikari. “I am truly so thankful for my collaboration with my partners at Searchlight and Sight Unseen and for their never-ending support,...
- 3/18/2024
- by Anthony D'Alessandro
- Deadline Film + TV
It is one of the biggest truths of international cinema, that the level (of extremity if you prefer) the highschool drama has reached in the Japanese movie industry, in actually unparalleled, with films that range from “Confessions” to “Flowers of Evil”, from “Crows Zero” to “Liverleaf” and from “Assassination Classroom” to “Lesson of the Evil, including everything between. Hideo Jojo, who has mainly worked in adult films, in an adaptation of the manga series “Joshikosei ni Korosaretai” by Usamaru Furuya, presents another testament to the fact.
“To Be Killed by a High School Girl” is screening at Osaka Asian Film Festival
The absurdity here mostly revolves around the main protagonist, Haruto Higashiyama, a young, smart, and handsome history teacher, whose appearance in Niitaka High School has made him immediately popular with his students, and particularly the female ones. Higashiyama, however, harbors a rather dark secret, since his biggest dream is...
“To Be Killed by a High School Girl” is screening at Osaka Asian Film Festival
The absurdity here mostly revolves around the main protagonist, Haruto Higashiyama, a young, smart, and handsome history teacher, whose appearance in Niitaka High School has made him immediately popular with his students, and particularly the female ones. Higashiyama, however, harbors a rather dark secret, since his biggest dream is...
- 3/17/2022
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
Another Decade with Takashi Miike is a series of essays on the 2010s films of the Japanese maverick, following Notebook's earlier survey of Miike's first decade of the 21st century.Following Takashi Miike's progress over the 1990s and 2000s was one of the preeminent pleasures in world cinema of the past generation. Like a champion surfer, Miike rode the waves of modern moviemaking wherever they took him, making surprising turns, executing wild stunts, and maintaining remarkable stamina. He often released a half-dozen films a year, and his output was never predictable; Miike directed Yakuza movies, children's movies, art movies, outré cult hits, manga adaptations, and the occasional straight drama. He once said that he would accept any assignment that was offered to him, and it sounded like he wasn't exaggerating. Miike's movies weren't always good, but they were seldom boring; no matter the project, he usually exhibited flashes of impish wit,...
- 9/9/2020
- MUBI
Another Decade with Takashi Miike is a series of essays on the 2010 films of the Japanese maverick, following Notebook's earlier survey of Miike's first decade of the 21st century.Takashi Miike could have become the idea of himself held by many Americans and gotten rich doing it, but his career was always his own. After he indulged one last time in the uncomplicated thrill of homicide-as-spectacle in 13 Assassins (2010), he’d never spill blood the same way. In Miike’s films of the last decade, violence became the director’s way of working through feelings about a world ruled by a rotting morality. Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (2011), Lesson of the Evil (2012), As the Gods Will (2014), and Terra Formars (2016) all reckon with the problems of believing in some greater power or logic, and their findings are bleak. If teachers, gods, governments, and alien life aren’t looking out for us,...
- 8/31/2020
- MUBI
Another Decade with Takashi Miike is a series of essays on the 2010s films of the Japanese maverick, following Notebook's earlier survey of Miike's first decade of the 21st century.As the Gods Will (2014) picks up where Lesson of the Evil (2012) left off, with a massacre at a high school. Again, Takashi Miike is considering the unspeakable—namely, the wholesale slaughter of children in the place we most expect them to be safe—but there are some critical differences this time. Lesson of the Evil followed the perpetrator of an atrocity for months (and about an hour of screen time) before he shot up a high school, thereby acclimating viewers to how terrible he could be; the massacre didn’t seem to come out of nowhere. As the Gods Will, on the other hand, presents a scene of multiple homicide mere minutes after the title cards appear. It’s as...
- 8/31/2020
- MUBI
Another Decade with Takashi Miike is a series of essays on the 2010s films of the Japanese maverick, following Notebook's earlier survey of Miike's first decade of the 21st century.Being in league with Takashi Miike, taking the sensually arrayed and flayed curtains of flesh in stride, has a way of making one think of Claude Rains in Lawrence of Arabia: “It is recognized that you have a funny sense of fun.” When you make it your life’s work to decorate the insides of cinemas with the exploits of desperate, subhuman Yakuza, your idea of the business of law enforcement and especially your idea of heroism are bound to be just as warped as your sense of "fun". Miike’s cop movies are few and far between—he doesn’t get cops and he doesn’t much like them. There’s something about lying to people about the...
- 8/31/2020
- MUBI
Plot77% Acting80% Directing79%Builds up the suspense wellEnthusiastic performance by Hideaki ItoThe final goes on a bit too long 79%Overall Score Reader Rating: (3 Votes)75%
Aku no Kyôten, aka Lesson of Evil, is a pure Takashi Miike film. If you have seen more of Miike, you kind of know what to expect but the man does jump from genre to genre. But whether it’s shocking his audience with stomach-turning twists like in Audition; making a musical like For Love’s Sake; or filling the screen with cute Ninja kids in the child-friendly Ninja Kids!!!: Miike mostly knows how to make it work. With Lesson of Evil, Miike reaches back to his roots that made him famous worldwide: a mixture of gore and suspense.
We meet popular English teacher Seiji Hasumi, (portrayed by Hideaki Ito, famous for the Umizaru films) who seems to be the perfect teacher. He can teach well,...
Aku no Kyôten, aka Lesson of Evil, is a pure Takashi Miike film. If you have seen more of Miike, you kind of know what to expect but the man does jump from genre to genre. But whether it’s shocking his audience with stomach-turning twists like in Audition; making a musical like For Love’s Sake; or filling the screen with cute Ninja kids in the child-friendly Ninja Kids!!!: Miike mostly knows how to make it work. With Lesson of Evil, Miike reaches back to his roots that made him famous worldwide: a mixture of gore and suspense.
We meet popular English teacher Seiji Hasumi, (portrayed by Hideaki Ito, famous for the Umizaru films) who seems to be the perfect teacher. He can teach well,...
- 11/5/2013
- by Thor
- AsianMoviePulse
Over the past few weeks we've been keeping you updated on the expanding lineup of titles being added to Montreal's Fantasia 2013, the largest genre film festival in North America. Now that the list is a lock and the curtain is set to rise tomorrow night, we thought we'd gather up our own list of the Fantasia screenings we're most curious about. Some of the fest titles we've shared with you already, in some form or another: for example, we took a look at James Wan's The Conjuring, the grim Israeli killer flick Big Bad Wolves, Mike Mendez's monster bash Big Ass Spider! and E.L. Katz's mind-games thriller Cheap Thrills; some titles like V/H/S/2 and the psycho-thriller Magic Magic are seeing their theatrical, DVD and/or On Demand premieres this month, and Adam Wingard's You're Next screens at Comic-Con tonight. But there are still plenty...
- 7/18/2013
- by Gregory Burkart
- FEARnet
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