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Hiroyuki Tanaka (Kanikosen, Blessing Bell, Drive) is a very big favorite of mine. Largely unknown in the West (unless you're part of a privileged fest crowd that is), Tanaka is a director with plenty of commercial appeal who failed to ride the (somewhat random) wave of popularity that many other Asian films enjoyed in the early years of the new millennium. If you want a taste of what he is capable of, Monday is probably your best and most entertaining entry point.There are still plenty of films out there that lack a proper English-friendly release (take Kyoshin, Tenshi no Tamago, Symbol) but in those cases I can at least sympathize with the financial risk of releasing such films over here. Even though Monday isn't without...

A new Hiroyuki Tanaka film, rejoice! He used to operate on a pretty regular schedule, sadly his last film dates almost 5 years back. By the time I'd finally caught up with his films, it seemed he quit making them. Kanikosen is a welcome come-back for Tanaka and even though it's a little different from his other output, it turned out to be a very enjoyable film indeed.

Tanaka (better known as Sabu) is without a doubt one of my favorite directors. I consider The Blessing Bell a true masterpiece, with Monday and Postman Blues only further proof of his enormous talent. His films are notoriously hard to find on DVD (English subbed that is, they seem to appreciate Tanaka in Germany a great deal more), which is quite strange considering how well-received his films are on festivals.

With Kanikosen (or The Crab Cannery Ship), Tanaka reunites his love for transportation...

Hello, Film Experiencers! This is the rather-absent-of-late BeRightBack, posting a note from beneath the mountains of work I've been buried under for the past two months or so. As you may know, the Chicago International Film Festival is currently taking place in the Windy City. While I had been resigned to skipping it entirely this year, last night I was compelled to ignore my obligations and take in a Sunday night screening of Kanikôsen, the new movie by the Japanese director Sabu.

Known for candy-colored, slapstick films like Hard Luck Hero and Drive that rely on the narrative force of a madcap chase to connect a series of inventive set-pieces and visual gags, Sabu seemed a provocatively odd choice to remake the stern 1929 proletarian novella Kanikôsen by Kobayashi Takiji (the title is translated variously as "The Factory Ship" or "The Cannery Boat," although Sabu has insisted that his film be...