Word: kitano
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...should we concern ourselves with this hateful tyrant, whose life the movie traces for nearly half a century starting with his immigration to Japan from Korea in 1920? The most obvious reason is that Kim is played by "Beat" Takeshi Kitano, the Japanese actor-director whose blind-swordsman movie Zatoichi won him best-director honors at last year's Venice Film Festival. Shunpei Kim is Kitano's first lead role under another director in more than a decade, and the best performance of an illustrious career. But an equally important force behind what may be this year's best Japanese...
...Blood and Bones, which was adapted from a semiautobiographical novel by Korean-Japanese author Yang Sok Gil, is a departure from Sai's freewheeling, often humorous style. But the director's gutter humanism and Kitano's steely meanness fuse elegantly in their portrayal of a ruthless man who, as he builds a new life for himself in Japan, is gripped by a need to destroy what he creates. Even as we're repulsed by Kim's violence and heartlessness, we're seduced by his survivor's charisma-in fact, Kitano's performance is so compelling that Kim's victims have...
...cinemavens at the Toronto International Film Festival talk about movies with a connoisseur's urgency and will pick a fight over pictures that may never grace a cineplex. Takeshi Kitano's Zatoichi, with the star-director playing Japan's legendary blind swordsman, provoked one such debate. Some said it was too faithful to the old Zatoichi movies to be a true Takeshi film, others that it was too Takeshi to be a true Zatoichi. (No matter: the picture still won the People's Choice plebiscite...
...Brother (2001): Kitano goes to America and teaches Los Angeles gangstas a thing or two about the art of killing?mostly by killing all of them. A misfire...
...Dolls (2002): In a departure, Kitano presents three tales of undying love inspired by Bunraku, traditional Japanese puppet theater. A strange lack of guns, but there's emotional violence aplenty