Uzumasa Limelight (April 4th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[UZAMASA LIMELIGHT screens Saturday April 4th at 8:45 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Wayne Richards

Many classic Japanese samurai films have been produced in Uzumasa, a suburb of Kyoto which has been described as the “Hollywood of the East.”  At one point a home to over 100 “Kirare Yaku" (sword fighting film extras who have mastered the art of dying well on screen), Uzumasa has begun to see a steep decline in the making of samurai pictures. This downturn has resulted in the vast majority of these skilled actors disappearing from the cinema landscape.  UZUMASA LIMELIGHT focuses on one of the last of the storied and dying Kirare Yaku breed.  The premise here is the equivalent of telling the life story of an indistinct actor who played one of the countless henchmen that were effortlessly and quickly disposed of by Bruce Lee in ENTER THE DRAGON.  

Onibaba (July 22 at 9:55 p.m. and July 23 at 5 p.m. at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[ONIBABA screens Friday July 22nd at 9:55 pm and Saturday July 23rd at 5 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.)

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.


See these reeds? ONIBABA is like that, and more.
In the favorite of my many part-time jobs, I arrive at work adjacent to a stand of reeds, just over head-height, constantly undulating in the wind. I've stared at the ever-rustling fronds obsessively and even filmed them, probably because of my psychological scarring from early exposure to this 1964 samurai horror tale from director Kaneto Shindo.