Ash The Watcher

   BATTLES WITHOUT HONOUR AND HUMANITY-1973 DIRECTOR- KINJI FUKUSAKU  WHAT IS IT ABOUT? The first movie in Kinji Fukasaku's epic of five movies, the Yakuza Papers series, BWHAH follows a young gangster Shozo Hirono as he makes his own place in the Yakuza landscape of Post WW2 Japan. ------------------------------------------------------- W ith the effects of the second world war and Japan's defeat still looming in the background, BWHAH starts off with Shozo Hirono being sent off to prison where he befriends a member of the Doi family thus leading him to his first serious brush with the Yakuza and his rise through the ranks helped by his intense sense of loyalty. Considered as one of the essentials of the Gangster cinema and one that during it's five movie run helped change the Yakuza cinema in general, The first installment in the series grips you from the beginning as it drops you right into the middle of this expansive and complex world with a whole load of different char

   VIRUS-1980 DIRECTOR- KINJI FUKUSAKU  WHAT IS IT ABOUT? A Virus designed with the intent of being a Bioweapon accidentally leaks killing off almost the entire world Human population, with the only survivors being the Scientists working in the cold of Antarctica. And as they try to find a cure, another unexpected threat threatens to derail them. ------------------------------------------------------- S tarting off in 1983, the movie takes us straight to the aftermath of what the world has been through in 1982, the year the virus was unleashed as we follow a submarine on an expedition to Japan witnessing the entire population wiped out a fate shared by the rest of the world barring the Scientists working in Antarctica. And then in a flashback, we see the events leading up to it. The ambitions of Virus are staggering. Reportedly the costliest Japanese production of its time, the story incorporates a global worldview to the spread of the Virus, and although Japan is featured, a significa