Fridae

If you're a no-nonsense intellectual queer who prefers historically-accurate
dramas to fluffy cartoons and comedies, then this is the movie for
you. Hailed by critics as one of the best Japanese films of the
year, Blood & Bones is based on a non-fiction book which
explores the lives of Korean immigrants living in Japan from the
1920s to the 1980s. Spanning six decades, the story centers on a
man named Kim Sun-Pei—?a violent, hot-tempered man who rapes
women and bullies his children for years while he builds his loan-sharking
and property empire.

Takeshi Kitano — who has become the most recognizable face
of Japanese cinema — plays the role of Kim, imbuing it with
a force and intensity that simply blows every other actor off the
screen. So frightening is his presence that you instantly start
to worry for the other characters when he enters a room. Kyoka Suzuki
plays his long-suffering wife, while the impossibly sexy Joe Odagiri
plays his bastard son.

Though Blood and Bones is a culturally important film
because of its period authenticity, it is not a film that will stay
in your heart for long. Kim's outrageous acts of violence make it
hard to like or care for him. When you see him exhaling his last
breath of air on his deathbed at the end of the film, you too breathe
a sigh of relief that it's all is over. Still, Blood and Bones
is the most serious cinematic offering of the week and a should-see
for film students and aspiring critics.