Certain movies get under my skin and refuse to leave. Case in point: Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure and Pulse (AKA Kairo). There are several startling scenes in those movies that left me on edge for days. Both are horror flicks, but differ in their approaches. Cure is a police procedural with an unsettling string of deaths, while Pulse imagines what happens when there is no more room in the spirit realm for dead people. Kurosawa has a gift for creating indelible imagery married to sometimes head-scratching stories. Even when things don't really add up, as in Bright Future, his films leave a distinct aftertaste.

Kurosawa's Retribution, from 2006, hit Region 1 DVD earlier this week, and it's an odd little beast. In the opening scene, a woman in a red dress is brutally drowned by a mysterious man in a shallow pool of salt water on a reclaimed piece of land near the ocean. Kôji Yakusho (Babel, Shall We Dance?) plays Yoshioka, a weary police detective (similar to the one he played in Cure) investigating the case. Before he can get too far, we witness a respected doctor kill his son, for little apparent reason, by the same method. Is the doctor a serial killer? Why are Yoshioka's fingerprints on the first victim's body? Why does Yoshioka start having nightmares about a woman in a red dress?

Deliberately paced, Retribution veers between an effective freak-out and a disappointing, frustrating mystery, but Kurosawa fans may want to check out its low-key artistic despair.

The Hollywood Reporter announced that Hayden Christensen will produce and star in Beast of Bataan. The story is based on Lawrence Taylor's book A Trial of Generals and was adapted for the screen by Chris Carlson and Mark Jean. The script will focus on the war crime trials that took place after the infamous Bataan Death March during WWII. Fred Schepisi (Six Degrees of Separation) has already signed to direct and Christensen will produce the indie-drama under his Forest Park Pictures banner.

Now for a little history lesson: On April 9th, 1942, General Edward P. King surrendered approximately 75,000 troops (mainly wounded American and Filipino soldiers) to the Japanese as prisoners of war that were to be transported from Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, a prison camp in the province of Tarlac. Instead what happened was the men were marched without food and water, were tortured and beaten, and of the original 75,000 men only 54,000 reached their destination. Ultimately, the Japanese general responsible for transporting the soldiers (Lt. General Masaharu Homma) was convicted of war crimes and executed just outside of Manilla in 1946 (I guess I should have labeled that a spoiler, but it is history after all, so it's not like it was a secret).

Babel star, Koji Yakusho, is in talks to play the Japanese general, Lt. General Homma and Christensen will play his rookie defense attorney trying to save Homma from the death penalty -- although I guess we all know how that one turns out. Also joining Christensen are William Hurt and Willem Defoe, but there was no word on their roles. Beast of Bataan is scheduled to start shooting in Australia this February.

In the opinion of Tokyo-based writer Don Brown of Ryuganji, "the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan has settled for a typically middling selection." He's talking about Japan's submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award; the selection in question is a film entitled I Just Didn't Do It. Brown says he's hard pressed to think of a more suitable candidate, though he offers suggestions that he feels would have been more adventuresome (Memories of Matsuko) or more conservative (Love and Honor).

Written and directed by Masayuki Suo (his first film since the original Shall We Dance? in 1996), I Just Didn't Do It centers on the travails of Teppei, a young man uncertain about his future. According to the official site, "On his way to his first job interview ... he's accused of groping a young woman on the train. ... Before he knows what's going on, his denials plunge him into a Kafka-esque world of bureaucratic precedent." Ryo Kase (Letters From Iwo Jima) plays Teppei; Koji Yakusho and Asaka Seto are attorneys hired to help him.

Mark Schilling of The Japan Times observed: "The Japanese are a law-abiding people for a very good reason -- once the system here has you in its grips you are well and truly in the meat grinder." He feels the film drives its points home "with an unrivaled forcefulness." Variety's Russell Edwards was not as enthusiastic yet still wrote: "Patient viewers will appreciate helmer's determination to show the tedious and the wearing nature of the extended and inequitable legal process." The film will screen at the New York Film Festival on October 9 and 10. I Just Didn't Do It does not yet have US distribution.

[ Via The Golden Rock and TokyoGraph ]