My Twenty Favorite Blu Ray-4K UHD Blu Ray Releases of 2023

Well, here I am again.  I keep saying it every year: I thought I would not be able to upload My Favorite Blu Ray/4K UHD List this year for sure, but my protestations have become just that, protestations. 

The truth is that as long as I have a functioning brain and/or optical-neural capacity to watch and comprehend a motion picture, and as long as they keep putting out physical media optic discs for classical cinema, I will continue to put together this list, or something approximating it, every year.  There is no real compelling reason not to, it seems.  Yes, yes, I am always busy, involved in some life-changing decisions or projects that makes a big difference in the scale of my income, or some such adult concerns.  Nonetheless these forces of “real life obligations” have never been powerful enough to derail my effort at list-making yet (I think it happened only once to my Korean-language list in the last twenty years?  But I could be mistaken).

The physical media may yet decline further in the coming years but it will never completely disappear, under most of the abject circumstances hypothesized by those busy prophesizing the deaths of older-generation media forms. Suppose the worldwide economic collapse takes place following a global environmental disaster.  What then?  The first thing to go would probably be streaming services, not optic discs.  In a situation like that, if history is any indication, concrete, you-can-put-your-hands-on artifacts become even more valuable and desirable. Their contents will acquire additional meanings beyond the disposable “entertainment” values assigned to them by the corporate entities: of course, this is already the world most of the collectors I know have been living in for many years, sometimes decades, upgrading from LPs to CDs, VHS tapes to laserdiscs to DVDs, and from Blu Rays to 4K UHD Blu Rays, through the thick and thin and through financial ups and downs.  

This evolution of physical media is not simply driven by corporate greed or technological advancement.  It is also a response on the part of many artists, technicians, consumers and aficionados over the years, based on our fervent wish to watch motion pictures— or any media content, really— in the best light possible, to be able to appreciate their qualities in the fullest way possible.  Such a desire is a real thing. While it might not be strong enough to always buckle the mindless corporate mandate that passes for “capitalism” in the United States (and rest of the world), it has sustained various forms of meaningful resistance against the latter.  

So much so that I can truthfully say I today have greater access to the bountiful cinematic treasures from all over the world— from Tunisia to Senegal, from Mongolia to Albania— and from all periods in the grand narrative of cinematic evolution, from the very beginning of the cinema to the latest experimental video, than any other time in my life. As far as a lover of classic, different, and interesting cinema (with sufficient resources, I hasten to add, but, on the other hand, you do not have to be crazy-rich to be a good collector) is concerned, life is good indeed.

As per every year, a word of caution to those stumbling on my list for the first time. This is exactly what it says it is, My Favorite Blu Rays and 4K UHD Blu Rays of 2023, and the selection process is fundamentally subjective. The list is not beholden to “objective” assessments of the archival values of the items discussed herein, although the latter are certainly factors for consideration. Nor is it beholden to the critical consensus for “greatness” or “excellence” of the films found in these discs.  The most important criterion for selection is the sense of (re)discovery, surprise or confirmation that I derived out of owning these discs, not simply watching them.  The production quality, the design, the packaging, the commentaries, the supplements, the letterings and signages: they all matter, perhaps not as much as the movies themselves, but they play non-trivial roles in my appreciation of these titles.  

So please do not consider this list as “the best Blu Rays” or “the best films” of 2023, however you construe the term “best.”  I am thoroughly not interested in that kind of list.  Enough rantings. Let’s delve into them then.  There are twenty titles, and the “dating” is not laser-precise, as the repeat readers of my annual lists already know.  

20.  The Game Trilogy: Limited Edition (1978-79, Arrow Video, Region A). 

This release is mostly significant for allowing those outside Japan to finally access the star-making films of Matsuda Yūsaku (1949-1989), a half-Korean Japanese star of ‘80s who tragically died from bladder cancer at the age of 40, shortly after making an impressive Hollywood film debut as a vicious punk villain in Ridley Scott’sBlack Rain.  The reason it is relatively lower in my list is that I find the films— the so-called Game Trilogy, The Most Dangerous Game, The Killing Game (both 1978) and The Execution Game (1979)— entertaining enough but not quite likeable or genuinely inventive. Nonetheless, they are fascinating slices of nihilistic urban action genre done in the late ‘70s-early ‘80s Toei style, where a lot of gunshots are fired, not very realistically I must add, and nasty fistfights among colorfully dressed and coiffed thugs take place in narrow corridors or abandoned empty houses.

As for Matsuda, he is certainly an intriguing figure, emerging almost unscathed from the very loud period wardrobe and hairstyle doing their darnedest to render him laughable.  At times he improbably suggests a cross between Jacky Chan and Lee Marvin, at once hard-boiled and charismatic on the one hand, and goofily charming but lethally lithe, a Monkey King in shades and pantaloons, on the other.  Matsuda hints at his skills as an actor, especially in The Killing Game, probably the best in the trilogy, projecting intensity, inner conflict and even remorse, while intoning uber-pulpish, borderline ridiculous dialogue. Even though the films are not quite rediscovered masterpieces, Arrow Video’s expert husbandry of them cannot be faulted.  

 

19.  The Devil’s Game (1981, Severin Films, Region Free).

This title, too, might have been higher up in the list, had it been presented in the way some Anglo-American TV shows of ‘60s and ‘70s were remastered to the point of never-before-seen glory (see Columbo below).  Realistically, we should be simply grateful that Severin Films, following in the footsteps of the last year’s Tales to Keep You Awake, Narcisso Ibanez Serrador’s key Spanish TV horror, has unearthed and made available, with English subs, Italian RAI TV’s I giochi del diavolo, six-episode adaptations of nineteenth century literary classics.  The source novels and stories range from E.T.A. Hoffman’s The Sandman, Henry James’ Sir Edmund Orme, Robert L. Stevenson’s The Imp in a Bottle, Gerard de Nerval’s The Possessed Hand, H. G. Wells’ A Dream of Another, and Prosper Merimeé’s The Venus of Ille. Of course, the last episode will be of great interest to the horror film fans, as it is officially the last film directed by Mario Bava, assisted by his son Lamberto.

The episodes are collected here mostly as SD-grade tape masters, sometimes with the horizontal “fuzzes” visible and weak colors, but, despite the visual impairment and sometimes staid, talky presentations, the majority of them evince a classicist feel of the kind difficult to replicate in an Anglo-American setting, as if the video cameraman was directly capturing productions authentically taking place in nineteenth-century.  And of course, The Venus of Ille, scratched and damaged but scanned from a 16mm print rather than a video source, is a terrific little piece of suggestive terror, with a riveting performance by the exquisite Daria Nicolodi (The Deep Red, Bava’s Schock), well transcending its curiosity value.

18.   The Haunting of Julia (1977, Scream! Factory, 4K UHD Blu Ray).

A surprise title for a 4K UHD release, The Haunting of Julia, better known as Full Circle, features another woman-under-psychological-distress role for Mia Farrow in the wake of Rosemary’s Baby, based on Peter Straub’s (Ghost Story) first full-blown horror novel Julia. Featuring a very young Tom Conti and a cabal of British actresses including Jill Benett and Cathleen Nesbitt, Richard Loncraine’s (Breamstone and Treacle, Richard III with Ian McKellen) film is a monumental feel-bad show, especially for the female viewers with children, but there is certainly truth in advertising: it is a haunting film, all right, with Farrow delivering an achingly vulnerable performance.  The dual 4K UHD-Blu Ray collector’s edition has a new commentary with director Loncraine’s participation, a set of pleasant interviews with the veteran actor Conti (most recently seen in Chis Nolan’s Oppenheimer as Albert Einstein) and the then-child actress Samantha Gates. 

 

17.  Marathon Man (1976, Kino Lorber, 4K UHD Blu Ray).

 

William Goldman’s urban espionage thriller is really at heart a New York Jewish artist’s reflection on the inadequately addressed legacies of the Holocaust.  It is perhaps best known for the chilling turn by Laurence Olivier as the Nazi dentist Szell, who has turned his trade skills into torture techniques.  After nearly 50 years, it now has an added meaning as a deconstruction of the globe-trotting action thriller genre, in the sense that it is centered on a New York grad student’s extremely personal vendetta against the vast, global machinery of interconnected evil, ever banal and mundane and firmly rooted in the wartime “expediencies” carried out by global empires, including the good ol’ US of A.  What is it about ‘70s American movies that look the best on 4K UHD?  Kino Lorber’s presentation of Marathon Man, like Jaws, perfectly recreates the theatrical experience I have had in late ‘70s Korea, watching the film riveted along with a paying Korean audience and feeling the wave of collective frisson as Szell calmly walks over to poor Babe with a dental drill in his hand.

 

16.  Libido (1963, Severin Films, Blu Ray- Region A).

 

This low-budget little Italian programmer in black and white was an on-the-nose directorial effort by the insanely prolific screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi, responsible for many giallo classics with sometimes amusingly convoluted plot twists (and/or mouthful titles) such as The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key and Torso. Featuring a debut performance by Giancarlo Giannini and a welcome substantial role for the “Italian Peter Lorre” Luciano Pigozzi, Libido is a surprisingly effective chamber piece, compact and atmospheric, that anticipates many conventions and stylistics of the giallo genre.  Severin Film’s presentation of this nearly forgotten early ‘60s template for the Italian psychosexual thrillers, scanned in 2K from a dupe negative, is not perfect but probably presents it in the best possible behavior ever.  The disc also comes with another erudite commentary track from Kate Ellinger and a wry, aggressively candid long-form interview with Gastaldi.

 

15.  Dellamorte dellamore [a.k.a. Cemetery Man] (1993, Severin Films, 4K UHD Blu Ray)

 

Severin’s full-blown attack at horror film collectors near the end of 2023 came with a triptych of Italian horror classics remastered in 4K UHD, The Church, The Sect and Dellamore dellamorte. The last title, in particular, has been long time in coming, with only a German Blu Ray edition available previously. I should add that Dellamore is one of the few horror films made after 1980 I have seen that unambivalently deserves the designation “dark/horror fairy tale,” with its punkish-ly morbid but strangely affecting aura of romantic yearning.  Severin’s lovingly remastered 4K UHD iteration presents it swathed in rich, almost sensual, blackness as well as in the extra-moody Dolby Atmos five-channel soundscape. As for the supplements, the company managed to rope in almost all major participants, from director Michele Soavi to stars Rupert Everett, Ana Falchi, Stefano Masciarelli, cinematographer Mauro Marchetti, and special FX artist Sergio Stivaletti, plus a glossy, visually arresting booklet with an analytic essay by Claire Donner.  As if this is not enough, we also get a 72-minute CD soundtrack compiling the witty score by Manuel De Sica and Riccardo Biseo.

 

14.  The Questor Tapes (1974, Kino Lorber, Blu Ray- Region A).

The Anglo-American TV from ‘60s and ‘70s are one area for which the HD upgrade in physical media has done some truly amazing feats, rendering some TV movies and series episodes the kind of clarity and resplendence, entirely absent in their original airwave broadcasts.  This is the kind of “revisionism” that I heartily welcome.  As a stand-alone film, The Questor Tapes feels rather incomplete, given that it was one of the several unsold pilots from Gene Roddenberry. It has all the hallmarks of a Roddenberry project, again featuring a God-like alien intelligence that “benevolently” attempts to steer humankind out of its likely path for self-annihilation.  Like the original Star Trek, the movie’s— scripted by Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon— liberal sentiments and admittedly sophisticated SF trappings are contrasted to its condescending attitudes toward women and, well, the unwashed masses.  However, the movie is compelling, mainly due to a wonderful performance by Robert Foxworth as the self-constructing android Questor, who generates an excellent chemistry with Mike Farrell’s skeptical scientist.  Kino Lorber’s presentation includes a welcome commentary by Gary Gerani (I just realized that he produce-directed a documentary on the music of Billy Goldenberg, one of the great TV composers of ‘70s).

 

13.  Accion mutante (1992, Severin Films, 4K UHD Blu Ray)

 

OK, Alex de la Iglesia’s debut feature film is finally here in the glorious 4K UHD from our friends at Severin Films!  It is certainly a unique concoction, an ultra-grungy, hyper-sophomoric, sub-Star Wars SF/spaghetti Western hybrid with the most politically incorrect characters you could imagine (for one, the band of outlaws that cause all the mayhem are not mutants, but simply disabled people, including a Siamese twin brothers attached at their shoulders and a hulking brute identified as “a man with the lowest IQ in human history”). This is the kind of movie in which the head bad guy keeps a kidnap victim’s mouth shut with metal staples instead of duct tapes, and that detail is played for a joke later: you have been warned. 

But what really dropped my jaws was not all the “transgressive” (some are admittedly funny) satire and bad attitude in the film itself but just how good the movie looks in this 4K UHD presentation.  It lovingly restores its widescreen cinematography, including eye-opening vistas of Spanish mountain regions that pass for an alien desert landscape.  All directors should be so lucky to have their debut features presented in a glorious form like this.  

 

12.  Danza Macabra: The Italian Gothic Collection, Volume One (1964-71, Severin Films, Blu Ray- Region A/Free).

Severin’s curation of the more obscure but desirable Euro-horror titles continue with this collection of four films, Monster of the Opera, The Seventh Grave, Scream of a Demon Lover and Lady Frankenstein, the last title pretty well known and previously released in a decent Blu Ray from Nucleus Films.  All of them, with differing levels of genre pedigree, entertainment value and archival interest, are outfitted with individual commentaries and substantial supplements that greatly enhance our appreciation of these films.  None of them are masterpieces but, collected in a hefty box adorned with the newly commissioned beautiful illustration typical of Severin’s care and attention to the production values, they truly warm the heart of a collector. 

11.  The Giant Gilla Monster/The Killer Shrews (1959, Film Masters, Blu Ray- Region Free).

 

For some strange reason, I have never actually seen The Killer Shrews, neither on a late night creature feature program, nor via a VHS rented from a neighborhood video store, not ever. Well, I am glad I have not until Film Master’s Blu Ray.  No doubt about it, it is a badly acted, badly staged regional exploitation horror of the peculiarly US of A late ‘50s-early ‘60s kind, but guess what bro, I actually found some of its set pieces genuinely scary, the hilariously hideous, dentally exaggerated puppet heads standing for mutant shrews notwithstanding.  Oh, The Giant Gilla Monster is a total fluff, but it has its charms too.  Has my life improved in quality thanks to having watched The Killer Shrews through this special edition Blu Ray (presented with the option of watching the movies in the 1.85:1 theatrical aspect ratio or the 1.33:1 TV academy ratio)?  You bet your cheese crumbs.

 

10.  Monsieur Hire (1989, Kino Lorber-Cohen Media Group, Blu Ray- Region A).

 

One of the French films that I come back to multiple times in order to savor its dense texture and melancholy sensibilities, Patrice Laconte’s Monseiur Hire saunters into the room in an impeccable Blu Ray presentation from Cohen Media.  Particularly powerful in this iteration is Michael Nyman’s score that partially draws upon a spectacularly haunting arrangement of a Brahms piece.  This is one of those twisty dramas in which an initially unsympathetic and even repellent character (brilliantly essayed with great restraint by Michel Blanc) gradually transforms into an uncomfortably familiar, even a tragic one, without attempting to tug at our heartstrings.  The supplement includes a brand-new interview with Laconte and the female star Sandrine Bonnaire.

 

9.  eXistenZ (1999, Vinegar Syndrome, 4K UHD Blu Ray) 

I thought that the Region B 101 Films Blu Ray from some years ago was going to be the last word on this David Cronenberg outing: I was wrong, and I am now obliged to include the Vinegar Syndrome 4K UHD in the 2023 list.  The VS upgrade is mostly distinguished from the movie’s other iterations by its sense of depth and rich texture as well as the powerful ambience effect created by Howard Shore’s stealthily magnificent score.  Now only if Criterion or Arrow could do a similar update on M Butterfly (with a commentary by Professor Howard Chiang: you know, sometimes wishes do come true)!

 

8.  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937, Disney, 4K UHD Blu Ray).

 

I have never expected to put a classic Disney animation in this list: for one, the company does not have a good track record of making its library titles accessible to the consumers, even its fan base.  But again, this 4K UHD Blu Ray release— which I obtained from Amazon UK— is a special item.  It really rehabilitates, as far as I can see, since I was obviously not there during the theatrical premier of this landmark feature-length animation, its three-dimensionality, emphasizing the astounding depths of background drawings and fluid mutability of the rotoscoped animated figures: it is one of the most astounding cinematic transfigurations of moving drawings I have ever seen.  By the way, this Snow White is surprisingly short and truncated, rather abruptly terminating the (great) villainy of the Evil Queen. It might not be quite as affecting as Dumbo or Fantasia, but it is still one of the genuine American treasures of popular culture.  It is amazing in and of itself to be able to appreciate its beauty in this manner, that I think will easily best a theatrical showing of a newly struck print.

 

7.  The Criminal Acts of Tod Slaughter (1935-1940, Powerhouse Indicator, Blu Ray- Region Free).

This was a pure surprise again, comparable to my first exposure to the films of Laird Cregar during the DVD era, but in a much bigger scale.  I was not even vaguely aware of Tod Slaughter (1885-1956), one of the first Anglo-American cinematic stars to specialize in playing villains that you love to hate (which differs from monstrous portrayals of the horror stars in the same period such as Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi) prior to Powerhouse Indicator’s boxset that collects eight films among Slaughter’s oeuvre.  The literary sources and cultural pedigrees of these programmers are by themselves intriguing and illuminating.  Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is bookended by a vignette set in a location-shot barber shop in ‘30s London: Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror anticipates both a German crimini and a James Bond extravaganza, and it is fascinating to see how this template of a techno-thriller, replete with arresting but plot-wise near-nonsensical visuals was already fully formed: The Face at the Window is a Gothic melodrama with a powerful sense of underground perversity running beneath its narrative.  The other films are all endlessly fascinating as well.  Tod Slaughter himself is mesmerizing, his theatrical villainy intriguingly fairy-tale-like, sometimes with unmistakable glints in his eyes and chortles echoing down the corridors long after he had existed.

 

6.  Blood and Black Lace (1964, Arrow Video, Blu Ray- Region B).

The 88 Films restoration of Mario Bava’s The Whip and the Body almost made the list. I just had to leave a designated spot in it for the stuffed-to-the-gills Arrow special edition of Blood and Black Lace, although I am not sure why Arrow did not go for a 4K UHD release. Still, their touted new 4K restoration is a marvel, blindingly aggressive reds and treacherously shaded greens all blazing and assaulting our senses.  The Carlo Rusticheli score in lossless mono soundtrack has never sounded better. Tim Lucas is the main authority in the supplements, which makes sense, but I found David Del Valle’s Sinister Image episode on Cameron Mitchell most interesting among numerous special features.  The 50-page-plus “booklet” has tons of attractive pictures and essays by the likes of Howard Hughes, Kate Ellinger, Rachael Nisbett, Joe Dante (interviewed by Alan Jones) and David Del Valle. 

 

5.  Samurai Wolf 1 & 2 (1966-67, Film Movement, Blu Ray- Region A).

This was also a nice surprise. Gosha Hideo is still not quite well represented in North America, considering some of his amazing but relatively scant output (what happened to Criterion Channel’s The Oil-Hell Murder? Is it ever going to come out? How about The Fireflies of North?).  Film Movement’s presentation of a lean and mean swordfight actioner Kiba Ōkaminosuke (roughly, “Mr. Fanged Wolfguy”) and its even better sequel is a terrific boon to any fan of the Japanese period pieces. Natsuyagi Isao is the unkempt, bearded and freewheeling ronin with the unlikely moniker, hired as a bodyguard against the antagonists Uchida Ryohei and Nishimura Ko, respectively. The best supplement is an affectionate and respectful recollection of Gosha’s innovative filmmaking techniques and interaction with his crew and cast by his daughter Tomoe, projecting a pride in her father’s legacy.

 

4.  Mexico Macabre (1959-63, Powerhouse Indicator, Blu Ray- Region Free).

This collection is a revival of the old (now defunct) Casa Negra DVD series of classic Mexican horror films, but since Powerhouse Indicator is the culprit behind the re-do, the collection, holding together Black Pit of Dr. M, The Witch’s Mirror, The Curse of the Crying Woman and the one-and-only, brain-slurping craziness entitled The Brainiac, is, conservatively put, overwhelming in its almost absurd level of comprehensiveness and imparted information.  And yes, the “booklet” again: this time it is 99 pages, and as is the custom with PI, includes a hefty amount of archival data, including a 1995 obituary of Abel Salazar— the star of The Brainiac— by David Wilt in Mexican Film Bulletin. 

3. Columbo: The 1970s- Seasons 1-7 (1968-1978, Kino Lorber, Blu Ray- Region A).

 

This landmark boxset has received some online criticism due to Kino Lorber’s failure to include previously announced commentaries by notable scholars and critics, but I could not really drop it from the list for this reason, disappointing as it might have been for core fans of the series.  Columbo is now proven to be simply one of the most intelligent and best-produced mystery TV series of all time.  It is absolutely wonderful to have these motion-picture length episodes on a remastered HD presentation that allows us to appreciate the distinctive, episode-specific looks of location cinematography, editing techniques (including a split-screen montage as busy and dense as those seen in theatrical films such as The Thomas Crown Affair) and inflections and turns of speech among great guest actors conveyed ever so clearly (My favorite guest appearance in this set is perhaps Johnny Cash’s slightly sweaty and melancholy turn as a country singer star-murder conspirator).  

However, for my money, the most mind-boggling thing was watching the first pilot film Prescription: Murder (1968) in this magnificently remastered HD version, with Gene Barry as a manipulative psychoanalyst.  Here, Lieutenant Columbo is equally manipulative and duplicitous.  It is almost a neo-noir in which your sympathies threaten to pivot toward the cold-hearted murderer played by Barry from an obviously sharp-minded police inspector whose skewed gaze and gravely voice barely seem to camouflage a ruthless and amoral core fully matching that of his wealthy opponent.   

 

2. Cushing Curiosities (1962-1974, Severin Films, Blu Ray- Region Free/A).

The “odds and ends” collection of Peter Cushing’s lesser-known or under-appreciated films, outside Hammer and staples of Euro-horror is nonetheless something only Severin Films at this stage could put together.  It includes a  very welcome Blu Ray presentation of The Man Who Finally Died, reviewed several years ago in this website, interesting British thrillers Suspicion and The Cone of Silence, six surviving episodes of the BBC ’64-’68 Sherlock Homes with Douglas Wilmer as Dr. Watson, Bloodsuckers which seems to receive zero respect anywhere, despite its weirdly respectable cast (including Edward Woodward as an anthropologist— or a psychologist?— specializing in sexual perversities in various cultures: Oh-kaay…) and at least some coherent critical viewpoint about vampirism as a metaphor for social exploitation, and Tender Dracula, a strangely affecting horror-comedy that actually features a genuinely sympathetic performance by Cushing.  

Maestro Cushing is front and center in all of these features: none of his roles here are glorified cameos (well, maybe Bloodsuckers, depending on how you read the film).  The collection confirms my conviction that Peter Cushing is completely watchable in any work he has a hand in: he and Christopher Lee still remain for me the standard-bearers for true film stars. 

 

1.  Borsalino (1970, Arrow Video, Blu Ray- Region A)

This has always been the pattern for My Favorite Lists: the number one spot has always been claimed by a totally unexpected title, never really favored in other estimable lists of similar kinds. The final choice has remained intensely personal, and this year is not an exception. 

I have missed Borsalino during its South Korean theatrical run (I was too young: from this era, however, I have vivid memories of watching all Jamese Bond films, even the farcical Casino Royale, in theaters) but since then were able to watch quite a few Alain Delon films, most memorably the directorial outputs of Duccio Tessari.  Borsalino is known in Korean language as bol-sarino, even though a Korean reading of the hat brand should have been boreu-salino: this was due to the limitation of the Japanese phonetic transliteration, rendered as borusarino, carried over directly to the Korean culture.  Ah, that was an era in which an European film actor who had become a big star in Japan also had to be a big star in Korea.  It took some decades for this pattern to break: Jacky Chan and Star Wars actually played their roles in this shift.

However, Borsalino, ably directed by Jacques Deray, did not turn out what it was supposed to be in my imagination, a commercially manufactured team-up designed to boost marquee values of its superstars, Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo.  Instead, I found myself utterly engrossed in the narrative, mis-en-scene, and most importantly, characters played by its two massively charismatic stars.  More than almost any film I have seen in 2023, Borsalino was the motion picture that took me back in time to my awareness of becoming a film enthusiast, yet coupled with the true appreciation of what these “old” films in fact are, seen again in its pristine, youthful countenance, capable of.  

The same list of labels, with gratitude and appreciation: Severin Films, Powerhouse Indicator, Arrow Video, Kino Lorber, Vinegar Syndrome, Scream! Factory, Cohen Media, Film Masters and many others who worked on the equally splendid discs that for various reasons did not make the list.  Additional showers of gratitude to ever-reliable online reviewers, again led by Cinesavant and Mondo Digital, and including DVD Beaver, Blu-ray.com, Digital Bits and other sites.  A special word of thanks to the Patreon-sponsored DVD Beaver collections of screenshots, that supplied a few of the screenshots I have employed above.    

What will 2024 going to bring?  It is already one and a half months into the new year and maybe the world is go down the (climate-change-caused) storm drain, but as I reiterate, the life of a classic cinema collector at this point is not bad at all.  It is, truthfully, wonderful.  May the Force— the Energy or Ether (ki) as Koreans call it, the Power of Principle (riryoku) as Japanese call it, or the Fundamental Power (yuanli) as Chinese call it— be with all collectors and connoisseurs of classic cinema!   

 

'We Never Treated These Civilians Unfairly'- DVD Review of BOY SOLDIERS: THE SECRET WAR IN OKINAWA

BOY SOLDIERS: THE SECRET WAR IN OKINAWA 沖縄スパイ戦史. Japan, 2018. A Tofoo Films/Documentary Japan Co-Production, with assistant from Ryūkyū shinpōsha, Okinawa Times Company, Okinawa Kiroku Eiga-wo Ōen-suru Kai. Aspect ratio 1.78:1. 1 hour 54 minutes. Directors: Mikami Chie 三上智恵, Ōya Hanayo 大矢英代 . Cinematography: Hirata Mamoru 平田守 .  Editor: Suzuo Keita 鈴尾啓太. Music: Fujii Yūji 藤井祐二   Interviewed: Sugeyama Ryōkō 瑞慶山良光 , Kudaka Eiichi 久高栄一 Tamazato Katsuzō 玉里勝三 Tamai Teiji 玉城貞二, Miyagi Kōji 宮城康二, Ōshiro Hirokichi 大城弘吉 . 

The horrible treatment that Okinawans received during the Pacific War, especially in its end stages, has been public knowledge for quite a while now, but of course there are stories from the Okinawan experiences that remain untold or insufficiently publicized. A committed movement in the postwar Japan against militarization of the Okinawan islands has drawn upon the tragic wartime history of the island population to remind the world that the horrors of wartime mobilization could repeat itself in the near future, if the Okinawans let the US-Japan international-security network in the Pacific that ultimately regard the local population as strategically “expendable” dictate their fates. One outcome of the concerted efforts to excavate the hidden history of the military exploitation of Okinawans is this documentary, co-directed by Mikami Chie (1964-), a veteran journalist at Ryūkyū Asahi Radio and director of such Okinawa-themed documentaries as The Targeted Village (2012), and Ōya Hanayo, a young former reporter for Ryūkyū Asahi Broadcasting Station and producer of the award-winning TV program The Terrorist Was Me (2016), about former US soldiers stationed in Okinawa who had become anti-war and anti-base activists.     

The film is far from a leftist screed, although some viewers who want to strenuously decouple contemporary global geopolitics from the histories of wartime Japan, Okinawa and the Pacific War might still find it “excessively political.” Mikami and Ōya ground their work firmly in the recollections of the septuagenarian and octogenarian Okinawan survivors of the Pacific War. Their accounts are told in an unhurried, minimalist manner avoiding dramatic emphases, rendering this film stylistically “conservative” compared to well-known non-fiction features dealing with memories of a war such as Erol Morris’s The Fog of War (2003).   

Harrowing, emotionally devastating yet ultimately hopeful, these stories contribute to the deepening of our historical understanding of not only the colonial and neo-colonial experiences of the Okinawans in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries but also the ways in which the Japanese wartime regime wanted to play the “end game” of their horrifying war.  The Army Nakano School established in 1938, the notorious anti-espionage and spy-training institution figures importantly in the narrative of establishment and deployment of Gokyōtai (The Hometown Protection Unit), a guerrilla paramilitary group specifically designed to attack and sabotage American troops moving into Okinawa and composed of young Okinawan boys aged fourteen to eighteen.  Some 160 boys perished in their combat actions against the Americans, and the filmmakers do not avert their eyes from graphic presentations of the horribly perforated and mangled remains of these children, captured in the photographs of the American soldiers.  A few of them were summarily executed by their “superiors” for their failure to be “good soldiers,” such as a boy named Takaesu who had apparently displayed symptoms of psychotic breakdown.  The “officer” from the mainland put a blanket over the hysterically laughing boy and summarily shot him dead, as recalled by a surviving Gokyōtai member.  Nakano School-trained counter-espionage specialists— 42 in total were sent to Okinawa, according to the filmmakers— infiltrated the Okinawan society, winning the trust of the locals, especially children: one such individual named Murakami Haruo played a charming, sophisticated “mainland” teacher to a group of schoolchildren, giving them pep talks and displaying warm smiles, only to take off his sheep’s skin once the American landing became imminent, organizing his “charges” into human grenades and mines and sending them to certain death.   

Another lesser-known episode that filmmakers discuss is the forced relocation of the residents of Hateruma island, one of the Okinawa’s many islands, to a section of the bigger Iriomote island. The residents were told to slaughter all of their livestock (Okinawans, unlike the sometimes ridiculously misleading “Blue Zone” characterization of them as nature-loving rustics living off fish and seaweed, were consuming much red meat prior to the advent of McDonalds and KFC in the postwar, US-military-dominated periods) so that the Americans, a “carnivore race,” could not make use out of them, but the meat was of course filched for the consumption of the Japanese soldiers.  And many residents knew that the relocation to Iriomote could expose them to malaria, already established to have been circulating in that section of the island.  The Nakano School agent named “Yamashita Torao” overruled these objections and pushed through the relocation.  As a result, many Hateruma island residents perished following prolonged suffering, having contracted malaria without availability of an adequate medical assistance. “Yamashita,” whose real name was Sakai Kiyoshi, did quite well as a civilian businessman after the war, becoming a factory owner, and the documentary records a chilling telephone interview with him by an Okinawan journalist, wherein he punctuates his complete denial of ever having “mistreated” the locals with smooth aizuchi (“yes, yes,” “of course, of course”) and personable guffaws.    

While the film is not short, clocking at nearly two hours, and some of the local details, such as names of the individual islands, could be a bit confusing for those unfamiliar with Okinawan geography, history and culture, it admirably holds the viewer’s interest and plays scrupulously fair to all participants, never lingering on any one particular issue for dramatic effect. It also does not merely focus on “human interest” stories and makes an attempt to reach out to historians and academics in order to make sense out of the eyewitness accounts in the context of modern Japanese history. Kawamitsu Akira, a specialist of Nago City history and author of numerous academic studies on the Gokyōtai and war orphans, and other historians argue that the Japanese army in truth never wanted to protect the civilian population of Okinawa, or for that matter, the civilian population of Japan, from the ravages of the war. Their objective had always been “protection of the kokutai,” the mythical “national body” embodied in the person of the emperor: the rest of the Japanese population was, in a word, “expendable.” The historical sources explored in the documentary illustrate that the plans to continue combatting, via guerrilla warfare and sabotage, the American forces should they end up landing and occupying Japan were in the works, and Okinawa was regarded as a prefatory stage for this eventuality.    

Can It Be Used in Class?   This documentary is currently uploaded with English subtitles as a paid rental service at Vimeo: you can access it from this URL.  The curated VOD channel MUBI has the present title in their catalogue with a trailer, but the film itself appears unavailable.  Taking into consideration difficulties of navigating such a dialogue-heavy film, you could assign this work as a supplementary material in a course covering modern Okinawan history, history of Japanese militarism and/or the end stages of the Pacific War. So often the American historical perspective about Okinawa is rigidly bifurcated between that of a particularly brutal battle theater in the late stages of the Pacific War and that of an exotic tourist spot with some sideline knowledge about the US military presence. The present documentary forces the viewers to recognize the immediacy and urgency of the history of the ongoing (neo-)colonial relationship between Japan and Okinawa and how such a history is also unavoidably intertwined with the ongoing presence of the US military stemming from the postwar US-Japan security partnership.  

The Japanese DVD (NTSC and all-region, so it should play in American and non-Japanese Asian players), issued from Kinokuniya Bookstore is well-produced with three rather substantial supplementary videos. For me, the first segment (clocking in around 17 minutes) regarding the post-production, marketing and the screening of the film for the local Okinawan viewers, is the most interesting and illuminating, the extremely fresh-looking director Ōya— looking hardly aged from her college student days— leaving a striking impression as an ethnographer-historian. The second video, longer at 37 minutes, is the longer version of the fieldwork footage involving the Cherry Blossom Sightseeing Society organized by the Gokyōtai survivors. The last short (19 minutes) is an edited recording of more eyewitness accounts at a public symposium discussing the Gokyōtai’s suppressed history.  All in all, this is an excellent presentation of a soft-spoken but provocative documentary that deserves to be seen by many viewers with more than a passing interest in the history of Japan, Okinawa and the Pacific War.

Depicting Korean History Beyond "Factual Accuracy"-- An Interview with Professor Ki Kyong-ryang on Representation of History in Contemporary Korean Cinema and TV Dramas

Having been teaching Korean and Japanese history at a wonderful American public university for more than 25 years, I have always been meaning to put up a series of discussions regarding representation of history in Korean and Japanese cinema. Those who have been following my Q Branch blog know that many of my reviews of the Korean and Japanese films have engaged with the question of whether they could serve as good educational texts for my students interested in learning about Korean and Japanese histories.  

With this entry, I seek to launch a new series of interviews with some real academic experts on Korean history and culture that go beyond the usual hair-splitting exercises on how “accurately” a particular work of New Korean Cinema reflects Korean history and culture.  The recent controversy regarding the hybrid-genre TV drama Joseon Exorcist [Joseon Gumasa, hereafter JE] which was abruptly cancelled by its home station, SBS, in March 2021 after airing only two episodes, I believe provides an entry point for tackling the complex question of the representation of history in New Korean Cinema. 

The first expert who had graciously agreed to an interview despite his busy schedule is Professor Ki Kyoung-ryang, Assistant Professor of Korean History at the Catholic University of Korea.  He received his Ph. D. in Korean history, specializing in ancient period, from Seoul National University in 2017, and is currently conducting research on the castle-towns of Goguryeo kingdom.  Professor Ki has always been interested in the close communication between professional historians and the general public: he is a regular panelist in the podcast group Maninmansaek Yeoksagongjakdan and has been one of the vocal critics of the chauvinistic pseudo-histories that have gained a good deal of popularity over the years.  

This interview was conducted on June 20, 2021, through Zoom.  It has been edited and somewhat shortened for clarity and economy. However, I have done my best to capture the actual flavor of the exchange we have had throughout this highly informative session. The contents of this interview are copyrighted to Professor Ki Kyoung-ryang and Koreanfilm.org.  Any citation or reproduction without an explicit permission of Professor Ki is forbidden and will be regarded as a breach of copyright laws as defined by the United States and South Korean courts.  “Q” refers to Kyu Hyun Kim and “K” refers to Professor Ki Kyoung-ryang in the subsequent text.

Q: Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview despite your busy schedule! I found your writings regarding the convoluted and complex relationship between historical studies as an academic discipline and popular cultural presentation of Korean history extremely illuminating.  Your latest reflections on this issue were spurred by the abrupt cancellation of the TV drama due to the public outcry that it was “historically distorting” (waegok 歪曲) and subservient to the Chinese interests. I thought this unfortunate incident would mark an interesting occasion to examine this issue of the relationship between history and popular culture in the context of Korean cinema and TV dramas. Do you think the criticisms levelled at the drama were typical or somewhat unique? 

K: It is somewhat unique in the sense that this reflects a very recent trend. First, it was assumed that JE was reflecting the ideology behind the so-called Northeast Project (東北工程, short for Research Project on the History and Current State of the Northeast Borderlands, originally slated as a five-year plan between 2003 and 2007).  This project has angered many Koreans for its perceived treatment of Goguryeo, Pohai and other regions that Koreans consider as a part of their history as Northeastern borderlands of China. Throughout the subsequent decade, the Northeast Project has become a shorthand for Chinese arrogance and imperialistic intent among many Koreans. In truth, there is hardly any content in JE that explicitly promoted the Northeast Project.  However, the hostility directed at Chinese “appropriation” of Korean history, and in fact the underlying anger toward the imperialistic condescension implied in such behavior, happened to find a powerful vent through this episode.  One of the most controversial scenes set in an Euiju inn featured Korean characters eating what appeared to be Chinese food presented as “Korean” in a rather barbaric, brusque manner, provoking some viewers to see this as both misrepresentation of Korean culture as well as sly infiltration of Chinese-ness into a popular cultural product clearly set in Korea.    

Q: Generation gap may be a factor in this turn of events, don’t you think?

K: That certainly seems to be one of the reasons. The older generation probably does not quite understand how young South Koreans— those under 30s— take strong pride in the global success of their popular culture. And many among the latter are intensely aware how some Chinese pop cultural products seem to “copy” Koreans. 

An official poster for Joseon Exorcist.

Q: That is precisely the kind of behavior that Korean pop culture industry shamelessly used to indulge in three to four decades ago with Japanese pop culture. Comic books, TV variety shows…

K: Absolutely. Of course, Japan used to wholesale “copy” Hollywood and American pop culture, especially immediately after losing the Pacific War. The difference perhaps is that Chinese government, if not Chinese people, considers itself a “big nation” and many Koreans, who, like many other citizens of today’s world, tend to see the nations in terms of a hierarchical order, with Republic of Korea now at least in terms of affluence and cultural sophistication “ahead” of China, take a strong umbrage at this behavior.  There was in fact a Korean TV drama titled Mr. Queen [哲仁王后, 2020], which if I remember correctly was moderately successful.  However, there was some criticism of the drama at that time, because it was based on a Chinese source novel.  Its writer subsequently wrote JE and the critics quickly found a connection.  The station released an explanation that Chinese capital was not involved in producing the latter TV drama, but it was wholly inadequate in stemming the negative tide. 

Q: So, the “nationalistic” negative surge regarding JE is different from the familiar “nationalistic” animosity against Japan?

K: I think it is different. The latter tends to be tied to the issue of resolving the painful history of colonial experience. In contrast, the issue with JE is connected, I think, to the recent global success of the Korean popular culture and its incommensurability with what Koreans perceive as “hegemonic” behavior of the Chinese government as well as some among the Chinese population. In any case, the TV drama was more of a symbolic item, functioning as a lightning rod that attracted the powerful electric charge building up in the storm cloud of negative public opinion for some years.

Q: Most interesting.  Things have indeed shifted greatly since the times in which I had grown up in Seoul. Can we expand the scope of the discussion a bit, and inquire your opinions about the relationship between historical dramas (sageuk) and history as studied by academic historians as reflected in Korean cinema (and TV dramas) in the last decade and a half or so?

K: Broadly speaking, they have become more beautiful to look at, more aesthetically pleasing, better designed and materially better endowed.  Recent TV dramas appear to evince a stronger trend of moving away from the “realistic recreation of the past” model, mixing in deliberate anachronisms, fantastic elements and so on. But this trend is also discernible among theatrical feature films. Also the more successful TV dramas like Daejanggeum [Jewel in the Palace, 2003], I think, show a greater level of creative reinterpretation, rather than following conventional stories that every Korean knows already.

Q: Oh, I cannot go any further without asking what you thought of Daejanggeum!  [Laughter]

K: I actually enjoyed it a lot.  The drama focused on the everyday details of Joseon dynasty folks and upped the ante in terms of aesthetic quality.  Of course, many of the details took creative license with historical studies had so far revealed about the life in early Joseon dynasty, beginning with some of the impossibly appetizing cuisine that Janggeum and other members of the royal kitchen staff come up with in the show, which more often than not reflect our modern conception of the Joseon dynasty “great food” than the historical reality.  But what was really significant about Daejanggeum was, in my view, its characters and narrative were far more important than “history:” Korean history served as a background, neither its theme nor its raison d’etre. Watching the drama, or other ones like it, while superbly entertaining and even moving, does not necessarily give us new insights or understandings of the past. 

Q: So even Daejanggeum is limited as a historical drama? 

K: Well, to be honest, I sort of disagree with some of my colleagues, professional historians, who tend to believe that “accurate recreation of the past” is the reason why we make and watch historical dramas.  It might be a bit strange coming from a historian [Laughter] but I do not believe “history” has to at all times take priority over “literature” or other forms of creative endeavor.  Having said that, I do find the obvious tampering of well-known historical facts to score some plot points, or to emphasize a particular character’s villainous qualities, rather less effective or problematic. 

Q:  I wholeheartedly agree. I previously wrote about Lee Jun-ik’s Blades of Blood (2010) messing with the chronology of Joseon dynasty history, just to grind the director’s axe aimed at King Seonjo (r. d. 1567-1608) as a failed monarch. I have been complaining for some time about “presentism” in many Korean sageuk, using historical figures as shorthand projections of contemporary political figures, which at worst could be a form of disrespect for the historical personages.  In addition, the producers and writers of these movies and TV dramas seldom draw upon what I actually think are really “dramatic,” interesting and intriguing stories, utterances and events in the existing historical sources, even from the often-relied-upon Joseon wangjo sillok (Real Records of the Joseon Dynasty).

K:  I remember one of my junior colleagues who had spent considerable time digging up the more historically authentic cultural representations, such as dress designs, for a TV drama (which shall remain nameless here: let’s just stay it was set in Three Kingdoms Period) for which he was a consultant. In the end, he had to ask for his credit removed because his painstaking work was virtually ignored.  He was in essence told that his more authentic findings were “not attractive or magnificent enough.”      

Q: Can we talk about negative and positive recent examples among the sageuk, for now confining ourselves to feature films? 

K: Oh boy. [Laughter] You mentioned that you thought rather positively of Kim Han-min’s War of the Arrows (2011).  Let’s say I cannot say the same thing about his far more commercially successful next effort, The Admiral: Roaring Currents (2014).  However, Lee Joon-ik’s The Throne (2015) I can cite as one of the more positive recent examples.  I think the latter film successfully evaded the popular conception of Prince Sado as a tragic victim of the court intrigue and attempted to capture complexities of his character based on actual historical records, illuminating in the process some of the less-than-generous qualities of Yeongjo’ behavior as his father and other aspects of its supposedly well-known characters and events. 

 Roaring Currents, on the other hand, fails to present any fresh insight or interpretation regarding its central protagonist, Admiral Yi Sun-sin (1545-1598), not to say Choi Min-shik playing the general did not do a great job.  Presenting Admiral Yi as some kind of “democratic” or “populist” hero was possibly one of the reasons the film appealed so much to the contemporary Korean moviegoers.  However, aside from this almost pandering attitude toward the ticket buyers, the film was in my view not much different from the kind of nationalist biopic produced during the military dictatorships. 

Q: Having been a practicing historian of Japan for nearly thirty years, I was bothered by its shallow and stereotypical characterization of Japanese enemies, although this is more or less par for the course in Korean popular culture.

K: Right, there is a long Korean tradition of popular cultural representation of Admiral Yi, in which he is always exalted for being a great general, strategist, et cetera, by his Japanese enemies.  However, having said all this, I do acknowledge that there are few recent Korean sageuk movies set in the ancient, medieval or early modern periods that are as flagrantly bad as, say, some of the more obstreperously political “historical” films set in the modern period, such as Operation Chromite (2016).  Most of them seem to reach a certain level of competency these days, at least in terms of their production qualities. 

Q: Is there a particular subject, topic or figure in the entirety of Korean history you feel has been neglected or inadequately treated by Korean cinema? 

K: Hmm.  Nothing specific comes to my mind at this moment… however, I will say that Goryeo period has relatively been neglected, in comparison to the ancient (Three Kingdoms, Unified Silla) and early modern (Joseon) periods.  For Joseon period, of course, there are bountiful historical sources. Plus, it is easier for the producers to materially reconstruct the period details. The ancient periods could be rendered with the narratives centered on the wars and national conflicts.  During the Goryeo period, the Military Rule (1170-1270) era has so far received a lion’s share of attention, but among professional historians, the late Goryeo period under the Mongol [Yuan] Empire’s domination (approximately 1259-1356) is being cast in a new light. In these studies, the Goryeo regime “intervened” by the Yuan empire is reinterpreted not as a weak state completely under the thumb of the powerful Mongol suzerain but as a dynamic subject both influencing and influenced by the greater changes in Asia.  Having said this, I do not know if Korean moviegoing public is ready to accept a movie that truthfully explores the complex hybrid reality of late Goryeo dynasty.

 

 A portrait of King Gongmin, one of the later Goryeo kings and his
Mongol wife, Queen Noguk, a.k.a. Borjigin Budasiri.

Q:What do you think about my question that too many Korean sageuk films and TV dramas focus on kings, good or bad?

K: I think the interest in royal family might not easily abate, but the more recent producers and viewers appear to be more interested in princes than kings. 

Q: Aha. 

K: The princes are figures of possibility rather than establishment and serve as better identification figures especially for the younger generations of viewers.  I also think that it is to a certain extent inevitable that the public prefers to watch films and TV dramas featuring pageantry and pomp of the royal personages, an opulent and luxury-filled world far removed from their everyday lives, than those set in more mundane settings. Just like the way a good deal of modern-day-set Korean TV dramas take place among the chaebol super-rich!   

Q: My wish is that one day we could see a Korean film set in, say, Goryeo period and a viewer reaction would be “What the heck? How could this be Goryeo? This looks like a foreign country, not Korea!” And the filmmaker would respond, “You are absolutely right. The movie is set in a foreign country called Goryeo, not in Korea.”[Laughter] 

K: I am actually rather optimistic about the prospect of eventually witnessing a genuinely challenging cinematic sageuk, that, as you put it, renders the (mistakenly) familiar into the (truthfully) unfamiliar again.  Even regarding the ever-problematic superficial obsession on material details, as the example of the so-called “Korean hat” becoming widely popular among the non-Korean viewers due to the Netflix zombie sageuk series Kingdom (2019-2020) demonstrates, getting these details “right” could pay off with unexpected dividends.    

Q: I agree!  I only wish the producers and filmmakers understand that you don’t really need to invent a zombie epidemic (not that such an effort is not worthwhile) to tell interesting and compelling stories or portray amazingly fascinating characters set in the distant Korean past, that “real” history has an ample supply of these and more. 

Q: Well, regrettably we have come to the finishing line. Any final thoughts? 

K: I hope that more open and friendly channels of communication between academic historians and the creative people come into being, instead of the latter only consulting the former to maintain their baseline of “factual correctness,” which are often ignored anyway in the end, or the former viewing the creative products only to nitpick about how the latter got everything wrong.  We can probably help each other a lot more than we currently do, to the ultimate benefit of the Korean film industry. 

Q: Thank you so much for a hugely educational and wonderful discussion! 

K: You are so very welcome.