It's been a while since a film release round-up. Sometimes news is quiet, sometimes it rushes around us and as we are running up to Christmas (no idea why that matters, except maybe treating yourself to some pre-orders?) Oh go on, why not?
Starting with February releases, and Eureka's recent announcement of Zen and Sword, comprising all five of Toei's Miyamoto Musashi films from the 1960's, director by Tomu Uchida (of the excellent Fugitive from the Past):
Arrow today have announced a nice 4K restoration of Jang Joon-hwan’s bonkers, Save the Green Planet, which has long been out of print since the fall of Tartan. Also a set of Takashi Shimizu's two Sana films, the first of which we covered recently.
A bit late to the party, Radiance's release schedule is set to include The Japanese Godfather Trilogy.
Moving into March and 88 Films don't have them on their site yet (but available else where for pre-order), but reasons to be happy are their Blu-Ray releases of Sakuran (a personal favourite) and Helter Skelter, both directed by Mika Ninagawa.
Some other things to looks out for: The Prince Charles Cinema continues to show a wide variety of Japanese cinema, and anime films, and The Nickel, 40-odd seater, continues to show some lovely double-bills, including an upcoming Shinya Tsukamoto double-bill.
Finally The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme has announced their cinema season next year will run between 6 February – 31 March 2026 and their official line-up will be announced on 19 December (Friday) at noon GMT.
