What to watch at home in March | Little White Lies

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What to watch at home in March

13 Mar 2024

Words by Anton Bitel

Collage of six headshot portraits, featuring diverse characters from Asian cinema - a samurai, a vampire, a woman with dark hair and a stern expression, a man in an ornate jacket, a bearded man shouting, and a man with a serious expression.
Collage of six headshot portraits, featuring diverse characters from Asian cinema - a samurai, a vampire, a woman with dark hair and a stern expression, a man in an ornate jacket, a bearded man shouting, and a man with a serious expression.
A Hideo Naka­ta clas­sic, a New York city mur­der mys­tery and a pre­vi­ous­ly unre­leased wux­ia adven­ture are among the high­lights on offer this month across phys­i­cal media and digital.

Anton Bitel pro­vides a look at six titles head­ing to stream­ing and phys­i­cal media releas­es this month that you should add to the top of your view­ing list.

Close-up of a woman's face with a serious expression, wearing a white collared shirt.

Near the begin­ning of Ryûichi Takamori’s man­ga-based action thriller, pro­tag­o­nist Nao­to Kiba (Son­ny Chi­ba) calls a press con­fer­ence, hav­ing just sin­gle-hand­ed­ly tak­en out a group of ter­ror­ist hijack­ers on a plane. On stage, he requests a brand­ed drink, and slices it in half with his bare hand.

If this is prod­uct place­ment and PR’, Kiba him­self is the brand, exploit­ing his new­found celebri­ty to adver­tise his ser­vices as a body­guard, and through that, to reha­bil­i­tate the Tesshin School of Karate that has fall­en out of favour for its bru­tal­i­ty. As Chiba’s first mar­tial arts film, this was also PR for the badass actor, who one year lat­er, as he promis­es in the clos­ing line, would be going glob­al” with his first inter­na­tion­al hit, Shige­hi­ro Ozawa’s The Street Fighter.

Kiba’s first job is to pro­tect the mys­te­ri­ous Reiko Miwa (Mari Atsu­mi), who has pil­fered the last drug ship­ment of her lover, a recent­ly mur­dered New York mafioso, and is now being tar­get­ed by the Yel­low Mafia’, Japan­ese black mar­ke­teers, moon­light­ing Amer­i­can ser­vice­men and var­i­ous oth­er free­lance crim­i­nals. Bones will be bro­ken and limbs sev­ered in the ensu­ing chaos. Three years lat­er, an expand­ed ver­sion called The Body­guard (also includ­ed in this set), was released in Amer­i­ca, and its intro would be quot­ed in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.

Body­guard Kiba is avail­able on Blu-ray in a two-disc dou­ble pack­age with Body­guard Kiba 2 from 18 March via Eure­ka!

A man wearing traditional Asian clothing, riding a brown horse in a rural setting with traditional Asian architecture in the background.

Joseph Kuo’s Tai­wan-set wux­ia is a film of coin­ci­dences and clash­es. When Tsai Ying-jie (Tien Peng) takes out a bul­ly­ing mar­tial arts mas­ter and his gang, he may con­tin­gent­ly be help­ing defend a street per­former and his daugh­ter, but his only real motive is revenge against the mas­ter who, togeth­er with four oth­ers, had mur­dered Tsai’s par­ents 18 years ear­li­er. Tsai even has a hit list of the five names inscribed on wood­en tablets, with their leader Yun Chun-chung (Tsao Tsien) saved for last. Mean­while, the swords­man Black Drag­on (Nan Chi­ang) pur­sues a duel with Tsai not because he is Yun’s son and con­tin­u­ing this fam­i­ly feud, but mere­ly because he wish­es to prove him­self the world’s finest swordsman.

A true man repays kind­ness when helped, and gets revenge when wronged,” says Tsai — and yet both these prin­ci­ples will coin­cide and clash as Tsai strug­gles to rec­on­cile his debt to Yun’s daugh­ter Fly­ing Swal­low (Pol­ly Shang-Kuan Ling-Feng) for sav­ing his life, and his vendet­ta against wise old Yun. Accord­ing­ly, this is a mar­tial arts film of a rather philo­soph­i­cal bent, con­stant­ly call­ing into ques­tion the mean­ing and val­ue of the very con­flicts that con­sti­tute its genre.

The Swords­man of All Swords­men is avail­able for the first time ever in the UK on Lim­it­ed Edi­tion Blu-ray (includ­ing Kuo’s The Mys­tery of Chess Box­ing, 1979, on a bonus disc) from 18 March via Eure­ka!

Two individuals seated at a table in a dimly lit setting, one with curly hair looking at the camera.

Mar­tin Scors­ese, Woody Allen and Spike Lee always get cit­ed as cinema’s great chron­i­clers of New York, but one should nev­er for­get Abel Fer­rara, who thrives at the Scors­ese end of the city’s mean streets but goes down sleazier alley­ways for his art.

Nobody’s clean,” says Detec­tive Wheel­er (Bil­ly Dee Williams), inves­ti­gat­ing a sor­did sub­cul­ture in pur­suit of a slash­er (John Fos­ter) muti­lat­ing and mur­der­ing his way through the strip­per pop­u­la­tion. At first it looks like some­one enact­ing a grudge against box­er turned tal­ent agent’ Matt Rossi (Tom Berenger) and his part­ner Nicky Parzeno (Jack Scalia), who pro­vide dancers for the (most­ly mob-owned) strip clubs, and whose women have been tar­get­ed — but as oth­er agen­cies’ strip­pers fall prey to the New York knifer’, it becomes clear that a Travis Bick­le-like vig­i­lante with a pen­chant for exot­ic blades has decid­ed to clean up the streets him­self, one whore’ at a time. This trig­gers Matt — who once killed a man in the ring — to turn bruis­er once more, hero­ical­ly or otherwise.

Falling some­where between Taxi Dri­ver, Mani­ac and neon-lit neo-noir, Ferrari’s tawdry fea­ture anatomis­es Man­hat­tan vice in much the way that the killer carves up his victims.

Fear City is avail­able on Lim­it­ed Edi­tion Blu-ray on 4 March via 101 Films

Two men in a dark, atmospheric scene; one with a stern expression, the other laughing maniacally.

There are only two pos­si­bil­i­ties,” says San­dra (Janet Agren) in the first entry of Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell’ tril­o­gy. Either I’m going out of my mind or some­thing very, very strange is happening.”

View­ers may well feel sim­i­lar­ly. The plot seems sim­ple enough: fol­low­ing the sui­cide of a local priest, a vil­lage with a decid­ed­ly Love­craft­ian name has become a por­tal to the dead which must be reclosed by All Saint’s Day to avoid a glob­al apoc­a­lypse. Yet this is mud­died var­i­ous­ly by a séance; a pre­ma­ture bur­ial; ref­er­ences to The Book of Enoch and the Salem witch tri­als; intes­tine vom­it­ing; a wind-borne plague of mag­gots; super-leap­ing, brain-claw­ing sort-of zom­bies with trade­mark Ful­cian hideous­ness; an Amer­i­can coun­ty whose res­i­dents are most­ly played by Ital­ians; and a pan­icky freeze-frame end­ing that defies all interpretation.

A woman with sec­ond sight (Catri­ona Mac­Coll), a jour­nal­ist (Christo­pher George) and a psy­chi­a­trist (Car­lo De Mejo) attempt togeth­er to impose order and rea­son on all the sin­is­ter­ly sur­re­al goings-on, but like the fog that con­stant­ly shrouds Dun­wich, there is some­thing obscure and impen­e­tra­ble about Fulci’s hor­ror, cre­at­ing its own uncan­ny vibe of her­met­ic irra­tional­i­ty. It’s both strange and maddening.

City of the Liv­ing Dead is avail­able on 4K UHD from 25 March via Arrow

A man with a serious expression, wearing a green jacket, framed in a dark setting.

The title refers not to an eco­nom­ic élite but a fight­ing one, name­ly action actor Taku­ma Toshi­ro (Tak Sak­aguchi) who has honed his Assas­si­na­tion-jut­su’, Zero Range Com­bat’ and bul­let-dodg­ing Wave tech­nique’ far beyond what is required on a movie set, and who longs to make a 100% Pure Action Film’ where his assailants come at him with real intent.

Ten years after his career has washed up, Takuma’s dream comes true — for while loca­tion scout­ing in an aban­doned island fac­to­ry, he comes under attack from yakuza, an assas­si­na­tion squad, and a kick­ass sen­sei, all look­ing for a large cocaine stash. Spot­ting an oppor­tu­ni­ty both to test his abil­i­ties for real, and to raise buzz for his next film project, Taku­ma instructs his young assis­tant Aki­ra (Sho Aoy­a­gi), Film the whole thing.”

What fol­lows is a para­dox­i­cal play on real­ism, as the clos­er this intense action star comes to the rôles he typ­i­cal­ly plays, the more absurd­ly post­mod­ern the exer­cise becomes, with an array of car­toon­ish vil­lains and impos­si­ble fights to prove that, as one hack direc­tor puts it, You don’t get the real­i­ty, films are fic­tion, make-believe.” This fight club even brings a psy­cho­log­i­cal twist to pin down its own fantasy.

Giv­en how much this exploits Sakaguchi’s own image and iden­ti­ty, one should note that the actor is cur­rent­ly fac­ing seri­ous sex­u­al assault alle­ga­tions in Japan.

One Per­center is avail­able on Blu-ray/dig­i­tal from 11 March via Third Win­dow

A young girl with dark hair sits in a room, holding a baby. The image has a grey, muted tone.

It opens with an image of aban­don­ment, as nobody comes to pick lit­tle Yoshi­mi up from her preschool. Now, many decades lat­er, Yoshi­mi (Hit­o­mi Kuro­ki) is a moth­er her­self, mov­ing into apart­ment 305 in a bru­tal­ist old build­ing with her own beloved preschool daugh­ter Ikuko (Rio Kan­no) while under­go­ing divorce medi­a­tion and a bit­ter cus­tody battle.

Even as anx­ious, over­whelmed Yoshi­mi finds her­self repeat­ing the past and fail­ing to pick up Ikuko on time, a dif­fer­ent kind of his­to­ry reechoes. For a damp, dark spot on their apart­ment ceil­ing keeps leak­ing water every­where, a young girl’s red hand­bag keeps rema­te­ri­al­is­ing every time it is dis­card­ed, and lit­tle Mit­suko (Mirei Oguchi), who van­ished two years ear­li­er, makes her haunt­ing pres­ence ever more felt, heard and seen by both moth­er and daugh­ter. With Yoshi­mi unrav­el­ling, a lega­cy of aban­don­ment, part psy­cho­log­i­cal, part super­nat­ur­al, is passed on once more to the next generation.

Direc­tor Hideo Naka­ta will always be best known for the impact and influ­ence of his 1998 J‑horror Ring, but this is the bet­ter film — a ghost sto­ry of mater­ni­ty and mad­ness that is, beyond all its drip­ping atmos­phere and uncan­ny creepi­ness, awash with mov­ing waves of melan­choly and loss.

Dark Water is avail­able on 4K UHD from 18 Mar via Arrow

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