New Japanese film reviews appear every last Friday of the month.

Gozu ***

The hardest working man in Japanese cinema, Takeshi Miike knocked off this straight-to-video yakuza flick, little knowing that it would be invited to Cannes. An extended David Lynchian nightmare, this imaginative low-budget flick has young hood Hideki Sone charged with killing his nutty aniki (Sho Aikawa). The two gangsters set off for the yakuza disposal dump in Nagoya, but somewhere along the route, they enter a surreal detour. Essentially a long parade of bizarre characters speaking in grating Nagoya accents, this turns into freaky roadtrip to hell. Funny, weird and for the most part entertaining (middle section drags a little), this one really takes off at the end when the murdered aniki returns in the form of a hot babe who tries to seduce for the confused, virginal young punk.

Battlefield Baseball ****

Based on a manga by Gataro Man, this is Yudai Yamaguchi's first feature, an imaginative cartoon of high-school baseball as coliseum game. Tak Sakaguchi (from VERSUS) plays traumatized pitcher Jubei (he killed his own dad with a curve ball) who swears he'll never pitch again. But then he transfers to a highschool that faces the murderous Gedo High in its next game, and Jubei is forced to pitch again. While the first half struggles to find an appropriate tone, the film finally comes together and gleefully merges cliches from sports dramas with western, vampire and horror conventions.

Oh Mikey! ***

A spin-off from episodes in Yoshimasa Ishibashi's Color of Life (2001), this is a feature length film of the wacky exploits of a beleaguered family of American ex-pat mannequins in Tokyo. While following the same style as the original shorts from the Vermillion Pleasure Night TV series (essentially still shots of garishly dressed and posed mannequins with outlandish Japanese voice-overs), this time the Fuccon family is joined by a huge range of other wooden characters - senile relatives, poor Osakans, vampires, aliens that look like squid, sexy private tutors, rockstar hairdressers, all humannequin life is there. Relentless in its cutesy hysteria, at just one hour long this colorful and surreal series doesn't wear out it welcome.

Kakuto *

Directed, written by and starring Yusuke Iseya and Takamasa Kameishi, this is a slight but energetic music video about troubled teens. While it covers a lot of the same territory as Trainspotting, it remains a very tame, non-inhaling, nonviolent version of totally drugged up youth getting dangerously close to the Yakuza. Iseya keeps the story moving at a good pace, and despite being a popular model and actor, resists the temptation to make himself look too cool.

Geroppa! (Get Up!) ***

Film director and now TV personality Kazuyuki Izutsu makes his return to film with this lively comic drama about an Osaka gang boss (Toshiyuki Nishida) whose last wish before an extended jail term is to see James Brown perform. Underling Ittoku Kishibe sends his hapless goons to kidnap JB, but they return with a badtempered lookalike. While the comedy is hit and miss, especially with the inclusion of all manner of Osakan vaudevillians hamming it up and a rather underwritten role for a JB impersonator, the film really works as a moving drama with bitter-sweet humor - as the old gang boss is reunited with his long-lost daughter, played by Takako Tokiwa.

Nine Souls ***

Directed by Toshiaki Toyoda, who did the excellent Pornostar and Blue Spring. Nine inmates (played by Toyoda regulars such as Ryuhei Matsuda, Koji Chihara and Onimaru) of an overcrowded prison cell bust out of jail and set off in a stolen bus for their home towns. For a while, these violent, troubled men enjoy an idyllic road trip around Japan - in search of a stash of stolen loot that's rumored to be in a schoolyard time capsule. Before long, however, the real world starts to catch up on these hapless murderers - and in true Toyoda fashion - the final thirty minutes is an explosion of unendurable violence and retribution. Ryuhei Matsuda takes about 10 minutes to beat out his brother's brains in slow motion. Cool.

Battle Royale 2: Requiem *

The sequel to Kinji Fukasaku's controversial hit Battle Royale is a total mess. Riki Takeuchi plays a parody of his own yakuza bad self, a bunch of flavor-of-the-month teen idols shriek and scream for the duration, and Kinji's untalented son Kenta cobbles together scenes from other films (outrageous steals from Saving Private Ryan and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) and halfbaked ideas to turn this into a yawn. BR2 sets up the USA as the Great Satan, and has poor Japanese youths as idealistic Islamic revolutionaries. Why are the kids wearing Afghan robes? Why does the war stop every three minutes to allow a shrieking kid to die a violin-accompanied death? At least BR had some ingenious deaths among the mayhem.

Hotel Hibiscus *

From Yuji Nakae, director of the charming Nabbie's Love, comes another folksy Okinawan tall tale. This time the story centers on a family of misfits at the Hotel Hibiscus: sanshin-playing dad, floozy mom, and a brace of multicolored kids all from different fathers from the local US military. Film focuses on 9-year-old girl Mieko and her search for an Okinawan folk legend. Unfortunately, what Nakae takes for charming amateurishness and cute folksiness seems to be merely a cover for a poorly developed script, ham acting from children and foreign extras, and a total lack of story.

Rokugatsu no Hebi (Snake of June) ****

Director of the cult movies Tetsuo, Tokyo Fist and Gemini, Shinya Tsukamoto takes a very different tack with this arty, fetid and sensual story of a woman's sexual awakening. Asuka Kurosawa plays a repressed Tokyo woman unhappily married to an uptight, bald drone. She is startled out of her complacent life by a stalker (director Tsukamoto himself) who forces her to indulge his erotic, fetishistic longings. Before long, all three protagonists in this dark, damp, furtive world are awakened to the power of eros, the only escape from the encroaching embrace of thanatos. A beautiful, moving film, shot in blue-tinged black and white, with Tsukamoto's trademark bursts of energy, violence and surprising humor.