2002
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Takashi Miike is a Japanese film director, producer and screenwriter known for his extreme and diverse style. He has directed over 100 films, including Audition, Ichi the Killer, Dead or Alive, and various remakes of classics.
Takashi Miike. Director: 13 Assassins. Takashi Miike was born in the small town of Yao on the outskirts of Osaka, Japan. His main interest growing up was motorbikes, and for a while he harbored ambitions to race professionally. At the age of 18 he went to study at the film school in Yokohama founded by renowned director Shôhei Imamura ...
- January 1, 1
- 1.64 m
- Yao, Japan
- “Fudoh: The New Generation”
- “Sun Scarred”
- “Ichi The Killer”
- “13 Assassins”
- “Young Thugs: Nostalgia”
- “The Happiness of The Katakuris”
- “Visitor Q”
- “Shangri-La”
- “Rainy Dog”
- “Audition”
- GeneratedCaptionsTabForHeroSec
Miike’s 19th film was originally intended for a V-cinema, or direct-to-video release, but was put into theaters once producers knew they had something special on their hands. Adapted from a popular manga, “Fudoh” marries the yakuza world, a milieu in which most of the director’s previous films had been set, with high school teenagers to create the ...
Never released in America or screened at film festivals, this revenge saga echoes “Death Wish” and “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” as it tells the story of salaryman Katayama (frequent Miike actor Show Aikawa), who gets caught up in a cycle of revenge after he stops a gang of teens from beating up a homeless man. The disturbed gang leader targets Kata...
Speaking of mayhem… One of the films which cemented Miike’s overseas reputation as a purveyor of the “Asian Extreme” form of violence, “Ichi the Killer” is an unforgettable, all-star gorefest based on a violent manga about an exceptional killer who cries even as he’s dismembering his victims. When Ichi meets up with extreme masochist Kakihara (Tada...
After a series of megabudget manga adaptations (the “Crows Zero” series) or family-friendly special-effects spectaculars (“Yatterman,” “Zebraman”), Miike took on this remake of Eiichi Kudo’s 1963 samurai film, a rarity for him in many ways. The result was old-school, bloody swordplay action at its best, with Koji Yakusho leading a dozen other inexp...
This pair of seemingly unrelated films — one about youth gangs in Osaka in the 1960s, the other about a pair of hitmen who team up to save sick children — share an important component within Miike’s filmography: the bittersweet yet comforting taste of memories. “Young Thugs: Nostalgia” is the director’s self-confessed favorite within his filmograph...
Just when critics and audiences thought they had Miike pinned down as an extreme genre stylist, he dodged their expectations with this family musical comedy, albeit one about a family that’s hiding a stash of buried corpses near their mountainside inn! A remake of “The Quiet Family,” an early (non-musical) film by Korean director Kim Jee-won (“I Sa...
Shot on DV for a miniscule budget, “Visitor Q” took the idea behind Pasolini’s “Teorema” — a mysterious stranger invades a bourgeois household — to its most perverted extreme, and further cemented Miike’s reputation as a cinematic provocateur, with violence, prostitution, drug addiction, necrophilia, and all manners of kinky behavior depicted onscr...
Another essential Miike film never released in America, “Shangri-la” finds the director taking the main theme of “Katakuris” and “Visitor Q,” redemption of the family unit, and burying it within a dark but inoffensive comedy about a group of homeless people who help a bankrupted businessman rebuild his life and get payback on the giant corporation ...
Made at the beginning of Miike’s transition from minor domestic director of video projects to major international filmmaker, both of these movies were also shot outside Japan, in Taiwan and rural China, respectively. Rainy Dog stars Aikawa as Yuji, a Japanese hitman exiled to Taiwan, where he spends his days doing menial labor and the occasional as...
Although Miike’s best-known film internationally, “Audition” is almost completely unknown inside Japan, possibly as a result of its limited distribution there, but more likely because of its antagonistic relationship with its own audience. A classic example of a film that pulls the rug out from under its viewers, “Audition” begins as a domestic dra...
IndieWire lists the top 10 movies by the prolific Japanese director, from 'Ichi the Killer' to 'Audition'. The article also highlights some of his lesser-known but memorable works, such as 'Sun Scarred' and 'Young Thugs: Nostalgia'.
- Jeremy Urquhart
- Senior Author
- 'Audition' (1999) Letterboxd Rating: 3.8/5. Audition was the movie that made Takashi Miike an internationally known name and helped develop the idea of J-horror in the minds of western audiences.
- '13 Assassins' (2010) Letterboxd Rating: 3.8/5. There were already two versions of 13 Assassins that existed before Takashi Miike's 2010 remake, but he has since become the most well-known and beloved.
- 'The Happiness of the Katakuris' (2001) Letterboxd Rating: 3.7/5. There is absolutely nothing else in existence like The Happiness of the Katakuris. It's almost the textbook definition of a cult film, given it gleefully mashes up surreal comedy, family drama, zombie horror, and musical numbers in its story about the unlucky but determined Katakuri family trying to run a guest house in the countryside.
- 'The Bird People in China' (1998) Letterboxd Rating: 3.7/5. Even though one of its main characters is a member of the Yakuza, The Bird People in China certainly isn't a crime film.
Learn about the life and career of Takashi Miike, a prolific and provocative Japanese director known for his violent and sexual films. Find out his influences, trademarks, quotes and more on IMDb.
- August 24, 1960
Learn about the life and career of Takashi Miike, a controversial Japanese filmmaker known for his extreme violence and genre-bending movies. Browse his highest and lowest rated films, photos, and upcoming projects on Rotten Tomatoes.
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Sep 27, 2019 · An interview with the prolific and versatile Japanese director Takashi Miike, who talks about his latest film "First Love", his influences, his manga adaptations, and his views on Yakuza. Learn about his humble personality, his love for cinema, and his contradictory style.
