Big Screen Big Apple- A Dog Eat Dog World Sunday at the Japan Society

Just because it's Sunday doesn't mean the action over at the Japan Society is honoring the Sabbath. In fact, Dog Eat Dog World Sunday is throwing NYC three bones in the form of Yakuza action. Starting with Cops Vs. Thugs(1975) at 3:15pm.

Japan Society says - "With this film, which has all the grunting doggedness of the real thing, Fukasaku puts the spotlight on the forces of grand corruption and the ferocious business of butting heads with the law. 1963: The Kurashima City police have spent the past seven years eradicating the yakuza gangs, at the root of much mayhem. The last two remaining gangs, Ohara and Kawade, are in tatters, with the Ohara boss in prison. But with the police force full of corrupt officers, the gangs begin to prosper once again. Soon it's not only Cops vs. Thugs, but Thugs vs. Thugs and Cops vs. Cops. With genre supremo Bunta Sugawara as a police detective who makes Dirty harry look like a rent-a-cop."



Round 2 begins at 5:30PM with Battles Without Honor and Humanity A.K.A. The Yakuza Papers(pt. 3):Proxy War(1973)

Japan Society says - "The centerpiece of the five-film postwar yakuza arch-epic/classic is almost impossibly alert to the constant transactions of power within the unrepentantly violent world of Hiroshima gangsters. Inspired by real-life events, these Battles breathlessly accumulates unabashed close-ups of bloodletting and wounded bodies flying left and right, front and back. The film has the most treacherous plot of the lot--plotting, counter-plottings, alliances and betrayals will leave viewers dizzy and with only one certainty, that of violence; by fair means or foul, mostly foul, we are led into battle and bloody murders, with jitsuroku ("docudrama"-style) star Bunta Sugawara at the center of it. This is your chance to witness Japanese gangster violence in all its seedy, futile but spectacular glory.
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And last but not least we go back to some 60's action at 7:15PM with Youth of the Beast(1963)

Japan Society Says -"Seijun Suzuki's breakthrough film is faster, rougher and wilder than most of his other outings (except perhaps the outrageously off-the-wall Branded to Kill). Raw, rugged and tumbling out of nowhere, Jo (Joe Shishido, a frequent leading man in Suzuki's films) wants employment and wants it now. Closer in temperament to a human lava flow, he's not about to let little things like a bunch of big, bulky brawlers get in the way. He barges into the headquarters of a notorious yakuza organization and there he proceeds to beat the living daylights out of the goons, points a gun at the boss and politely asks for a job. The boss is impressed and puts him on the payroll. Jo then heads over to the rival faction's gang... Repeat. In other words, all-out gang war is around the corner. This early Seijun Suzuki masterpiece paved the way for the late 1990s visual extravaganza (Takashi Miike and others)."

Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, at 47th Street and First Avenue

It's nice to be able to find trailers for all the movies this time.