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

Innocence **

Mamoru Oshii's long-awaited sequel to his own "Ghost in the Shell" is a bad case of "Ghost Reloaded." Further into the future, and now there seems to be no difference between humans and robots - every living thing is partially cyborg. Rudimentary plot mixes noir cop tropes with sci-fi cliches as our half-droid hero goes in search of mutant sex cyborgs that are running amok. Like the Matrix sequels, Innocence delivers the eye candy and some explosive action - sequences such as the Chinatown parade and an aerial flight through a medieval cathedral are breathtaking - but even his fans are going to balk at all the cod-philosophy spouted by the dour cops. (They quote Descartes and John Milton!) A lot of the film looks like showing off (Oshii loves depicting cigarette smoke in CG anime) and some of the fetishistic imagery (lots of naked prepubescent Bellmeresque girl-dolls) quite disturbing. The only thing that kept me awake was the loud snoring of the otaku behind me.

Ai Suru Yochu ***

Weirdest film this month has to be this video-shot full-length comic horror film by ex-pink film director Noboru Iguchi. It starts outrageously, as a nerdy young boy with a crush on an older girl peeps on her as she makes out with her hairy boyfriend - the guy pulls out her eyeballs and fondles them! Years later, Yoshiyoshi Arakawa is now a geekish erotic manga artist, his editor Aki Arai is a socially inept girl with a fear of sex, who lives with an older hairdresser boyfriend Suzuki Matsuo. Soon a miserable love triangle erupts, as these pathetic, lonely misfits turn into bloodsucking sex-fiends. A terrific antidote to all those films that show Japan to be a cool and beautiful country: here's the real thing, otaku nerdy guys obsessed with porn manga and the dull, frumpy girls who love them.

Hana to Hebi ****

Takashi Ishii's remake of the old Nikkatsu roman porno classic. This is a really extraordinary film, an arthouse erotic film about the Japanese art of bondage and humiliation. A thoroughly depraved film, it is also beautifully lit, played with conviction by a strong cast of striking actors (Ishibashi Renji, Endo Kenichi) and graced by a revelatory performance by Aya Sugimoto, a TV personality known for her ballroom dancing. In the film, Aya is the trophy wife of a filthy rich business man, and a world class tango dancer. The spineless businessman laughingly agrees to give his wife to a 95-year-old lech in payment for a debt, believing the old geezer to be impotent. Thus begins an endless nightmare of sexual abuse and psychological torture as the wife is forced to strip naked in front of a shadowy audience of superrich voyeurs (and sometime participants) and then artfully tied, crucified, ravished, and abused by a dispassionate SM rope artist. Unlike Ishii's last film, the horrible, ugly "Freeze Me", this is a tour de force of stunning images, both beautiful and disturbing at the same time.

Moji to Issunboshi **

Infamous cult director Teruo Ishii's latest film has been collecting dust on the shelves for two years before it was finally released on one small screen in Shibuya. Based on two tales by Japan's creepiest Taisho era writer Edogawa Rampo, this has fellow director Shinya Tsukamoto and manga writer Lily Franky as private investigators on the trail of a missing woman, various body parts, and the suspicious activities of a blind ghoul and a sinister dwarf. Despite its grand guignol pretensions, the whole thing is mounted with the low-budget glee of an amateur dramatic society. Shot on digital video, it's a small square postage stamp of light plagued with extraneous sound (a motorbike engine almost drowns out the dialog in one sequence). And even though everyone wears handsome Taisho era suits and kimono, Moju is more reminiscent of 1960s avant garde theater than 1920s glamour.

Babaa Zone *

Another collaboration between director Yudai Yamaguchi and manga writer Man Gataro following the success of "Battlefield Baseball." This is a compilation of 5 short skits, and while they are brimming with the duo's usual zany, over-the-top antics and gleeful indulgence in the most outre, lowbrow humor, the whole thing rather reeks of slapdash riffing. There's simply not enough material here to create a feature film, and Yamaguchi tries to compensate by endlessly flogging a dead horse in the mistaken belief that if you repeat a sight gag enough times, it becomes funny. Well, actually, it does, especially when it's a naked guy hammering on a shuttered bookstore shouting "Give me porn!" Fans of low comedy featuring buckets of blood, severed limbs, gallons of green puke and Priapic pants will undoubtedly have a good time.

I am an SM Writer ****

This week's recommended DVD is a sort of companion piece to HANA TO HEBI, as it is based on an autobiographical story by famous SM author Oniroku Dan. Ren Osugi stars as an eccentric novelist with an obsession for bondage who hires his enthusiastic young assistant Jun Murakami to bind and gag beautiful models in order to get the inspiration to write. His dedication to his craft leaves his wife Yoko Hoshi feeling neglected, however, and she starts an affair with the assistant. The writer is surprised to find himself more jealous than betrayed. An entertaining, sophisticated adult romp directed with wit and subtlety by Ryuichi Hiroki (who did "Vibrator" and "Sadistic City").