Boiling Point was Japanese legend Takeshi Kitano‘s second film as director and his first as screenwriter and shouldn’t be confused with the Wesley Snipes clunker of the same name that was released in the UK around the same time. As with many of Kitano’s directorial efforts the film features Yakuzas as a prominent story element. Yûrei Yanagi (AKA Masahiko Ono) stars as Masaki, a feckless loser stuck in a dead-end job at a gas station who also plays (badly) for a local baseball team.

One day the coach of the team is attacked and almost killed by yakuza thugs following a confrontation in which Masaki is threatened by the same gangsters. He decides to head to Okinawa to meet a contact who can supply him with a gun in order to take revenge. This contact happens to be the psychotic Uehara (Kitano himself in an extended cameo) an unpredictable, dangerous yakuza who also wants revenge against the same gang. Masaki is taken under Uehara’s wing, leading to violent and surprising encounters in the Okinawa underworld.

Kitano’s character is thoroughly unlikeable and most of his actions are reprehensible in the extreme. Following on from the critical and commercial success of Violent Cop, audience and critical reaction wasn’t quite as favourable to Boiling Point and today its often said to be one of his lesser films, if not still a must watch for fans of the actor-director.

This striking B2 poster features the simple image of a metal baseball bat on a blue-green background. The Japanese title translates as ‘3-4, October’ and relates to the score of a baseball match seen in the film and the month of October, an important one in the Japanese baseball calendar.

Check out the other posters featuring Takeshi Kitano in the Film on Paper collection by clicking here.

Princess Mononoke was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, the founder of the legendary Japanese animation outfit Studio Ghibli. Apparently around 144,000 cels were hand drawn for this film with Miyazaki personally overseeing each one and making hand-drawn amends to over 80,000 of them.

A fantasy drama set in the Muromachi period of Japan, the film follows the plight of a young warrior called Ashitaka who is stricken by a curse whilst defending his village from attack. After learning that he may be able to obtain a cure from the Great Forest Spirit (Deer God), Ashitaka travels west to try and locate it and ends up becoming involved in the battle between the animal inhabitants of the forest and the greedy humans of Irontown, who are attempting to strip the land of an important mineral called ironsand. The animals have a special ally in the form of San (AKA Princess Mononoke) a human raised by wolves, and Ashitaka must join forces with her to put an end to the conflict before all is lost.

The film was picked up for distribution in North America by Miramax Films and after the then chairman Harvey Weinstein proposed multiple edits to the film Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki sent a Katana sword to Miramax with the simple message: ‘No cuts’.

This B2 poster depicts Ashitaka but other poster styles were printed for the theatrical release of the film in Japan.