Into the Forbidden Zone with Kiyoshi Kurosawa  Pulse (Kairo),
image courtesy of Magnolia Pictures  Format: DVD  Title: Pulse
(Kairo)  Distributor US: Magnolia Pictures  Distributor UK:
Optimum Releasing  Japan 2001  118 mins  Title: Bright Future
(Akarui mirai)  Distributor UK: Tartan Video  Japan 2003  115
mins  Despite being one of the most accomplished, intelligent
and adventurous filmmakers to come out of Japan in recent years,
Kiyoshi Kurosawa has inexplicably been ignored in this country.
With the overrated Ring spawning a seemingly unquenchable thirst
for anything that more or less fitted the ‘J-horror’ label, it
looked like Kurosawa came to maturity just in time to ride the
wave, but the subtler, deeper thrills of his films have kept him
stranded on the shore. The fact that Kurosawa has worked in
different genres hasn’t helped, his idiosyncratic approach to
genre conventions even less so. Too oblique for the grindhouse,
too creepy for the art-house, his films seem to have fallen in
between audiences,