Released in 1987, The Red Spectacles was the first celluloid entry in the Kerberos Saga, a dystopian franchise created by anime legend Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) that spread across live-action/animated films, manga, radio dramas and more. It starts off as a futuristic sci-fi actioner, with a trio of armored cops taking out a bunch of bounty hunters, slo-mo Peckinpah-style. After the opening credits roll, it turns into something else entirely — Alphaville by way of Seijun Suzuki. After being on the run from the government, a police detective (Shigeru Chiba) returns to Tokyo to fulfill a promise to his comrades. But the Tokyo of this movie is a strange one, a place where nothing and no one is what it seems — and you need to go to the bathroom a lot. Thanks to a crowd-sourced campaign that raised 59,336,002 yen ($377,769 in American dollars), this paranoid, surreal, extremely nutty neo-noir has gotten the 4K DCP restoration treatment and will be showing for all you local weebs at the Belcourt this week. Visit belcourt.org for showtimes.
Jan. 21-22 at the Belcourt
2102 Belcourt Ave.
