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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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The Eel (1997)

Rating: 3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

All That Slithers

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy The Eel on DVD

Directed by Japan's Shohei Imamura, this is a wonderful movie -- with a brief violent beginning -- about a man (Koji Yakusho from Shall We Dance?) who discovers his wife with another man and kills them both. Upon his release from jail, he gets a job as a barber, and finds himself surrounded by the usual crew of Imamura misfits, including his pet eel which he regularly talks to. The Eel won the Palme D'Or (with Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry) at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.

Starring: Koji Yakusho, Misa Shimizu, Fujio Tsuneta, Mitsuko Baisho, Akira Emoto, Sho Aikawa
Written by: Shohei Imamura, Daisuke Tengan, Motofumi Tomikawa, based on the novel by Akira Yoshimura
Directed by: Shohei Imamura
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Language: Japanese with English subtitles
Running Time: 117 minutes
Date: October 23, 1998