Anyone who has seen the baffling yet beautiful – I guess you could call it a horror film – House might reasonably expect that the director was never allowed to make another film. But Nobuhiko Obayashi was a wild mainstay of 1980s Japanese cinema, combining genre elements with pop culture fascinations and the graceful aesthetics of a perfume commercial. AFS Cinema’s series Nobuhiko Obayashi: Kodokawa Superstar celebrates his inimitable sensibilities, beginning with School in the Crosshairs (aka The Aimed School), in which schoolgirl Yuka (pop idol Hiroko Yakushimaru) deals with high school politics, her budding psychic powers, a fledgling romance with her classmate, and an interplanetary invasion by piano-playing Venusians in this mix of Heathers and Scanners. – Richard Whittaker
July 4-5
