The Taste of Cinema

Tetsuo - The Bullet Man (Shinya Tsukamoto, 2009)

2010-11-25T23:19:00.008+01:00

The Bullet Man.

Having read only extremely negative reviews of Shinya Tsukamoto's newest part of the Tetsuo series, I felt like I had to make a decision before watching it. Either to watch it with my expectations set really low, prepared to be disappointed by something that isn't what Tetsuo - The Iron Man (1989) was. Or, I could go in with my expectations through the roof, preparing to see something great in its own right, to see where Tsukamoto takes it and see the films own qualities. Since one of the problems I've had with reviews the last few years is that "everyone" only seems to be looking for a repeat. Especially when it comes to directors like Tsukamoto and Takashi Miike, who have a reputation of making a certain kind of films, even if they are in minority in their bodies of work, overshadowing everything else they have done. Because of that I chose the latter and Tsukamoto did not let me down.

The Bullet Man plays like a culmination of all of Tsukamoto's films so far. It is almost, but not quite, like a remake of Tetsuo, made in crystal clear high definition and in english. I can see parallells to other films of Tsukamoto's that probably weren't expected. The dreams of the main characters' wife coming true and the shots of large cold buildings of Tokyo reminded more of Nightmare Detective (2006) than anything from earlier in Tsukamoto's career. The origin of the bullet man also is like a fusion between later films like A Snake of June (2002) and Vital (2004) and the first Tetsuo. Through love in a kind of afterlife the bullet man is born, and through provoked emotion his transformation takes place creating something with the power to destroy the world. The city is still there as a cold and lonely place, but it no longer seem like the main reason for the characters' decline into loneliness and rage.

As a film, it's not perfect. The story in all its simplicity is still hard to grasp sometimes. The motives of The Guy, the catalyst behind the bullet man's transformation, is somewhat unclear, unless he's only there as a "director" character, making the whole thing spin. After all he is played by Tsukamoto himself, just like in the original. Having it made in english seems somewhat unnecessary because even if it were to attract a foreign audience, the rest of the film is hardly mainstream. The dialogue is also delivered in a stilted manner making the feeling of cold people stronger than that of a society built out of steel and concrete. As I'm a non-japanese speaker, having the english dialogue spoken like this actually strengthened the atmosphere of the film and did not work as a distraction. Had it been in Japanese it probably would have been harder to pick up on. The frantic camerawork and editing is still there, making it hard to see what is actually going on sometimes, but together with the loud industrial soundtrack by Chu Ishikawa it works so well that the film becomes more of an experiance than a film, and I believe that that is exactly what a Tetsuo film should be like.

I wouldn't call this new Tetsuo cyberpunk, it's a bit too polished to be punk, just like I disagree with some calling Sogo Ishii's Electric Dragon 80.000V (2001) cyberpunk, even though they are somewhat alike. But if you draw a line from Tetsuo - The Iron Man through Tetsuo II - Body Hammer (1992) and Ishii's Electric Dragon and then this new film, The Bullet Man makes perfect sense being the way it is, just like it does if you take a look at Tsukamoto's recent filmography and don't expect The Bullet Man to be just a remake of The Iron Man.

This is a new Tetsuo, from a new Tsukamoto, perhaps for an entirely new audience.

Big Tits Zombie (Takao Nakano, 2010)

2010-11-25T22:10:00.003+01:00

Aoi Sora in Big Tits Zombie (2010).

The questions were, "Can a film called Big Tits Zombie be any good? Can it be bad?!". The answers are "probably not" and "hell yes".

A group of bored strippers spend their time bickering backstage in the dressing room while waiting for customers who never show up. One day they find a hidden passage leading from their dressing room down into the basement. Turns out the basement is full of old black magic books and a mysterious well, and when one of the strippers read from the infamous Book of the Dead, the dead starts walking the earth. Or at least the strip joint.

The problem, or problems, with Big Tits Zombie is that it fails to live up to the promises of its title. The tits aren't that big, there aren't enough zombies and the general craziness that is expected of a movie with a title like this just isn't there. There are many different ways that an ultra-low budget film like this could be enjoyable, it could be extreme like the many recent gore films produced for the American market like Tokyo Gore Police and Vampire Girl Vs. Frankenstein Girl, or it could just be funny or have a lot of nudity. Big Tits Zombie is just bland.

The action is poorly choreographed, there aren't many jokes and the gore isn't very inventive. There is nothing wrong with cheap special effects if done right, but here it just looks bad. But the biggest disappointment of all is the lack of big naked tits. I have a hard time imagining that anyone bought this on dvd or went to see it not expecting to see a lot more of Aoi Sora and the other strippers and not being disappointed when it comes down to just a couple shots throughout the whole film.

On the plus side though, you do get to see a fire throwing zombie vagina.

It's here

2010-11-23T23:13:00.004+01:00

Finally. I don't care about reviews or expectations, this thing just needs to explode.

Quick takes #7

2010-11-23T00:14:00.007+01:00

Josie Ho, lowering the value of some property in Dream Home (2010).

Dream Home (Pang Ho-Cheung, 2010) - Pang Ho-Cheung does his usual bit of establishing a context of either a social phenomenon or a societal condition and then delivering a film around that subject but in a way that you probably won't expect. This time around it's a gory slasher film about a woman (Josie Ho) having trouble affording an apartment in the pricey Hong Kong real estate market. Pang manages to keep the sharp but still effortless and easygoing tone of his earlier films despite the absolutely over-the-top gore and truly horrible proceedings of the main character. Dream Home is actually the only film I can remember where the gore felt like it was too much to take, despite it being so exaggerated it's shown in a calm and realistic way and Pang manages to make it almost unbearable. With Dream Home, Pang once again shows he's the most interesting director in Hong Kong, can't wait for his next film.

Goemon (Kazuaki Kiriya, 2009) - Historical fantasy adventure starring Yosuke Eguchi as master thief Goemon Ishikawa. Directed by Kazuaki Kiriya who made Casshern, Goemon is made in the same style of all CG environments and landscapes with (mostly) live actors. While Goemon is a more entertaining film than Casshern, which felt overly long and slow, I have to say that the computer created world worked better in the sci-fi film than in this period piece. A bunch of great actors in supporting roles do make it a fun time though.

Takao Osawa and Yosuke Eguchi in Goemon (2010).

Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge (Takuji Kitamura, 2007) - Supernatural coming of age action drama starring always annoying Hayato Ichihara. Could have been a pretty cool b-movie about a school girl fighting a chainsaw maniac from the moon and getting unwanted help from another kid at school but takes a turn for the more serious, and dull. It has all the afformentioned but still manages to mess it up by making it a story about Ichihara's desire to do something cooler than his friend who passed away in a motorcycle accident. It should have focused on the chainsaw wielding maniac from the moon.

One Million Yen Girl (Yuki Tanada, 2008) - Suzuko (Yu Aoi) moves into an apartment with a friend and the friend's boyfriend only for them to break up. When the ex-boyfriend later throws out a kitten that someone leaves at the door, Suzuko throws out all his belongings but it turns out to be a big mistake as she is sentenced to prison for it. Apparently the guy had a million yen hidden in a bag in his room and pressed charges. When released, Suzuko decides to leave town to make it on her own, and each time she's managed to save up a million yen, she ups and leaves for a new town and a new job. This of course makes it hard to connect with people, not to mention having a relationship with someone. Nice film, both sad and hopeful.

Yu Aoi and Mirai Moriyama in One Million Yen Girl (2008).

Green Mind, Metal Bats (Kazuyoshi Kumakiri, 2006)

2010-08-29T02:19:00.009+02:00

Masanobu Ando as Ishioka in Green Mind, Metal Bats (2006).

Nanba is a former high school baseball player who's working in a convenience store. Ten years have passed since he failed to enter the national high school baseball tournament but he's still practicing his swing by throwing his bat a thousand times every day, hoping to turn pro. When he's at work he spends most of his time staring at his co-worker Mami, a high school girl that Nanba seems to have a crush on, but Mami is not interested.

On his way home one day Nanba sees a woman in a drunken rage kicking a car. When the car's owner comes out and grabs her, Nanba hits him in the knee with his bat and runs off with the woman. Her name is Eiko and she turns out to be a huge baseball fan and a violent alcoholic. To be able to afford Eiko's drinking habits when his hours are cut down at the convenience store, Nanba and Eiko start robbing people and soon they are wanted by the police.

Ishioka is a bicycle policeman and one of Nanba's teammates from school. Ishioka was the star pitcher for the team and managed to get all the way to the national tournament finals but because of an elbow injury he had leave the game of baseball and became a police officer instead. He's not a very motivated one though, spending most of his time ignoring crimes or making shoplifting housewives show him their panties, even though he's married.

One thing they all have in common except for their love of baseball is, they're all losers. Their lives are full of failed attempts and missed opportunities. Nanba never became a baseball player, Ishioka peaked playing in the finals in high school and has spent the last ten years being bitter. You never really get to know anything about Eiko's past, but surely becoming a penniless drunk living in a one room appartment with an equally penniless guy like Nanba wasn't part of the plan.

I really like this film, the eccentric, sometimes crazy behaviour of its characters, especially Eiko, is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny and even though their lives are pretty bleak and not much good happens, it is obvious that Kumakiri cares for his characters despite, or because of, their faults.

Pistol Takehara and Maki Sakai as Nanba and Eiko.

It's been about four years since I watched this film for the first and only other time and it was interesting to me how differently I perceived it this time. The difference comes from changes in life situation. When I first watched it, I could really relate to the lonely, part-time worker Nanba who wanted to do something completely different from working in a convenience store. Meeting a woman by chance, who happens to be "stacked" and really into the same things you are also seems to be a fantasy of a lot of anime and asian cinema geeks. Despite not much good happening to the characters, the film kind of played like a modest dream come true, and even though everyone in it is kind of crazy, Kumakiri infuses the film with a warm realism.

Watching it now it's more about failed attempts and missed opportunities. Nanba never played in the finals, he was on the cheerleading squad, Ishioka messed up his elbow and had to switch careers losing his girlfriend in the process. Eiko is a drunk. Identification is gone, it's more of an understanding now. This time it's maybe even easier to relate to the bitter, tired of his job, cheat Ishioka than to Nanba. Things change.

What sets Green Mind, Metal Bats apart though from other films where I've noticed that my perception of them has changed is that it's not a case of not appreciating it anymore, or having it go from the true excitement of watching the action movies of my childhood to watching them with a sense of irony or tongue in cheek. With Green Mind, Metal Bats it's purely a change of character identification, a change in my, as a spectator, life situation. It doesn't have to do with maturity, my understanding of the characters is about the same. But still Kumakiri manages to invoke the same feelings for his characters in me, I still care about them, I want them to do well. What wouldn't I give for Nanba to perfect his swing and go pro.

In the end when Nanba and Ishioka finally face off, and Nanba says "I'm having the time of my life" and Ishioka answers "I know" you can feel it. No matter who you are watching this film, Kumakiri makes you feel for his characters and that makes Green Mind, Metal Bats a truly great film.

A Snake of June (Shinya Tsukamoto, 2002)

2010-08-25T15:50:00.008+02:00

Asuka Kurosawa as Rinko in Tsukamoto's A Snake of June (2002).

A Snake of June takes place in a rainy Tokyo where Rinko works as a psychological counsellor at a call center. She seems to lead a normal life with her older husband, Shigehiko, who's something of an obsessive compulsive when it comes to cleaning. The reason seems to be a fear of or unwillingness to be close to Rinko. Shigehiko not only rather cleans than spends time with her, he also pretends to fall asleep in a chair at night to avoid sleeping next to her. There is no question that they still respect each other and that Rinko has feelings for Shigehiko, but he seems emotionless and their marriage is devoid of physical intimacy. The following text contains spoilers.

One day Rinko recieves a package containing photographs of her masturbating and then a phone call from one of her callers at work who says that he took the photos. If Rinko wants the negatives, she has to wear a short skirt, which she only wears alone at home, without any underwear out in public. Apparently the caller, Iguchi, is a stalker who has been taking pictures of her for a while, and who has also recognized the frustrations in Rinko's marriage. Iguchi is a photographer who has been unable to take pictures of people, turning in photos of sexual objects to an adult magazine, but talking to Rinko and stalking her has made him able to photograph people again, namely Rinko. For this he wants to pay her back by helping her get in touch with her sexuality again and to be her true self and do what she really wants to do.

At first it's not easy to accept that a stalker forcing Rinko to do something against her will is what will release her from her repressions, but the way the film is constructed turns Iguchi more into a part of Rinko's subconscious than a physical character. He's just a voice on the phone, telling her things that is what she really wants to do and he never feels like a threat to her. He has pictures of her but he only threatens to show them to Shigehiko. There is never any physical meeting or violence between them. Soon it becomes clear that Rinko is the one in control as she uses Iguchi to make her husband jealous by letting him find one of the photographs and by that resurrect his feelings for her.

Now I'm no expert on Tsukamoto, but I've seen most of his films and to me A Snake of June definitely represents a big change. From his earliest films and forward, most of his films has contained the conflict between the human body and the city, flesh versus cold, concrete buildings and in every film he's become a bit more intimate, organic. From literally turning a man into metal in Tetsuo - The Iron Man (1989) to covering his characters in rags, dirt and make-up in Gemini (1999). In A Snake of June nature seems to take on a bigger role, a theme which is continued in his next film, Vital (2004). The rain, the images of snails and vegetation in the city, the intimate shots of Rinko, it all adds up to a different kind of atmosphere than in his earlier films, A Snake of June is a film which feels totally natural. I won't go into technical terms that I don't fully know the meaning of, but the way the film is shot, with the tight frames, the black and white images and the rain, creates an almost claustrophobic feel. It's cramped, wet, full of repressed desires and completely erotic.

Invisible Waves (Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, 2006)

2010-08-17T19:48:00.014+02:00

Tadanobu Asano in Ratanaruang's Invisible Waves (2006).

Invisible Waves, Pen-Ek Ratanaruangs follow up to 2003's Last Life in the Universe once again teams him up with actor Tadanobu Asano, cinematographer Christopher Doyle, scriptwriter Prabda Yoon and composer Hualampong Riddim and this time the result is a moody, atmospheric noir-like thriller. The following text contains spoilers.

Asano plays Kyoji Hamamura, a chef at a Hong Kong restaurant who is having an affair with his boss' wife. After a while we learn that he's also been hired by his boss to kill the wife and then leave Hong Kong to start a new life in Phuket. Everything is arranged by Kyoji's boss so that he can easily sneak out of the city on a cruise ship headed for Phuket but when he starts his journey Kyoji is having trouble coping with his conscience. It doesn't get any better when he also finds out that his cabin is more of a closet with a bathroom and seems to be located next to engine room, or when he's harassed by a strange man claiming to be an old friend of his from school. The only thing making the trip somewhat enjoyable is Noi, a young lady travelling to Phuket with her baby. She and Kyoji spend some time talking and dancing before they part at their destination. From here on Kyoji's troubles only get worse.

After being attacked and robbed in his hotel room, Kyoji's boss arranges for him to meet another man at a bar to pick up some more money, but that is when Kyoji starts to suspect that maybe it was his boss who had him attacked.

The story, just like in Last Life in the Universe, isn't always completely logical and often somewhat dream like. If it wasn't for this dream like atmosphere things like that Kyoji's boss could easily have had him killed instead of going through all the trouble of sending him on a cruise and have him attacked, might have been a bigger disturbance. The main reason though why the story still works so well is that the focus is completely on Kyoji's inner battle with himself over what he has done. It would be easy to say that he's on a quest for redemption, that the pains he endure during his travels would somehow absolve him of his sins. But Kyoji is a completely selfish character. He has accepted money to murder someone to save himself and while he does feel remorse over what he has done he is totally focused on getting away with it. During the film it never occurs to him to turn himself in to the authorities. He doesn't hesitate to call his boss to ask for more money when he has been robbed, he steals to eat when he's out of cash and he even nags his boss about not wanting to live in Phuket.

When Kyoji finds out that it really is his boss who is behind all his bad luck he sets out to get revenge, because after all, the boss broke their deal. There is no sign in him making you think that he's actually seeing anything that happens as something he deserves because of the murder he committed, but how could he when he didn't know who was behind it?

When finally confronting his boss, Kyoji fails to kill him because of a change of mind caused by his boss' new girlfriend showing up, the woman with the baby that Kyoji befriended earlier on the ship. Kyoji leaves and meets his future assassin on a train and tells him he couldn't kill his boss because he was happy. "Who deserves to live more? A happy man or a homeless ghost?" It seems Kyoji, while not reaching redemption, has reached acceptance. He accepts his fate because of what he has done, but in no way has he attoned for it. Maybe he just realized that killing more people wouldn't solve anything, and like he told his boss, he can never be happy again anyway. Or perhaps it's like his boss said, cause and effect, when you do something bad, bad things happen to you (the invisible waves of the title?). This doesn't seem true to Kyoji's boss though since after hiring Kyoji to kill his cheating wife, he doesn't only get to live but he has a new wife and a baby. But there is a third possibility presented in the film by another character sent to kill Kyoji during his trip who simply says that Kyoji is the "dumbest smart guy" he has ever met.

The ending is the weakest part of the film, feeling rushed and incomplete. It might be on purpose, to put even more emphasis on Kyoji's journey in the first part of the film which also is the most rewarding. The atmosphere and feel of the film, created by Doyle's beautiful cinematography, Riddim's music and the slow pace, makes it feel like a film noir thriller set in the same world also created in Last Life in the Universe. Unlike Kyoji's, it is a wonderful trip but in the end, just like Kyoji, you have to peacefully accept that you don't always get what you want.

Quick takes #6

2010-08-12T13:36:00.007+02:00

The villains of Yatterman (Takashi Miike, 2009).

Yatterman (Takashi Miike, 2009) - Miike continues the work that he started in 2005 with The Great Yokai War and makes another kids movie that isn't entirely appropriate for children. At first look it's a mess of a film. It feels fragmented, like a bunch of set pieces cobbled together more than an actual plot, but in the end Miike won me over by still having the energy of his earlier films intact and crazy ideas coming at you faster than you can register what you just saw. Yatterman is a fun, fast paced, entertaining film. And it's full of mechas.

Samurai Zombie (Tak Sakaguchi, 2008) - A group of criminals, an ordinary family and a couple of cops are stuck in a forest where the dead come back to life due to an ancient curse. Sound familiar? Samurai Zombie is another Versus (Ryuhei Kitamura, 2000) clone that tries to add some more story to the proceedings with a messed up love story and I think that is why it fails. What made Versus so great was its simplicity, it had a forest, zombies and a bunch of criminals battling it out for two hours and that was it, focus was put on the action being as exciting as possible. It also doesn't help that the star of Versus, Tak Sakaguchi, is the director of Samurai Zombie, which is several notches below his other directorial effort of 2008, Be a Man!! Samurai School, or that Ryuhei Kitamura who directed Versus wrote the script, when it's so obvious that they are out of ideas when it comes to action films. Nothing either of them has made post-Versus has lived up to what was expected of them and Samurai Zombie doesn't even come close.

In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000) - I don't think I'll ever be a fan of Wong Kar Wai, he's just too good of a filmmaker. I didn't really know what to expect from In the Mood for Love, somehow I've managed to avoid reading anything about it except that it's supposed to be great and when it started playing it didn't take long before I was thoroughly bored. The acting, cinematography, music, everything is such a perfect fit that I couldn't help feeling disinterested. It wasn't until right before the end credits that I realized the knot in my stomach, that beneath the perfect, polished surface the film packs an emotional punch that feels real and never sentimental. I believe this is one of the best and most mature films about love that I've ever seen but I still can't call myself a fan, I won't be picking up Wong's other films, not until I'm more mature myself. I wouldn't be able to handle the perfection.

Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung in Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love (2000).

Quick takes #5

2010-04-09T23:46:00.008+02:00

20th Century Boys.

Lately, I've mostly been working or sleeping, not watching movies. But when I finally do sit down to watch a film, I've haven't been able to formulate a single thought about what just appeared before me on the screen, I hardly even feel anything. Not that I'm usually very insightful or anything, but it is pretty annoying. I remember times when I watched four or five films a night and wanted to write something about every single one of them, now I have trouble sitting through 2o minutes of any film, so these quick takes are going to be real quick.

Lala Pipo (Masayuki Miyano, 2009) - Written by Tetsuya Nakashima (Kamikaze Girls, 2004, Memories of Matsuko, 2006), Lala Pipo has the same look as his films and kind of the same feel. It features some great performances and touching moments, but ultimately it's kind of flat and empty. I felt the same way about the writers other films.

Stop the Bitch Campaign: Final (Kosuke Suzuki, 2009) - Let this be the final one. Kenichi Endo is out stopping teen prostitution by having sex with teen prostitutes and humiliating them, so that they'll stop! It's an ingenious plan and it works perfectly until a group of girls decides to catch him and beat the crap out of him, just like in the first two films, only this one is even worse.

20th Century Boys: Chapter 3 (Yukihiko Tsutsumi, 2009) - Big disappointment. The first film was a great conspiracy thriller that was actually kind of creepy in places while at the same time being like a children's adventure but the second film turned into a boring mess. I was hoping that the third film would tie it up nicely though, but no such luck. It has its moments, but they are few and far apart.

Accident (Soi Cheang, 2009) - Starts out pretty good with a story about a group of assassins staging elaborate accidents to get to their targets but turns into a weak psycho drama when accidents start to happen to them. Soi Cheang seems to have lost it with Shamo (2007) and this one, after the great Love Battlefield (2004) and Dog Bite Dog (2006). Louis Koo however is turning into one of my favorite HK actors.

Louis Koo in Accident (2009).

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (Naoyuki Tomomatsu, Yoshihiro Nishimura, 2009)

2010-04-09T22:13:00.005+02:00

Resurrected schoolgirl getting chopped up for the second time in Tomomatsu and Nishimura's Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (2009).

I said I wasn't going to watch anymore of these recent low budget gore films out of Japan, but when I saw that Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl was out on dvd I couldn't help myself. I don't know why since I've been disappointed by every single one since I saw Versus (Ryuhei Kitamura, 2000) back in 2001. Strangely enough, the one film I watch after having decided not to watch anymore turns out to be the best one so far. Tomomatsu and Nishimura takes the few good things that worked out of their earlier films and actually creates a pretty entertaining film. I don't know exactly who did what, but I assume Nishimura was more in charge of the special effects and got some help from Tomomatsu with the writing and directing, and it seems to have paid off.

Vampire Girl... is better paced and not as overlong as Tokyo Gore Police (Yoshihiro Nishimura, 2008) and as a result it's a lot more entertaining. The balance between the gore and the moronic story about a vampire high school girl who battles the resurrected daughter of the vice principal/insane scientist (Kanji Tsuda goes Herbert West) is better, less story and more gore that is, and the film is a lot more fun than Nishimuras previous borefest.

After having kind of liked this one, I know I'll end up watching Robo-geisha (Noboru Iguchi, 2009) and Mutant Girls Squad (Yoshihiro Nishimura, 2010) too.

Love Exposure (Sion Sono, 2008)

2010-02-14T13:23:00.006+01:00

Hikari Mitsushima as Yoko in Love Exposure (2008).

I've never been a big fan of Sion Sono, perhaps unfairly since I've only seen three of his earlier films, Suicide Circle (2001), Strange Circus (2005) and Exte (2007) and they all felt too fragmented and unfinished to be really enjoyable, even though they also had their high points. Going into Love Exposure I kept my earlier experiences with Sono in mind while at the same time being excited about finally getting to see it after reading all the reviews and top 10 lists claiming it to be the movie of the year in 2009. I have to admit though that arguments like "it's 4 hours long, how original!!" and "it's full of crazy!!!" doesn't do it for me like it did 10 years ago when I started out watching Japanese films.

So what's it about? Well, it's hard to say, for a movie with a four hour running time I felt that Love Exposure manages to say very little about the subjects it brings up, religion, extremism, love, passion, acceptance, sex and sin. I guess finding balance between the body and mind, religion and love without letting one or the other take over completely is a theme in the movie, perhaps best represented in the character of the father who decides to become a catholic priest after his wife dies and then finds love again with another woman, who later leaves him which turns him even more into a religious fanatic.

The main part of the story is a love triangle between Yu, the son of the priest, who is forced to commit sins so he'll have something to tell his father in confession which makes him turn to photographing girls' underwear in the streets, Yoko, a high school girl who was sexually abused by her father and is now a man hating ass kicking machine who has run away together with her stepmom Kaori who is the love of Yu's father and Koike, another teenage girl who is a member of the Zero Church cult and who, for some reason, wants to ruin Yu's relationship with Yoko and his family. So basically it's four hours of identity mix-ups, kung fu, praying and up skirt photography.

My feeling here is that I probably just didn't get it, the characters struggles with their emotions probably would mean more to someone who's better suited to analyze these things, but at the same time, I'm not sure that there is so much more beneath the surface. The film gets repetetive very quickly. Even though the settings change, four hours is a lot to sit through. It's the same situations over and over, the same dilemmas and with the performances more often than not being closer to annoying than brilliant, with the exception of Atsuro Watabe as the priest and Sakura Ando as Koike, the long running time takes its toll.

I have to say though that it's not an uninteresting film, it's still with me a few days after I've seen it, and even though I'm sure I won't ever sit through it again, this won't be the last time it crosses my mind. Sono manages to cram a lot into it, as he should with a running time like this, and while it's not executed flawlessly I feel that I'm more interested in seeing what he comes up with next than I was before. As for Love Exposure being the best film of 2009 I have to disagree, but it's not surprising it made those lists with ingredients like panty shots, girls in high school uniforms beating up guys, a lot of references to 70's pinky violence films with Yu dressing up like Meiko Kaji's Scorpion character and other random craziness. It's a geek fest.

In the mood for Love Exposure

2010-02-06T22:29:00.007+01:00

Sion Sono's Love Exposure (2008).

Since the beginning of December I've been really busy at work, starting a new job and working 16 hour days has made me too tired to watch anything. For the last two months I've watched zero films. I started watching Bong Joon-Ho's Mother (2009) and got about 20 minutes into it before I fell asleep, not because of the film but just because I've been too tired to care. Even though I have a big pile of dvds that I'd like to watch, I just haven't felt interested, until now.

Sion Sono's Love Exposure (2008) just arrived in the mail and while I haven't read anything about the story I haven't been able to avoid the headlines calling it movie of the year and after it made the top spot on several of the writers at Midnight Eye's year end lists, I just can't wait.

Zombie Self-Defense Force (Naoyuki Tomomatsu, 2006)

2009-11-29T22:29:00.006+01:00

Zombie Self-Defense Force (2006).

Part one of the Nihonbi trilogy, Naoyuki Tomomatsu's Zombie Self-Defense Force starts off with a long monologue where the director speaks about how Japanese WW2 veterans have been treated, and war crimes commited by the US in Japan during WW2 and Iraq in present day. Taking into consideration what film you are watching makes the speach a little harder to take seriously and when it's all tied up with the line that there are good things about America too, like George A. Romero, it's obvious where this is going.

The story is simple, a UFO crashes, turns every dead person in the area to zombies, and a group of random people, some of them members of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, are stuck in a house in the country side and have to battle it out with the zombies. Sound familiar? Tomomatsu also manages to include a legend about a super patriotic soldier from World War 2 who is buried in the woods and has never been able to rest in peace because of the way that Japanese soldiers are remembered, and a cyborg, an alien, and a zombie baby along with references to Kinji Fukasaku's Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973) and a bunch of other films.

I don't really have much to say about Zombie Self-Defense Force, the acting was bad, the effects were cheap and the story was a mess, like it should be in a film like this. Tomomatsu keeps the action going almost throughout and the films does move at a better pace than its sequels, still I think this will be the last of these lowbudget gore films I'll watch in a while, somehow I always get my hopes up, expecting something more than just blood, but they never deliver. It's like they have all the right ingredients but it never adds up to a good whole.

Samurai Princess (Kengo Kaji, 2009)

2009-11-16T20:29:00.007+01:00

AV idol Aino Kishi as Gedohime in Kengo Kaji's Samurai Princess (2009).

Another Japanese gore flick in the vein of The Machine Girl (Noboru Iguchi, 2008) and Tokyo Gore Police (Yoshihiro Nishimura, 2008) among others. This time out the setting is something reminiscent of Death Trance, where people seem to be living in a wasteland and both swords and guns are being used. A runaway scientist is making mechanical implants on people and also using body parts to build his own creations. Two of his androids are running amok, killing everyone they meet, especially young girls, after letting their band of criminals rape them. One girl survives their attack and is approached by the scientist who wants to make her too into an android so that she can avenge her friends.

So is there any difference to other films like this? Not really. It starts off pretty good but quickly turns into a slow mess of flashbacks and a totally unnecessary love affair. Nishimura is behind the special effects in Samurai Princess and limbs are literally flying everywhere and there are some great gore, like when the main bad guy punches the skeleton out of a guy. The big problem is the story and pacing, when a film like this actually manages to hold it all together without grinding down to a complete halt before going into the final showdown it'll be a fun ride, but Samurai Princess gets derailed after about 10 minutes.

I really feel like I'm repeating myself with these films, maybe I should just give up on them. But still I can't help wanting to see Robo-geisha (Noboru Iguchi, 2009) and Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (Yoshihiro Nishimura, Naoyuki Tomomatsu, 2009), maybe I'm still looking for the next great Japanese zombie/action film, the next Versus (Ryuhei Kitamura, 2000).

Favorite moment #2: The Bird People in China (Takashi Miike, 1998)

2009-11-02T01:33:00.005+01:00

Masahiro Motoki and Renji Ishibashi on a quest for jade in China.

Since I just crapped all over a Miike-film, I figured I would list a scene from one of his films that I still find myself thinking about even though I haven't seen the film that features it for years. I don't remember the exact circumstances around it but it's somewhere along Masahiro Motoki and Renji Ishibashi's trip to a small mountain village in rural China and they're having a rest and discussing something, as far as I recall. For some reason Ishibashi's yakuza thug gets offended by something white collar worker Motoki says and unexpectedly kicks him right in the face, hard. It made me fall off the couch laughing. It is one of many memorable moments in Takashi Miike's The Bird People in China, the van that's falling apart is another.

Crows Zero II (Takashi Miike, 2009)

2009-11-01T14:48:00.010+01:00

The Crows of Suzuran High.

The follow up to Miike's 2007 hit Crows Zero is basically more of the same. Based on a long running manga by Hiroshi Takahashi, the story tells of rival high school gangs fighting each other and among themselves to gain control over Tokyo's high schools. In Crows Zero II, Genji (Shun Oguri) has captured Suzuran High by beating Serizawa (Takayuki Yamada) in the first film, but he has failed at uniting the different factions at the school and beating loner giant Rindaman. But with the release of former Suzuran student Kawanishi (Shinnosuke Abe) from prison, bigger trouble than petty infighting are headed for Genji and everyone else at Suzuran High. Two years earlier, Kawanishi, the then leader of Suzuran, stabbed the boss of Hosen Acadamy to death and now the new leaders of Hosen are out for revenge, not just on Kawanishi, but on all of Suzuran's students. This along with Genji's yakuza father (Goro Kishitani) being targeted for a hit by another group doesn't make Genji's life any easier.

The biggest problem I have with Crows Zero and its sequel is the drama, both films feel too much like some teen drama tv-show, where it's hard to take the cheesy dialogue about war and tactics as seriously as the characters seem to do, and to believe that these scrawny actors are actually brutal fighters. The parallel of Genji's fathers life, with the same kind of conflicts within the yakuza group and with others, showing what the kids of Suzuran High can expect their future to be, and the message that no matter how strong you are, there is always someone stronger doesn't really fit in the film as much as it does as a continuation of Miike's earlier films where unconditional success is rarely seen.

Genji facing off with Rindaman in Takashi Miike's Crows Zero II (2009).

I think the thing lacking in the Crows films compared to Miike's earlier efforts in the kids-knocking-each-other-senseless genre, like the two Young Thugs (1997-1998) and The Way to Fight (1996), is heart. The previous films were actually showing parts of the characters lives and full of warmth and humor between the fights while Crows are merely showing fighting and discussions of tactics on how to recruit more members to their gangs and how to win fights. Even though there are scenes of bonding and the sense of family isn't taken lightly, the emotional impact isn't there in Crows. The only time Crows Zero II really comes to life is in the fight scenes, which surpasses the first film with their energy but still lacks to be really involving. Perhaps the life of the characters are really shown in the fights, as it is their way to feel alive, and afterwards they rarely seem bothered by injuries or the bruises on their faces like it is their natural state.

At 2 hours and 13 minutes, I wish that Miike would have settled for 90 minutes of high school kids beating the crap out of each other and saved the drama for another film.

Zombie Hunter Rika (Kenichi Fujiwara, 2008)

2009-10-20T00:09:00.009+02:00

Risa Kudo as high school girl Rika in Zombie Hunter Rika (2008).

Kenichi Fujiwara's Zombie Hunter Rika is the third part in a trilogy of unrelated zombie films that started with Stacy (2001) director Naoyuki Tomomatsu's Zombie Self-Defense Force (2006). The second film was the not so great The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers (2007) by Koji Kawano who after making his feature debut with the lesbian teen drama Love My Life (2006) seems to have found a home in the horror/gore genre.

The movie starts out with Rika and a friend of hers from school being attacked by zombies and being saved by a yakuza who, incidentally, is headed to the same place as Rika, her grandfather's house. Rika's grandfather is a famous surgeon who is struggling with dementia, living with his young wife who may only be after his money. They also hook up with a zombie who's slightly more sophisticated than his undead friends. Their mission becomes to defeat the leader of the zombies named Grorian, killing him will make everything go back to normal. The problem is that Grorian has already killed The Zombie Hunter which will cause the US to send missiles over Japan to eliminate the zombies.

Ultra low budget, shot on video, with homemade special effects, Zombie Hunter Rika isn't a perfect film. The lack of special effects is its biggest weakness since a film like this is really about the gore and not the story. In the action scenes the camera always cuts away and all you get to see is blood spraying from off-screen. The action is directed by Versus star Tak Sakaguchi but it doesn't really show until the final showdown between Rika and Grorian, which is actually pretty sweet albeit short, this must be what they spent the money on as it looks like a completely different movie.

Still, I didn't mind Zombie Hunter Rika too much, it has its moments and the music by Hideto Takematsu seems inspired by Nobuhiko Morino's score for Versus and actually helps to heighten the mood in some scenes, making Rika as a whole become something better than its individual parts.

New titles from Pink Eiga

2009-10-17T22:49:00.005+02:00

Usually I wouldn't do this, but since I think Pink Eiga are putting out some really great films, I'll just inform about what they're planning for this fall. Personally I'm most looking forward to Blind Love (2005) from Daisuke Goto, the director of the earlier Pink Eiga release, A Lonely Cow Weeps at Dawn (2003). Visit their site to watch trailers for the films.

Invitation Only (Kevin Ko, 2009)

2009-10-14T00:50:00.006+02:00

Maria Ozawa in Taiwanese slasher flick Invitation Only (2009).

Invitation Only got some publicity before it's premiere for being Taiwan's first slasher film, and because Japanese porn actress Maria Ozawa has a small role in it, but after the premiere it's been mostly quiet about it and with good reason. Invitation Only starts out with a guy working as a driver being invited to a party by his employer after he accidentaly walked in on his employer and his model girlfriend having sex in the car. At the party there are several people attending for the first time who have all been invited by the people they work for, the only requirement being to write down their craziest fantasy on the back of the invitation for it to come true. Sound too good to be true? It is. And this is when the film stops being good too, if it ever was. It turns out that the organizers of the party are more into torturing and killing their new arrivals than making their wishes come true.

When things are turning ugly for the characters the filmmakers actually manage to bring down the pace of the film and turn it into a sleeping pill. It takes about 45 minutes of eventless running up and down hallways with occassional confrontations with the killers before anything remotely interesting happens, the best thing about the film being the still completely unnecessary set up for a sequel in the final seconds. The only reason to watch the film would be for the gore, there's lots of it and it's very brutal. Not counting pure gore flicks like Tokyo Gore Police, this is probably the bloodiest film I've seen in a while. For me though, it didn't help the film entertain.

Cruel Gun Story (Takumi Furukawa, 1964)

2009-09-05T17:23:00.005+02:00

Jo Shishido in Cruel Gun Story (1964).

Another film from the Nikkatsu Action box set. Again with Jo Shishido in the lead, but not quite as slick and cool as A Colt Is My Passport (Takashi Nomura, 1967).

Shishido plays a criminal being released early from prison after killing the truck driver who hit his sister and made her paralyzed. The early release comes from another gangster having pulled some strings to get Shishido out so he can use him for a job, to rob an armored car transport taking money from a race track to the bank. As always not everyone is what they seem. A typical heist movie, with the Nikkatsu Action borderless element coming down to the American fighter planes constantly flying above and the American GIs visible in bars and in the streets, and Shishido's wish to escape to Brazil along with his sister.

Even if it's not as entertaining as A Colt Is My Passport, Cruel Gun Story is still a great film. Shishido is as ruthless as ever and there are some great shootouts to go along with the beautiful black and white cinematography.

A Colt Is My Passport (Takashi Nomura, 1967)

2009-08-30T20:29:00.009+02:00

Jerry Fujio and Jo Shishido in Takashi Nomura's A Colt Is My Passport (1967).

Part of the new Nikkatsu Noir box set from Criterion, A Colt Is My Passport is one of the "borderless" (meaning something like being influenced by American and European films, stories about escaping, taking place in locations and using situations not common in Japanese films) action films from Nikkatsu released in the 60's. Heavily influenced by western films, it starts out with the sound of gunshots and a spaghetti western theme and it features Jo Shishido as a hitman character that would be more likely in a Hollywood film than in anything from Japan.

Shishido plays a hitman who is hired by a yakuza group to take out the leader of another gang, only problem is, Shishido does the job a little too well and finds himself, along with his accomplice (Jerry Fujio), on the run from the gang whos boss he just killed as well as the gang that hired him.

Trying to get out of Japan, first by plane and then by boat, they are hiding out in Yokohama at a trucker inn where they meet a woman who is also trying to leave her old life behind. It turns out that it's not as easy as just jumping on a ship when the former rival yakuza gangs team up to catch Shishido and Fujio. It all boils down to a desert finale, filmed at a landfill, that is everything you would expect from a showdown in a spaghetti western, only thing missing being a coffin full of guns, instead you get a golf bag this time around.

It's not a complicated film but what makes it really stand out is the acting by Shishido, and this was apparently the film that cemented him as a leading man. Every time he's in the frame he breathes life into the film and there is no doubt who's the toughest guy around. For sheer entertainment it doesn't get much better than this. If the rest of the films in this box set is half as good as A Colt Is My Passport, it will be the release of the year.

To read more about Nikkatsu Action Cinema I'd recommend Mark Schilling's book No Borders, No Limits.

No Borders, No Limits at FabPress.com

Stop the Bitch Campaign (Kosuke Suzuki, 2001)

2009-08-30T15:40:00.008+02:00

Kuni's plan turning on him in Kosuke Suzuki's Stop the Bitch Campaign (2001).

Released recently on dvd in Hong Kong under the same title as the new 2009 version by the same director, Stop the Bitch Campaign Version 2.0, but it's actually the original from 2001. Kenichi Endo plays Kuni, the strange, to say the least, manager of a phone sex service who discovers that a group of young girls is using his service to black mail his middle aged male clients by bringing gangsters to their arranged meetings.

That is when Kuni hatches the brilliant plan to stop the prostitution, save the country and become a hero of Japan by meeting the girls himself and violate them with his special kind of s&m and then leave without paying. After torturing a virgin who tries to commit suicide afterwards, and who happens to be the little sister of the leader of the blackmailers, Kuni is the one being hunted by the girls instead of the other way around.

I've always liked Kenichi Endo and his weirdo characters even though he sometimes goes too far into just screaming and mugging territory. Going into Stop the Bitch Campaign, I was a bit worried he'd be as bad and annoying as in the first sequel, Stop the Bitch Campaign - Hell Version (2004) starring Aoi Sora, but in this first installment he stays just insane enough for it to be entertaining. For anyone looking for something serious, Stop the Bitch Campaign can't be recommended, but if all you want is Kenichi Endo in a thong and eye make-up torturing high school girls and a guy getting firecrackers up his butt, this is the film for you. Even if it brings up issues like compensated dating (enjo kosai) and the immorality and greed of both men and women the film is, just like Kuni's plan, just an excuse to show/get some sex.

Intentions of Murder (Shohei Imamura, 1964)

2009-08-19T02:00:00.005+02:00

Shohei Imamura's Intentions of Murder (1964).

In Intentions of Murder, the follow up to The Insect Woman (1963), Shohei Imamura takes another look at a woman struggling to maintain her way of life and at times just to survive. In The Insect Woman the main character was, just like the bug in the opening shot of the film, trying to make her way to the top, to get ahead in order to survive. Sadako in Intentions of Murder is likened to another animal, a mouse running on a treadmill is in the foreground in several scenes of Sadako doing her chores. Unlike Tome's climb from peasant to madam for a group of prostitutes, Sadako's main goal is to preserve her family after she is raped by a burglar who falls in love with her and keeps coming back. Just like The Insect Woman, Intentions of Murder is a film about the strengths and struggles of women on the lower end of society.

As a teenager Sadako is sent from Tokyo to a northern town to work as a maid in the same household as her grandmother once did. Once there she's treated badly by the lady owning the house and even when she has a child with and marries the son in the house, Riichi, Sadako is still not allowed into the family registry.

Years later, living with Riichi and their son Masaru, Sadako is still treated as nothing but a maid by everyone in her family and Masaru is registered as the son of her now mother-in-law. Completely repressed by her husband, controlling their finances down to the cost of an onion, Sadako mindlessly performs her everyday chores, just like the mice run on their treadmill, with her only self initiated activity being some knitting work to get some extra money.

One day a man breaks into the house to steal money but when he sees Sadako he rapes her instead. Sadako fights back but is overpowered and though it is clear that she doesn't want anything to do with the man, there is a flashback to when she was a teenager. She's sitting outside with a silkworm crawling up her thigh but is discovered by her future mother-in-law who scolds her badly. Possibly the rape has awoken something inside Sadako that has been repressed for a long time, something instinctual, the opposite of her current life. Sadako's reaction is to commit suicide, but thinking of her son while standing next to the railroad tracks makes her unable to. Her next reaction is as basic as protecting her young, to eat. From here on Sadako's life becomes more about protecting her family unit and trying to resist the carnal desires she has rediscovered than to simply just exist as before.

When the rapist comes back, claiming he's in love with Sadako and wanting to elope to Tokyo with her, she keeps resisting him. It's first after several meetings, where she has tried to make him stay away by paying him, that she lets her sexual desire take over and has consented sex with him, but as he's still a threat to her way of life with her family, she plans to kill him.

Maybe this is Imamura's way of showing the strength of women this time, Sadako protecting her family at almost any cost, being able to overcome just about anything, be it through denial or dealing with it. It's a world where men are strong on the surface but which is really run by women. Both Sadako's husband and the rapist are weak, sickly men and Riichi is himself having an affair with a co-worker while condemning Sadako on the suspicion of her doing the same.

I feel like I'm on thin ice with this one. Compared to The Insect Woman, Intentions of Murder feels like the more layered film and I'm most certainly not the person to decode them all. It also doesn't help that the fact that Sadako starts to somewhat enjoy the rapes didn't sit well with me and that the film felt overly long. It has many similarities with The Insect Woman in its use of freeze frames and voice over from the main character and the feeling of it being more of a study than a regular film. Once again I felt more like an observer than part of an experience. But in the case of Intentions of Murder, the story takes some turns that just makes it too ludicrous to really take seriously, even though Sadako in a way, comes away with a win in the end.

Quick takes #4

2009-08-09T22:46:00.009+02:00

Anthony Wong and Jo Odagiri in Plastic City.

Plastic City (Yu Lik-Wai, 2008) - Strange gangster story about illegal immigrants in Sao Paolo, Brazil, played by Anthony Wong and Jo Odagiri. When the government wants to show the US that they are cracking down on crime, they ask Yuda (Wong) to cooperate and give up a few truckloads of merchandise and then he'll be left alone. Instead, Yuda is framed and sent to prison, leaving Kirin (Odagiri), Yuda's adopted son, to take care of business. Starts off gritty and somewhat engaging but is marred by Wong and Odagiri not really speaking Portuguese and being, I think, both dubbed and speaking phonetically and some weird CG enhanced environments and a voodoo ending that really takes you out of the film. Disappointing.

The Masked Girl (Isao Kaneko, 2008) - At 45 minutes in length, originally a double bill with Hard Revenge, Milly (Takanori Tsujimoto, 2008), there is not much plot to talk about in The Masked Girl. Hoshino (Yuki Shimizu) is kidnapped by an organisation called Clown and transformed into a martial arts expert with super strength. While she tries to figure out why, the same thing happens to her friend Yumi (Shizuka Nakamura), only Yumi is also brainwashed into believing that Hoshino is a traitor to the organisation. The fighting begins.

To compare The Masked Girl to films like The Machine Girl (Noboru Iguchi, 2008) and Tokyo Gore Police (Yoshihiro Nishimura, 2008) might not be the best way of describing the film since The Masked Girl is more like an episode of a kid-friendly tokusatsu show while The Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police are nothing but gore fests. But since they are all films that are made with only one purpose in mind, they are somewhat alike, The Masked Girl going for some harmless tokusatsu action and The Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police going for getting as much blood and guts in the frame as possible. Where The Masked Girl succeeds and the others fail though, is in its short running time, it never slows down and doesn't have any unnecessary scenes to make it an overlong bore fest like Tokyo Gore Police. Entertaining low budget nonsense.

Shizuka Nakamura and Yuki Shimizu in The Masked Girl.

Favorite moment #1: Battlefield Baseball (Yudai Yamaguchi, 2003)

2009-08-08T20:04:00.010+02:00

"Jubeh's tears made it happen!" - Battlefield Baseball (2003).

I don't like lists, whenever I try to list something, I always end up unhappy with the final result. No matter how much work I put into trimming the list down I'm never able to decide what to keep and what not to, so this is just going to be a random post about the first moment that popped into my head when I first thought of making a list of my favorite moments in Asian cinema.

At the end of Yudai Yamaguchi's zombie-baseball comedy, when everyone has finished beating the crap out of each other with fists, feet and poisonous bats and both players and audience have been massacred by a machine gun wielding living dead, the tears of Yakyu Jubeh (Tak Sakaguchi) saves the day. Everyone comes back to life and the differences between the baseball combatants are put aside because after all, it's all about teamwork. Pure goofy, incredibly stupid feel good moment that gets me every time.

Tokyo Decadence (Ryu Murakami, 1992)

2009-08-03T23:00:00.006+02:00

Tokyo Decadence (1992), written and directed by Ryu Murakami.

Tokyo Decadence takes place in a world where everyone has money and bodies are nothing but merchandise. The human body and mind as a contrast to the high-rises of Tokyo during the economic boom. It tells the story about Ai (Miho Nikaido), a prostitute but not a very confident one, making you believe that her life wasn't always like this. She takes on s&m clients, sadists as well as masochists, but doesn't handle either very well. She never seems comfortable in playing a role but every time her own personality comes through she is punished for it. Perhaps a failure of identity and individuality, she is just a prostitute, not a person.

Within the context of the bubble economy (a context I only got from reading the essay included on Cinema Epoch's dvd) and Japan as a country where everyone works with financial gain as the only goal, Ai is one of the people on the outside who for some reason wasn't included or lost her place in society. She tries to find her place in the crowd as an individual but as such she will always fail. On several occasions she finds herself the object of a crowd's condemning stares, only once being saved by another outcast who Ai has shown some kindness earlier. Not even this original, a vocalist, in a crowd of otherwise likeminded people lets Ai be herself, repeating Ai's customers' demands of "more" and "louder" when she wants Ai to be her audience.

In the end, none of Ai's problems are solved, her only happiness seemingly coming from accepting her situation and take some pride in having the strength to be who she is. As a prostitute friend of her says, the masses have achieved wealth without pride, but maybe Ai as an individual can find strength within herself.

When I watched the film I had no real knowledge of the social circumstances surrounding it and it seemed like just a story about a young woman trying to find her identity and place in a world she doesn't necessarily want to belong to, the only clear sign of societal critique being the comment by Ai's friend. Knowing the context do help put things in perspective, and to see the meaning behind the film, it makes it easy to see that Tokyo Decadence is more than just a soft-core s&m flick. But does it really help it as a film? Since the first 80 minutes or so consists of barely nothing else than sex scenes that seem to go on forever and the last 30 being a mess of Ai running around, all drugged up, trying to find the house of a former lover she can't forget, I would have to say no. Even though the end does help in conveying that she should be more self reliant, that she wouldn't be in this mess had she not taken the advice of others, it feels too contrieved, too self consciously strange for the sake of being strange, and towards the end the film just lost me completely. An interesting premise wasted by a bad presentation.

Humanity and Paper Balloons (Sadao Yamanaka, 1937)

2009-07-22T03:27:00.010+02:00

Matajuro Unno and the kidnapped Okoma in Humanity and Paper Balloons (1937).

Humanity and Paper Balloons concerns the lives of a group of low standing individuals living in tenements in the poor districts of Edo in 18th century Japan, most notably the unemployed ronin Matajuro Unno, living with his wife Otaki, and Shinza, a barber involved in most anything except cutting hair. There are also other characters like old blind man Yabuichi and their stingy landlord among others. It begins with a suicide in the tenement block. A ronin who's had to pawn his sword has killed himself by hanging, "The samurai should have slit his belly" someone says, "it was a disgrace to hang himself". The other tenants use the wake for the ronin as an excuse to throw a party. There is no honor or respect in being a samurai with no allegiance.

Unno is himself in a similar situation, his wife making paper balloons to make ends meet while Unno is out looking for a job, putting his last hope in gaining employment with Mori, a high ranking samurai who was helped to his position by Unno's late father. Mori however, doesn't want anything to do with Unno and even refuses to accept a letter from Unno's father with Unno's persistence only resulting in a beating from a group of yakuza hired as protection at the local pawn shop where Mori is grooming the owner's daughter, Okoma, to become the wife of a samurai.

Then there's Shinza, who's arranging nights of gambling in his home and has become the target of the yakuza with thugs chasing him down as soon as he sets foot outside. When Shinza is denied pawning his barber tools at the pawn shop, it results in him impulsively kidnapping Okoma and hiding her at Unno's house, not to make money off a ransom, but to put the screws on the pawn shop owner and the yakuza.

With its story about the lower classes of the Edo-period, Humanity and Paper Balloons a warm and humorous, but in the end very pessimistic film about how the people further down on the social ladder are treated by the higher ups. The humor coming mostly from exchanges between the tenants and situations as when they trick the landlord into first buying them sake for the wake, and then more food when he arrives or the blind man not letting anything slip by unnoticed.

Starting with the suicide of the ronin, director Sadao Yamanaka spends the rest of the film showing what could possibly lead to a man taking such extreme measures. Through Mori's treatment of Unno, who is already in a desperate situation, leading him on hoping that he'll just give up instead of telling him to his face that he's unwanted, and Unno being too ashamed to admit his failures to his wife who can only pretend to not know what is going on, it all adds up to the inevitable. No matter how persistent and servile Unno is, he's not able to get ahead because of his current lowly standing.

Shinza is more of a rebel, running his gambling business not only to make money but also out of spite. Why shouldn't he be able to do something others can? Just because they say so? When he kidnaps Okoma he refuses to accept the ransom but demands an apology from the pawn shop owner. Not just to be noble but also because having someone grovel before him would put himself in a higher position, as shown by the respect he receives from the other tenants.

Humanity and Paper Balloons is the last, and one of only three remaining, of the 22 films Sadao Yamanaka directed during his short six year career. He was drafted on the day of the premiere of Humanity and sent to Manchuria where he died in 1938, leaving a will ending with the words "Please make good movies". In the portrayals of the tenants, Yamanaka shows great love for his characters but he also shows their flaws. Like Unno's persistence that just becomes too much, what would have happened if he had just followed Mori's instructions to come back the next day and left it at that. There is a scene where Unno is reaffirming that he will surely arrive the next day at eight in the morning that makes him seem so desperate that it almost becomes unsettling. And is Shinza's demand for an apology and his wish for respect really that different from those of which he demands it from? In the end the only one being well off is the landlord who doesn't mind rolling over for anyone as long as there is money in it for him, showing that in this world humanity and honor doesn't mean a thing if you're not wealthy. As Yamanaka was a leftist, there is no doubt on which position he takes, but he doesn't take anything away from the complexity of his film or its characters.

Something that really struck me with Humanity was the flow of the film and how natural it felt, both in the editing and the performances of the actors, the left-wing theatre group Zenshin-za. This is the first Japanese film I've seen from the 30s and I wasn't expecting it to feel so modern. Other films I've seen from this period have felt staged with theatrical performances, but not so here. Just like when I watched Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog (1949) for the first time and that it could have been made much later, Yamanaka's film seems almost like it could have been made today.

Shinza being threatened by yakuza.

The Sniper (Dante Lam, 2009)

2009-07-15T15:07:00.010+02:00

Huang Xiaoming as Lincoln in Dante Lam's The Sniper (2009).

Originally filmed in 2007 but released in 2009, Dante Lam's The Sniper was postponed because of co-star Edison Chen's sex scandal in which intimate pictures of him and various Hong Kong actresses were leaked to the public when he turned his laptop in for repairs. The delay also caused Dante Lam's next film, The Beast Stalker (2008), to be released before The Sniper even though it's something of a sequel thematically.

Since I'm a fan of sniping action I've been looking forward to The Sniper since I saw the first promotional shots of it and while I had my doubts about how good it would be, it didn't disappoint. The base of the story is about competition and the competition between men in particular , the question is if there can be two masters at something co-existing or if one will always try to exceed or bring down the other, and the dark sides that this competition can bring out of a man. It's all spelled out pretty clearly during the film, there is not much subtlety in The Sniper.

Edison Chen plays OJ, a regular beat cop who joins the Special Forces sniper unit of the Hong Kong Police where he comes under the command of Hartman (Richie Jen), the unit's top shooter. OJ soon discovers there was another sniper, named Lincoln (Huang Xiaoming), who used to hold the title of top shooter before Hartman. On a mission four years earlier, Lincoln took matters into his own hands and accidentally killed a hostage. Since no one would testify on his behalf that the hostage taker was about to pull the pin out of the hand grenade he was holding, Lincoln has been incarcerated up until now. When Lincoln is released around the same time as the criminal that he failed to kill, it all comes to a boil with Lincoln blaming his former unit for his time in prison, Hartman trying to maintain command over his unit and OJ looking to become the best sniper on the force.

Not everything is perfect in The Sniper but as I want to end this post on a positive note I'll start with the flaws. At only 87 minutes in length, including the end credits, the film still has some superfluous scenes like the ones with the main characters' wives and girlfriends. They don't do much for character development since you get a pretty clear picture of them anyway, just adding some unnecessary sentimentality to the film along with the in-your-face message. This is more of a minor nuisance though, since it doesn't manage to bring down the entertainment level of the film as a whole.

Richie Jen as Hartman.

The actors all do a good job of displaying the competitiveness and the dual feelings between duty and to personally excel that it brings with it, even though if it's not really anything we haven't seen before. Both Chen and Jen work as the cocky new recruit and the more experienced unit leader but it's Huang who stands out as the menacing Lincoln, stealing every scene he is in with his screen presence. No matter how good the actors are though, a film like this stands and falls with its action scenes and this is where it really delivers. Not confining itself to the premise of its title, The Sniper features regular gunfights, chases, car jackings and explosions as well as stealth snipers picking off their targets, all culminating in the final, surprisingly bloody, sniper showdown, which is one of the best action set pieces I've seen in a long time.

The Insect Woman (Shohei Imamura, 1963)

2009-07-14T00:25:00.015+02:00

Sachiko Hidari as Tome in Shohei Imamura's The Insect Woman (1963).

The film starts with an insect climbing a muddy hill, struggling to get to the top. Tome Matsuki is a woman born in the countryside of Japan in 1918 and she spends her youth on a farm together with her somewhat slow father, Chuji, who she may or may not have an incestuous relationship with. The "may not" comes from her mother being less than faithful to Chuji and not really knowing who Tome's biological father is.

The film jumps to when Tome is in her late teens/early 20s and having had a baby of her own and a failed relationship behind her she moves to the big city, leaving her father and baby, to work as a housemaid at the home of a woman named Midori who has a child with an American GI. After Tome inadvertantly causes the death of the child she ends up in a religious meeting where she meets the madam of an inn that is also a front for a prostitution business run by the madam. Up to the point when Tome is talked into prostituting herself, she has been adapting herself to situations but without any particular motives except survival, she now becomes an opportunist, taking the first chance she gets to rat out the madam to the police and take over the business herself.

Things are going well so far for Tome but just as she betrayed her boss, the women working for Tome starts taking customers on the side and ultimately she is betrayed in the same way. As if that's not enough, Tome's daughter, Nobuko now grown up, arrives to borrow money and manages to not only get the money but to steal away and get pregnant by Tome's lover and benefactor since many years, Karasawa. In the end, Nobuko returns to the country to have the baby together with her fiancé who knows nothing of Nobuko's affair in the city. Karasawa, desperate to get Nobuko and his money back, sends Tome to the farm to retrieve her. And so the film ends with Tome back in the country, climbing a muddy hill, struggling to get to the top, once again having adapted to new circumstances to get by.

As the translation of the original title, Entomological Chronicle of Japan, suggests, The Insect Woman is more of a study of human behaviour, juxtaposed with that of the crawling insect at the beginning of the film, than a melodrama. At no point in the film, from when she has grown up, do you really feel for Tome, at times her actions are even detestable. The detachment comes from the style of the filmmaking and the way the story is being told.

Spanning over several decades, from around 1918 until the 1960s and following the same subject with clips of historical events to show the societal changes around her which she and everyone else has to adapt to, the eco. This along with freeze frames at both crucial and totally random feeling moments in Tome's life where she, through voice over, and the viewer is able to reflect on she has become.I also felt that with Tome so strongly representing adaptability, being so focused on survival and success, changing with the times and always adapting to surroundings, it removes some of her identity and personality and adds to the detachment of me as a viewer, making me feel more like an observer than someone emotionally involved with what's happening on the screen.

The detachment is both a weakness and a strength for the film, sometimes it feels like a chore following a person that you don't really care about, but at the same time it doesn't make the film any less interesting, but it's not what I would call entertainment. I remember having something of the same feeling while watching Imamura's The Pornographers (1966), whose original title translates to An Introduction to Anthropology. The result of The Insect Woman, Tome returning home climbing the hill just like the insect at the beginning having been replaced by a younger version of herself seems clear enough, but isn't that what happens to all of us in the end? Is it as simple as that no matter how much society changes, man will toil away in the same manner to get ahead not learning from our mistakes, just following our most basic needs.

I don't know if I'd really call Tome a strong person either, strong willed maybe, but she constantly makes the wrong decisions and even when it seems like she might be headed for some success, life remains a struggle for her. She never manages to truly become independent as in the end, she's relying on men to help her with money, men who measure a woman's worth only in how much money she can bring in working for them and who doesn't even care if she is faithful as long as they get what they want. The answer to what it all might be about sickens, "natural order". But as Imamura shows, women struggling are survivors, adaptable to any situation, and outlive their men.

Warring Clans, Flashing Blades - A Samurai Film Companion (Patrick Galloway, 2009)

2009-07-12T03:40:00.010+02:00

Hideo Gosha's Goyokin (1969), reviewed in Warring Clans, Flashing Blades.

Patrick Galloway dives right back into the samurai film pool, following up on his 2005 Stray Dogs & Lone Wolves - The Samurai Film Handbook with Warring Clans, Flashing Blades - A Samurai Film Companion and this time he's going a bit deeper into the more unknown films, unknown to casual fans like myself, at least.

This time the writer provides a bit more cultural context and explanations to the different ceremonies, the warrior code and other cultural proceedings that occur in samurai films. He also takes a slightly more analytical route, which is very much welcome, but just like in Stray Dogs & Lone Wolves, the writing suffers from becoming too casual, the reviews mostly consisting of a (detailed) synopsis and pointing out of "whoa!" moments. At the same time as it is pointed out that samurai films aren't that easy to get into and takes some work to really understand, the writing at times feels like it's aimed at 14-year-olds just looking for the next cool flick.

Don't get me wrong, I still really like the book. The style keeps it from becoming too dry and makes it a quick and fairly entertaining read, and while deeper analysis would have been appreciated, for the number of films on review here, it would take a lot more than 200 pages. And no matter what I think of the writing, there is no denying of all the research and enthusiasm that has gone into the book and that is its strongest point as the love for these films comes through. For as a guide to, and an inspiration for looking up all these films, Warring Clans... fills its purpose more than well, and what could be a better function for a book like this?

Tsumugi (Hidekazu Takahara, 2004)

2009-07-05T14:23:00.008+02:00

Aoi Sora is Tsumugi (2004).

Another release from Pink Eiga, the new company specializing in Japanese sex films of the pink cinema kind. Their fifth release, Hidekazu Takahara's Tsumugi, is a coming of age drama about a high school girl who likes toying with the men around her, starring AV idol Aoi Sora. The following text contains spoilers.

The story involves several characters that all need to grow up and mature in different ways, accepting and taking responsibility for their actions and lives. Tsumugi is having an affair with her teacher, Katagiri, who is about to have a child with his wife, and who is also having another affair with one of his co-workers at the school. Tsumugi is also getting involved with a boy in her class who she sometimes taunts for being a lousy student, not playing sports and basically not having anything going for him, until he finally accepts it as fact.

All these characters, including a punk rock singer who's a friend of Katagiri who's a bit too old to be sporting a mohawk and hasn't seen his daughter in years, come to a point where they have to make a decision to either act as adults and make the right decisions or to run away from their responsibilities because of interactions with Tsumugi. At the same time as she too has to make her own decision she works as a catalyst for the other characters in the film.

As it turns out, only the students, and possibly the youth-like punk singer, manages to realize what is probably best for them, while the adults resort to childish actions and selfish behavior.
The boy student decides that he's had enough of not knowing where he wants to go in life and decides to start training for a triathlon in Hawaii, the first time he's really worked for anything, and to Tsumugi's surprise he's really giving it his best shot.

When Katagiri's co-worker finds out about and confronts Tsumugi about her relationship with her teacher, and is unable to end it, she outs them in the teachers' lounge, more out of jealousy than care for a student, and in the process makes a fool of herself judging from the lack of reactions from other teachers. In the meanwhile, Katagiri is still involved with Tsumugi even though he has become a father, and while they're out driving, Tsumugi seems to realize that she's probably better off with the student than the cheating Katagiri, but as the films comes to a close, and the characters have made their decisions, so does her role as a catalyst and she has a fatal accident which Katagiri runs from.

The acting is good all around, with the stand out being Aoi Sora who fits her role perfectly even if it might come down more to screen prescence and charisma than anything else, and the co-worker whose desperate outing in the teachers' lounge is really uncomfortable to watch. The whole film feels very natural and the director manages to tell the story efficiently during the film's 62 minute running time and the many sex scenes never imposes on the rest of the film, they feel like a natural part of the story and doesn't come off as tacked on.

I'd say that Tsumugi is one of Pink Eiga's better releases, up there with the more serious films they have put on disc so far, A Lonely Cow Weeps at Dawn (Daisuke Goto, 2003) and New Tokyo Decadence - The Slave (Osamu Sato, 2007). It is also the first to be released in two editions, one standard and one special, with the special edition sporting 5.1 surround sound and a bunch of featurettes, mostly revolving around Aoi Sora, and some music videos.

Pink Eiga Website

Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008)

2009-07-01T04:33:00.011+02:00

Yu Koyanagi and Kyoko Koizumi in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Tokyo Sonata (2008).

Tokyo Sonata starts off with an apocalypse on a personal level for office worker Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) when the department he is head of is downsized and moved to China. His way of dealing with it is by not telling his wife (Kyoko Koizumi) and children so as to not lose his authority as patriarch of the family, pretending to go to work each day when he’s really going to an unemployment office and homeless shelters to get a free meal together with an old friend from school, Kurosu (Kanji Tsuda), who’s also unemployed.

Kurosu has made hiding that he’s unemployed into an art, always carrying around a briefcase, wearing a suit, having set his phone to ring five times every hour and having fake conversations on it and going so far as to invite Sasaki for a family dinner and scolding him at the table over some imaginary work related business. Kurosu also has a theory that the only way to find a way out and start over is to embrace the situation and accept who you are, but that not many people dare to do so. Instead they keep standing in line with the poor and homeless, wearing their suits thinking, hoping, that it will set them apart from the rest.

In Sasaki’s family, things are already out of his control, but he’s too busy keeping up appearances to realize it. The two children in the family are both taking different paths from their father, the elder one, Takashi (Yu Koyanagi), is joining the American army forces and the younger, Kenji (Kai Inowaki), having trouble in school, actually bullying a teacher when he feels unfairly treated. The teacher’s solution is “If you ignore me, I’ll ignore you.” When Kenji wants to take piano lessons, Ryuhei takes the opportunity to show that he is still in charge by saying “No way!” while the real problem probably is the cost. Even when Kenji pockets his lunch money to pay for the piano lessons and it turns out that he’s a child prodigy does his father acknowledge him, instead he says “How could our child be a prodigy?” and what awaits Kenji is a beating in another desperate attempt from Ryuhei to prove that he is still the man in the house even though he doesn’t have a job. In fact everyone except Ryuhei is somewhat successfull, the wife, Megumi, has recently gotten her drivers license and as it turns out that might be her key to starting over, Kenji decides that he wants to play piano and is very good at it, even Takashi finds his calling by joining the military. It’s only Ryuhei who desperately clings to the past.

At the same time as Ryuhei isn’t a very sympathetic person, it’s easy to identify with him, the hopelessness of standing in line at the unemployment office, the shame of facing one’s family and friends after being laid off, the anger and resentment from having to jump through hoops at interviews for jobs that are far below your previous one and the loss and frustration of not being in the position you once were, in society as well as at home. And I think this is Tokyo Sonata’s strongest point. Compared to earlier films by Kiyoshi Kurosuwa it might lack in atmosphere and sense of pending doom, but in these times of financial crisis and skyrocketing unemployment it doesn’t get much scarier than this.

After Kurosu tells Sasaki about his theory, he acceptingly joins the ranks of the poor and unemployed, walking along with them to the next free meal, but when Sasaki goes to visit him at home, he finds out that Kurosu’s way out was to commit suicide by poisoning himself and his wife, taking her with him. These scenes are where it’s easiest to recognize Tokyo Sonata as a Kiyoshi Kurosuwa film, seeing Kurosu fall in with the ghost like crowd and floating away, the multi-tiered freeway seen after Kurosu’s suicide, making the city look like a ghost town despite all the cars. There is no life, just people fitting into their roles, whatever they may be.

When Megumi is asked by Takashi why she doesn’t divorce Ryuhei, she answers that it isn’t so bad playing the mom role, but still when she puts her hands in the air so that Ryuhei can help her up off of the couch, he’s already gone and she asks for someone to help her, anyone. She too needs a push to start over herself. And the help comes in the form of a burglar (Koji Yakusho) in a strange twist that doesn’t really mesh with the rest of the film. It takes a sudden turn into comedy and theatrical overacting from Yakusho as his failed locksmith turned burglar kidnaps Megumi and makes her drive his stolen getaway car. When they stop at a mall so Megumi can use the restroom she runs into Ryuhei who is working there as a janitor, but she still doesn’t say anything and returns to her kidnapper. They drive as far as the road will go and spends the night in a shed at a beach. When Megumi wakes up in the morning the burglar is gone, the only thing left being tiretracks headed straight into the ocean. Refusing a dead end, Megumi returns home but things seem to have change, everything is out in the open now about Ryuhei’s job situation and everything else.

During all of this, Ryuhei has found an envelope full of money in a restroom stall. He takes it and heads home on foot but is hit by a car and passes out in the gutter covered with trash. When he wakes up he turns the money in at a police station and heads home, deciding to start over himself, but only after hitting absolute rock bottom. For the other characters the fall wasn’t as hard since they were more aware of the roles they were playing and their ability to accept the situation they were in and adapt to it. Only Ryuhei who was foolishly clinging to his old ways had to reach the bottom before he could start over.

The ending does offer hope, not unlike many other films by Kurosawa, his apocalypses warrants change rather than total destruction. When Kenji auditions for a music school, Ryuhei and Megumi are there to watch and when Kenji has finished playing they all leave together, hopefully to a happier life.

Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (Takashi Miike, 2006)

2009-06-30T23:21:00.015+02:00

Ryuhei Matsuda as Jun Ariyoshi in Takashi Miike's Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (2006).

I recently rewatched Takashi Miike’s Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (2006). A film that I did like on my first viewing but at the same time felt more as an observer of than drawn into. Also, I wasn’t able to make much sense of just about everything in the film except the pretty straight forward murder mystery at the center of the plot, so when I sat down with it the second time, I figured that I’d try to find some possible meaning in the film. Something that would mean something to me, personally, at least.

The film starts with Kenichi Endo, who plays one of the detectives in the film, supposedly reading from the script and describing the place where the prison that everything takes place in is located. A place so far away in space that when the light from earth hits it, you’re able to see into the past. A hundred, a thousand or ten thousand years into the past, depending on which way you look. Turn this light on Tokyo in 2005 and an alternate reality is created, a place outside of time, this is where the prison exists.

A boy is asked what kind of man he wants to be, and the answer is expressed in an animalistic dance. The boy grows up to be Shiro (Masanobu Ando), strong and violent. He arrives in the prison at the same time as Jun (Ryuhei Matsuda), Shiro’s opposite, but they are both convicted of murder. Shiro for beating a man to death out of anger and Jun for killing a man who possibly raped him, but it’s uncertain if it really was in self defense, since he stayed in the hotel room where the murder took place to keep beating the corpse several times and it’s implied that he followed the man there by his own will.

While Jun and Shiro seem to be exact opposites, there are some things that point to them being the same. The question of what kind of man to be is perhaps one clue, making Shiro and Jun two sides of the same man, or same human. While Shiro is violent, Jun is calm, when Jun is bullied in the cafeteria Shiro comes to his rescue, but as soon as Shiro gets the attention of the others it’s like Jun isn’t even there anymore, totally ignored by eveyone and after the fight it’s Jun who is in solitary confinement bleeding, with the dancer from the beginning is staring back at him. When Shiro gets farming detail, Jun gets to do laundry, combined with each of their behaviour it’s easy to do draw the stereotypical parallell of male/female, not only as opposites but as parts of the same being. It is a stretch though that they would be the same physical being since they are both acknowledged as individuals by the other prisoners, but in Big Bang Love, Juvenile A, physical accuracy seems to take a backseat to representations.

Perhaps the prison could be seen as a kind of childhood, where Jun and Shiro’s entry dressed in bloodied whites can be seen as a kind of rebirth from the regular world, and a new kind of innocence, even though the warden says that their crimes will never be forgotten. Jun felt like he was locked up in the modern world too, where he was abused by adults, and now he’s locked up in another kind of society, governed by adults. The prison is where they decide what kind of humans they want to be. When the two police officers are discussing Shiro’s background, they say that he’s been through horrible things as a child, but they never go into detail. One can only guess that he was also abused. When Jun walks into their cell, he literally sees a child looking out the barred up window, when it’s actually Shiro standing there, and outside the prison there’s a rocketship and a pyramid, maybe representing science and religion but also something that could be from a child’s fantasy.

Even though both Shiro and Jun bring their respective personalitites into prison, prison also turns out to be a place where roles are shed and their true selfs come out. Several times it’s shown that the violence and aggressiveness of Shiro is just a front and inside he’s still a child and at one point it’s said that no news from the outside world gets into the prison making it even more reminiscent of childhood.

If the prison is indeed childhood and the prisoners are children the guards and especially the warden must be seen as the adults. One thing that confirms this is that the warden (Ryo Ishibashi), even though Shiro raped his wife which caused her to commit suicide, puts his feelings of wanting to kill Shiro aside because even if he is husband to his wife, he’s also a civil servant.

There is also the question of guilt, fate versus choice. Violence goes in cycles, it's unavoidable if you're stuck in it. The warden says that he’s essentially powerless, he can’t help anyone. Those who reform do so out of the goodness of their own heart. It is also said that even if there are people who come out right from something like what Shiro has gone through, you can’t really blame those who don’t. When Jun brings out the guilt in Shiro for the crimes he commited, Shiro can’t handle it, his guilt turns him into a child but all the abuse has made him unable to handle his feelings. The original title, 4,6 billion years of love, suggests fate has brought Shiro and Jun together, that their love has existed since the beginning of time and that everything that has happened since then has lead up to their meeting in prison, like a butterfly effect. There even is a butterfly showing up in some scenes.

Masanobu Ando as Shiro Kazuki.

When Shiro’s dead body is found with Jun on top of it with his hands around Shiro’s throat, Jun claims that he’s the one who did it, possibly because his love brought out the child in Shiro which Shiro couldn’t handle so he commited a kind of suicide.

If all this sounds like confused ramblings it’s because the film does confuse me. Miike strips the scenery down to just lines on the floor in some scenes, like if to make you focus on the meaning instead of emotions. At other times he uses scenery that is more like something out of a Seijun Suzuki film, screaming for attention. The biggest problem for me, is to find a way to tie all of this together, and watching the interview with Miike on the Animeigo dvd might explain why. According to Miike the film was made with the intention of making a non-theme film, using the sets as a way to make the audience think critically about what they are watching, without there being any real meaning behind it. I have to say, as an experiment it worked, but I can’t help feel a little cheated. Miike also says though that the best way of watching the film might be while drifting in and out of sleep, experiencing it like a dream.

There are many more things in the film that could be interpreted, one is the conversation about heaven and space between Jun and Shiro out by the pyramid and rocketship. Climbing the pyramid takes you to heaven, going on the rocketship takes you to space, nothingness, there are less people there. Which one is to prefer? Maybe Shiro, in the end, just made his choice.

I think I was closer to the point the first time I watched it than I am now.

Miike Double Feature: Detective Story (2007) and God's Puzzle (2008)

2009-06-08T22:52:00.011+02:00

Hayato Ichihara and Mitsuki Tanimura in Takashi Miike's God's Puzzle (2008).

Two films by Takashi Miike that has recently been released with english subtitles that both feel like something he could have made ten years ago. Personally, I don't feel that Miike's new direction that fans sometimes complain about is all that different from what he used to do, he just has more money to do it now but that doesn't stop him from churning out a few v-cinema flicks now and then. It's also easy to see the connections between films like Crows Zero (2007) and Crows Zero II (2009) and earlier works like the two Young Thugs (1997-1998) films and The Way To Fight (1996) and the line of existential questions going through Izo (2004), Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (2006) and God's Puzzle (2008), although Izo is probably the film that started what some would call Miike's decline.

Miike has always been all over the map when it comes to genres, he's been doing dramas, comedies and just about every variation of a yakuza film imaginable, the genre he's probably most famous for among casual fans, horror, is one where he has worked the least, so seeing him make more family oriented films shouldn't come as a huge surprise. And at the same time as he's been making films like Zebraman (2004), The Great Yokai War (2005) and Yatterman (2009) he's made Waru (2006), Sun Scarred (2006), Like A Dragon (2007) and Sukiyaki Western Django (2007) among others. I feel as if Miike is just moving forward by expanding his line of work while at the same time he keeps in touch with his roots.

Strange looking characters in Miike's Detective Story (2007).

Detective Story is a straight-to-video (apparantely it did play a few theaters) gory horror/crime comedy about a former policeman now working as a detective, Raita Kazama, played by Kazuya Nakayama, who gets involved in the case of a woman being murdered the same night as she has visited his home to ask for his help. Naturally, the detetive becomes the suspect. To make matters worse different possessions of his starts to pop up at the murder sites as more bodies start piling up. The only other connection between between the victims is their interest in a mysterious artist named Yuki Aoyama who paints in blood and ground up meat. To his help, the detective has his two assistants and a newly moved in neighbor who shares his first name and who's a computer wiz who is reluctantly drawn into helping Raita No. 1 with the case.

The film turns into a bizarre crime mystery, mostly because of the mix of gore and weird sense of humor and the overacting by Nakayama in the lead. There just doesn't seem to be any other reason for his weird behaviour other than that he's a just a big kid inside who refuses to realize that he's grown up, which might explain his clothes. This is nothing new though for a Miike film produced by Hisao Maki, the man behind the Bodyguard Kiba (1994-1995) films, Silver (1999), Family (2001). As a product of a Miike-Maki collaboration, Detective Story still fares pretty well. Even though it's a bit too silly to be taken seriously as a crimethriller it is still fairly entertaining and Nakayama's odd performance is fun to watch. At least Maki settled for a tiny cameo as a police chief in this one instead of playing the hero's martial arts mentor and having a meaningless fight scene spliced into the middle of the film. It's hard to imagine that Maki also produced Miike's contemplative homoerotic prison drama Big Bang Love, Juvenile A.

Ryuhei Matsuda and Masanobu Ando in Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (2006).

God's Puzzle is a bigger film than Detective Story, produced by Haruki Kadokawa. The premise isn't really that complicated, Kiichi is about to graduate from university but decides to go on vacation, sending his delinquent twin brother, Motokazu, to physics class in his place since all he needs to graduate is the attendance and since all Motokazu has to do is sit there, it won't be a problem that he doesn't know the first thing about physics. Things get complicated when he actually shows up in class and a teacher asks him to encourage another student to come to class, isolated girl genius Saraka. She agrees on the condition that Motokazu helps her with a science project, to figure out what the nothingness that our universe was created out of consisted of and to try to create a new universe.

Now the english subtitles on the Malaysian dvd are pretty bad, so this is where things get shakey. The first half of the film is mostly physics talk about particles, energies and theories about how the universe was created and what would happen if man was actually able to create a universe. Would it create a black hole that would swallow our own universe? If man were able to create such things, would there be any need for a god and would scientifically proving that everything that is needed to create a universe and what is contained in the nothingness out of which our universe was born is right under our noses also prove that there is no god? But God's Puzzle also deals with the troubles of youth, growing up and finding out who you are and dealing with the unwanted expectations of others, things that are close to heart of Saraka who was concieved as a "manmade" test tube baby.

Although I enjoyed just about every minute of God's Puzzle, there are some weaknesses. Hayato Ichihara's Riki Takeuchi like mugging and screaming of every line does get a bit annoying sometimes and at 133 minutes it feels a bit overlong, with the disaster movie ending actually feeling more drawn out than the first part of the film, but it's all saved in one of the greatest moments in Miike film history. In spirit, acting and setting it was reminiscent of his early Osaka films but with a sci-fi twist.

While Detective Story shows that Miike, despite making big budget blockbusters now, is still not above getting knee-deep in blood and guts and v-cinema filmmaking, God's Puzzle proves that he also, while making bigger films, can bring together all the energies that made some of his early work so great.

Malaysian Gods (Amir Muhammad, 2009)

2009-06-06T16:53:00.008+02:00

Poster for Amir Muhammad's 2009 documentary Malaysian Gods.

In 1998 the deputy prime minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, was arrested and later sentenced for corruption and sodomy. This caused widespread anti-government protests and Anwar was seen as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.

Amir Muhammad's documentary, Malaysian Gods, recaps the events of 1998 by using text screens and by visiting the sites where the protests took place, interviewing random people there about how their lives have changed since the protests and what they think have changed in society. All of the interviews are in Tamil language, the Tamils constitute the major part of Malaysia's Indian minority that makes up for 8% of the population.

While things does seem to have changed, a lot of things remain the same. In 2007 protests against governmental policies favouring ethnic malays took place and the organisation behind them HINDRAF (Hindu Rights Action Force) was declared illegal in 2008. Also in 2008, Anwar Ibrahim, who after being released from prison in 2004 has become leader of the political opposition in Malaysia, was once again brought in for questioning about charges of sodomy.

These events are shown in both a ciritcal and a humorous light and while it does feel like Malaysian Gods is only scratching the surface it keeps Malaysia from becoming just another exotic location in other films.

Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)

2009-05-27T02:16:00.009+02:00

Machiko Kyo and Masayuki Mori in Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu (1953).

When I watch a film I ususally try to know as little as possible about it beforehand to avoid spoilers to really get to experience it without any prior knowledge about plot twists and to let the film set its own mood. With Ugetsu, knowing no more than that it's a ghost story was still a bit too much and made some of it very predictable, but what I didn't expect was how much I was going to enjoy it. I will be writing some things about Ugetsu that I'm not really sure of, but one thing that I'm certain of is that Ugetsu is a truly masterful film and since it is the first film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi that I have seen I have a lot of catching up to do.

When I first watched Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog (1949) I thought that it was mainly about the characters and their choices and not so much post war Japan's influence on them, even though, of course, it is there. I felt that the characters ultimately had their lives in their own hands, that it was their own decisions that decided their fate and society was never the cause for how someone turned out. But when reading a bunch of reviews online, they mostly talked about how Stray Dog was a reflection of the times it was made in than anything else. While watching Ugetsu I thought that this is probably more of an allegory for post-war society than anything I've seen so far by Kurosawa, but after finishing it and reading some reviews, everyone was just writing about the characters as individuals and their actions as reactions to the closed off, fictional film world they live in and nothing about the film as a mirror image of Japan at the time it was made. So I'm either reading in the wrong places or I don't know what I'm talking about and right know I'm leaning towards the latter since all my knowledge of Japan does come from watching Japanese films.

In Ugetsu, war is raging, and it has opened up economic possibilities for farmer and potter Genjuro and his friend Tobei to sell their goods at the market in a nearby town. After going there the first time and having made some easy money, Genjuro and Tobei, for different reasons, are prepared to risk anything and everything for more money. Genjuro to provide a better life for his wife and daughter and Tobei to become a samurai to impress his wife. One night while their village is being raided by soldiers all Genjuro can think of is keeping his pots safe so he can sell them the next day, even risking his life while doing so. The morning after, Genjuro and Tobei heads to the market with their wives in tow but after being warned about pirates Genjuro decides to leave his wife Miyagi and their child behind because of the dangers that might lie ahead. While at the market, Genjuro is invited by a Lady Wakasa to her mansion to deliver the goods she just purchased and while there Genjuro is flattered enough by her not to return to his family. At the same time, Tobei is finding fame as a samurai by taking credit for the killing of a general that he only witnessed but didn't perform.

Perhaps the actions of Genjuro and Tobei and the results they bring could be seen as a warning against blind obsession with economic growth, and that abandoning your family could translate into giving up on your old values in favor of quickly gained fortunes in a more modern Japan. Fortunes that can turn out to be nothing but illusions that come with a higher price than expected. Ugetsu does seem like a conservative film with the point being to know your place, remain in the old and for women to stay at home at take care of children but while watching it, it felt more like a cautionary tale, not telling you to stay put, but to not rush headless into something just because you feel flattered by it or a promise of easy money.

Robo Rock (Taikan Suga, 2007)

2009-05-10T19:38:00.010+02:00

Taikan Suga's Robo Rock (2007).

In a way, I think Robo Rock (2007) was just what I needed. I've been watching a lot of films lately, but I think being too focused on work has left me kind of numb to them and stopped me from really enjoying them. Watching Crazed Fruit (1956), directed by Ko Nakahira, just made me think that despite the film's history, it just wasn't very interesting to see a bunch of spoiled, disaffected brats try to deal with every day emotions. Mikio Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960) left me as feeling as distant to the film as Hideko Takamine's character wanted to be to her clients, even though I did like the film. Seijun Suzuki's The Flowers and the Angry Waves (1964) almost bored me to death and it took me a whole lot of tries to get through it. I also watched a few pink films, Bitter Sweet (Mitsuru Meike, 2004), Empty Room (Toshiki Sato, 2001) and Tokyo X Erotica (Takahisa Zeze, 2001) and they all left me cold, wishing Artsmagic wouldn't have stopped releasing the films of Hisayasu Sato and Kazuhiro Sano a few years ago.

So this is when I popped Robo Rock in my player, a low-budget comedy about a loser named Masaru (Shun Shioya) who works as a handy-man, which means he's doing all kinds of odd jobs given to him by a mediator, in Masaru's case Ibume (Kenichi Endo). The jobs may include everything from stealing panties off of clotheslines to delivering drugs to South Americans. The latter is what gets Masaru into trouble. At the same time, a nerd named Nirasawa (Yuichiro Nakayama) who is obsessed with big machinery and robots in particular, is convinced that Masaru is the only one capable of commanding a giant robot named Land Zeppelin to protect the earth against an impending Saturnian invasion.

This all sounds stupid enough, so mentioning Masaru's girlfriend Kiriko (Minami) who's a tattoo artist with only one design and the horrible western actors playing drug dealers might not be neccessary, but inside all this stupidity is a very entertaining film. It doesn't matter that it seems to be stealing bits and pieces from other films to create a whole, that the acting isn't always top notch, or that they seem to have spent the entire budget on special effects in the last 10 minutes of the film, since the result is more than the sum of its components. Robo Rock is great fun and it has a giant transforming robot.

Late Bloomer (Go Shibata, 2004)

2009-04-13T00:44:00.006+02:00

Masakiyo Sumida as Sumida in Go Shibata's Late Bloomer (2004).

Late Bloomer is the story of Sumida, a disabled man who lives alone in a big house and whos only company is that of his two caregivers. Sumida spends most of his days driving around town on his electric scooter or drinking and going to concerts with his caregiver Take who is in a band.

Though not very able bodied due to his handicap and only being able to speak through a digital speaking device, his mind is as clear as day. He has all the same feelings and needs as everyone else but not in a simplified manner. When he's horny he watches porn, he likes to get drunk with Take and he loves women. This is not some sugar-coated story about a disabled person having to overcome a specific task, Sumida lives with the pain and frustration of understanding how he's different and not being able to express himself like everyone else, every second of each day.

When he develops a crush on a new helper, a college girl named Nobuko, things become more complicated as it turns out that Nobuko is just using Sumida for a paper she is writing. He's just like an object for her and her friends to study and exploit, and it pushes Sumida over the edge.

My first thought when I started watching Late Bloomer was to turn it off, through extreme close ups and weird angles and a style similar to that of Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo - The Iron Man (1989) Sumida is made out to look like a monster. But as I hung in there I started to feel like the excessive way in which Sumida is portrayed made me question my own sense of being an unprejudiced person. Maybe it wasn't the way the filmmaker saw him, or how Nobuko and her friends saw him but also how I saw him when I started watching the film. To me it felt like the style helped in putting all of Sumida's needs and feelings of inequities against him right in the viewers face and not only make you know they were there, but to truly evaluate Sumida's complete situation and it makes it hard not to feel for him despite his actions later in the film.

Even if it's easy to see how the style might be off-putting to a lot of people, and that the film has some parts that feel superfluous even at only 83 minutes in length, Late Bloomer is a strong film that, at least, made me re-evaluate if I'm really as open-minded as I think I am.

Quick takes #3

2009-03-31T23:16:00.007+02:00

Tae Kimura in Ryosuke Hashiguchi's All Around Us (2008).

All Around Us (Ryosuke Hashiguchi, 2008) - Ryosuke Hashiguchi returns to directing for the first time since 2001's Hush! with a drama about a married couple spanning over ten-something years, from the early 90's into the 00's. At first I was wondering where the film was going, what was the point of spending 140 minutes following this couple when the film didn't seem to go anywhere. There is no real story, no big conflict that needs to be resolved and I think that is one of the films strengths.

There are ups and downs, when their newborn child passes away, the wife goes into depression, but instead of some big eyeopening moment, it is worked out over time, years, through small things, things that makes it believable how their love grows stronger over the years despite their flaws. This along with the great acting from Lily Franky and Tae Kimura as the couple make the film and characters seem so much more real.

Once I got passed the lack of any real story and could just get into the film I noticed that I wanted to know what would happen next to this couple even if there was nothing happening at all.

Ong Bak 2 (Tony Jaa, 2008) - A simple story turned into a mess through an uninvolving, excrutiatingly boring first hour. I know, it's my own fault for expecting something as energy packed and cheap but entertaining as the first Ong Bak, but set in the 1400s instead of present day, but who didn't? Tony Jaa wanted more though, but maybe directing, writing, choreographing the fights and starring was too much for his directorial debut. Ong Bak 2 is basically a story about vengeance and what the right or wrong reasons behind violence can be and Jaa should be commended for his ambition, but in my opinion, he didn't pull it off.

The last half hour though is one great big fight scene with Jaa pulling together everything that his character learned earlier in the film and is the first time the film really comes to life, almost making the first 60 minutes worth sitting through, but then the ending is another let down. Due to all the troubles with the production, Jaa disappearing from the set for two months among others, they didn't have time to finish the film in time and the ending is used as a cliffhanger for part three which has been announced. I'm just not sure I want to see it if Jaa is still behind the camera.

224466 (Tadanobu Asano, 2008)

2009-03-28T16:12:00.007+01:00

Tadanobu Asano, Ayane Omori and Ryo Kase in 224466 (2008).

Short film written by Shinji Aoyama and directed by Tadanobu Asano as part of the R246 Story project. The dvd didn't have any subtitles and my understanding of Japanese is extremely limited but I think 224466 is more of a an audio/visual ride, and as far as I could tell Asano plays an alien who when he arrives on earth loses his source of power, a rainbow colored drum set. By chance he comes across a young girl who can knock people out with her awesome guitar playing and a ragged looking man who carries around her amp and they decide to try and find the drum set together.

I haven't seen Asano's directorial debut Tori (2004) but here it looks like he's ripping off earlier films he's starred in, most notably Electric Dragon 80.000V (2001), directed by Sogo Ishii. Scenes of Asano's alien walking the streets searching for his drum set and taking weird poses are reminiscent of Dragon Eye Morrison searching through the streets of Tokyo for runaway lizards and the look of the film is a bit Ishii/Tsukamotoish. It's still enough to make me want to see more from Asano the director though and most of the 25 minute running time is both interesting to look at and entertaining. I just wish the drum/guitar showdown at the end would have lasted longer.

A Lonely Cow Weeps at Dawn (Daisuke Goto, 2003)

2009-03-01T23:23:00.006+01:00

Horyu Nakamura and Ryoko Asagi in Daisuke Goto's A Lonely Cow Weeps at Dawn (2003).

New distributor Pink Eiga just released another couple of films, one of which is A Lonely Cow Weeps at Dawn, a rural drama about an aging farmer living with his daughter in law. The problem is that the farmer, Shukichi, is suffering from dementia and is slowly getting worse and worse, he doesn't realise that his favorite cow Hanako died a long time ago and that now it's Noriko, his daughter in law, that's waiting for him in the barn every morning. Noriko's husband, Shukichi's son, died a few years earlier and while Noriko has stayed on the farm she and Shukichi has come to have an unspoken love for each other. Things doesn't get easier when Shukichi's daughter comes back to town after ten years and teams up with a local scoundrel who is trying to get his hands on the deed to Shukichi's farm.

The story might make it sound like A Lonely Cow... is just another Japanese film going for the weird and crazy but director Daisuke Goto avoids making things too absurd by keeping the film low key and more focused on quiet emotions and strong acting rather than the sex scenes that pink films are known for. They are still there though.

A Lonely Cow Weeps at Dawn is, a story about getting old and a story of acceptance, not only of accepting that you will age and become weaker and possibly ill, but accepting that people are different, no matter how cliché that may sound. The scenes where Shukichi tries to milk Noriko, thinking she's his cow, made me think of when people get their whole lives cross-examined in the media, where every little deviation from what's considered normal behaviour, no matter the context, and it makes the viewers/readers judge those people without really knowing anything of what was behind their actions. Take certain parts out of anyone's life and I'm sure you could make it into something very weird. Perhaps it is a bit far fetched to take it that far, but ultimately, what happens between Noriko and Shukichi only happens because they accept each other and in the end themselves for who they are even though they know their love won't be accepted by society.

I hope Pink Eiga will keep it up with releasing these more serious pink films, so far they haven't disappointed.

Quick takes #2

2009-02-15T15:02:00.009+01:00

Supposed scarecrows in Kenta Fukasaku's X-Cross (2007).

X-Cross (Kenta Fukasaku, 2007) - My expectations on a new film by Kenta Fukasaku were at rock bottom after the crap fests that were Battle Royale II (2003) and Yo-Yo Girl Cop (2006) but Fukasaku actually delivers some high-tension suspense with X-Cross, even though it's somewhat ruined by too much sucking up to fans of the crazier side of Japanese cinema.

The film starts out with Shiyori and Aiko going on a trip together to a secluded village resort following the break up between Shiyori and her boyfriend. They soon discover that the villagers are up to some foul play involving cutting limbs off of young girls and sacrificing them to their gods and as if that wasn't enough, there's an insane scissor-wielding woman in a french maid's uniform after Aiko.

The plot is just as silly as it sounds but Fukasaku manages to put the screws on and make you feel like there really is no escape when the villagers chase the two girls through the woods. The structure of the film, being told in flashbacks from Shiyori's and Aiko's perspective cross-cut with each other also helps to keep you guessing who's really to be trusted, but the tension is ultimately ruined by some strange choices, like having Aiko turn into a chainsaw-wielding, ass-kicking heroine and some ill-placed humor. A more serious approach would have been a better fit for the rest of the film.

I Just Didn't Do It (Masayuki Suo, 2006) - Masayuki Suo's return to the cinemas ten years after making Shall We Dansu? (1996). It deals with a man, Teppei, falsely accused of groping a teenage girl on a packed commuter train and when charged refuses to admit to it to get off easier since after all, he didn't do it. Suo depicts the Japanese legal system as a corrupt process, everything from the arrest and interrogation of Teppei up until the final verdict is more about just falling in line with the authorities and accepting the blame to get off with a slap on the wrist, no matter if you're guilty or not. But if you stand up for yourself thinking the truth will be known, the system will crush you.

I don't know enough about the legal system in Japan to go into all of the details that the film brings up during its 140 minute runtime but as a film it is very engaging and upsetting. You really get to feel for Teppei, played by Ryo Kase, and his fight to clear his name. But the main focus isn't really on his being guilty or not but on the actual process and the system that causes the fact that it's better to confess to something you didn't do and that you have to prove your innocence rather than that the prosecutors have to prove your guilt. Suo couldn't have made a better return.

Raw Summer (Keisuke Yoshida, 2006) - The directorial debut of Shinya Tsukamoto collaborator Keisuke Yoshida is another film on the theme of train gropers but here it is an actual stalker, Masuo, who is following a high school girl, Anko, around, taking pictures of her from a distance.

When Masuo works up the courage to talk to Anko and give her a letter and a gift (albeit with a hidden microphone in it), he later hears Anko and her friend talk about how weird he was. Anko's rejection ruins Masuo's world and filled with anger he pushes up against her on the train with a knife against her back while he starts groping her but a sudden push from another passenger makes Masuo accidentaly stab Anko. Torn up by guilt over something he didn't intend to do, Masuo tries to kill himself but as the loser he is he fails at that too and ends up in the hospital bed next to Anko's and this is where the film loses its steam. Going from being a cheaply made but creepy thriller to Masuo and Anko becoming friends in the hospital is just a bit too unlikely. Even though Masuo is somewhat of a "nice" pervert, becoming friends with the girl he has been stalking and stabbed is not what you want for him. In the end though, it might just have been a dream.

Before We Fall In Love Again (James Lee, 2006) - Slow moving Malaysian drama directed by James Lee. Chang's wife Ling Yue has been missing for a month so Chang decides to go to Prague, a place they visitied/wanted to visit together, to look for her. When he arrives at home after having been at the travelling agency there is a man, Tong, waiting for him who claims that he is Ling Yue's lover and that he is also looking for her. They go inside to talk and in a series of flashbacks the viewer and the characters themselves learn about Ling Yue's personality.

Ling Yue has been playing them both, possibly having more than one lover on the side as Chang and Tong find a letter adressed to her first love. From the way Ling Yue talks about her first lover in one of the flashbacks I got the feeling that Ling Yue is consciously playing with the mens' feelings without really thinking about the consequences. She puts it in a romantic light even though it's just her being unable to resist anything she might want or that shows her attention and her having trouble letting go of past relationships. Her lover, Tong, is married and has children, he is aware of what will happen if anyone finds out, hiding in hotels with Ling Yue when they meet, but he still can't keep himself from cheating on his wife. Neither of them will be happy.

In the last third of the film, Chang and Tong sets out to deliver the letter to Ling Yue's first lover, but when they find him the see that her description of him is far from true. He has turned into a failed criminal who is beaten up by meaner thugs right infront of Chang and Tong.

I'm not sure what all this means, if I'm even close to the intentions in my interpretation of the characters' motives, but as the first part in James Lee's love trilogy I think Before We Fall In Love Again shows two kinds of betrayal as well as the unknowingness of the betrayed and perhaps that what you remember as being great not necessarily still is and is not worth giving up everything for.

Chye Chee Keong, Len Siew Mee and Pete Teo in James Lee's Before We Fall In Love Again (2006).

Tokyo Gore Police (Yoshihiro Nishimura, 2008)

2009-02-04T21:37:00.012+01:00

Yoshihiro Nishimura's Tokyo Gore Police (2008).

Fever Dreams Productions followed up the entertaining Noboru Iguchi-directed gore hit The Machine Girl (2008) with Tokyo Gore Police, directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura who did the make up and special effects on The Machine Girl and a number of Iguchi's other films as well as films by directors like Sion Sono and Yudai Yamaguchi. Tokyo Gore Police is his second film as a director, his debut was Speakerman: The Boo (2004) which I haven't seen.

Tokyo Gore Police have all the ingredients necessary to be a worthy follow up to The Machine Girl, a simple enough story, plenty of action, weird weaponry and lots and lots of, sometimes, very imaginative gore. But somehow it fails miserably. It's basically a 60 minute film dragged out to almost two hours, filled with unnecessary, neverending scenes consisting of slow motion and close ups. It doesn't help either that a lot of the action is obscured by a shaky camera and blood spurting everywhere. I know that "too much blood" may be a weird complaint when writing about a film like this but when the blood covers the lense to a degree as to where it's impossible to see what is going on, it's more frustrating to watch than anything.

The acting was another thing that added to the growing boredom I experienced while watching the film. Both Eihi Shiina, who plays the lead, and Itsuji Itao, who is the main bad guy, have been great in other films but here it feels as if they're taking everything too serious and they never really let loose and to me, in the end, it hurt the film.

I think Nishimura's film is closer in tone with Yudai Yamaguchi's and Jun'ichi Yamamoto's Meatball Machine (2005) which is kind of dark and drab but in a good way and which also is a film that Nishimura worked on, than it is with The Machine Girl. Unfortunately, in Tokyo Gore Police dark and drab turns into just plain boring.

Koroshiya 1 - The Next

2009-02-01T14:35:00.011+01:00

Mai Goto as Sailor in Ichi the Killer (2001) equals...

Admittedly, I've been as confused by Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer (2001) as anyone else, but I feel that maybe I picked up on some clues to what it's actually about both from watching it a few times and by doing some reading. The characters' struggles of trying to move from being involuntary masochists to sadists, from weakness to power, the character of Jijii's god-like presence and his manipulation of everyone in the film, the audience being denied identification with Ichi and therefore being forced to identify with the pain loving Kakihara and to revel in the violence and being disappointed in the lack of it in the finale, just like him. This, coupled with the contrast between the cartoony CG blood and gore and the harder but at times only implied violence to women basically adds up to one thing. How much are you willing to take and what will it take to make you reflect on what you are watching? Even if these are just excuses to legitimize a film full of rape and violence towards women and other unsympathetic behaviour I'd still say that Ichi the Killer has more to offer when it comes to story and characterizations than the average exploitation film.

I recently read a review of the film Tokyo Gore Police (Yoshihiro Nishimura, 2008) where it was compared to Miike's film and made out to be something possibly could have been the next Ichi the Killer with other examples of films going for that being The Machine Girl (Noboru Iguchi, 2008) and Chanbara Beauty (Yohei Fukuda, 2008). Pure exploitation films with no other reason behind them than to show off some cool action scenes and as much blood, guts and female skin as possible to draw in the crowds. I understand that if you look at Ichi as a pure gore flick you may want to compare it to other films in terms of the amount of blood and violence in them, but as Ichi has nothing really resembling a real action scene and relies on the audience to fill in the blanks in some of the more offensive scenes I'd say that the cartoon gore that is in there is not enough to beat a lot of other films in that regard. From the first time I watched it I've felt that it lived more on its reputation in horror fan circles than what is actually in the film.

...Penis gun guy in Yoshihiro Nishimura's Tokyo Gore Police (2008)?

I enjoyed The Machine Girl and I look forward to watching Tokyo Gore Police and it makes me feel like a bitter old snob for writing this but this is one of the frustrations of being a fan of Asian cinema in Sweden. People are still just looking for the new Takashi Miike, Shinya Tsukamoto or Kiyoshi Kurosawa and new versions of their old films instead of looking for the next directors to make an impact of their own, maybe in similar ways but in their own styles with their own views of things.

When I first saw the trailers for The Machine Girl and Chanbara Beauty, one thought that never crossed my mind was "Oh hell yeah! This could be the new Ichi the Killer!" It must be more fun being a horror fan.

Quick takes #1

2009-01-25T20:25:00.009+01:00

Berg Lee in Woo Ming Jin's The Elephant and the Sea (2007).

The Elephant and the Sea (Woo Ming Jin, 2007) - Malaysian drama by Woo Ming Jin. A fishing village is struck by an epidemic that causes people to get sick from eating fish. Ah Ngau is a fisherman who when he comes back to shore is told that his wife has died from the disease and that his house is quarantined. He gets to stay in a governement shelter and is later sent home with a box of donations from the public, nothing of use to Ah Ngau though except a shirt. For Ah Ngau life goes on as usual except now he has the freedom to experience new things.

Yun Ding lives by doing odd jobs with his friend Long Chai but when the disease claims the life of Long Chai, Yun Ding has to make it on his own. Yun Ding is like the opposite of Ah Ngau even though they both have to learn to deal with the situation they are suddenly in. While Ah Ngau has no use for donations, Yun Ding is hoping for, among other things, lucky numbers on a fish to bring him a better life.

My exposure to Malaysian cinema is very limited, I've actually only seen two Malaysian films before, Liew Seng Tat's Flower in the Pocket (2007) and Tan Chui Mui's Love Conquers All (2006) but what they have in common, in my opinion, is that even at their slow pace and almost plotless appearance they are full of life and enthusiasm for telling about the characters in the films and it is done in a naturalistic way without many embellishments or sentimentality. The Elephant and the Sea is no exception and maybe the most visually arresting of the three.

Dream (Kim Ki-Duk, 2008) - Kim Ki-Duk's latest, starring Joe Odagiri and Lee Na-Yeong as two people connected through their dreams. When Jin dreams that he causes a car accident it's so real to him that he goes out in the middle of the night and drives to the place where it happened in his dream and he realises that it actually did happen but not with him behind the wheel. Following the police he finds out that it was a girl, Ran, who turns out to be a sleepwalker, acting out anything that Jin dreams about. Whenever Jin dreams about his ex-girlfriend who he still loves, Ran sleepwalks over to her ex-boyfriend whom she really hates and has sex with him. The solution for them is to take turns sleeping, which seems simple enough but they manage to mess it up which has bad consequences.

I'm not a big fan of Kim Ki-Duk and Dream didn't make me like his films more. It seems like a story that he could have done a lot with but it doesn't really go anywhere. Everything is explained very clearly within the first few minutes, then the rest of the time is spent watching two people trying not to sleep and that almost put me to sleep instead, I just didn't care. Too contrieved and emotionally lacking.

The Slit-Mouthed Woman (Takuaki Hashiguchi, 2005) - A pink/J-horror combination directed by Takuaki Hashiguchi, not to be confused with Koji Shiraishi's Kuchisake onna from 2007, starring Eriko Sato and released on dvd in the US as Carved. Even though Hashiguchi's film looks (and most likely was) cheaper than Shiraishi's version of the urban legend I feel that it was the better of the two. You wouldn't expect from something that's supposed to be a film made to just show sex scenes but Hashiguchi manages to create some tension in some of the more scary scenes and the plot is enough for any J-horror rip-off in the wake of Ring and just about perfect for a 60-minute film.

Rough Cut (Jang Hun, 2008) - Another film with a Kim Ki-Duk connection, this time he's writing and producing and Jang Hun, Kim's assistant director on The Bow (2005), is directing. The story is about a film being made within the film and they're having trouble finding a co-star for the lead since he's been beating up and injuring actors during the fight scenes. What to do but hire a real gangster who doesn't mind not pulling punches for the role? Combining working as an actor with the duties of being head of a group of gangsters while the boss is doing time is easier said than done though. Rough Cut brings up the differences between being a real gangster and a tough guy in the movies but doesn't really go too far with it, most of it is an entertaining action film and even though it loses some steam towards the end it never gets too sappy unlike a lot of Korean films.

Dirty boxing in Jang Hun's Rough Cut (2008).

Ploy (Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, 2007)

2009-01-11T14:28:00.007+01:00

Apinya Sakuljaroensuk and Pornwut Sarasin in Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's Ploy (2007).

Last Life in the Universe (2003) became an instant favorite of mine when I first saw it about five years ago and it made Pen-Ek Ratanaruang the director I most looked forward to seeing new films from and he didn't disappoint with his next film, Invisible Waves (2006). Just like Last Life Invisible Waves was a collaboration between Pen-Ek, cinematographer Christopher Doyle and writer Prabda Yoon with a score by Hualampong Riddim and it maintained the dreamlike atmosphere of Last Life while being a completely different story. Two stories set in a universe in which Ploy (2007) also fits in.

Ploy takes place in a hotel in Thailand, Wit and Dang is a married couple who just returned from America to attend a relative's funeral and in the hotel bar young girl Ploy is waiting for her mother to arrive from Stockholm. Feeling restless Wit goes down to the bar to buy cigarettes and Ploy asks him for a light. They talk for a while and Wit finds out that Ploy's mother won't arrive for another few hours so he invites her to his room to rest there, something Dang isn't very happy about. When Ploy is taking a shower Dang urges Wit to kick her out but he won't and feelings of jealousy start to come over Dang. As a contrast to Wit and Dang's tired, passionless marriage, the bartender and a maid, presumably in the beginning of their relationship, are roleplaying and having sex in another room in the hotel.

It's not clear what is actually real and what's just dreams in the film, is Wit's ex really at the door and did Wit really leave the hotel together with Ploy or is it just Dang's jealousy that is taking shape in her dreams? Is Dang really abducted when she accepts an invitation to come to a stranger's apartment?

Ratanaruang manages to re-create the mood of Last Life in the Universe and Invisible Waves, mostly thanks to Riddim's score and that the look of the film is reminiscent to the previous two, especially the corridors of the hotel reminds me of the corridors of the cruise ship that Tadanobu Asano's character Kyoji Hamamura boards in Invisible Waves. The problem with Ploy is that it feels like it wants to say something but it doesn't really come up with anything. We do get closer to the characters than in Last Life and Invisible Waves but they don't really add anything. Sure, marriage gets old, you don't have sex as much after a while as you did in the beginning and sometimes the perceived lack of love makes you do the wrong thing or make the wrong decicions. But without knowing the characters' bagage, it's hard to make out if there is anything for them to worry about or if they are just crazy but maybe that's the point.

I had a really hard time with Ratanaruang's pre-Last Life films, all of them bored me to death and some reviewers are saying that Ploy is in a way a step back to the roots for Pen-Ek at the same time as it's a step forward, a natural evolvement in his filmmaking. I agree because Ploy also almost bored me to death and that Pen-Ek is taking a step back by copying the feel (which saves the film somewhat) of his previous two films but without someone else writing a script for him he just seems unable to come up with an interesting story or characters.

This World of Ours (Ryo Nakajima, 2007)

2009-01-11T01:48:00.008+01:00

Ryo Nakajima's This World of Ours (2007).

I'm not sure what to think or feel about Ryo Nakajima's debut feature This World of Ours as it takes adolescence to such extremes that, to me, it becomes hard to relate to. It deals with the crushed hopes and dreams of some Japanese teenagers who struggle with their own and society's expectations of their futures. They feel bored with school, they want to make it on their own, is conforming and fitting in really the only way to success? Is it impossible for someone of common stature to really change or have an impact on society? This and the constant berating from teachers and nagging or indifferent parents and rejection from potential employers results in bullying, manipulating, gang rape and ultimately murder and terrorism. And that is why Nakajima almost loses me.

From all reports in media at least, the situation in Japan when it comes to the pressure to succeed that is placed on teenagers is much more extreme than here in Sweden, but having faced all these same problems of dropping out of school, being unsuccessful in finding a job for years and spending a lot of time thinking about what it is that I really want and how far one is willing to go to fit into society, gang rape and murder still never became parts of my life.

The things that redeem the film for me are the strong performances from the actors and that Nakajima doesn't spare his characters at all, there really is no romanticizing of the events in the film, all the characters have to face the cold, hard world and what they make of it is up to them. This World of Ours have been compared to Shunji Iwai's All About Lily Chou Chou (2001) on more than one occasion but the things written above makes me feel that Nakajima is a much more honest and talented filmmaker and, to me, his film is far, far superior to Iwai's.

I don't know what it is that Nakajima, a former hikikomori who started writing the script when he was 19 and spent the next four years making it, wants to say with the film. Does he just want to shed light on the situation, show how dark the world can get for young people who doesn't know how to deal with the pressure and expectations put upon them by society. Does he want them to compromise since the world won't change, get a job and fit in. My take, and probably the simplest one, comes from the most sensible character in the film. He says that, to him, death is not being able to live life your way but he also asks what's wrong with hard work. He has chosen to live life the way he wants to, travelling and making art, and he takes jobs in between to be able to do it. Maybe that is the best way to change the world for yourself. Completely giving up on your dreams and get a salary-man job is one way to fit in, but maybe it's possible to conform your dreams to fit into the frames of society and work hard to achieve them.

Ryo, the school bully in This World of Ours.

No matter what you believe in This World of Ours will make you feel something, it might be anger, disgust, despair or hope, there is no denying that it is a strong film with strong performances from someone who I hope will be making a lot more films in the future.

Chinese Hercules (Ta Huang, 1973)

2009-01-10T23:01:00.009+01:00

Bolo Yeung in Chinese Hercules (1973).

"Bone cracking! Head crushing! Back snapping! Body breaking!" Bolo Yeung delivers in Chinese Hercules (1973). He's not the main character though and doesn't really get anything to do until the end of the film and the road there is pretty excruciating. The story is simple, Chan gets provoked into fighting his girlfriend's brother and accidentaly kills him causing him to flee town. He takes a job unloading ships at a pier but the boss is in business with the mob and when they demand that all the workers leave the pier so that they can use it to unload their own "special" goods trouble starts brewing. Some of the workers are killed by a musclebound mob henchman (Bolo Yeung) fights are breaking out and the foreman tells the workers that Chan is the only one that can help them, but Chan's guilt over killing a man has rendered him unable to fight. What will it take to make him fight again? Bolo Yeung busting some skulls is what it takes.

The problem with Chinese Hercules is that there is too much downtime between the fights, there are beatings in the film where one person is getting the crap kicked out of him by a group of others but the actual fights are few and far between until the long showdown between Bolo and Chan in the end. But it still manages to be a fairly entertaining film and it is well shot and the western-like theme helps build some tension for the fights. Chinese Hercules may not be the greatest martial arts film ever made but for some crazy Bolo madman action, you can't go wrong with it. According to imdb.com Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao and Corey Yuen also have small roles as thugs, I missed them though.

Shinoda Double Feature: Assassination (1964) and Pale Flower (1964)

2009-01-05T02:04:00.007+01:00

Masahiro Shinoda's Assassination (1964).

I recently watched two films by Masahiro Shinoda, Pale Flower and Assassination, both from 1964, and I can't say I fully grasped either one. In the case of Assassination I think it comes down to my lack of detailed knowledge in Japanese history as the film deals with specific events that have their basis in other events that took place before where the film picks up. The brief introduction at the start was of some help but not enough to fully appreciate the film, of more use is the booklet that comes with the dvd as it contains an essay about the film and some historical background. It's worth mentioning also that Shinoda's film isn't meant to be fully accurate in its depiction of history but is more of a psychological study of it's main character and the times in which it takes place. I don't feel that there is any use for me to try and retell the story here since I'll just mess it up so I'll just steal the description right off the box.

"The story of Assassination begins with the events of 1853 when "four black ships" - the foreign steamboats of Commander Matthew Perry - anchored at Edo Bay, sparking civil unrest and the major political maneuvering that saw the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate. At a time when assassination had become a disturbing political tool, Shinoda's film follows Hachiro Kiyokawa (Tetsuro Tamba), an ambitious, masterless samurai whose allegiances drift dangerously between the Shogunate and the Emperor."

Ryo Ikebe and Mariko Kaga Pale Flower (1964).

You can tell that it is a Shinoda film just by looking at the images, and while it's a great looking film it just doesn't engage me. Maybe it's because of the complicated story, but I had the same problem with Pale Flower. It's pretty to look at but at the same time it feels a bit empty, despite everything that is going on. In neither film are the characters people I can relate too, even though the main character in Assassination is pained by the fact he is a farmer's son who has become a samurai and that he is not taken seriously and is denied further advancement in the ranks because of it and Muraki (Ryo Ikebe) in Pale Flower who has just been released from prison and is dealing with the changes in society and his gang, something that has worked in so many films before and after, but still Shinoda fails to bring me in. Both films have interesting stories and characters worth following so maybe it's just a case of Shinoda's style or the nihilistic tendencies in his characters that loses me, or, the most likely, Shinoda is just way over my head. I'll give him another try with Double Suicide (1969).

4bia (Youngyooth Thongkonthun, Paween Purikitpanya, Banjong Pisanthanakun, Parkpoom Wongpoom, 2008)

2009-01-03T21:48:00.007+01:00

Maneerat Kham-uan in the first segment of 4bia (2008).

Thai horror anthology consisting of four stories by different directors, among them the duo behind Shutter (2004) and Alone (2007), Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom. The other two are Paween Purikitpanya and Youngyooth Thongkonthun. The four stories all deliver different kind of scares, everything from Ring-like atmosphere, ghosts, psychological terror, bullying, black magic and gore.

The first part, Happiness, is about a girl, Pin, isolated in her apartment with a broken leg after a traffic accident. One night she starts recieving text messages on her phone from someone she doesn't know. It turns out that it's a guy and Pin gets curious. After a while the messages turns more and more menacing until she recieves one that says that the guy is standing outside her building. This is by far the scariest of the four tales and it does it purely through creating a creepy atmosphere and a great performance from Maneerat Kham-uan as the lonely girl, there is no dialogue except for the text messages. Happiness was directed by Youngyooth Thongkonthun.

Part two, Tit for Tat, was directed by Paween Purikitpanya. It deals with the bullying of a school boy by a group of delinquents. When he accidentaly causes them to get caught by the teachers smoking weed the abuse gets even worse. The boy decides to get back at his tormentors through black magic and he puts a curse on them. While Tit for Tat starts off good enough, the ending is ruined by the introduction of CG creatures that just look out of place and it turns into a case of showing too much. It is the goriest of the lot and has the most inventive deaths but it still skimps on both blood and scares.

The third part is directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun, one of the men behind Shutter and In the Middle is full of references to the director's earlier film, one character even spoils the ending for it. In the Middle is a ghost story set in the jungle where four guys have travelled for some river rafting. In their tent at night, they are telling ghost stories and one of them promises that if he dies he will come back and haunt the person sleeping in the middle. Take a guess what happens. At the same time as it is criticizing modern horror films for being all the same, the long haired female ghosts and what not, it does the exact same thing but with a guy as the ghost. While not being exactly scary, In the Middle is very enjoyable in an 80's B-horror kind of way, just like Shutter. Good fun.

The Last Fright is the weakest of the bunch. A flight attendant, Pim, is having an affair with a prince from another country. When the prince's wife is demanding her presence on a flight she is forced to go by her boss. On the plane, it turns out the princess knows all about the affair and she does her best to make Pim's life miserable. Pim decides to get back at her and manages to kill the princess and is then stuck with transporting her corpse back to her relatives on another flight. It turns out, though, that the princess is a restless spirit and she is not very happy with Pim. The Last Fright feels too predictable and overlong. Right from the start you know where it's going and the director, Parkpoom Wongpoom, fails to build any kind of suspense and because of that the frights don't really play out well. It does have a few moments that make you jump, but as a finale it fizzles.

4bia is still very entertaining and at times very scary. With the parts in a different order, building up an overall sense of horror, it might have worked better. But as is it's a great time for the first three quarters and then a drawn out letdown. Still recommended though as the best asian horror since Shutter.

Pink Double Feature: S&M Hunter (Shuji Kataoka, 1986) and New Tokyo Decadence - The Slave (Osamu Sato, 2007)

2009-01-01T14:57:00.006+01:00

Shiro Shimomoto as S&M Hunter (1986), directed by Shuji Kataoka.

Just finished watching the first two releases by new company Pink Eiga, S&M Hunter and New Tokyo Decadence - The Slave. I think it's good with a company that's focusing on releasing some true pink films since Artsmagic seems to have given that up (are they out of business?) and Kino hasn't released any more roman pornos since the release of a few Masaru Konuma titles a little over a year ago. The pre-pink/roman pornos and pinky violence films that have been released in between by other companies haven't been much to root for. I don't know if UK-based Salvation Films are still releasing pink films either, they don't seem to have put any out in a while. So Pink Eiga is very much welcome.

Their first two films are very different, S&M Hunter is a pretty crazy sex comedy about the one eyed titular character who is hired by a man who hates women to free his boyfriend from a group of female delinquents. The man is recommended by the proprietor of an S&M establishment to hire the S&M Hunter since he's the world's foremost rope bondage master and can conquer any woman on earth with his rope skills. There is love in his violence. While this is going on, the group of women are taking turns raping the kidnapped boyfriend to turn him into women instead of men.

S&M Hunter isn't as extreme as a lot of reviews make it sound like, compared to a lot of other Japanese 80's sex cinema, it's pretty tame. Sure, the leader of the girl gang posing in full nazi uniform in front of a swastika flag before her showdown with S&M Hunter may offend some, but who'd really take anything seriously in a film like this? It's a pretty fun cheese flick with some questionable morals but as I said, who would take it seriously, especially now, 23 years after it was made.

New Tokyo Decadence - The Slave, made in 2007 by Osamu Sato, has a completely different story. Young Rina is a high school girl by day and works as a dominatrix by night. She's good at it since she's actually a masochist so she knows what her clients want. When she moves to the city she gets a job at a company where her boss quickly exposes her as a masochist and takes her on as his slave. She has to do whatever he says whenever he says it, no matter where they are. He is also allowed to have other women as long as they are not his slaves. It's not hard to figure out that their games will lead to jealousy. When a co-worker falls in love with Rina it gets even more complicated.

Rina is played by AV and pink film actress Rinako Hirasawa who made her pink film debut in Shinji Imaoka's Frog Song in 2005 and New Tokyo Decadence is based on her own experiences in the world of BDSM. I think New Tokyo is the film of the two that deserves the most attention but it has been placed in the shadow of S&M Hunter's crazy bondage super hero story, while New Tokyo is more of a drama where Rina finds out what it is that she really wants.

Rina's boss and her leg in Osamu Sato's New Tokyo Decadence - The Slave (2007).

The good thing with New Tokyo is that it doesn't feel as Sato is being judgmental towards his characters in any way. The s&m in the sex scenes never turns into just a gimmick for the film, and it doesn't cross over into abuse like in so many other films. There is no bad childhood or any other trauma to explain away Rina's masochistic behavior. Sato also creates some truly erotic scenes that takes place outside the bedroom without the actors shedding any clothes at all and as tired as it may sound, he makes you care about the characters. New Tokyo Decadence - The Slave is proof of the real talent that exists in the pink film world and I hope Pink Eiga will keep bringing it forth for a long time.

L - Change the World (Hideo Nakata, 2008)

2009-01-01T01:06:00.006+01:00

L - Change the World (2008), directed by Hideo Nakata.

I watched the first 40 minutes of this a few months ago, when the Hong Kong dvd had just been released. It was impossible for me to get any further than that, all I did was to wish for every character in the film to just die. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I didn't watch another film for a few weeks after having tried this one, it was that bad. L - Change the World made me more scared of going near a tv than Ring (Hideo Nakata, 1998) did, but a few days ago I mustered the courage to pop the disc in the player and finish it.

I actually kind of liked the first Death Note, it was silly but still had an entertaining story with the battle of wits between Light and L and there was always the shinigami, voiced by Shido Nakamura. The biggest drawback was the character of L, I don't care how close to the manga Kenichi Matsumoto played it, it was still one of the most annoying characters I've ever seen on screen. Death Note - The Last Name (Shusuke Kaneko, 2006) was a big step down from the first one but it was still almost endurable. So why did I even bother with a film named after and centered around a character that I can hardly stand? Well, I saw the first two so...

L - Change the World takes place after the two Death Note movies. L has 20-something days left to live after writing his name in the Death Note and burning it when he has to take care of a boy and a girl who together holds the key to the antidote to a deadly virus. They are also being chased by a scientist who wants to use the virus to "change the world" and her cohorts (the most uncharismatic villains I've seen in a film for a long time) is just in it for the money, wanting to sell the virus together with the antidote to the highest bidder. I think the story is one of the main flaws of the film. The character of L and his annoying mannerisms and the fact that some kid is the greatest crime fighter in the world worked better in the fantasy world of Death Note (Shusuke Kaneko, 2006) but, here in what is supposedly a real world, it is just too awkward to be taken seriously. The acting constantly bordering or crossing over into parody doesn't help either. What would have been needed for this to be somewhat entertaining is a new Light Yagami but no such luck.

This seems to be nothing but another cash in on the success of the Death Note films and to make a few more bucks off of the Matsuyama fans, but he alone cannot save this film. It could have been okay for an episode of a kids tv-show but as a film L - Change the World is a complete failure.

High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)

2008-12-28T22:04:00.008+01:00

Toshiro Mifune as Kingo Gondo in Akira Kurosawa's High And Low (1963).

Akira Kurosawa's High and Low is a great kidnap thriller starring Toshiro Mifune as Kingo Gondo, a shoe manufacturer who is staking everything he owns on a deal to take over the company he works for when a kidnapper calls and demands a huge sum of money for Gondo's son. The thing is though, it isn't Gondo's son that is kidnapped but Gondo's driver's son.

High and Low in some ways reminded me of The Bad Sleep Well in that it deals with the corruption among company leaders, or rather, the ruthlessness of company leaders. It's not as central as in The Bad.. but it's there. High and Low's main focus is on the differences between rich and poor, those who live at the top of society and those who live at the bottom.

Gondo lives in a house up on the hills above the city. His house is big and airy with big windows and open spaces and it is visible to everyone who lives in the hot, crowded city down below, where the kidnapper is calling from. One day, Gondo is approached by the other directors of the shoe manufacturing company to take over the company together with them and start mass producing cheap shoes that won't last, but he refuses. Not only because of the reason he gives the directors, that he wants to keep making quality shoes, but also because he has his own long going plans to take it over all by himself. All he has left to do is to send his assistant over with a check for 50 million yen and the company is his. But then the kidnapper calls.

The kidnapper demands 30 million yen as ransom for Gondo's son, Jun. Gondo immediately agrees to pay the sum even though it will ruin him. Soon after, Jun comes into the room and everyone is relieved but it soon dawns on them that Jun's friend Shinichi, who he was just playing with, is missing. Shinichi is the son of Gondo's driver, and soon the kidnapper calls again having realised his mistake but he still demands that Gondo pays the ransom. This time, Gondo refuses and calls the police instead. Who would want to ruin himself and his family for someone else's child? That is what Gondo has to wrestle with while the police, headed by Tokura (Tatsuya Nakadai) is trying to catch the kidnapper. Gondo's wife and Aoki, the driver, is begging him to pay, but he refuses, saying that since his wife was born wealthy, she doesn't know to appreciate what they would have to sacrifice.

When the police are unable to catch the kidnapper within the time limit he has given, Gondo agrees to pay and the child is released. This makes Gondo a national hero, but the creditors who he owes money doesn't care, Gondo is ruined. While all of Gondo's possesions are being repo'd, the chase for the kidnapper goes on.

Tatsuya Nakadai in pursuit of the kidnapper, Tsutomu Yamazaki.

After it has turned out that the kidnapper is a medical student who lives in a tiny apartment below Gondo's house, and that his motive seemingly is simple jealosy it brings the film down a little at the very end. Even if the reason is to show that hard work pays off and that some things are worth sacrificing for, as in the case of Gondo working himself to the top and paying off the ransom, and that chosing the easy way of crime will always leave you at the bottom, it feels a bit too simple. But up until that point, which is at the very end of the film, High and Low is a phenomal thriller. With the first half being Gondo's personal struggle with his morals and conscience and the second being the cops chasing the kidnapper, the tension is high through the entire film and never lets up.

I'm not sure, though, what Kurosawa really wanted to say. The character of Takeuchi is a medical student, who should be able to become something, or is he envisioning the rest of his life as taking place in the tiny apartment below Gondo's house. Gondo is also someone who has worked his way to the top, so why hate him? Or is it just because he built a house that everyone could see, is he rubbing his hard earned wealth in people's faces and deserves to be robbed of what he has? When Takeuchi is arrested and confronted with Gondo, it turns out that after his arrest, he tried to commit suicide, not wanting to take responsibilty for his actions. He is entirely weak and probably insane, yet Gondo's face is superimposed on Takeuchi's. Are they the same or is it as a contrast? At the same time as the ending feels like the weakest part of the film, it also gives the most to think about.

Blues Harp (Takashi Miike, 1998)

2008-12-28T17:22:00.009+01:00

Seiichi Tanabe in Takashi Miike's Blues Harp (1998).

Maybe watching films while being completely worn out from work and falling asleep every five minutes isn't ideal. Especially when it comes to films where plot is second to characters and atmosphere and you can't just jump right into it.

Watching Takashi Miike's Blues Harp like this just made it feel like nothing really happened in it. Maybe it's just a bad film, even though it is one of his most praised "kind of rare but still not too hard to get a hold of" films. It seems like typical Miike. A few people getting involved by chance with eachother and trying to build lives together, but due to their involvment in crime, no matter if they are full blown yakuza or only living on the sidelines, everything always comes crashing down.

Chuji works in a bar and sells drugs for a yakuza group. He also becomes the member of a band which is being scouted by an agent at the bar, getting close to a record deal. Kenji is a gangster who wants to move up and is sleeping with his boss' wife. Together with a member of a rival gang they conspire to kill Kenji's boss and alter his testament to make Kenji the next boss. The only problem is that Kenji is gay. When Chuji saves Kenji's life when he's being chased by other yakuza, Kenji takes an interest in Chuji, which makes Kaneko, Kenji's right hand man, jealous. This, toghether with the boss' wife seeing Kenji frantically brush his teeth and vomiting in the shower after every time they have had sex, spells trouble for both Kenji's and Chuji's plans to move up in society.

If this had been one of the first films by Miike that I had watched instead of number 50 something (and if I hadn't been so tired) I probably would have gotten into it more. But as it was, it just was too predictable. This doesn't really lessen the actual film as much as it does my experience of it. The actors all do a fine job in making their characters seem real and while Miike focuses on them, the plot moves along at a slow pace towards the inevitable end that comes to all (most) of Miike's characters.

The predictability of a story doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing if the characters are interesting enough, but here I didn't really feel like I could connect despite the good performances. All I felt was "Please, get it over with, I know what's going to happen". I really should give Blues Harp another chance.

The Bad Sleep Well (Akira Kurosawa, 1960)

2008-12-21T16:27:00.006+01:00

Toshiro Mifune in Akira Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well (1960).

It's hard to say anything about The Bad Sleep Well without giving away too much of the story, so beware of spoilers in this post.

Toshiro Mifune stars as Nishi, a man bent on exacting vengeance on the corporate executives that convinced his father to commit suicide out of loyalty to them. Together they were all involved in a scam to hire a company and pay them more than what was really needed, and then recieve personal kickbacks from the company. When Nishi's father grew a conscience, they talked him into killing himself and when Nishi found out, he took on a fake identity and gained employment as the vice president's secretary.

While it is clear from the beginning who "The Bad" of the title are, it is a bit more complicated. All of the men behind the corruption, one of them described as non-human by another character, wrestles with their guilt and one is even driven insane by it when he's subjected to Nishi's plan. Nishi himself, who expresses frustration over not being able to be as ruthless as his enemies, hesitates when he finds himself in love with Yoshiko, the daughter of the vice president, who he just married to advance faster in the company. But his and his enemies humanity is what drives them all towards defeat. Only the vice president himself, who manages to hide his own humanity until the very end, and the nameless voice on the phone who gives him orders, are the ones to come out as winners.

Darker than the other Kurosawa films I've seen, The Bad Sleep Well shows a world where only the completely heartless win and the rest are losers.

Seven Days (Won Sin-Yeon, 2007)

2008-12-18T00:21:00.006+01:00

Kim Jun-Yin as the lawyer trying to save her daughter in Won Sin-Yeon's Seven Days (2007).

Lately, I've been lucky with the Korean films I watch. Usually I expect to be disappointed, and most of the time I am, especially when it comes to thrillers. Seven Days did not disappoint though.

The story is about a successful lawyer, Yu Ji-Yeon, who is also a single mother. One day while participating in a race at her daughter's school, her daughter disappears. Soon enough, Ji-Yeon is contacted by someone who is demanding money for her daughter's return. Later, it turns out that the real ransom is arranging the release of a killer facing the death penalty. Ji-Yeon takes the case and along with her corrupted detective friend she starts to uncover the truth about the murder that put the man she is trying to free on death row. But they only have seven days until the trial.

The plot has a lot of twists and turns, but basically it's kept simple, which is what makes the film so successful. Leaving out romance and overly sentimental drama that is so common in Korean films makes the focus stay on the chase against time. It does come close to slowing down too much a few times during the second half, and the jury is still out on the ending, which works in some ways but just seems a bit too contrieved. Overall though, it is a thrilling ride.

Executive Koala (Minoru Kawasaki, 2005)

2008-12-17T23:11:00.008+01:00

Minoru Kawasaki's Executive Koala (2005).

Keiichi Tamura works for a pickle distribution company. His career is moving along well and he's just about to make a deal with a Korean kimchi company when two detectives come looking for him at work. Tamura's girlfriend Yoko has been found dead and since his wife disappeared three years ago, he's the prime suspect. When the Korean businessman is visiting Japan he reveals himself to be the former lover of Tamura's wife, and that she used to write him about how Tamura was mistreating her. The problem is that Tamura can't remember a thing about what happened three years ago, and he's also a man-sized koala.

Director Minoru Kawasaki starts off by playing it straight, Tamura is popular with the women at work and even though some of them thinks he's a bit too furry, no one really seems to care that he's a koala. But what can you expect in a company where the president is a bunny. Then it turns into a bloody slasher/psycho thriller when Tamura, with the help of his psychiatrist, is trying to find out what really happened. After that, it just gets crazier and funnier.

Go, go Executive Koala!

I was a bit worried that I wouldn't like Executive Koala. When I watched Kawasaki's previous film, The Calamari Wrestler (2004), about a giant squid wrestler, I thought that while it was a great idea, the movie was just too slow and didn't have enough humor. The insanity of a squid fighting for a wrestling championship and his girlfriend just wasn't enough. There are no such problems in Executive Koala. Between the weirdness of a koala being an office worker, his bunny boss, the convenience store frog, a musical interlude and an interspecific martial arts fight, Executive Koala leaves no room for boredom, just bewildered amazment.

Dachimawa Lee (Ryoo Seung-Wan, 2008)

2008-12-15T23:52:00.007+01:00

Lim Won-Hie as Dachimawa Lee (2008).

Originally a short made by Ryoo Seung-Wan in 1998 and released on the internet, this new full length version, also by Ryoo, is a spoof of spy films like the James Bond franchise and Korean action films from the 60's and 70's (I wouldn't know, I haven't seen any). Dachimawa Lee is an enormously handsome spy, master of martial arts and all around great guy. If you believe the other characters in the film. Slightly overweight and less handsome than average, Dachimawa Lee does get all the ladies and instills fear in the bad guys.

The story is set in the 1940's and involves a golden Buddha statue that contains the names of all Korean spies in the world. Some Manchurian bandits are trying to get hold of it to sell it to the Japanese and, of course, it's up to Dachimawa Lee to stop them.

I'm not going to try to act like I picked up on every joke in the film. Since I don't speak either Korean, Japanese or Chinese, most of the "language jokes" and references were lost on me. What is in there though, when it comes to the over acting, all the physical humor and crazy antics (and there is a lot!) is no less than hilarious, and it's non stop until the end. Some have critisized it for being too much, but I'm grateful that it never takes the same route as most Korean comedies, which switches gears for a, usually unbearably boring, slower third act. Dachimawa Lee entertains all the way.

The Man in White (Takashi Miike, 2003)

2008-12-15T03:23:00.010+01:00

Kazuki Kitamura, Tatsuya Fuji, Masaya Kato, Renji Ishibashi and Ryosuke Miki in Takashi Miike's The Man in White (2003).

When Azusa (Masaya Kato) is a kid he sees his father being murdered by his older stepbrother, Serita (Tatsuya Fuji). Now, as a yakuza, Azusa has another run in with his brother when Serita shows up and kills Azusa's boss, his new father, leaving Azusa as the only one alive. Azusa throws all sense of loyalty to the wind and goes off to avenge his boss and hunt down Serita and anyone involved in the conspiracy to kill his boss.

While the story is simple, it's Miike's execution that sets it apart from other films in the same genre. His characters are yakuza and live by the code, but only as long as it really suits them. The Man in White is filled with over the top characters but they have human feelings which make them seem more real than the more traditional yakuza characters you see in a lot of films. They are criminals, and there are no excuses, Azusa is the film's main character, but he is a killer, and his actions sets off a lot of unnecessary killings just so that he can get his will done. He is no hero even if his cause might seem noble. The same goes for his friend, Mizutani (Kazuki Kitamura), who's along for the ride. Serita and his buddy, the drug addicted alcoholic Sakazaki (Renji Ishibashi) are purely in it for their own gain, loyalty and honor are nothing more than words for them.

The darkness in Miike's characters put them closer, in my opinion, to those of Rokuro Mochizuki's films, where yakuzas often are crazy drug addicts who have trouble staying within the bounds of the yakuza code, simply because they are human. There probably are other filmmakers who also make their yakuza films like this (I'd like to say Fukasaku in Graveyard of Honor (1975), but it's been so long since I watched it), but I haven't seen anyone yet who does it as convincing as Miike. In The Man in White he constructs a world where everything the characters do is believable. Or maybe it's just easier to relate and believe in someone going crazy because of emotions and human weakness than going on a killing spree out of principle. This is one of Miike's finest yakuza efforts.

The Hidden Fortress (Akira Kurosawa, 1958)

2008-12-10T00:30:00.007+01:00

Misa Uehara, Toshiro Mifune, Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara in The Hidden Fortress (1958).

Just finished watching another Kurosawa film, this time it was The Hidden Fortress, made in 1958. The film follows Matakishi and Tahei, two peasants who was late for a war and forced to dig graves by the winning side. After escaping from labor they find a stick of wood with gold hidden inside it, soon after they run into a stranger who is a general on the losing side of the war. It turns out that he knows where the rest of the gold is hidden and he is also, unbeknownst to the peasants, transporting a princess to safety. To cover up her status, she is appearing as a mute peasant. They decide to team up when the general uses Matakishi's and Tahei's greed to get them to help carry the gold. The rest of the film shows their journey through enemy territory.

Visually, The Hidden Fortress is the most impressive film of Kurosawa's that I've seen so far. This was his first film using the 2,35:1 format and he makes the most of it. As for the characters, they seem more one dimensional than what I'm used to from Kurosawa. The only one who really changes, even if just a little, is the princess who has to live like a peasant and learns a thing or too about humbleness and sacrifice. It's not a drawback, though, since all the characters are good fits for an action/adventure comedy, especially Matakishi and Tahei who are as dumb and cowardly as they are greedy. The Hidden Fortress is not my favorite Kurosawa film so far, but as an entertaining adventure, not many films beat it, old or new.

Madame O (Seiichi Fukuda, 1967)

2008-12-07T23:54:00.007+01:00

Michiko Aoyama preying on her next victim in Madame O (1967).

Madame O is an independently produced, pre-pink, eroduction film, made in 1967 and directed by Seiichi Fukuda. Most of these early, pre-pink, sex films seem to be lost and unavailable even in Japan. The reason for Synapse Films being able to release Madame O is that it was sold to Audubon Films in the US and preserved by them, and that is why it's only available with an english dub.

Seiko (Michiko Aoyama) is the Madame O of the title, she works as a doctor and runs her own practice. When she was younger she was raped by three man who left her pregnant and infected with syphilis. The event has left her emotionally empty, except for wanting to take revenge on all men. She does that by walking the streets at night to pick up men and transfer the disease to them. One day she hires a male doctor and ends up falling in love for the first time in her life after he finds her passed out after performing an abortion on herself. When he also becomes a witness of Seiko killing and dismembering one of her late night pick-ups who tried to extort her, and doesn't report it, they soon get married. To no one's surprise though, it turns out that the good doctor may have a hidden agenda of his own.

For being described as a film that will "paralyze audiences with gore, nudity and shocking violence" as it is on the cover for the dvd, the film is very tame. Expecting any of the three will make the viewer come up short. Also, even at 81 minutes in length the film feels overlong and gets frustratingly boring, making the ending come as a relief rather than an intense finale. The most interesting things in the film are the cinematography, it does look good, and the actors who, even while being dubbed, come off as doing solid work. I'm still not sure on whether the decision to make some sequences in the film in color, while the main bulk of it is in black and white, was good or not. It seems like the scenes shot in color are mainly the ones with nudity or blood in them, or both, and it just makes it feel more exploitive instead of artistic.

While I appreciate that Synapse has given this film a dvd release and making it available, I also wish distributors would put the same effort into releasing better films from the early eroduction and pink film era. It feels like Madame O got the attention more because of it being available than anything else.

Eye for an Eye (Kwak Kyung-Taek, Ahn Kwon Tae, 2008)

2008-12-06T20:56:00.013+01:00

Han Suk-Kyu and Cha Seung-Won as cop and robber in Eye for an Eye (2008).

I watched another Korean film today, Eye for an Eye, directed by Kwak Kyung-Taek and Ahn Kwon-Tae. Why they replaced Ahn with Kwak after finishing half the film I don't know, maybe it was just co-directed, but parts of the film are confusing and hard to follow. Maybe Ahn was having trouble getting it straight. It's basically a heist film with Cha playing the mastermind behind it and Han playing the cop trying to catch him and at the same time it has a story about Han's detective trying to catch a powerful business man who is also a crime boss, in style with Public Enemy (2002). Knowing more about the plot beforehand would spoil the film, so I'll leave it at that.

I wouldn't call the film a masterpiece, but it is a great piece of entertainment, mostly thanks to Han Suk-Kyu and Cha Seung-Won in the lead roles. Han seems to be moving away from the regular lead roles, like in Christmas in August (Hur Jin-Ho, 1998), Shiri (Kang Je-Gyu, 1999) and Tell Me Something (Chang Yoon-Hyun, 1999), that I'm used to seeing him in and portrays a slightly more bizarre character here.

With Eye for an Eye my interest in Korean cinema keeps on growing after having been put to rest a couple of years ago. It may not be the greatest film ever made in Korea but it's up there with the better of their crime films.

/edit

Apparently, Eye for an Eye was a co-writing and co-directorial effort between Kwak Kyung-Taek and Ahn Kwon-Tae. Ahn, the director of My Brother (2004), was not replaced by the more experienced Kwak whose earlier films include Friend (2001), Champion (2002), Mutt Boy (2003) and Typhoon (2005).

Unlucky Monkey (Sabu, 1998)

2008-12-04T21:54:00.008+01:00

Shinichi Tsutsumi in Sabu's Unlucky Monkey (1998).

While watching Unlucky Monkey, directed by Hiroyuki Tanaka aka Sabu, I thought "Is it just me or has every Japanese film I've watched lately dealt with individuality and individual responsibility?" Unlucky Monkey travels the same path, kind of, but the main theme here is guilt.

When Yamazaki (Shinichi Tsutsumi) and his buddy (Sabu) is ready to enter a bank to rob it, another robber comes running out and is hit by a car. His bag of loot comes flying through the air and lands in the arms of Yamazaki who takes off running with the bag and a knife in his hand. Turning a corner he accidentaly bumps into a young woman and stabs her. He flees the scene and buries the money in a field before taking off again.

Simultaneously, two yakuza are in a meeting with a boss from another gang, applying to join since their own boss is in prison. When their third friend barges in the boss from the rival gang is accidentaly killed. Afraid of the consequences, the three yakuza hides the body, but soon they are being pursued by killers from the other gang.

Both of these storylines are basically the same, except that while Yamazaki struggles with his conscience, being overwhelmed by guilt when he finds out that the woman he stabbed didn't make it, the yakuza are only concerned with saving their own skins. At first Yamazaki tries to but the blame on the victim, maybe she ran into him on purpose, maybe she was suicidal, but in the end he has to fess up and take responsibility and he is willing to give up both the money and his life. When all the characters crosses paths in the end, I think the ability to feel guilt and take responsibility is what seals their fates.

Unlucky Monkey is a great film, it doesn't matter if you watch it to try to find a message in it or just go along for the ride. There are other films like this, where a bunch of characters' fates are just loosely intertwined but where they all play important parts for each other through chance encounters, but not many makes them as great as Sabu.

Chanbara Beauty (Yohei Fukuda, 2008)

2008-12-02T22:09:00.008+01:00

Yohei Fukuda's Chanbara Beauty aka OneChanbara (2008).

What did I expect? I guess that ever since watching Ryuhei Kitamura's Versus (2000), I've been waiting for the next low-budget, stylish, gory action film that will actually be good. Kitamura himself hasn't managed to top it yet and it doesn't seem like anyone else will either, at least not anytime soon. The closest I've seen to the spirit of Versus is Yudai Yamaguchi's Battlefield Baseball (2003), even though it's a comedy and not really an action film, and the Media Blasters production Death Trance (2005), directed by Yuji Shimomura, the action director on Versus. Chanbara Beauty, however, doesn't even come close.

Based on a video game, the story is kind of thin. A scientist (Taro Suwa) is experimenting on corpses to resurrect them but, of course, they turn into zombies. To succeed he needs the blood from a pair of sisters who's from a special bloodline, one of which he has already captured. The older sister is wandering a futuristic Japan ridden with living dead, killing every zombie that she meets while looking for her abducted sister. It's not much, but it should be enough for an entertaining zombie slashing film.

Unfortunately, the fight scenes are so fast that a lot of times it is hard to see what is going on, there's just a bunch of CG blood flying around the screen. For some reason (unless there's a problem with the dvd that I watched) they have decided to not use sound effects for parts of the action and it makes it feel disconnected and even harder to enjoy. Or maybe I'm just not getting it.

To me, the action scenes is the biggest flaw in the film. If it doesn't deliver the action, what point is there to it? Other than that, I don't have much to say. Complaining about the story or the acting in a film like this seems kind of redundant, it's point is the action and that is where it fails. Not even Taro Suwa, talking about the meaning of life and being God, while pulling gory bits out of a severed head can save this one.

Drunken Angel (Akira Kurosawa, 1948)

2008-11-28T18:11:00.009+01:00

Takashi Shimura and Toshiro Mifune in Drunken Angel (1948).

Akira Kurosawa's and Toshiro Mifune's first collaboration is set at the end of the Second World War and revolves around a doctor (Takashi Shimura) and his yakuza tuberculosis patient (Toshiro Mifune). The doctor, Sanada, is a drunk who can't even stay away from his medical alcohol and his practice is located near the shore of a toxic swamp. On the other side of the swamp is the black market, the turf of Matsunaga, a violent criminal. When Matsunaga visits Sanada in the middle of the night to have a bullet removed from his hand, Sanada discovers that the yakuza has tuberculosis. Matsunaga refuses to believe him but later comes back with an x-ray that shows a hole in his lung. At the same time, Okada, Matsunaga's former boss, is released from prison and comes back to the neighborhood to reclaim his turf. This just makes Matsunaga's fight against his illness, while trying to keep his appearance of strength, even harder.

Drunken Angel seems to be about the morals and codes of the yakuza and all the violence they bring. Sanada questions everything Matsunaga does because of his yakuza code, and insists that he tries to get well instead. Feudalism is out of style. In the booklet that comes with the Criterion dvd of the film, Kurosawa talks about falling out with the co-writer, Keinosuke Uegusa, over their different views on the yakuza and the role that society plays in shaping these individuals. Basically, he's saying that, while society has some influence, it's up to the individual to decide what kind of person to be. After all there are a lot of poor and weak people who doesn't resort to a life of crime to get ahead. The same reasoning that I got from his Stray Dog (1949), made one year after Drunken Angel.

Toshiro Mifune as the tuberculosis-ridden Matsunaga.

From what I've read, Stray Dog is considered to be Kurosawa's first masterpiece, and while Drunken Angel might not be a masterpiece, it's a big step towards creating one. The acting is great all around, and even though Mifune seems a bit unpolished compared to his later work with Kurosawa, he still gives a haunting performance as Matsunaga. While being a very good film, Drunken Angel does seem a bit simpler than Kurosawa's later films when it comes to technique, that doesn't mean that it's bad in any way though, just that Kurosawa evolved as a filmmaker. Drunken Angel is the earliest of his films that I have seen, so I don't know how big the difference is between this and the films that came before, but I look forward to finding out.

Sad Vacation (Shinji Aoyama, 2007)

2008-11-24T20:55:00.012+01:00

Tadanobu Asano and Jo Odagiri in Shinji Aoyama's Sad Vacation (2007).

I'm not sure what Aoyama is trying to say with Sad Vacation, I'm not even sure Aoyama knows exactly what he is trying to say. The only thing I'm sure about is that it's a film about family, being abandoned by your family and trying to forgive them or take revenge. It might also be about how different experiences and environments forces you to be the person you are, even if you try to become something else.

All of this is best described in the character of Kenji Shiraishi, the young delinquent in Aoyama's early film Helpless (1996) who took part in some murders along with his yakuza friend, Yasuo, after his father commits suicide. Something that Kenji blames his mother for, since she abandoned both him and his father. Following the murders, Kenji and Yuri, Yasuo's traumatzed sister, have been on the run for the last ten years or so. While working in human trafficking, Kenji, knowing what it's like to be all alone, decides to take care of a Chinese boy who's father died during the boat ride over. Later, while working as a designated driver for drunk business men and bar hostesses, Kenji drives a man home only to find that he is married to his eloped mother, Chiyoko. Kenji goes to see her and finds that she is nothing but happy to have him back in her life, but his own feelings may not be the same.

Kenji moves in with Chiyoko and her new family, consisting of her new husband, Mamiya, their teenage son, Yusuke, and the employees of their transporting company who are all drifters with nowhere else to go. One of the drifters is Kozue, the girl who survived the bus hijacking in Eureka (2000). She was looking for her runaway mother when she was taken in and offered a job by Mamiya.

After Kenji has moved in, he plans to get revenge on Chiyoko to cause her the same feelings of abandonment that he had to live with since she left him and his father, but when he thinks that he is finally done with her and has rid himself of the influence she has had on his life, she comes back, with a stronger hold on him than ever. It doesn't matter that Kenji is basically a good person, the experiences he's had has left a mark on him and his hate forces him into bad cycles. The only thing his mother can do is try to understand and forgive. Chiyoko, now wanting to be the mother she never was, can't get through to her other son and, not by leaving him, but by maybe not trying hard enough, abandons him too. Her previous life has left her too in a bad cycle.

The film does seem kind of confused, taking stands both for and against parents being needed, "real" families vs. surrogate families and whether it's right or not to forgive just about anything.
Maybe it's not the point of the film to come to some kind of conclusion, but just to make room for thoughts on the subjects that it brings up. After all the ending is just a big splash.

Samurai Spy (Masahiro Shinoda, 1965)

2008-11-22T22:22:00.014+01:00

Fighting in the fog in Masahiro Shinoda's Samurai Spy (1965).

Masahiro Shinoda's anti-war samurai film is set in 1614, and seems to be an allegory for the Cold War and the relations between the US and Soviet in the 1960's. The beginning is quite confusing when all the different clans and characters are introduced, all with different loyalties and motives. After a while though, it's easier to make sense of it all. I felt like the first time I watched Kinji Fukasaku's The Yakuza Papers (1973-1974) films.

I won't go into the details of the story more than that it's about a spy named Sasuke, working for a neutral clan, who is trying to find out the truth about two murders he is accused of committing. Of course, it brings him into conflict with with two other clans and double-crossing spies.

Samurai Spy is more of a spy film than it is a regular samurai film, focussing more on the frail peace of the time in which the film is set, where war may break out at any time, and the spies working with and against each other, than on samurai honor. The spies are also more like ninjas with supernatural powers than samurai. The action in the film is quite bloody but a lot of times it is obscured by objects in the foreground, fog or edits. I don't know if it's just a stylistic choice or part of the films anti-war message.

Samurai Spy is a good looking and sometimes confusing film, but even if it is hard to follow in parts, it is still entertaining enough. It's not as good as most other samurai films I've seen, but it doesn't feel like it's really trying to achieve the same things anyway.

Tetsuro Tanba and Koji Takahashi.

Gosha Double Feature: Sword of the Beast (1965) and The Wolves (1971)

2008-11-18T23:54:00.010+01:00

Mikijiro Hira in Hideo Gosha's Sword of the Beast (1965).

Hideo Gosha is apparently considered one of the masters of the samurai film. Tonight I watched Sword of the Beast, directed by Gosha in 1965. While I did like the film a lot, it seemed to be very conventional, following the standards of the genre, and Gosha seems somewhat heavy handed compared to Kurosawa and Kobayashi (the only other two that I have really seen any samurai films from). It's the same feeling that I got from The Wolves, a yakuza film made in 1971, and the only one of Gosha's other films that I have seen.

The Wolves and Sword of the Beast also share some of the same themes, they are both about where the line is drawn between being loyal to one's gang or to oneself and the main characters of both films are betrayed by the ones they trust. The yakuza (Tatsuya Nakadai) in The Wolves who after being released early from prison realises that his former boss' death might not have happened the way it is told, and his new boss, his sworn brother, may not be so innocent. And the samurai (Mikijiro Hira) in Sword of the Beast who is told he will get a faster rise to the top if he kills a counselor but realises after it is done that he has been used and is now a fugitive.

All of this is apparent from the first frame in both films, in The Wolves the main character has to be convinced that this is the case by other characters, and in Sword of the Beast it feels like you're being beaten over the head with it as no less than four characters other than the samurai realises that the fate of the samurai is also their own. This doesn't lessen the enjoyment of watching Sword of the Beast though, it still is a beautifully shot chambara with great performances from Mikijiro Hira, Go Kata, Shima Iwashita and the Gosha and Kinji Fukasaku regular Kunie Tanaka. The same cannot be said of The Wolves, which is much too slow and unengaging, and with a performance by Tatsuya Nakadai that can best be described as sleepwalking. He is far outshined here by Noboru Ando and the aforementioned Kunie Tanaka. How this would be considered the best, or one of the best, yakuza films ever made is beyond me.

Tatsuya Nakadai on the cover of Animeigo's dvd release of The Wolves (1971).

I read a description of Hideo Gosha's films as being emotional like Kurosawa's and containing the politics of Kobayashi's, and judging by these two films the description is correct, Gosha's films are just more standardized and less refined. As a period sword fighting film, Sword of the Beast is great though and enough to make me want to see more of his samurai films. As for 1970's yakuza cinema, I still have some more Fukasaku to explore.

Public Enemy Returns (Kang Woo-Suk, 2008)

2008-11-17T01:49:00.011+01:00

Kang Woo-Suk's Public Enemy Returns (2008).

In Kang Woo-Suk's third part of the Public Enemy trilogy, Sol Kyung-Gu once again plays the character of Kang Cheol-Jung, the corrupted, ill-tempered police officer from the first film who grew a conscience when a company executive killed his parents over money. This time he's less corrupted but with the same bad temper when he goes after a crime boss who uses teenagers to do his dirty work and to take the blame when the police get too close.

Compared to the previous films, Public Enemy Returns is a lot closer in tone to the first film, it has the same slapstick humor and excessive violence. It doesn't build much suspense, similar to just about every other Korean thriller, but the story is still engaging enough not to get tired and the acting by Sol Kyung-Gu and Jeong Jae-Yeong and supporting actors like Lee Mun-Sik and Kang Sin-Il, keeps the film entertaining through out.

Public Enemy (2002) was one of the first Korean films that I really liked and Public Enemy Returns could have been made at the same time between 2000 and 2004, before Korean cinema got into a slump. There still are some good films being made in South Korea and maybe Public Enemy Returns and films like The Chaser (Na Hong-Jin, 2008) and Big Bang (Park Jeong-Woo, 2007) are the beginning of a return to form, I know I'm not the only one waiting for that to happen.

Assault! Jack the Ripper (Yasuharu Hasebe, 1976)

2008-11-07T16:49:00.015+01:00

Assault! Jack the Ripper (1976), directed by Yasuharu Hasebe.

Assault! Jack the Ripper (1976) is about a man who works as a baker at a café. One day, one of the waitresses asks him to give her a ride home. He agrees, but on the way they pick up a hitchhiker who happens to be a suicidal maniac. When they kick her out on the road again they have an accident and the hitchhiker dies. Instead of going to the police they dump the body at an old junkyard. Afterwards, having arrived at the waitress' apartment, they realise that the accident, and the disposal of the body, has made them aroused and they have sex.

They keep on using murder as an aphrodisiac, killing just about every young woman they see, but the man seems less and less interested in his partner in crime and more so in his knife and victims. He starts killing the women by stabbing them in their genitals and soon enough he's "cheating" by killing on his own. It's pretty obvious where the film is going, but when the killer starts hiding his knife in the front of his pants, and a woman that he is cutting open starts enjoying it, it changes from being a pretty boring exploitation slasher into being just plain stupid.

I have no problem with the blood and gore, or the sex, but the film fails to entertain, I think that is usually the difference between good and bad exploitation. A film is never pointless as long as it entertains in some way, but when all it does is make you yawn and think "Why am I watching this?" it feels pretty pointless to me. It doesn't help though that I'm getting tired of the whole roman porno/pink/pinky violence craze that is going on. While there are some really well made and thought provoking films in this area, they seem to be the exceptions to the genre. Assault!.. feels like just another one of those films to be hyped up because of its rarity, and when it finally shows up, it fails to do anything but disappoint. It may have been extreme in the 1970s, but now, it feels as impotent as the main character seems to be without his knife.

/edit

I can add that I just finished watching Mondo Macabro's other recent Nikkatsu release, Noboru Tanaka's Watcher in the Attic (1976), based on stories by horror/mystery writer Edogawa Rampo. It's very different from Assault! Jack the Ripper, it's more of a drama about a rich man's wife, her lovers and the watcher from the title. It soons turns into a story about sexual perversions and murder, but compared to other Rampo adaptations like Teruo Ishii's Horror of Malformed Men (1969), Shinya Tsukamoto's Gemini (1999) and horror omnibus Rampo Noir (Akio Jissoji, Atsushi Kaneko, Hisayasu Sato, Suguru Takeuchi, 2005), Tanaka fails to inject the story with the kind of creepy atmosphere that the other films have. Watcher in the Attic has sex and murder, but it never turns into a mystery worth solving.

The Face of Another (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966)

2008-11-02T18:25:00.018+01:00

Tatsuya Nakadai and Mikijiro Hira in Hiroshi Teshigahara's The Face of Another (1966).

Mr. Okuyama's (Tatsuya Nakadai) face is horribly disfigured in an accident at work. He spends his days at home with his entire head covered in bandages and it's making him feel as if he is losing his identity. His wife (Machiko Kyo) pretends that she is not bothered by his new appearance but it is obvious to Okuyama, who even fantasizes about scarring her face in a similar way to make her less uneasy around him. Being on leave from his job after the accident, he wants to come back as long as he won't have to deal with people as much as before. His boss says it's no problem but Okuyama can tell that his boss finds it exhausting just to be in the same room as him. While this is all going on, Okuyama is seeing a psychiatrist (Mikijiro Hira) to get help with his identity crisis. The psychiatrist offers to give Okuyama a new face, in the form of a life-like mask, as an experiment, on the condition that Okuyama tells him about everything he does and feels while wearing the mask.

While waiting for the mask to be completed, Okuyama and the psychiatrist discuss what he will do once it is finished. Okuyama seems to be focused on re-seducing his wife, making her cheat on him with himself. The psychiatrist warns him that it may be dangerous. When the mask is finished and Okuyama is trying it out, the psychiatrist is talking about the freedom it must bring, to not be recognized by anyone, being able to do anything, almost as if you were invisible, but Okuyama soon learns that it's not that simple. Being recognized by a mentally challenged girl who has only seen him once before wearing bandages, and who is described by Okuyama as an idiot, makes him wonder if the mask really makes him unrecognizable. To find out he goes to see his boss once again, and is greeted by his secretary in a very different manner than before, since she clearly doesn't recognize him. This gives him confidence to seduce his wife or as he puts it "take back what is mine". The obvious danger would be that if he succeeds, why would he want to be with a woman who would cheat on him, wouldn't it make him feel even worse about himself? But the outcome is something different. Instead it is his wife, who has recognized Okuyama and played along, who is offended when she finds out that they weren't roleplaying and that he wasn't wearing the mask to make it easier on her, but to trick her into "cheating" on him. She sees the mask as wearing make-up, in the same way that women wears make-up to better their appearance. This drives Okuyama to use the freedom that he thinks the mask gives him as he tries to rape a woman on the street and is arrested.

Nothing that he and the psychiatrist imagined would be gained from wearing the mask happens. There is no freedom, what Okuyama gains is not a new identity but a distorted version of his old self that still wants the same thing that he wanted earlier, he wants to be accepted by his wife. His appearance isn't changed enough for him to be totally unrecognizable either, and he is still sensitive to how others react to his appearance, and their reactions decides how he feels, what he becomes. The supposed freedom doesn't exist. You may be able to be more confident while hiding behind a mask, but you're still the same person and responsible for your actions.

Tatsuya Nakadai (left) wearing his mask and Mikijiro Hira (right).

I guess that your identity partially comes from how others perceive and react to you, by being part of how you see yourself, but appearances can also be decieving, as with the "idiot" girl. When Okuyama is robbed of his appearance he is also robbed of his identity, or his feel of identity, but his new appearance doesn't give him a new "real" identity. His boss would be willing to give him his job back without him wearing a mask, and his wife wants him for who he is, but wants him to wear make-up to make it easier when they have sex. Okuyama fails to see this because his mask is, like the prosthetic finger in the opening scene of the film, an inferiority complex in the shape of a face.

These are just my thoughts immediately after watching the film so I might edit this post later. I feel that there is more to the film than this but reading some reviews, I noticed they mainly consisted of a plot description and praise of Hiroshi Teshigahara, the director. I agree with everything positive about the film, the acting, the music and the way it looks, but what I found most interesting was the way that appearances and the way the may have an effect on how you see yourself are handled in the film, so that's what I wanted to write about. Now I look forward to watching Teshigahara's other films.

Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)

2008-11-01T10:04:00.007+01:00

Toshiro Mifune and Machiko Kyo in Rashomon (1950).

After watching Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950), and being somewhat underwhelmed by it, I decided to read some reviews of the film. There seems to be a few different opinions about what the film is really about. Is it concerned only with the Japanese or can the characters' actions be applied to people from anywhere in the world and does the film care about what really happened, the real truth, or does it only care about the way people will change the truth to make themself seem better? I think it falls somewhere in between these different views.

The story is about a rape and murder that takes place out in the woods. It involves a bandit, Tajomaru, and a samurai and his wife. There is also a woodcutter who finds the corpse. They all get to tell their story about what happened after Tajomaru is caught and brought to trial.

The thing that, to me, sticks out the most as exlusively Japanese is that all the characters except the woodcutter, in their version of the what happened, claim to be the killer. If they had been western characters they probably would have claimed their innocence instead. Still, no matter if it is to make their actions seem more honorable, or if it is to make it seem like they had no part in it, both Japanese and western characters would be lying to avoid judgment. No matter the differences of what it means to take responsibility and saving face between the cultures, what it results in is the same for all humans. So, at the same time as it is very Japanese, it is also universal.

Also, as the woodcutters story is the one that seems to be the most truthful, him being the closest thing to an objective observer, even though it is compromised by him having stolen a dagger that may or may not have been the murder weapon. The film does present the viewer with one version that is portrayed as being more accurate than the others, while it also shows that even good men, like the woodcutter, are susceptible to corruption. Basically, it is a film about human nature.

Just as with my take on Kurosawa's Stray Dog (1949), I feel that Rashomon is more about human nature than it is a commentary on a specific society, and that Kurosawa was an emotional filmmaker more than a political one. I think this is also the reason why I was underwhelmed by the film. It didn't bring any new feelings to me, the way it was shot and edited wasn't as spectacular as in the few other films I have seen of his, and its comments on human behaviour didn't feel very original. That is not Rashomon's fault though, it has just been covered a lot since 1950, and it is easy to see how it came to be considered a masterpiece when it was released.

Beat Takeshi vs. Takeshi Kitano (Casio Abe, 2005) / Kitano Takeshi (Aaron Gerow, 2007)

2008-10-26T01:08:00.010+02:00

Takeshi Kitano in Hana-Bi (1997).

Recently I have read two books about Takeshi Kitano, the first one being Casio Abe's Beat Takeshi vs. Takeshi Kitano and the second one being Aaron Gerow's Kitano Takeshi. I preferred Gerow's take on Kitano's work as an actor and director, probably because Abe's writing was too academic for me. But another aspect that really annoyed me with Abe's book was the way that he seemed to have one main theory that he forced onto every one of Kitano's films, even when it didn't really fit.

Gerow uses some of the same themes and theories as Abe, such as Takeshi Kitano's struggle to separate himself from his tv-persona of 'Beat' Takeshi and his obsession with his own death, but seems to be more adaptable to the differences in Kitano's films. It makes his book seem less forced and his analyzing of the films becomes more rewarding since it isn't so narrow.

Both books are interesting reads in their own right, but I felt that Gerow gives a wider analysis of Kitano as a person and of his films, while Abe goes deeper into the conflict between 'Beat Takeshi' and Takeshi Kitano and tv versus cinema. I must say, though, that judging by these two books, Kitano's films are more compelling to watch than to read about.

Stray Dog (Akira Kurosawa, 1949)

2008-10-25T16:16:00.012+02:00

Toshiro Mifune and Keiko Awaji in Stray Dog (1949).

I'm not sure why it has taken me this long, but I just recently started watching the films of Akira Kurosawa. I think one reason may be him constantly being praised as one of the greatest filmmakers ever, and me not wanting to be disappointed. Another reason is that I have been more interested in recent films and it's not like there has been a shortage of films and directors to explore. After having seen four of his films, ranging from 1949's Stray Dog to 1962's Sanjuro, I realise that there was no reason to be worried about being disappointed and Kurosawa's films appear to be more modern than most that I have seen from the same time period.

Stray Dog is about a rookie homicide detective (Toshiro Mifune) who gets his gun stolen on a crowded train. When his gun is later used in a robbery, the detective hands in his resignation but is instead put on the case. Helping him catch the criminal and retrieve his gun is an older inspector (Takashi Shimura) who is an expert at catching pickpockets.

Most of what I've read about Stray Dog focuses on its depiction of the immediate post-war era and the presence of the American occupational forces and society's part in the fate of the characters in the film. I don't feel that I have enough knowledge of the times to comment on the depiction of post-war Japan but to me the film was mostly about morals and the individual's choices on how to live life in a society that won't take care of you.

While Mifune's detective and Isao Kimura's criminal share the same past as soldiers, who upon their return got their knapsacks stolen on the train taking them home, they did not make the same choices in how to go from there. The detective admits to getting ideas of stealing and taking the "easy" road of crime but realising it is not the way to go, he gets a job instead. Kimura's character instead chooses a life of crime. They are the same on the outside, living in the same society, but it is what's on the inside that sets them apart. I don't agree with the take that society forced the criminal's choices, even if it did play a large part. I think the film ultimately shows that it is up to the individual to make his or her own choices, which is also shown in the way that every character the policemen stumble upon during their investigation knows exactly what they have done right or wrong, it is what they chose and they know the consequences.

The biggest differences between the detectives and the criminals is the feeling of responsibility. Toshiro Mifune feels responsible for the crimes that are carried out using his gun, even though it is not his fault, they would have happened anyway using another gun. The pickpockets and gunrunners they encounter have no such feelings, not because society forced them into it, but because the lack of feeling responsible is a requirement for a lot of criminals. One thing that exemplifies that it is about individual choices, I think, is the young girl (Keiko Awaji) who is a childhood friend of the criminal. She recieves an expensive dress from him but, suspecting that it's been procured through wrongdoing, she doesn't wear it.

Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Keiko Awaji.

Even if I'm totally wrong on this, it is still a masterful film, with great performances from everyone involved, especially the three leads in Mifune, Shimura and Awaji. The way it is shot and the editing gives it a feel of being made much later than the late 1940's, something I think is common with a lot of Kurosawa's films. After having seen Yojimbo (1961), Sanjuro (1962) and Seven Samurai (1954), Stray Dog makes me think even higher of Kurosawa and I will be seeing the rest of his films.

Bashing (Masahiro Kobayashi, 2005)

2008-10-24T06:16:00.008+02:00

Fusako Urabe as Yuko in Bashing (2005).

Masahiro Kobayashi's Bashing is a fictional story based on the real events of Japanese people being taken as hostages in Iraq in 2004 and, upon release, not being very welcome back in their home country, with even the prime minister at the time, Junichiro Koizumi, condemning them for travelling to a war zone. According to articles about the subject, the former hostages were accused of causing the Japanese government trouble and embarrassing the country of Japan and its people. The general opinion was one of "It's your own fault" and that it was a matter of personal responsibility. The articles also says that the Japanese government charged them for their plane tickets home, and said that they should cover at least part of the cost for freeing them.

The film is about a woman, Yuko, who volunteered to go to Iraq as an aid-worker. After being taken hostage and then released, Yuko has returned to Japan where she is harrassed wherever she goes and her and her family are recieving threatening phone calls. When she is fired from her job for causing a bad mood among her co-workers just by being there, and her father is fired from the company where he has worked for 30 years because they want to protect their image, she decides to go back to Iraq.

While most reviews have mentioned Kobayashi's art house filmmaking and that the film is condemning the Japanese for the way they treated the ex-hostages, I think it also portrays Yuko as a not entirely sympathetic person. While clearly being the victim, the film also shows her as being a selfish person, something that Yuko herself acknowledges in the film. It does not make her a bad person, it just makes her human, and to me, Bashing is more about the right to be human than anything else. It's about having the right to do what you want, even if what you want sometimes is selfish. Of course, that doesn't justify anything that Yuko and her family has to endure but the film gives you more to think about than if it had just been pointing fingers and looking to blame someone the same way that some people did to the freed hostages.

Good Morning (Yasujiro Ozu, 1959)

2008-10-21T05:59:00.006+02:00

Yasujiro Ozu's Good Morning (1959).

Last night I watched my first film by Yasujiro Ozu, Good Morning. I have heard a lot about Ozu ever since I first started following Asian cinema but still I didn't really know what to expect. Usually, people say that they love his films but then only talk about the technical aspects of his filmmaking, the editing and the way he shoots his films. I was prepared to be entertained or bored to tears and I ended up somewhere in between, closer to the positive side.

Good Morning's main story, if you can call it that, is about the children of a few families who are neighbors. The kids usually go over to a younger couple to watch sumo wrestling on tv, but when their parents orders them not to, and then scold them for asking too much about getting a tv-set of their own, the kids go on a silence strike as a protest to the adults' meaningless polite chit-chat.

The unnecessary chatter of the adults is shown in a side story about the wives, where the unfounded rumors of one of them buying a washing machine for their collective money begin spreading in the neighborhood, and also in the way two people who may be in love just engage in empty conversation. Perhaps it is necessary though, to make interacting with others easier.

The way the film is shot, with a mostly static camera, and the editing, always showing the person talking head on, almost calls attention to itself by being so straight forward, but after a while I got used to it. It actually helps in making the events of daily life in the film seem more real, which I think is one of the films strongest points, one of the others being humor. A lot of the events in the film are depicted with a lot of humor, especially those of the children, and that also helps in making the characters seem more alive.

All in all, Good Morning turned out to be an enjoyable film and a lot funnier than I had expected. I look forward to seeing more of Ozu's films.