Invisible Waves (Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, 2006)

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

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

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)

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

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)

"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)

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.