Amazo Japanese Films

An engaging movie that takes a bleak, but also beautifully hopeful look at the lives of four young women who live on the margins of life in contemporary Tokyo. Sex in the City it's not. The portraits of these women are, almost unnervingly, complete. Great great independent film for adults.

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sitenoise at the movies: Strawberry Shortcakes

Poetic. Dreamy. Surreal. There's just something about the way Sion Sono puts together a film that appeals to me. The assemblage maybe more than the film.

It's worth noting that director Sono Sion is a also a street poet and musician. There is a guerilla-art quality to this film. One gets the impression it's being made up on the spot, while your watching it, yet there isn't the slightest hint of improvisation and the film betrays an intricate construction. Contradictions abound. There's a mature adolescence in heady ideas about original sin and up-skirt, "peek-a-panty", photography. I can't call this a 'weird' film because it's not, even though I smiled through most of it thinking "This can't be serious." I was amazed by the entire cast's chameleon like ability to move convincingly among different levels of sanity. Everyone in the film is so earnestly bizarre. If you like Sono's work you will not be disappointed by this. If you haven't seen anything by him, why not start with a four hour movie? The music is great.

A debt collector offers Fumiya an opportunity to erase his debt: walk with him around Tokyo. What we get is a road movie, a very funny road movie, where the unlikely duo walk instead of drive. There's eventual male bonding, marvelous footage of Tokyo, and a smorgasbord of odd characters and situations along the way. Very enjoyable.

sitenoise at the movies: Adrift in Tokyo [2007]

Simply Beautiful. This is Brokeback Babbling Brook. Incredibly insightful story about one-sided young gay love that transcends itself. The woman who made this film is the daughter of a famous film director and I'd say its given hera wonderful head start. She's young and destined for greatness if the gentle and mature way she put this film together is any indication.

Wow. Just wow. This is the most adorable cartoon I've ever seen. It's beautifully animated (by the master Hayao Miyazaki) and the two kids portrayed seem uncannily accurate. I highly recommend NOT watching the English dubbed version. Dubbing might seem like less of an issue with animation than with real people, but I saw a dual audio version and flipped back and forth and for some reason the English voices made it seem less magical. It's a simple story about a father and his two young daughters who move, and must adapt, to the country, but it's executed perfectly. You will feel happy after watching this movie. It's soothing, and as a friend says, it seems almost healing. I agree.

The infamous needle torture is more conceptually gruesome than it appears in practice at the end of this film, but the foot amputation by wire is kick-ass-sexy-hard-to-watch.

After three and a half slow paced, sepia toned hours experiencing pain and anguish I still watched the credits roll. The film starts off with a guy hijacking a bus and killing most everyone on it. The driver and two middle school kids survive and we spend the rest of the film watching them live with it. We watch them fall asleep watching television and other mundane maneuvers but there is not a wasted frame in this movie. There are a remarkable number of plot points that keep the film moving forward but it still feels like suspended animation. Koji Yakusho is sublime and Aoi Miyazaki, at like twelve years old--and without saying a word the whole film--is mesmerizing. This film is a masterpiece.

It must be chauvinistic to suggest that a film about a young man accused of touching a young girl's hip and right buttock under her skirt on a crowded train doesn't sound like a compelling two and a half hour legal drama, but this film is compelling and impeccably done. Japan's 99.9% conviction rate is the star of this show and it's scary stuff.

This is one of those films that uses the device of repeating scenes from different perspectives to embellish a simple story and it does it in spectacular fashion. There are a couple lonely hearts, a couple con artists and a very well-mannered Yakusa boss who all intermingle over the course of one evening and a suitcase full of money. The scene where the Yakusa boss hiding under a bed sees only the shy dance of feet of the initial interaction between the two lonely hearts that we had seen earlier from a different perspective is one of the most hilarious and sweet scenes I've witnessed in a while. It's all handled in a lighthearted and charming manner. The film is chuckle friendly all the way through and the whole cast is perfect. Very highly recommended.

Fans of ERASERHEAD should like this. It's gross and disturbing beyond the call of duty, yet ultimately very amusing. The funniest scene in the film involves necrophilia gone bad. Not for the lactose intolerant!

A couple clean cut kids who don't have much bad happen to them struggle for identity anyway. They are extremely cute and the film is put together artfully; beautiful scenery, split screens, and lots of fades give the film a poetic rhythm. And there's tinkling piano too.

Geez, this is massive cute from top to bottom. Five year old Ei Morisako practically steals the adorableness award from Kyôko Fukada, the Angel. Everybody's attractive, it's not stupid, the Angel loves to drink gin and lime, and there's a cat lady! This movie really packs a feel good punch. There are four different character threads involving lonely hearts which are chaperoned by the Angel and they're all good. Gosh ... everybody, I love you, man.

I was a bit surprised by the sometimes frank and honest dialog coming from Aoi Miyazaki's character in what for the most part is a very family friendly bit of Japanese young love/first love cinema. But it is appropriate for her character, a set-to-mature-at-any-moment young woman deficient in some necessary growth hormones needed to push her over the edge (that when triggered by a first kiss could ultimately be her ... undoing) and seems trapped in young adolescence. It's a very cute and cute-funny, and really sad, sad, film. Miyazaki teeters the edge between coy and seductive so well it made me dizzy ... with delight.

The film is beautifully photographed. The 'heavenly' forest is fairy-tale gorgeous, as are the three young actors we spend time with. The story is engaging too, clearly a novel-adapted one.

This is one of the funniest albeit confounding movies I have seen in a long long time. This is a happy film with a happy ending. A connection is finally made between young and old, the pop group's work is done and the most suicidal of the teenagers, the one whose boyfriend surprises her by landing on her when he jumps off a building in a suicide attempt, but doesn't die until he's had time to discuss the irony of the event with her, (tell me that isn't pure comic genius).

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sitenoise at the movies: Suicide Club

This is just what a guy wants from a Japanese movie: bizarre humor, twisted family relationships, a little sexual deviance, beautiful women. Most guys will probably go for robo-babe Eriko Sato, who does a great job playing mean and self-centered, but it's Hiromi Nagasaku who shines in this film--a multiple award winning performance. Nagasaku plays the innocent, an outsider who has married into a crazy family and she is the only character any one should relate to (or pity). Check out her filmography, she always elevates a film. This one is stylized decadence with a sweet filling. Not for mainstream lovers.

Only from Japan. This has a sensibility and sense of humor similar to ADRIFT IN TOKYO and FUNUKE, SHOW SOME LOVE, YOU LOSERS! Bizarro-land family dynamics. Things are said where the delivery and body language don't play at the same level of intensity as the words. Kyôko Koizumi plays this kind of role perfectly, similar to her character in ADRIFT. Hiromi Nagasaku also has a wonderful small role. The soundtrack is a little trite and annoying in parts as are the 360 degree camera swings but it's funny and intense with a spectacular ending.

One thing is for sure, this film has some of the most gloriously thought out and constructed set designs ever. A lot of the film takes place in the young girl's "apartment" which is about the size of an average K-Mart. Each room is like a different department but it doesn't seem strange once you enter the world Hideaki Anno has created. Anno comes from years working in Anime so his visual imagination works on a different level than most. This is a beautiful film with stunning photography. When the couple are outside they're usually hanging out on or near railroad tracks, creating all kinds of wonderful lines and framing. On the downside, the story is standard "crazy free-spirited girl captivates man" stuff; the dialog and philosophy get a little precious from time to time; neither of the two can really act--they're just supposed to be attractive cool people (they are)--but Anno makes the best of their limitations. This is definitely an indie/arty bag of ennui, but it does do some interesting things and even goes all Dogme 95 for a scene at the end.

sitenoise at the movies: Ritual