[s0apgun]

Title: Frog River
Genre: Comedy / Bizarre
Writer / Director: Katsuhito Ishii (The Taste of Tea, Funky Forest: The First Contact)

Story:
Tsutomu has it rough when it comes to his masculinity. Shamed when he was younger due to an unlikely dare that he couldnt commit to, he has always lived under the shadow if his peers and never fully stands up for what he believes in. He has since become an aspiring DJ and works as a clerk at a record store where he can play all the music he wants too without being bothered. This all changes though when he meets up with his peer from the past, the ever oppressive and bullying Shiba. Shiba has been bullying Tsutomu for as long as he can remember, always putting on a friendly façade to convince Tsutomu that he is actually his friend. Shiba continually gets him into trouble, but when a mere accident results in Tsutomu having to battle a rival in a kendo duel, will Tsutomu finally gain the courage to face his fears?

Rating: 8.5/10 Popcorns

Music Rating: 10/10 Drum Machines

I love this movie. Go watch it!

qwertyytrewq Wrote:The other opportunity or setback (depending on your point of view) is the gradual "unifying" of Hong Kong and China. Hong Kong movies had always had a different flavor than mainland Chinese movies. The issue here is with the influence of China on Hong Kong, will Hong Kong movies find new areas of inspiration or will the HK style/personality be diluted?

i think HK style is being diluted by this ridiculous use of 3D effects in virtually every movie. it makes them look cheap and silly. if you take a look at some 80's classics, like 'a chinese ghost story', you can see how imaginative their usage of practical effects is. i don't think all special effects should be replaced with 3d graphics - there is something creepy when you know that monster on film is 'man-made' and not just rendered image. just take a look at carpenter's original 'the thing' and recent remake filled with 3D graphics to know what i mean.


ontopic:

叫 (2006)

the first 45 minutes of this are very good. it's a story about a detective investigating a case of strange serial murders. along the way, he loses a grip on what is real and what is imagined/hallucinated. i's really atmospheric and creepy. unfortunately, after the introduction of one major plot point, things become increasingly silly and in the end downright kitschy. i wasn't expecting that from kiyoshi kurosawa.
so i would recommend to avoid this film and maybe find some earlier works by the same director, like 'cure' or 'pulse'.

umetani666 Wrote:incidentally, last week i went to see 浮草物語(original version) with benshi narrator and it was really good. watching silent films this way is a completely different experience and i'd like to see some of european silent classics getting this treatement, too.

That sounds amazing! I saw a silent film with a live pianist once. Do you mean you'd like to see European films with benshi? This is really great I didn't even know about it. Mental to-do list updated.

btw I don't think there is a one-review per forum member limit, so don't be shy to keep this thread one review at a time, folks! And also don't forget to try a random film once in a while, without any reviews, and then spread the word good or bad. Kanpai!

This is giving me a feeling of deja vu, and if it's because I already posted about this somewhere on the forum, I apologize, but Miike's Ichimei (eng. title "Harakiri: Death of a Samurai"). (

). It's a remake of the original, but even better.

It's one of the best movies I've ever seen. Just amazing in every way.

Fair warning: it's very slow, and pretty sure it goes over 2 hours. So if that's a problem for some, whatever. I'm glad it was slow, because it allowed me to take in the details. They were stunning.

For something fast paced, Miike's 13 Assassins is also very good.

tashippy Wrote:Do you mean you'd like to see European films with benshi?

yeah. after the screening, benshi guy(i forgot his name) talked a bit about various things. he mentioned that he also does narration for european silent films, although they were not originally meant to be viewed that way. still sounds interesting, though.
he said that he's been doing benshi for 12 years and is one of about ten professional benshi currently working in japan. he also said ozu hated benshi!

i guess most of the benshi left in japan often tour europe and america. i remember seeing another benshi performance a couple years ago(for kinugasa's 狂った一頁, one of the best silent films, not just japanese) and i'm almost positive it was the same guy.

@Stansfield123

what's the difference between the two? i only watched kobayashi's version. does miike add something new or is it just straightforward retelling of original story?

i thought that '13 assassins' was competent, but too generic, while 'visitor q' was very smart remake and much better than original.

Shion Sono's Land of Hope was pretty boring and I fast forwarded through the boring speechless bits. His previous post disaster movie Himizu was much better.

umetani666 Wrote:砂の女 is by far teshigahara's best film. 'pitfall' and 'a face of another' are solid.

wahnfrieden gave good recommendations. 'vengeance is mine' is good, but imamura's 'the pornographers' is one of the best new wave films i've seen. it starts off as a black comedy about a couple of hoodlums making porn flicks and on the way transforms into wonderfully surreal nightmare. thematically and visually it's amazingly fresh and modern, not dated at all.

i'm in the middle of exploring nagisa oshima's 60's opus and will write about it in the future.

Great recommendations. Buta to gunkan is also great. I love Imamura.

haven't watched that one yet. imamura made a lot of movies, i've seen maybe 6 or 7. some of the more interesting ones that i have yet to watch are 豚と軍艦 and 神々の深き欲望

地獄でなぜ悪い - new sion sono film about amateur filmmmakers and yakuza gang trying to make a movie. i couldn't finish this one...sophomoric and tedius, with constant yelling and overacting. he even reuses some of the music from 愛のむきだし。。。ugh

舟を編む　(The Great Passage) was selected as the Japanese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards, but wasn't nominated.

The film is about a guy who begins to work in the dictionary department of his publishing company. As someone who uses kokugo dics often, I love how much detail they showed about dictionary making, and how much work goes into it. In the film the dictionary department's recruiting question is asking to define the word "right" (右). It made me think about how we all carry the definitions of words within us in a way, and the way they went about collecting new words reminds me of my own word collecting efforts as a language learner. Recommended.

naomi kawase last film 二つ目の窓, that premiered at cannes, is now available on asiatorrents

umetani666 Wrote:地獄でなぜ悪い - new sion sono film about amateur filmmmakers and yakuza gang trying to make a movie. i couldn't finish this one...sophomoric and tedius, with constant yelling and overacting. he even reuses some of the music from 愛のむきだし。。。ugh

Oh God this movie. I finished it, hoping it would become good at some point. I loved 愛のむきだし, and 冷たい熱帯魚 has to be one of the bleakest movie I've ever seen (which in this case is a compliment, because that's what the movie is going for).

but 地獄でなぜ悪い is shit. Starts off okay, but the plot never goes anywhere. It felt like Django Unchained ; a great filmmaker doing self parody.

Tampopo, Tampopo, a thousand times Tampopo.

A woman running a run-down and unsuccessful ramen shop, enlists the help of two truckers and a slew of accumulating characters to turn her business around. Through this story, and the many interweaving sidestories, including but not limited to a yakuza and his woman, who use food in (ah hem) "novel" ways, a woman who rises from her deathbed to cook her family one last meal, and a kouhai who embarasses his superiors at lunch with his extensive food knowledge, the movie explores life and death itself, and not to mention the wonderful world of food, the greatest chain linking the slew of characters.

Every time I watch this movie it makes me want to cry the whole time. Just writing about it is giving me a lump in my throat. It's an absolute diamond, only somewhat disguised as a simple tale. I love this movie so goddamn much.

Welcome Back Mr McDonald (ラヂオの時間) (1997)

This is a comedy set during a live broadcast of a mediocre radio play. One of the actors requests a small alteration to the script. Then the other actors want to make changes too. Then the script has to be altered in other places so as to remain consistent. Little by little, the situation goes completely out of hand. By the end of the night, it takes a lot of creativity and the combined effort of the entire cast and crew to hold the storyline together and, against all odds, bring the tale to a happy ending.

One of my favourite comedies ever. It has a sort of slow start to it, but it gets hilarious as the plot escalates bit by bit. And the characters are very loveable.

As a matter of fact, all the movies made by Mitani Koki (including Rajio no Jikan) are critically acclaimed, light comedies. Must see are: The Uchoten Hotel, The Magic Hour, Suteki na Kanashibari (A Ghost of a Chance) and I am planning to see his latest one: Kiyosu Kaigi

Scabbard Samurai (さや侍) by Matsumoto Hitoshi (yes, THAT Matsumoto from ダウンタウン) - 2011

What a fantastic surprise. I was not expecting much, but it turned out to be a genuinely funny and touching movie on many levels. It follows the story of a deserting, swordless samurai and his daughter. The samurai gets captured and condemned to commit seppuku within 30 days unless he can make the Daimyo's son laugh.

Great acting and deceptively light-hearted, it's actually a pretty deep movie exploring many interesting themes. The humour is what you'd expect from Mr. Matsumoto ; good, simple, silly slapstick, that works great in the context. A great watch for sure, with a great ending. Warmly recommended.

---

Kids Return (キッズ・リターン) by Takeshi Kitano - 1996

I'm a big big fan of Kitano's work. And this movie is one of the wonderful oddities that dots his career. Arguably one of the smartest coming-of-age movie I've seen in a good while.

It follows the story of two high-school bullies trying to find their own path in life. One starts boxing, and the other becomes a Yakuza. The acting is great, the support cast is absolutely amazing, and it's got Kitano's trademark deadpan humor. It's a slow, but very engaging movie, with a great message. Even if you're not a big fan of Kitano, I'd suggest you give this one a fair shot.

Yume uru futari

I think this was the best Japanese movie that I watched. The filming is great, the story is really really interesting and different from anything Japanese I had watched before (for example, 1 minute into the movie and they already show some boobs lol).
I definitely recommend it!!!

Plot:
After losing their restaurant in a fire, a husband and wife come up with a strange plan to rebuild their shattered finances: marrying the husband off to a series of lonely women and defrauding them.

Sion Sono's "Why don't you play in Hell?". As you can tell from the reviews above, not for snobs. But it is for people who know movies. So much concentrated awesomeness. As one reviewer put it on Rotten Tomatoes:
"Quite possibly mankind's greatest achievement."

Maybe not mankind's, but definitely Sion Sono's greatest achievement.

About half the movie is a Kill Bill parody btw, so any comparison to Tarantino without recognizing that is just flat out missing the obvious. And yes, there is massive amounts of yelling and overacting in it. All of it on purpose, and there for good reason.

Stansfield123 Wrote:But it is for people who know movies.

it's more for people who have very fixed expectations of how modern japanese films should be. you know, stuff like stylized violence and fashionable nihilism, that make those films full of 'pure awesomeness' and 'so much win'.
sono is good at catering to westerners' stereotypes about japanese cinema.

Stansfield123 Wrote:And yes, there is massive amounts of yelling and overacting in it. All of it on purpose, and there for good reason.

i think it has more to do with sono's inability/unwillingness to work with actors. when you decide not to direct actors and 'let them do their thing', you usually end up with performances like in 'why don't you play in hell'.
on the other hand, characters in this movie are so one-dimensional that it was probably impossible for actors to do anything with such material.

I think it's fair to say that if live action movies/dorama was the only entertainment coming out of Japan, I would not be learning Japanese.

anotherjohn Wrote:I think it's fair to say that if live action movies/dorama was the only entertainment coming out of Japan, I would not be learning Japanese.

Huh? So none of the movies mentioned in this thread impresses you??

umetani666 Wrote:it's more for people who have very fixed expectations of how modern japanese films should be. you know, stuff like stylized violence and fashionable nihilism, that make those films full of 'pure awesomeness' and 'so much win'.
sono is good at catering to westerners' stereotypes about japanese cinema.

You're the only one in this conversation with expectations about Japanese cinema. You're the one claiming that the movie hasn't lived up to some standard of purity, because it caters to...gasp...non-Japanese (I doubt that's true btw, it's just more snob nonsense - I'm fairly certain that the target audience is young Japanese who like western movies).

I never even mentioned Japanese cinema. I just said it was a great movie. It would've also been a great European or American movie. There was nothing typically Japanese about it, it just happens to take place in Japan. It plays with/parodies elements from several American, European and HK movies.

umetani666 Wrote:i think it has more to do with sono's inability/unwillingness to work with actors. when you decide not to direct actors and 'let them do their thing', you usually end up with performances like in 'why don't you play in hell'.
on the other hand, characters in this movie are so one-dimensional that it was probably impossible for actors to do anything with such material.

Right. Overwhelmingly positive reviews from audiences and critics alike, but the director doesn't know how to work with actors. I guess everyone just missed how terrible this movie was.

It couldn't be you who missed the reason (oh I don't know, because they were trying to make you laugh, not convince you of the complexity and realism of their characters?) why the actors were being over-dramatic.

umetani666 Wrote:you know, stuff like stylized violence and fashionable nihilism

Nihilism? It was a God Damn parody. You're being literal about comedy. All the dead people showed up with their heads and limbs reattached and bandaged up at the end, for God's sake. How can you miss that the over the top violence wasn't supposed to be taken literally?

Realism Wrote:Huh? So none of the movies mentioned in this thread impresses you??

I always like to keep an open mind, so perhaps I spoke too soon - I didn't mean to dismiss *everything* in this thread out of hand.

Long before I started learning Japanese I saw The Seven Samurai, which I enjoyed and will no doubt rewatch in Japanese someday, so there is at least something there for me.

I'm not interested in watching violent or depressing melodrama, so that narrows the field somewhat. I watched the trailer for Robo Geisha, which looked like it might be fun for a while, but not for 90 minutes. And the seemingly obligatory guro scenes (blood squirting out the ass? really?) are not particularly to my taste.

I thought the description of 夢売るふたり sounded interesting, so I watched the trailer, expecting a light-hearted tone, given the premise. But the trailer is full of angry shouting and nasty violence. Watching a woman getting thumped to the ground is not my idea of entertainment.

Having said that, some of the others do sound interesting, and I will be sure to check them out at some point.

Stansfield123 Wrote:You're the only one in this conversation with expectations about Japanese cinema. You're the one claiming that the movie hasn't lived up to some standard of purity, etc.

eh? standard of purity? i wrote that movie was sophomoric and tedius. it recycles sono's past movies and themes, but in a much more lightweight and senile manner.
i also mentioned bad acting. if film is a parody(and this one's isn't btw, it just has some elements of it) does it mean that bad acting is acceptable? is 'himizu' then also a parody? it's as subtle as 'why don't you...', but is a serious drama. how come?

Stansfield123 Wrote:Right. Overwhelmingly positive reviews from audiences and critics alike, but the director doesn't know how to work with actors. I guess everyone just missed how terrible this movie was.

you know that reviews are irrelevant, so i don't know the point of this argument. reviewers can also be(and often are) fanboys.

Stansfield123 Wrote:It couldn't be you who missed the reason (oh I don't know, because they were trying to make you laugh, not convince you of the complexity and realism of their characters?) why the actors were being over-dramatic.

is it possible to miss it? i mean there's even that yellow suit he took from tarantino's film!

Stansfield123 Wrote:Nihilism? It was a God Damn parody. You're being literal about comedy. All the dead people showed up with their heads and limbs reattached and bandaged up at the end, for God's sake. How can you miss that the over the top violence wasn't supposed to be taken literally?

it was a comment on sono's opus in general, but yes, we got it. it's a parody of a parody. the movie is intentionally bad because it's a parody. it's great also because it's parody. can we move on? you still didn't write where's that concentration of awesomeness in this film?

anotherjohn Wrote:

Realism Wrote:Huh? So none of the movies mentioned in this thread impresses you??

I'm not interested in watching violent or depressing melodrama, so that narrows the field somewhat. I watched the trailer for Robo Geisha, which looked like it might be fun for a while, but not for 90 minutes. And the seemingly obligatory guro scenes (blood squirting out the ass? really?) are not particularly to my taste.

Well most Japanese movies aren't in the category of Robo Geisha or Godzilla, it's just the impression that people have.