Posts Tagged ‘Japan’


The Invisible Man vs. The Human Fly

December 2nd, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a.: Tomei Ningen To Hae Otoko
Year: 1957  Runtime: 96′  Director: Mitsuo Murayama
Writer: Hajime Takaiwa   Cinematography: Hiroshi Murai   Music: Tokujiro Okubo
Cast: Yoshiro Kitahara, Ryuji Shinagawa, Junko Kanau, Ikuko Mori

A strange and increasingly violent series of burglaries and murders shakes Japan. The murder victims are usually found stabbed in the back, and killed in tightly controlled or completely locked places. Or on an airplane toilet. Additionally, nobody ever sees or hears any sign of the perpetrator or perpetrators. Why, you could think the killer is invisible! That’s at least what the lead investigator of the case, well-respected young cop Wakabayashi, says in a moment of weakness.

When the policeman utters this rather absurd theory while interviewing some scientists he is friendly with about the airplane toilet business one of them witnessed, they aren’t laughing about his flights of fancy. Ironically, the men are working on some scientific ray stuff whose by-product is invisibility, or, as they prefer it to be called, imperceptibility. They haven’t tested it on a human being yet, though, out of fear that it might be dangerous.

Apart from putting the idea of an invisible copper into his brain, this isn’t getting Wakabayashi anywhere right now. Fortunately, the continuing murder spree gives our hero and his team a lot to distract them. The last few victims have been pointing in the air and swatting at something during their last moments, and witnesses heard the buzzing of a fly. Why, you could think the killer can turn into a fly! Which is nearly, but not quite what is happening. In truth, the killer is using an experimental reagent made during the war to facilitate his escapes. This reagent, you see, can shrink down a man until he is not quite as small as a fly. As SCIENCE(!) teaches, all small creatures are able to float through the air while making the buzzing noise of a fly, so that’s the explanation for the noises the witnesses heard.

About half of the murders are connected by this reagent too, because the victims have all been part in the war crimes committed during its creation, though none of them have been punished for them. This part of the killing spree is vengeance for and by the only man who did get punished, and is now using a rather mad gentleman with an addiction to the reagent to commit the murders. The other half of the killings has something to do with the madman’s obsession with a nightclub singer on whom he likes to perv when he is shrunk down, but let’s not go there.

Obviously, this is the sort of case that can only be cracked if someone is willing to take the risk of becoming an invisible man.

  
  
  

Even though this plot description sounds as awesome as it is dumb, Daiei’s IM vs HF is not quite as awe-inspiring as I would have liked it to be. The film has two major problems it is only just able to conquer to my satisfaction. The first one is scriptwriter Hajime Takaiwa’s peculiar decision to frame much of the movie’s first two thirds as a slightly weird police procedural, with many scenes of earnest looking men doing earnest police business that are only from time to time broken up by the insanity that waits in the plot’s background. The second problem is also one belonging to the script. Takaiwa seems hell-bent to stuff Human Fly as full of elements of the police procedural, the slightly sleazy exploitationer and the mad science horror film as possible. This, however, leaves even the more patient viewer (like me) with a film full of ideas and plot-threads that are never really explored nor explained and in the end more often than not just stop with a hand-waving gesture when Takaiwa is getting bored of them.

Characterization-wise, there’s never a clear through-line for why people act like they do. Just to take some obvious examples, why does the film’s villain suddenly turn from a man out for vengeance and a bit of money into the sort of bad guy more fitting into an issue of The Spider? What does he need the invisibility ray for when he already can turn into a flying, buzzing little man? And, while I’m at it, why doesn’t he just steal it (he is the Human Fly, after all) instead of going for a semi-apocalyptic blackmail plan? And why does the elder scientist’s daughter decide that the invisible scientist already at work isn’t enough and turns into the invisible woman?

I sure could make up some reasons for the characters’ behaviour, and some of the film’s obvious plot holes, but I do think that’s the responsibility of the script, not the audience. Especially the film’s last third gives the impression of Takaiwa giving up and just making stuff up as it goes along without any thought for coherence or sense. Come to think of it, hero pulps like The Spider with their usually heated and sloppily constructed narratives seem like an excellent point of comparison to what Taikawa does here writing-wise.

Comparable to many of the hero pulps, the writing flaws that hinder IM vs HF from becoming the goodSF/crime/horror hybrid movie with a subtextual line about the violence committed by war-touched people in post-war Japan it could have been, are also making it enjoyably nutty and near impossible to dislike for viewers like me who can get excited about a film that’s just full of silly stuff for no good reason other than the clear awesomeness of all silly stuff. This is, after all a film that doesn’t want to realize that flies have wings for a reason, a film that also makes up some nonsense about face and hands of an invisible person getting visible quite fast again because of the rays of the sun while the rest of it doesn’t (no nudity for Japanese people who want to turn visible again, it seems), only to then forget that for the rest of its running time. It also presents turning back from an invisibility by means of SCIENCE(!) as very dangerous, until it’s time to wrap everything up, when it’s not only possible to turn visible again and live, but to seemingly go from one state to the other at will. It’s all very dumb, and reeks of lazy writing as much any modern blockbuster I’ve seen, but it sure is fun to watch what nonsense Takaiwa is going to come up with next.

The film’s other big plus point is Mitsuo Murayama’s (whom I know as one of the Japanese directors who’d go on to work a bit for Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers) direction. For my taste, Murayama isn’t a very consistent stylist, but he is the kind of director always going for the most interesting angle from which to shoot the more boring police procedural scenes, making the parts of IM vs HF most in need of not looking square and boring look much weirder than their actual content and context deserve; if you’re the generous type, you might even suggest Murayama is hinting at the strangeness surrounding his square policemen right from the beginning by way of his stylistic tics. Be that as it may, Murayama’s often peculiarly cramped, close-up and Dutch angle heavy visual style keeps the movie’s rather slow beginning interesting, and helps the mess that is its script stay a mess that is fun to watch even in its worst moments.

The Horror!? is a weekly cult cinema column by Denis Klotz, an aficionado of the obscure and operator of the film blog of the same name.

The Incite Mill

November 4th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 2010  Runtime: 107′  Director: Hideo Nakata
Writer: Satoshi Suzuki   Cinematography: Junichiro Hayashi   Music: Kenji Kawai
Cast: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Haruka Ayase, Satomi Ishihara, Kinya Kitaoji, Nagisa Katahira, Takuro Ohno

Looking at the career of director Hideo Nakata, I can’t avoid the impression he had his difficulties recovering from the catastrophe that was the US The Ring 2, possibly because being responsible for that one is a shame someone with even a little bit of pride in his work would have a hard time living down.

In Nakata’s case, his decline isn’t as horrible as it could be. In fact, compared with Takashi Shimizu, the state of Nakata’s career is absolutely golden, seeing as he’s not making something called Rabbit Horror 3D, and doesn’t seem to have lost all his talent while slumming in Hollywood. The Incite Mill is a clear demonstration that he still has what made me fall in love with his earlier films.

The Incite Mill is a pretty typical entry into the sub-genre of the thriller that is occupied with putting a bunch of characters into an artificially locked down place, having them submit to peculiar and bizarre rules and observing them fastly starting to kill each other off, in part because People Ain’t No Good™, in part because the party responsible for their imprisonment does some subtle and some not so subtle things to, well, incite them to murder. In this variation, the characters have come to the place of their imprisonment out of their own volition, for the promise of a surprising amount of money for just seven days of work in a psychological experiment. Of course, they didn’t expect quite as much violence, nor that they’d be the stars in one of these popular Internet shows nobody in the cast has ever heard of you only encounter in movies.

As this is a Japanese movie, the rules element is quite heavily emphasised, riding one of the hobby horses of Japanese pop culture of the last ten years or so in what is probably a reaction to the country’s still heavily restrictive and regimented society and the resulting pressures to conform on the individual.

  
  
  

There are also many allusions to classic manor mysteries (ten little Indians ahoy), and the Cluedo-inspiring (or Clue-inspiring for you Americans) construction of that very mechanical sub-genre. In a sense, Nakata seems to want to escape the heavy artificiality of his set-up by pointing it out himself. To a degree, this works pretty well, though I couldn’t help but begin to question parts of the story’s basic set-up I would probably not have questioned in a movie less knowingly artificial. Just to take an obvious example: how come the police hasn’t gotten involved if this is not the first time this little show has been broadcast? I can believe in police laziness and incompetence, but I’m pretty sure this sort of thing would at least have been in every news show in the country, and therefore nothing the characters could notknow about. And while I’m thinking about logical problems, how is it that most of the characters actually believe anyone (especially people who never ever show their faces to them) would pay enormous amounts of money for them to take part in a simple psychological experiment? I find this sort of thing much harder to believe than the existence of ghosts, aliens, and vampires, but your mileage may very well vary.

The Incite Mill‘s best moments are interesting enough to let me forget these doubts, however. Besides taking cues from manor mysteries and the brethren in its own sub-genre, the film also does some things that are bound to help a guy like me forget little niggles like logic problems and a lack of coherent worldbuilding. Namely, there is a slight SF element in the form of one of these new-fangled ceiling-bound robots with impressive gripper arms (and some useful gadgets). Even though it isn’t talking or beeping melodically like a good robot should, it’s still there to throw people in jail, inefficiently patrol the Paranoia House’s (yes, that’s how the place of the experiment is named – surely no reason the get paranoid) corridors at night, and to delight my heart to no end. After all, everything is better with robots.

I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t mention the good ensemble cast, consisting – among others – of actual movie star Tatsuya Fujiwara (with whom Nakata has worked before on the Death Note spinoff L: Change the World), veteran actor Kinya Kitaoji, veteran TV actress Nagisa Katahira, and some other members of the TV actor and idol business (Haruka Ayase, Satomi Ishihara, Takura Ohno and others). All of them (yes, even the male idols) deliver performances that are generally convincing and often even quite intense. There’s never the feeling that you’re watching idols act. Rather, these are actors who also take part in the idol rat race, but do know about more than pushing their physical assets into the camera. There’s a certain degree of overacting on display, but overacting seems to fit the hysteria-inducing situation the characters are in quite well. Plus, I prefer conscious and artful overacting to the near-catatonic blandness that is so trendy in English language cinema right now. I understand, all that botox makes one’s face difficult to move, but still…

Hideo Nakata for his part has never been a flashy director, usually preferring a style that subtly influences an audience perception of a story and its characters to one that is always pointing at the director’s technical abilities, which usually works to the detriment of the narrative. Nakata is too self-assured a director to have much of a need for showing off. If you want to see his technical accomplishments, you will find them in the careful framing of scenes, in the precise rhythms his films’ editing creates, and in Nakata’s strong sense for iconic imagery that works as an actual, living part of his movies. In The Incite Mill, Nakata shows that all of these talents are still alive and well in him, serving him as well in his new genre of choice as they did when he was making the horror films which made me fall in love with Japanese horror.

The Horror!? is a weekly cult cinema column by Denis Klotz, an aficionado of the obscure and operator of the film blog of the same name.

13-nin Renzoku Boukouma

September 7th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a. 13-Victim Serial Attacker / Serial Rapist
Year: 1978   Company: Shin-Toho Film Company   Runtime: 60′
Director: Koji Wakamatsu   Writers: Koji Wakamatsu    Cinematography: Hideo Ito
Music: Kaoru Abe   Cast: Kumiko Araki, Mayuko Hino, Kayoko Sugi, Maya Takagi, Ami Takatori, Tensan Umatsu

Ferociously independent writer and director Koji Wakamatsu (United Red Army, Secrets Behind the Wall) has never been one to trifle over the social acceptability of his work, and is well known for his combination of sociopolitical commentary and extreme sex and violence.  Even with that in mind this is a tough one.  Wakamatsu’s 1978 obscurity 13-Victim Serial Attacker concerns a troubled young man who bikes around Tokyo on a seemingly meaningless quest to rape and murder any young woman he finds.  It’s a bleak, discouraging film that offers neither justification nor excuses for its content, and though broadly categorized as “pink” erotica and even horror, trying to classify it as entertainment of any sort is missing the point.

Thematically 13-Victim Serial Attacker can be seen as a direct offshoot of Wakamatsu’s earlier Secrets Behind the Wall, which focused partly on the rise of a homicidal sexual deviant in an anonymous Japanese apartment complex.  Indeed, an early montage of endless indistinguishable apartment buildings echos the past film nicely.  13-Victim Serial Attacker‘s simple and repetitive narrative follows a similarly misguided youth, but perhaps misguided isn’t the word.  Unguided may be more apt.  Shuffling aimlessly about the banal artifices of postwar prosperity, the attitude of the unnamed offender speaks as much of boredom and time-fed anxiety as it does of psychopathy.

The opening moments of the film have our unnamed and overweight protagonist whittling together a custom firearm in a rundown metal works before stuffing it into his omnipresent overalls and speeding off on his bicycle.  He soon finds himself in an apartment complex, where he picks a tenant at random and infiltrates her home by pretending to be a policeman.  Once inside he viciously assaults the inhabitant, a young stay-at-home wife, raping her until he reaches a hollow satisfaction and then unloading his firearm into her uterus.  The brief opening credits fade in over a static shot of her sad remains, sprawled bloody and lifeless and treated with all the respect one might grant a heap of dirty laundry.  When we meet up with the young man again he is wandering around Tokyo Bay, killing time before an opportunity to strike once again arises.

The rest of 13-Victim Serial Attacker follows in a similar vein, as our anonymous assailant happens upon victim after victim, many of whom seem at least as adrift as himself.  A pair of hot-headed lovers near a commuter line, a young artist by the sea, and a host of faceless others are needlessly attacked and murdered in spaces as small as automobiles or public restrooms and as expansive as undeveloped industrial land.  Wakamatsu shows grim imagination in some of the assaults, as when a prostitute and her gent are tied back-to-back by their limbs before the attacker begins his deadly business.  The director also incites reaction from his audience through his brutal and honest depictions of rape, with several of the victims appearing to enjoy themselves as they seek a respite from the violence in the fleeting comfort of sexual arousal.

The most substantial development of the film again echos an earlier Wakamatsu production, as the nameless creature at the story’s center captures a policewoman and holds her hostage in an abandoned warehouse, assaulting her again and again.  The narrative thread reminds strongly of the director’s first independent production, The Embryo Hunts in Secret, in which a well to do businessman takes a female associate hostage and forces her into a variety of degrading subservient behaviors.  That film, which speaks of the oppressive nature of power and the necessity of rebellion, offers the audience a satisfyingly gruesome out.  Here there is nothing of the kind.  After the policewoman misbehaves, nearly drawing the police into her kidnapper’s hideaway, he simply draws his gun and shoots her.  She ends her appearance like so many others, as another statistic to be rattled off on the radio news.

Throughout 13-Victim Serial Attacker the audience is given very little in the way of insight into the character’s reasoning, and the purpose of his actions remains elusive.  When his final victim, a young blind woman, asks him if he enjoys killing he responds as honestly as he likely can – “I don’t know.”  When she summarily asks if why he kills he has no answer for her at all.  Oddly, the only understanding the audience is really allowed to develop for the eponymous serial attacker comes by way of the film’s score, a collection of sparse avante-garde improvisations by renowned alto saxophonist Kaoru Abe, who would die later the same year of a drug overdose.  The harshness of Abe’s performances evoke sensations of loneliness and interminable angst, while a brief encounter between the attacker and Abe, in cameo, draws a rare emotional reaction, a single tearful eye, from the former.

13-Victim Serial Attacker ends abruptly, and with violence every bit as sudden and needless as the rest.  With the police unable to stop him the army (!?) is called into action, and an unstoppable social monster meets the irresistible force of military intervention.  As the sun literally sets on our protagonist’s violent spree, a solitary jeep lies in ambush.  Their meeting is torrid and bloody, and as the unknown man dies his voice fades into the inhuman shriek of Abe’s saxophone.  Wakamatsu’s parting shots recall the opening scene, with the man’s bullet-riddled body floating in Tokyo Bay, the army having left it behind as though it were nothing more than an innocuous bit of garbage.  Its a final act of inhumanity in a film overflowing with them, and Wakamatsu leaves the audience to contemplate its consequence.

As a brutal example of Wakamatsu’s rebellious cinematic spirit 13-Victim Serial Attacker is striking, with exceptional photography from ace cinematographer Hideo Ito (In the Realm of the Senses, here working in cost-effective 16mm) and haunting musical contributions from the late Kaoru Abe.  Its capacity to offend also ranks higher than just about anything else I’ve had the pleasure to cover here, though with Wakamatsu one should always expect a little confrontation.  Those with a hankering for a bit of intellectual pursuit will find the most satisfaction here, while those looking for a good night out would do best to avoid Wakamatsu all together.

And now, a brief note on the title used here.  13-Victim Serial Attacker is my own rough translation from the original Japanese title.  The more common translation of Serial Rapist just isn’t accurate, eliminating the numerical beginning and lending the word boukouma (literally something like “habitual act of violence”) a more precise meaning than it seems to have.  The word nin that follows the number 13 literally means “man” or “person”, and has been translated here as “victim” since these are the people that the word is, in this case, referring to.  Keep in mind that I am in no way trained in the Japanese language, but in the absence of a suitable official English title for this rarely seen film I have done my best.  Whine if you must.

Garo: Red Requiem

September 2nd, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 2010   Runtime: 97′  Director: Keita Amemiya
Writers: Keita Amemiya, Itaru Era   Music: Shunji Inoue
Cast: Ryosei Konishi, Mary Matsuyama, Saori Hara, Yosuke Saito, Masahiro Kuranuki, Kanji Tsuda

Makai Knight Kouga (Ryosei Konishi) is still protecting his part of Japan from the incursions of extra-dimensional evil beings known as Horrors. This time around, our hero has left his home city for some other unnamed Japanese city to hunt the particularly loathsome “Lord” (who just happens to quite clearly be a Lady) Karma (Saori Hara voiced by Kouga’s TV show love interest Mika Hijii, for some reason). Karma resides inside of a mirror that can only be entered by others under very specific circumstances, and uses her victims’ hidden desires (and a couple of freakish henchpeople owning a goth club) to lure them in.

The city Kouga looks for Karma in has its own protectors already: the experienced Makai Priest Akaza (Yosuke Saito) and his assistant Shiguto (Masahiro Kuranuki). For once, both residents seem pretty okay with letting Kouga do his heroic loner thing. That’s not the reaction of another Makai Priest, Rekka (Mary Matsuyama), who arrives just when Kouga does, with a chip on her shoulder and obvious hatred towards Karma in her heart. Rekka wants to kill Karma herself, the fact that she isn’t bonded to a magical armour (it’s not allowed for girls, you know, I suspect because of girl cooties) notwithstanding, and really, given that we’ll later learn that Karma ate Rekka’s father, it’s a reasonable wish.

Obviously, Kouga and Rekka will come to blows, and it will take a series of cheesy speeches to convince the priestess that it’s the job of all female characters in tokusatsu to cast spells (or – as in this case – play magic flute) at the main baddie from the side-lines while a rude, arrogant man with a very large sword does the main fighting, even when she has been shown to be quite good – though not so good as to embarrass the main character – at kicking peoples’ asses.

Anyway, Karma is powerful enough for Kouga to actually need the magical help, so it is a good thing that he’s upgraded his interpersonal skills from “insufferable” to “just not a people person”.

  
  

Despite my problems with its use of its female lead character, the (3D, but who cares?) theatrical feature following the “mature” (and pretty damn great) tokusatsu show Garo is an at times very entertaining piece of work, at least if you’re willing to go with it.

Now, when you hear “theatrical feature”, don’t imagine the film’s budget to be visibly higher than that of the TV show. The rather humble number of locations, the shooting style and the quality of the special effects should make the low budget nature of the endeavour quite obvious.

Fortunately, Red Requiem is still as much Keita Amemiya’s baby as the original show was, and Amemiya is a director and creature designer with a great talent for milking low budgets for all the spectacle they are worth. After all, he’s the guy who once used re-jigged cuckoo clocks as gigantic war machines in a movie, and it kinda-sorta worked.

Whether you think the quality of the CG effects helps or hinders Amemiya in his creative efforts will depend on your tolerance for extremely cheap looking CG.

I have made my peace with unnatural looking CG effects by now, as long as I like the concepts and ideas that are being put on screen with their help. Given my predilections, it would be pretty difficult for me to dislike the aesthetic the digital tech is trying to bring to life in Red Requiem‘s case. It’s a strange, sometimes silly, sometimes cheesy, always very Japanese visual world, where classically Japanese style meets Western kitsch, mock-Gothic trappings, hack and slash videogame choreography and the free-form bizarre, until it becomes pretty difficult to decide on the appropriate reaction to it all. One could of course be an art snob and snort derisively, but it’s just as fair a reaction to be charmed by the combination of the childlike naive, the exploitative and the imaginative on display. (And yeah, there are some of Amemiya’s trademark mime-alike monsters and someone with white wings, too).

  
  

Most of the not-so-digital action and the wire fu is quite good too. Konishi and Matsuyama are convincing at striking the appropriate poses, and Amemiya is still a friend of staging action sequences so that the audience is actually able to see what’s going on. There are two or three moments of too obvious stuntman substitution, but I take a scene that’s so clearly staged I can identify someone as a stuntman over one where I don’t see what’s supposed to go on at all any time.

The acting’s about how you would expect from a project like this. Konishi still doesn’t move a facial muscle to do anything but scowl, but he ispretty fantastic at scowling, and everybody else plays his or her role a bit broader than contemporary Western tastes in acting styles would suggest. However, the characters the actors are playing are pretty broad archetypes too, so I can’t help but find these performances fitting. Certain characters are not meant to be portrayed naturalistically.

On the writing side, Red Requiem is clearly a step back from the comparative thematic richness of the show that spawned it, back into the safer territories of overlong speeches about heroics that take turns with emotional cheese. Still, I can’t say I found myself getting to annoyed by it all, because there’s nothing cynical about this aspect of the film, never a feeling that the film is going through the motions when it sprouts its not very clever philosophy. It’s all honest heart-on-its-sleeve goodliness that takes itself terribly seriously, and while it seems proper to giggle about that, I won’t blame it for being good-natured, silly and a bit dumb. See also, “(What’s So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding”.

So, while I would have loved to watch a Garo movie that kept closer to the clever (or the exceedingly strange) parts of the show it came from, I had my fun with what Red Requiem has to offer, especially in its final third, when Amemiya seems to pull out all the stops and begins to bring anything on screen he could imagine and somehow squeeze in.

The Horror!? is a weekly cult cinema column by Denis Klotz, an aficionado of the obscure and operator of the film blog of the same name.

Tokyo Sonata

August 29th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 2008  Company: Fortissimo Films / Entertainment Farm   Runtime: 120′
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa   Writers: Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Max Mannix, Sachiko Tanaka
Cinematography: Akiko Ashizawa   Music: Kazumasa Hashimoto  Cast: Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyoko Koizumi,
Yu Koyanagi, Kai Inowaki, Haruka Igawa, Kanji Tsuda, Kazuya Kojima, Koji Yakusho, Jaosn Gray
Disc company: Eureka! / Masters of Cinema Series   Video: 1080p 1.85:1
Audio: Dolby TrueHD 2.0 Japanese,  DTS-HD MA 2.0 Japanese, Dolby Digital 2.0 Japanese
Subtitles: English   Disc: BD50 (All Region)   Release Date: 06/22/2009
Available for purchase through Amazon.com

Note: Due to the Sony DADC warehouse fire in London earlier this month the majority of the back-stock for Tokyo Sonata was destroyed.  Eureka / Masters of Cinema are in the process of repressing this, along with many of the other titles whose stock was lost, as combination DVD / Blu-ray editions.  Ignore any indications you may find of this title being out of print (including exorbitant Amazon and eBay marketplace prices1) – it will be back.

There’s one brilliant moment among the many in Tokyo Sonata that stands out to me on every viewing.  As the unemployed businessman father of the story’s central family waits in line at a work placement center, his similarly unemployed businessman friend turns to him and confesses that his wife, from whom he has been hiding his joblessness, is beginning to suspect.  ”I have to find a way to make her trust me2,” he says, before concocting a faked business dinner to bolster the illusion that his life is continuing as usual.  The thought of telling her the truth, and thus accepting his own condition, never crosses his mind.

This brief scene is the crux of Tokyo Sonata, to date the last film from Kiyoshi Kurosawa (best known in the West for his allegorical horror features Cure and Kairo), a film that inhabits a world all too familiar, in which familial communication has broken down and mistrust is the order of the day.  Kurosawa’s knack for developing a lurking sense of unease serves him well here, where he effortlessly transposes it onto the mundane verisimilitude of a traditional family drama.  It’s easy to separate oneself from the surreal threats posed by homicidal mesmerists or ghostly blotches of human grease, but Tokyo Sonata dwells on the far less sensational horrors of everyday life, and is all the more affecting for it.

Set contemporaneously and reflecting a time of growing threats to the family unit (a global economic recession, the war on terror, and the age-old problem of career centrism), Tokyo Sonata follows the implosion and subsequent transcendental rise of the Sasaki family.  One stormy morning father Ryuhei (the excellent Teruyuki Kagawa, Serpent’s Path) is unceremoniously ejected from his administrative position, the price of the outsourcing of his department to nearby China.  Finding himself suddenly astray, with the career upon which he built his identity only a memory, Ryuhei desperately attempts to keep up appearances, spending his regular hours waiting in the long lines at the local work placement center and taking charity lunches alongside the city’s homeless population.

At home Ryuhei’s veneer of authority begins to crack, as his relationship with both his wife and two children continues a steady deterioration set in motion long before his job was lost.  Housewife Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi) itches to express herself from beyond the confines of her daily routine, while wayward older son Takashi (Yu Koyanagi) tries to find his place in life through a series of dead-end jobs.  Meanwhile younger son Kenji (Kai Inowaki in his acting debut), failing to find a place for himself in a traditional school system in which he and his instructor are constantly at each other’s throats, develops an unexpected interest in learning to play the piano.  With his social position lost and the possibility of matching his former position practically non-existent, Ryuhei takes out his frustrations on those from whom he should be seeking support.  He ignores his wife, argues with Takashi and categorically denies Kenji’s request to learn the piano, driving the three of them further and further from him in the process.

  
  
  

As Ryuhei’s attempts at domination increase each of his family members begin their own private rebellions against it.  Takashi, in seeking a direction for his life, joins the military and becomes embroiled in a conflict in the Middle East.  Megumi earns her driver’s license, an expensive privilege, and begins window shopping for both a car and an escape.  Kenji finds a dysfunctional keyboard in a garbage heap and learns to use it as best he can, and stashes his monthly lunch allowance away for secret piano lessons.  All the while tension between the four is growing, and Ryuhei, finding himself trading administrative work for the degrading position of shopping center janitor, seems poised for a violent outburst…

Tokyo Sonata comprises some of the most absurdly horrifying imagery of Kurosawa’s career, imagery whose impact is heightened by the uncomfortable reality it represents.  As Ryuhei wanders through the streets of Tokyo he finds a whole disaffected population of the similarly lost, hordes of former businessmen who have defined themselves by their careers and who now waste away the working hours in public libraries, city parks and charity lunch lines.  The impact of the visuals here is near universal – who can’t relate to losing a job, and the sense of “what now?” hopelessness that so often comes along with it?  Tokyo Sonata also plumbs the unsettling depths to which that hopelessness can drag us all, from the development of self-destructive personalities to the grim finality of suicide.  It is in these moments, in which the lows are at their lowest, that the film proves most unsettling.  As Ryuhei becomes overtly abusive the final thread that holds his family together is ripped away – Kenji attempts to run away, but falls afoul of the law, while Megumi turns an attempted home invasion into an unlikely opportunity for escape…

But with the future at its most uncertain and the Sasaki family in its darkest hour, the sun both proverbially and literally rises – the Kurosawan equivalent of “…tomorrow is another day!”.  The reconciliation of Tokyo Sonata never feels cheap or manipulative, and avoids the happy family cliches of similar efforts.  Instead, at the height of their irresponsibility, the individual members of the Sasaki find themselves, and realize in no uncertain terms that which they are at risk of losing.  Ryuhei and his wife cease to strive for happiness in what they don’t have, and instead find contentedness in what they do, while son Kenji offers a moment of uncompromising beauty – a soulful piano recitation of Debussy’s Claire de Lune.  It’s the concept of mono no aware in action, a fleeting moment of transcendental bliss that’s all the more impacting for the ugliness that preceded it.

There are those who tout Tokyo Sonata as Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s masterpiece, and given the wealth of awards and praise it has garnered I can hardly argue with them.  It is certainly his most accessible film to date, presenting a universal story of familial progression with neither the ambivalence or ambiguity that has marked so much of his prior work.  And while the existential themes familiar to his career are present and accounted for, from the obscure nature of identity to the issues of communication posed by modern society, the end results are all together different.  Bleak as the world of Tokyo Sonata may be, the sun still rises on it and the birds still sing, and its ugliness, like all things, is transient.

  
  
  

Limited to DVD-only editions both domestically and in its native Japan, Kiyoshi Kurosawaw’s award-winning Tokyo Sonata has been given its due respect in a phenomenal Blu-ray edition courtesy of Eureka! Entertainment’s Masters of Cinema series.  Though produced in the United Kingdom I’m pleased to report that this edition of the film is ALL REGION compatible, with even the standard definition supplements rendered in a globally digestible NTSC format, leaving nothing in the way of excuses for why anyone shouldn’t have it in their collection.

Presented in full 1080p for the first time anywhere in the world, Tokyo Sonata is granted a properly framed 1.85:1 transfer and a healthy AVC encode (average video bitrate is 29.4 Mbps) in its Blu-ray debut.  The two hour feature is spread across just over 30 Gb of a dual layer BD50, and the results are both impressive and honest.  After toying with digital filming technology in Doppelganger, Bright Future and Loft, Kurosawa and ace director of photography Akiko Ashizawa have returned to 35mm photography, and I couldn’t be happier.  The imagery here is rich in both real world detail and the untouched texture of the medium itself, a 1-2 combination that I can’t help but love.  Contrast is at healthy levels throughout, as is the intentionally limited color palette.  This won’t be the most vibrant or demo-worthy transfer you’ve seen, and there’s even some printed film damage (specks and a few larger marks) to contend with, but the image remains honest to the source photography throughout.  I suspect this is a reference-level transfer for the title in question, and it retains its deliciously filmic qualities even when the image is zoomed-in to 200-300% its intended size.  Those looking for complaints will find none here today – this one looks precisely as it should.

Eureka present Tokyo Sonata with not one but two HD audio choices in the original 2.0 Japanese – a variable bitrate Dolby TrueHD track at around 600-800 kbps, and a DTS-HD MA option at around 1.7 Mbps.  Though I suspect the DTS-HD MA track, with more than double the bitrate, should be technically stronger, I found it impossible to discern a difference between the two.  Like the majority of Kurosawa’s work, the sound design here is quite subtle and restrained, with occasional punctuation from louder effects and minimalist soundtrack cues.  Dialogue is crisp and intelligible throughout, with no undue technical flaws – not that I was expecting any from this very recent production.  As with the visuals, I’d say the audio here is precisely as it should be.  A lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Japanese option is also included for the sake of completeness.  The optional English subtitles that accompany the feature are clear and legible, appear quite well translated, and don’t suffer the sparsity evident on some translations.  As an uncultured American I did muse at some of the verbage – “smartarse” jumps to mind.  Again, I’ve no complaints.

Supplements appear to duplicate those that appear on the Japanese DVD edition, and with the exception of the UK trailer for the feature (3 minutes, HD) are all presented in 480p SD.  You get a Making Of documentary (61 minutes) that covers literally every aspect of the production and features plenty of behind-the-scenes footage, a Q & A Session (12 minutes) and other footage (15 minutes) from the September 2008 premiere in Tokyo, as well as a discussion of the benefits of seeing the film on DVD from the cast and director (9 minutes).  I enjoy the respectful and appreciative tone of these pieces more than those of their American counterparts, which are typically no more than studio fluff.  The humility of all those involved is not lost on this reviewer, and I look forward to seeing more from all of them.  Rounding things out is a thick 28 page booklet that features a brief director’s statement from Kiyoshi Kurosawa and a excellent original essay by B. Kite.

I really can’t recommend Tokyo Sonata enough, whether you’re a fan of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s brand of cinema or not.  This is certainly a standout piece in his impressive oeuvre, and well deserving of the attention it has received.  This was my first import Blu-ray, as well as my first experience the Masters of Cinema series, and I was duly impressed on both counts.  MoC have put together a stellar high definition release, from the basics of the transfer right on up, and one that no self-respecting cinema buff should be without.  You’ll not find a higher recommendation from me than here – this is must-have stuff.

1 Case in point: At the time of this writing a certain eBay seller has DVDs of the Masters of Cinema series edition of The Burmese Harp listed at a whopping 381 pounds sterling – more than $600!  It’s an exceptional release of an exceptional film, to be sure, but that level of faux-crisis price fixing is shear insanity.
2 Emphasis mine.
in conclusion
Film: Excellent  Video: Excellent  Audio: Excellent   Supplements: Excellent
Harrumphs: None.
Packaging: Standard Blu-ray case, 28-page booklet.
Final Words: Everyone has there favorite director, but for me there’s nothing quite like the K. Kurosawa touch.  Tokyo Sonata is brilliant filmmaking through and through, and easily the director’s most accessible film to date.  There’s nothing at all wrong with the Masters of Cinema series Blu-ray edition of this title, except perhaps that you don’t own it.  A must have! 

Shingeki no Kyojin – Attack on Titan

June 1st, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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publisher: Kodansha,
Shonen Magazine Comics
year: 2009 – 2011 (continuing)
author: Hajime Isayama
Order this book from Amazon.co.jp

From the city stomping of Godzilla and friends to the flatly apocalyptic scenarios of The Last War, Vampire Gokemidoro and Virus, and beyond, the Japanese appetite for fictitious destruction on a near cosmic scale is insatiable.  It’s a fact that’s unsurprising given that disasters of untold magnitude (from the aftermath of WWII to the omnipresent threat of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis) are as much a part of the country’s national identity as cherry blossoms and kimonos.  I suppose that it’s likewise unsurprising to find, in the shadow of nuclear crisis and one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history, that Hajime Isayama’s bleak manga debut Shingeki no Kyojin (literally Advance of the Giants, and subtitled Attack on Titan) has become a smash success.

I have to admit that, while I’ve certainly been aware of the medium, I’d never actually read a manga, nor had I wanted to, until word of Isayama’s bestseller came my way, and the reasons for my interest are as transparent as can be.  Shingeki no Kyojin, which concerns the last remnants of humanity and their fight for survival against an army of man-eating giants, just sounded neat, and the series’ status as a bestseller (its four volumes have sold more than 4.5 million copies to date) certainly helped its case.  I never imagined that the story, or the format in which it was presented, could ever be so engrossing, but so it was that I blazed through the first two volumes in a single pulse-pounding evening.  Color me hooked.

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Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo

May 17th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 2009   Company: I & I Productions   Runtime: 84′
Director: Jessica Oreck   Writers: Jessica Oreck   Videography: Sean Price Williams
Music: Paul Grimstead, J. C. Morrison, Nate Shaw   Disc company: Factory 25   Video: 480i / 1.78:1
Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 Japanese   Subtitles: English   Disc: DVD5   Release Date: 05/17/2011
Reviewed from a screener provided by Factory 25.  Available for purchase through the official film site and Amazon.com.

As I get older my memory grows worse, but if I’m not mistaken Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo is the first documentary feature ever to be reviewed here at Wtf-Film.  For you outsiders, a documentary is just like a regular film, only it’s about real stuff.  I know, I know.  What will the kids think of next?

All joking aside, the sudden realization that I’ve never, in nearly a decade of writing about film, covered a documentary was quite surprising.  I watch a lot of them, after all – generally at least two a week.  It’s not enough to keep pace with the dozen or so feature films I gorge myself with on a weekly basis, but more than enough to warrant pondering how I’ve never happened to write about one before.  Better late than never, I suppose, and Jessica Oreck’s Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo is as fine a place to start as I can think of.

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The Green Slime

February 25th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a. Gamma Sango: Uchu Daisakusen (Gamma 3: Big Space Operation)
Year: 1968   Company: MGM / Ram Films / Southern Cross Feature Film Company / Toei Co. ltd
Runtime: 101′   Director: Kinji Fukasaku   Writers: Bill Finger, Ivan Reiner, Tom Rowe, Charles Sinclair
Cinematography: Yoshikazu Yamasawa   Music: Charles Fox, Toshiaki Tsushima
Cast: Robert Horton, Luciana Paluzzi, Richard Jaeckel, Bud Widom, Ted Gunther, David Yorston
Robert Dunham, Gary Randolf, Jack Morris, Eugene Vince, Don Plante, Kathy Horan, Linda Miller
Disc company: Warner Archive Collection   Video: 2.35:1 progressive    Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
Subtitles: None   Disc: DVD-R   Release Date: 10/26/2010   Product link: Amazon.com

After the discovery of an impending asteroid impact of apocalyptic proportions, Commander Rankin (Horton) heads to Earth-orbiting space station Gamma III – home of his old flame (Paluzzi) and former friend (Jaeckel) – where he mounts an all or nothing anti-asteroid offensive.  The mission is a success and the asteroid is destroyed, but a more insidious threat is lurking… Unbeknownst to Rankin and his crew a speck of primitive space-life is transferred from the renegade asteroid to the space station, where it spawns an army of tentacled monsters with a passion to kill, kill, kill!

The Green Slime is a delightful, dreadful, confounding paradox of late-’60s science fiction mayhem – an overly-ambitious and under-achieving opus that stands alone at both the top and bottom of its own singular heap.  Produced by Ivan Reiner and Walter Manley in cooperation with Japan’s Toei Company The Green Slime is the narratively unrelated but thematically similar offshoot of Antonio Margheriti’s Gamma One series, a collection of space station-oriented sci-fi cheapies produced in Italy by Reiner and Manley in the middle-’60s and distributed, with the exception of 1966′s Planet on the Prowl, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.  Though a considerable ad campaign and wide domestic and international distribution granted it a moderate financial success The Green Slime was a critical failure, and its release marked the end of Reiner and Manley’s careers in film production.

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Tokyo Sonata – Trailer

February 8th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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The latest film from acclaimed director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008′s Tokyo Sonata easily ranks as one of the best films of the last decade with this reviewer.  Focusing on a family in which distrust is already festering, Sonata concerns a Japanese businessman (Teruyuki Kagawa) who loses his job to outsourcing – a fact he conceals so as to save face with his wife, children and friends.  Tensions within the family quickly begin to rise, leading to disturbing consequences and a conclusion that’s as breathtaking as it is unexpected.

This is the UK trailer for the film, which is currently only available domestically on DVD.  Eureka has issued it as a gorgeous and, importantly, all region Blu-ray package (currently available for less than £10 at Amazon.co.uk) as part of their Masters of Cinema series.  A review is forthcoming, but I’ve no problem recommending this one in advance.

This one is 100% work safe, so dig in!


Godzilla Raids Again

December 21st, 2010 | article by | 3 Comments »
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Origintal Release Titles: Gojira no Gyakushu / Gigantis the Fire Monster
Year: 1955   Company: Toho Co. Ltd.   Runtime: 82′   Director: Motoyoshi Oda
Writers: Shigiaki Hidaka, Takeo Murata, Shigeru Kayama (for his novel “Gojira“)
Cinematography: Seiichi Endo   Music: Masaruo Sato   SPFX Director: Eiji Tsuburaya
Cast: Hiroshi Koizumi, Setsuko Wakayama, Minoru Chiaki, Takashi Shimura, Masao Shimizu,
Seijiro Onda, Sonosuke Sawamura, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Haruo Nakajima, Katsumi Tezuka
Order this film on DVD (Japanese and English versions) from Amazon.com

At the end of the 1954 classic Godzilla, paleontologist Dr. Yamane (veteran Toho star Takashi Shimura) gravely intones that, should nuclear testing continue unchecked, the world may soon be faced with more Godzillas.  He couldn’t have guessed how right he was, though for other reasons all together.  Godzilla was a smash success in Japan, seeing over 9 million admissions in its initial theatrical run and earning two Japanese Academy Award nominations, and producer / distributor Toho Company was eager to strike again while the iron was hot.  It wouldn’t take long for Dr. Yamane’s prediction to come true - Godzilla Raids Again marched onto Japanese cinema screens in April of 1955, less than 6 months after the debut of its predecessor.

Not long after the events of the first film a downed tuna spotter and his friend discover a new Godzilla, alive and well on a remote Japanese island.  Worse still, the creature seems locked in mortal combat with a new giant monster – the prehistoric Angilas!  The Self-Defense Force mobilizes and the country lies in wait, fearing the destruction that would result should the dueling titans make landfall…

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Garo

December 10th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 2005 – 2006   Runtime: 25′ (25 ep.)   Directors: Keia Amemiya, Makoto Yokoyama, Kengo Kaji
Writer: Yuji Kobayashi   Music: Shinji Kinoshita, Koichi Ota
Cast: Hiroki Konishi, Mika Hijii, Ray Fujita, Masaki Kyomoto

A secret war is raging (at least in Japan). Creatures from the Underworld known as Horrors regularly creep through the cracks between dimensions to possess humans whose darkest impulses accommodate the character of the respective horror and use them to commit various atrocities. Fortunately, humankind is protected by the Makai Knights, warriors of mystical bloodlines who are able to use a magical metal known as soul metal. When need be, a Makai Knight can conjure up full body armour made from the material, but (because that’s how it goes in tokusatsu shows) they can’t stand being clad in the magical armour for long.

Garo follows the attempts of the perma-scowling Golden Knight Kouga Saezima aka Golden Fang aka Garo (Hiroki Konishi, now called Ryosei Konishi to confuse everyone as much as possible) to keep his territory (which might be the Eastern half of Japan or of Tokyo) safe from the Horrors.

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Don’t Look Up

September 10th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a. Joyu-rei
company: Bandai Visual Co.
year: 1996
runtime: 75′
director: Hideo Nakata
cast: Yurei Yanagi, Yasuyo Shirashima,
Kei Ishibashi, Dan Li,
Ren Ohsugi
writers: Hideo Nakata
and Hiroshi Takahashi
cinematography: Takeshi Hamada
music: Akifumi Kawamura
Not on home video in the USA

Director Toshio Murai (Yurei Yanagi) is shooting what looks like a stylish, old-fashioned melodrama on a very tight schedule, but doesn’t seem to have much of a problem coping with the latter.

Something about the dailies of the first day of shooting isn’t right, though. At one point, the face of the movie’s lead actress Hitomi (Yasuyo Shirashima) is suddenly superimposed with the face of another actress, then the whole film disappears and turns into an older movie, complete with a long-haired woman lurking in the background. Obviously, the film stock they are using are outtakes that were supposed to be thrown out, but somehow landed in the wrong place. Murai thinks he remembers the film from his childhood, but apart from asking someone working in the studio’s archive to take a look at it, he just shrugs and continues his work.

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Prophecies of Nostradamus: Catastrophe 1999 (1974)

August 23rd, 2010 | article by | 1 Comment »
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Toho’s epic 1974 disaster-a-minute masterpiece needs no introduction to anyone familiar with this site, where our review of it remains one of our top-read month after month.  Directed by Toshio Masuda (Tokyo Blackout) and starring Tetsuro Tanba (Bohachi Boshido: Code of the Forgotten Eight), Toshio Kurosawa (Evil of Dracula), Kaoru Yumi (ESPY) and Yoko Tsukasa (Yojimbo), the film was pushed into production after the box office superstardom of 1973′s Submersion of Japan and took top honors in its release year of 1974.  Prophecies of Nostradamus: Catastrophe 1999 (original title, Nosutoradamusu no Daiyogen) remains a picture well ahead of its time in terms of concept, predating the nonsense mega-disaster hits of Roland Emmerich by several decades.

Though sold to me as a lobby card, this Mexican poster measures in at a considerably larger 16.5 x 21 inches.  Prophecies of Nostradamus: Catastrophe 1999 is another Toho effort produced with international distribution in mind, and included a lengthy English language sequence set in New Guinea, in which an investigative team goes out to hunt for one earlier lost only to discover that they have been reduced to a state of putrid living-death by a lingering radioactive fog.  This sequence would cause Toho considerable trouble shortly after release, when the shocking nature of both it and a late-film look into a post-apocalyptic future enraged advocates for survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The offending footage was subsequently cut from Japanese release prints, with Toho banning the picture from screenings entirely after its initial theatrical run.

Nevertheless, the film made a pretty penny in international markets and left an indelible impression on my young mind when it finally made its way to domestic television in the early ’80s in its truncated The Last Days of Planet Earth form.  This poster showcases one of the film’s most memorable moments, featuring two stills from the controversial New Guinea sequence.  The rest of the artwork, including a ship on a frozen sea, a Concorde SST, a desolate war-ravaged Earth and a chillingly reflected cityscape, are culled from the original Japanese one-sheet design.  The title translates to The End of the World: The Prophecies of Nostradamus Fulfilled! (El Fin del Mundo: ¡Las Profecias de Nostradamus se Cumplen!).


Gamera vs. Barugon

June 19th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a.: Daikaiju Ketto: Gamera tai Barugon
(lit. Giant Monster Duel: Gamera Against Barugon)
film rating:
disc rating:
company: Daiei Motion Picture Co.
year: 1966
runtime: 100′
director: Shigeo Tanaka
cast: Kojiro Hongo, Kyoko Enami,
Koji Fujiyama, Takuya Fujioka,
Yuzo Hayakawa, Akira Natsuki,
Yoshiro Kitahara, Bontaro Miake
writers: Nisan Takahashi
cinematography: Michio Takahashi
music: Chuji Kinoshita
Reviewed from a screener provided
by Shout! Factory LLC
Order this film from Amazon.com

Gamera vs. Barugon is slated for release on special edition DVD from Shout! Factory on July 6th, and is available for pre-order through Amazon.com and other online retailers.

Anxious to capitalize on the unexpected success of 1965′s Gamera, the Giant Monster, Daiei managed to push a bigger budgeted sequel into theaters less than six months after the fact (at the same time slating the production of their period monster trilogy Daimajin, the first of which premiered alongside this film).  Shot in ‘Scope and color by veteran director Shigeo Tanaka (The Great Wall) with …the Giant Monster director Noriaki Yuasa in charge of special effects, Gamera vs. Barugon is both bigger and bolder than its predecessor, and quite the serious affair in spite of the ludicrous monster antics.

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Wolfguy: Enraged Lycanthrope

June 4th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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company: Toei Films Tokyo
year: 1975
runtime: 86′
director: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi
cast: Sonny Chiba, Etsuko Nami,
Kani Kobayashi, Yayoi Watanabe
writer: Kazumasa Hirai
cinematography: Yoshio Nakajima
music: Hiroshi Baba
Not available on home video

Hard-nosed reporter who never does any reporting Inugami (Sonny Chiba) just happens to be the last of a tribe of werewolves, making him not a ravening beast at the night (and day) of the full moon, but giving him an old-school Wolverine-like self-healing ability as well as superhuman strength and agility on these nights. One non-full moon night, Inugami stumbles over a panicked man running through the city streets screaming something about a tiger and a girl named Miki. Before you can say “Very peculiar, Watson”, an invisible force rips the guy to shreds.

That – and the vision of a tiger – is certainly bizarre enough to get Inugami interested. With the help of his journalist colleague and friend Arai, the reporter soon discovers that the victim was once part of a rock band known as the Mobs, four charming guys who raped a singer named Miki Ogata (Nami Etsuko?). They didn’t only do the deed for kicks, but also because their yakuza-controlled management asked them to, to “teach Miki a lesson”.

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