by ·Comments Off on Tokyo Tribe (2014, Sion Sono)

Japanese gang-war rap musical, opens with an epic long take, then blonde gang boss Mera (Ryôhei Suzuki of Kurosawa’s Seventh Code) explains the local gangs and neighborhoods to a noob cop he has stripped and threatened with a knife, and we already know what the movie is like: it’s gross and loud and sexist, and kinda fun as hell.

Mera ambushes his hated rivals, the peaceful gang Musashino led by Kai, and kills a guy, and his body is wheeled back home with a new girl in tow (Nana Seino). Meanwhile, Mera ally Lord Buppa (played by a pop-eyed Riki Takeuchi, a classic Miike star I haven’t seen since Battle Royale 2) is sent two elite fighters by the High Priest to recover HP’s missing daughter Erika (the new girl, obvs), and previously unknown gang the Waru is activated.

A holographic message from the wise High Priest:

Kai bands together all the Tokyo tribes, including the Gira Gira Girls and Neri Muthafuckaz and probably a couple more, to fight this new threat. It all looks impressively choreographed and real, neon lights and stunt fights, then a super-fake CG tank comes along and blows it. Still, for a full two hours of rap mayhem, this doesn’t lose steam. I’d been avoiding Sion Sono since Noriko’s Dinner Table, but this and Why Don’t You Play In Hell were fun, so maybe I should watch his four-hour masterpiece Love Exposure sometime.

by ·Comments Off on Marjorie Prime (2017, Michael Almereyda)

A great improvement on that Black Mirror with the inflatable husband-substitute… three acts of interactions with holograms programmed to behave like lost loved ones. First, Lois Smith (Minority Report, and not Almereyda’s Twister but the other one) is given a virtual version of her late husband, as his handsome younger self (Black Mirror star Jon Hamm), by their daughter Geena Davis and husband Tim Robbins. Here the word “prime” refers to the A.I. replica, not the original, as in World of Tomorrow. Already things are unsteady, since Hamm Prime is learning how to be a more accurate version of himself, and ditto Smith since her memory is becoming unreliable.

In the second part, Smith has passed away, and her prime provides little comfort for her daughter, who has committed suicide by part three, and whose prime provides little comfort for Tim Robbins. Great final scene where the three primes chat with each other, being open about topics which were forbidden to the living. Some of my favorite actors together in a room with a good script, something you’d assume would be done all the time, but which seems hard to pull off in practice. You can tell it’s based on a play, but it’s not overly stagey, with low-light and backlight effects and great unsettling string music by Mica Levi (Under the Skin).