by ·Comments Off on Kanto Wanderer (1963, Seijun Suzuki)

Unique structure, starting with the girls in a crime town gazing at the local criminals, then spiraling into the lives of the criminals themselves. Who here is a Kanto wanderer, though?

Gutsy chick Hanako (Fukasaku regular Sanae Nakahara) gets sold into prostitution, sidelining the young women, while scarfaced Kat (Akira Kobayashi, between Rusty Knife and the Yakuza Papers) tries in vain to protect his boss while the rival gang’s warrior Diamond is on a bloody rampage. Kat is also hot for Diamond’s gambler-hustler sister (Hiroko Ito of Tattooed Life), flashing back to when he got his scar over her years earlier.

It’s a pretty okay story, but sometimes leads to great moments like this:

by ·Comments Off on Gemini (1999, Shinya Tsukamoto)

Yukio (Bird People In China star Masahiro Motoki) is a doctor who detests poor people.

Rin (Ryo of Harmful Insect and Scabbard Samurai) is his wife, has lost her memory.

They sleep like this:

One day, the doctor’s fur-lined bloodshot-eyed doppelganger arrives and kills the doctor’s parents.

Then the doppelganger throws the doctor down a well.

He torments the doctor, reveals the truth about their parents and the wife, all the plotty drama less convincing than the excellent visuals and cool music.

by ·Comments Off on The Beast To Die (1980, Toru Murakawa)

Date is a psycho criminal, played by Japan’s coolest man Yûsaku Matsuda, but in this movie’s world violence tends to be awkward and clumsy and nobody is cool. Date is already being tailed by beardy detective Hideo Murota (also beardy as the first doctor in Dogra Magra) when he comes across an aggrieved waiter with frizzy hair (Rikiya of Tampopo and Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter) and enlists him in a bank robbery plot.

Turns out Date is a shellshocked war photographer (always you lose points when you bring real war atrocity footage into your dumbass crime picture, let this be a warning), which is why he “walks like a dead man” and acts weird around his girl even though he’s supposedly a classical music fan and she’s a hot concert pianist. The shellshock doesn’t explain why he tells really long stories though. Having recently watched Heat, I’m gonna be comparing all cops and robbers movies to that – these guys are more intense than Kilmer and company, killing both their girls before/during the big heist.

Pre-game pep talk:

Detective with 30 seconds left to live:

by ·Comments Off on Pleasures of the Flesh (1965, Nagisa Oshima)

Bad-luck dummy Itsushi (guy with the writing on his face in the same year’s Kwaidan) loves his student Shoko (Pale Flower) but she marries someone else. Itsushi tries to protect her by pushing some guy off a train, but is spotted and blackmailed(??) by another dummy who stole a suitcase full of money and wants someone he doesn’t know to watch it while he’s in prison. Itsushi decides he’ll just spend it all on women and let the criminal kill him when his sentence is up. First he shacks up with Hitomi (Green Maya in Gate of Flesh), the ex of a gangster who catches up with her, at the cost of her pinky finger. Then he buys Shizuko (Eros + Massacre), sending the money to her shady husband, who eventually comes to take her back. Then he’s with Nurse Keiko, who feigns illness for a whole month to avoid having sex with him, then tries walking into the sea, then marries him but doesn’t stop hating him. Finally he buys sexy deaf-mute Mari from a thug, who tries to steal the rest of the money. And when his true love Shoko comes back to him in need, he’s just finished spending it all, so she turns him in to the cops.

Hitomi with knife, about to lose a finger:

The year before Violence at Noon, based on a story by the Samurai Reincarnation guy. I’m really enjoying all the pre-1971 Oshima movies, should maybe watch more of those.

Keiko:

Mari:

by ·Comments Off on Fireworks (1997, Takeshi Kitano)

It’s been a minute (twenty years) since I’ve seen this. Officer Kitano lives a depressing life in forced retirement with his sick wife, one friend dead, another crippled and suicidal, and loansharks after him. So he robs a bank, funds the suicidal friend’s new painting hobby, and takes his wife to the beach, fighting off the gangsters and capitulating to the cops.

Won the top prize at Venice, same year as Ossos, Chinese Box, The Tango Lesson, and 4 Little Girls. As usual, Josh Lewis gets it.

by ·Comments Off on Cloud (2024, Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

Ryosuke and Akiko are a young couple driven by money (he’s new, she starred in Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy). He quits his factory job to get rich buying junk (like pricey Sailor Moon snowglobes) and reselling it online, guided by schoolmate Muraoka (the First Love guy) and with help from very loyal assistant Sano.

But somebody is after him from the beginning, laying tripwires in his bike path and throwing car parts through his window, and soon his online identity gets doxxed and a gang of aggrieved customers who got ripped off by his fake designer handbags are after him, breaking into his house and Serpent’s Path-ing him for revenge. I’m not sure what all this double-crossing gun intrigue adds up to, besides the dreamlike final scene which spells out that unchecked greed will lead you to hell.

The Arkanoid Conspiracy:

Vadim Rizov in Filmmaker:

The sound mix elevates the humming of Yoshii’s computer monitor, as if the digitally transmitted virus of Pulse were still going strong years later. The inexplicable proliferation of evil is often Kurosawa’s beat, which can help explain the derangement exhibited by Yoshii’s enemies, a portrayal of capitalism’s deleterious effects as ethics-overriding brainworms. Maintaining a surface tonal grimness while turning the screws on Yoshii, Cloud is nonetheless one of Kurosawa’s goofier outings, full of manic outbursts and violence whose extravagance borders on comic.

by ·Comments Off on Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989, Kazuki Omori)

A very silly movie, rarely ever good, with big sweeping symphonic music that sometimes gets close to ripping off Star Wars. Jeers to Criterion for getting people to take a 1980s Godzilla movie seriously enough that I was tricked into wasting an evening on it.

Army weapon temporarily turns Godz into a Trapper Keeper graphic:

Competing English-speaking forces kill each other to capture Godzilla DNA, then a plant lab gets blown up, then a psychic girl speaks to plants. Botanist creates a plant monster and the next time hitmen come to steal secrets they get Little-Shopped. Plant monster and Godzilla fight.

What? Your IVYSAUR evolved into BIOLLANTE

Some of the human players: Yoshiko Tanaka (right) starred in Imamura’s Black Rain the same year, the plant scientist had starred in Samurai Spy in the 60s, the psychic girl became a Godzilla regular.

Godzilla will return, and return, and return

by ·Comments Off on Ghost in the Shell 2 (2004, Mamoru Oshii)

Very CG movie, but that feels appropriate for the content. Some idiot corporation has produced a bulletproof kung-fu sexbot, and the cybercops have to stop the killing while negotiating different levels of reality, like a boring eXistenZ.

by ·Comments Off on Broken Rage (2024, Takeshi Kitano)

Very good concept, two-part movie combining various Beat/Kitano personas. In each half he’s an elite hitman who gets recognized during a job, so the cops enlist him as a mole to take down a drug dealer. But it’s a typical crime movie for the first half and a silly-assed comedy in the second. Feels long for a one-hour movie, after remembering that zany Japanese comedies are rarely funny to me.