Midori-ko

Zipangufest's Beyond Anime segment consisted of three short films: all animated, none 'beyond' anything - except belief, in a couple of cases.

Encounters is a shoddy little adventure that looks like it's been shot and edited in a child's bedroom, by a child, in the space of a couple of hours. Featuring Action Men figures in the key roles, it's clearly supposed to be a self-consciously ramshackle, hilariously ironic re-run of any lame anime you care to mention. But since the sole joke is the fact that everything is done with jerky toys, it gets old after about a minute. Unfortunately, it goes on for a further 29.

Next up, The Great Rabbit. Despite its 7 minute running time, this short managed the impressive feat of outstaying its welcome. Simultaneously dismal and baffling.

Thank goodness then for the Svankmajer-esque Midori-ko, the longest of the 3 films, which uses some excellent hand-drawn animation (relatively static, but stylish) to tell the story of a young girl who discovers an extraterrestrial seed pod. The pod hatches what appears to be an alien vegetable but she detects a face on it and it later grows appendages. Analyzed through her handy USB cat scanner, it does appear to be vegetable in composition and everyone who encounters the strange plant-being wants to eat it. This appalls Midori - until she accidentally licks it herself and discovers how delicious it is...

Whether the film is pro- or anti-Vegetarian is quite hard to tell, but it doesn't really matter - some surprisingly grotesque, visceral imagery compliments a weird and wonderful story. Kind of like finding Miyazaki's demented cousin locked in a cupboard under the stairs.

緑子
Dir. Keita Kurosaka, 2010 

Portrait of Hell

Not quite as bizarre as it looks from the cover (and I must confess, as bizarre as I was hoping), Portrait of Hell is a slightly twisted morality tale that takes the form of a ghost story.

Lord Hosokawa, a vainglorious feudal overlord desires renowned Korean court painter Yoshihide to create an earthly paradise on the walls of his Buddhist temple. Yoshihide however, only seems capable of painting ugliness - he paints only what his mind's eye sees and all it sees is depravity and death.

Incensed by Yoshihide's stubborn refusal to bend to his will, Hosokawa decides that if he can't have heaven, he will have the perfect hell. He kidnaps Yoshihide's daughter Yoshika and uses her as bait to lure Yoshihide into his final deadly act of creation. 

Despite being relatively slow-paced, Portrait of Hell never drags - its world is a captivating one. The film has the look and feel of a stage play, perhaps because it was shot entirely in the studio rather than on location - but strangely, that works to its advantage. The decidedly ropey special effects are easily forgiven in light of the film's plus points: the lavish costumes and sets, the beguiling, languidly surreal atmosphere and most importantly, an unusual story populated with some memorable characters.

地獄変

Dir. Shiro Toyoda, 1969

Dead Or Alive 2

I can think of few other directors who would go so far out of their way to make as contrary a sequel as Dead Or Alive 2. It's a mark of Miike's rebelliousness and his distaste for the diminishing creative returns of the franchise model that the second film in the DOA trilogy bears almost no resemblance to the original. It's also a mark of his continual need to push the film-making envelope, defying audience expectation in the process.

DOA 2 stars the same two leads as DOA, Sho Aikawa and Riki Takeuchi, but they don't reprise their roles from that film (how could they?!). Instead, they play a pair of hit men, working independtly of one another, who end up targeting the same mark. Sawada beats Okamoto to the kill, but Okamoto decides to take his clients' money anyway and run. They both flee to the same small island, where it transpires they grew up together; childhood friends. The second act of the movie sees a reawakening of their friendship and leads to the formation of a plan - to work together and put their ill-gotten gains to good use, reinvesting hit money in foreign aid. Nothing is ever quite so black and white with Miike though - redemption for his characters comes at a heavy cost.

Although it doesn't quite deliver the compulsive viewing of its predecessor, DOA 2 is nevertheless an intriguing movie. By turns humourous, contemplative and surprisingly poignant, it's full of unexpected scenes, like the childrens' play Sawada and Okamoto decide to stage. The intrusion of adult themes into the play echo what is arguably the main theme of DOA 2 - loss of innocence, or rather, the gradual dissolution of childhood; the indefinable transition from what we were into what we become. This is framed throughout by the question "where are you?"; addressed, perhaps, to the viewer's inner child. In many ways, the film is reminiscent of Kitano Takeshi's style; extreme violence counterpointing a quiet reflection on the human condition; on friendship, memory and shared experience.

犯罪者 2
Dir. Takashi Miike, 2000

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Another anime based on older source material; in this case, Yasutaka Tsutui's 1967 novel of the same name.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is an undeniably charming piece of animation, with a deceptively simplistic visual style. Deceptive because your first impression is of how clean and uncluttered it feels, almost minimalistic, but then you gradually become aware of subtle layers of detail, which never compete for your eye's attention but are there if you allow your gaze to drift around the frame.

The plot, concerning a high school girl, Makoto, who discovers the ability to leap backwards through time, is quirkily entertaining, if slight. It's got a kind of 80s feel to it - the sort of movie you could easily imagine getting made back then, when literally everyone was leaping around time in Air Jordans and drainpipe jeans - sort of like Quantum Leap meets Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Temporal back flips and metaphysical wizardry aside, it does basically boil down to a teen romance played out across time, space, death and reality (to lift a phrase). But that's no bad thing - even though it verges on schmaltzy when I might have preferred it to verge on edgy, and suffers from the same gaping plot holes that beleaguer any film concerning time travel, it's still a thoroughly entertaining watch.

From the point of view of someone who appreciates great artwork in anime, the story is a distant second to the enchantment of the hand-drawn animation; a triumph of understatement.

時をかける少女
Dir. Mamoru Hosoda, 2006

Metropolis

Metropolis is based on Osamu Tezuka's unfinished manga from 1949, itself inspired by Fritz Lang's 1927 silent film of the same name. The central theme of both manga and anime is the hubris of Man and his inevitable downfall, symbolised by the fall of the Tower of Babel, as it is in Lang's film.

There are also character analogues - Duke Red could be John Fredersen, Dr. Loughton echoes Rotwang, the mad professor, and Tima, created at the behest of Metropolis's ruler, the robot Maria. Beyond this though, any similarities in plot are superficial at best; Rintaro's Metropolis is about a militarized Ziggurat, Duke Red's own Babylonian tower, through which he plans to consolidate his power base. The Ziggurat is designed to be the ultimate weapon, realized by its integration with Tima - a robotic super-human; the tower's 'brain'. This is where the hand of screenwriter and Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo really shows itself: Tima, only human in outward appearance, carries within her a potential for transformation that is far more destructive and all-encompassing than her creators could have imagined.

Despite being relatively multi-faceted, however, the story is hardly original, riffing on eveything from Tezuka's original Metropolis, Akira, Ghost in the Shell... through to Ghostbusters even (the old Gozerian paradigm). Behind this furious hotchpotch of narrative elements, the film is scored by a strangely ill-fitting Swing Jazz soundtrack (which morphs alarmingly at one point into what can only be described as Jazz Trance). But then there's the visuals - and what visuals they are. A combination of beautifully modelled CGI and hand-drawn cell animation, that reach an apex of immaculate, fluid detail in the destruction of Duke Red's tower; the symbolic liberation of Metropolis. It's a credit to Rintaro that he perceives digital animation as merely another tool in his armoury and does not, as other directors have done, abandon his artistic principles for technology fetishism.

One for the eyes this; send your brain on vacation.

メトロポリス
Dir. Rintaro, 2001

Nobody Knows

Another graduate of the Cannes circuit, Nobody Knows is based on a real life event from the late Eighties where four children were abandoned by their mother and left to fend for themselves in their Tokyo apartment, with tragic consequences.

What I like about this film is its lightness of touch - it's a modern morality tale that resists melodrama, sentimentality and judgementalism almost entirely (the score too, generally eschews emotional manipulation), in lieu of an intimate portrait of the everyday existence of the four abandoned kids. The children all act very well, especially Yuya Yagira as 12-year old Akira, who impresses as the nominal head of the household, struggling to come to terms with his mother's neglect; forced to deal with an inner conflict between wanting a childhood for himself and assuming responsibility for his younger siblings. In the end, naivety engenders a slow descent into unpaid bills, squalor and malnutrition. When I say 'slow descent' though, it's painfully slow and that's really the film's Achilles' heel. It gives you time to really get to know the characters, but not much actually happens (until the bleak finale) - and with a running time of 2 hours 20 minutes, that means it frequently drags.

So despite being commendably realistic and refreshingly subtle in its execution, it's not a film I can imagine wanting to revisit any time soon.

誰も知らない
Dir. Koreeda Hirokazu, 2004

Tokyo!

Three short films set in Tokyo, linked by a current of surrealism, and also by the fact that none of the directors are Japanese; a sense of being on the outside, looking in.

First up is a typically whimsical piece from Michel Gondry about a woman who transforms into a chair. It starts off quite slowly, with rather a mundane, albeit nicely acted setup - then throws you the curve ball you were expecting (it's Gondry!), before ending on an upbeat note. Slight, but I enjoyed it.

Carax's segment, Merde, is less successful. For all of it's superficial oddness, it fails to engage - the court sequence is particularly tedious. Carax's shock tactics aren't justified by what's on offer - it's not very funny and too lightweight for social satire. Capital punishment and xenophobia in Japan are contentious subjects and potentially interesting material for a film, but their treatment here is heavy-handed - not helped any by the less than subtle imagery of religious martyrdom.

This is counterpointed by an understated, gently satirical film from Joon-ho Bong, further underlining his status as one of the up and coming directors from South East Asia. Bong takes a sideways look at the peculiarly Japanese phenomenon of hikikomori (acute social withdrawal; the act of voluntarily excluding oneself from the outside world). The absurdity of the 'condition' - and on a wider level, Japan's social fragmentation - is highlighted by one man's earth-moving experience with a pizza delivery girl, following 10 years of solitary confinement in his apartment. A little gem.

Dir. Michel Gondry / Leos Carax / Joon-ho Bong, 2008

Raigyo

More often that not, a low rating on IMDb is a sure sign that a film is a turkey, but once in a while it's a sign that a lot of people just haven't got it. I think Raigyo falls into this second camp.

It's sold as 'Pinku Eiga' ('Pink Cinema' - Japan's surprisingly creative take on Erotica) but there's not a lot of sex, and virtually no eroticism to justify the tag. Instead we get a bleak, but engaging journey into mental illness, disconnection and psychopathy. If I'm honest, after watching the yawn-fest that was Kokkuri, I didn't expect much from Zeze, but here he proves himself to be a filmmaker of some skill. Raigyo perfectly captures a sense of desolate liminality - the action taking place in a part-marshland, part-industrial hinterland. The characters too, hover somewhere between intrigue and inscrutability; misfits, like the snake-headed fish of the film's title.

Given its short run time (75 mins), Raigyo, is, if anything, a little too opaque for its own good. The violence is explicit - and shocking in its banality - but the protagonists' motivations and back stories are barely fleshed out at all. We're plunged right into the here and now, and, like the police in the film, left to fill in the blanks. The final CCTV tracking shot brings this point home, as Yanai and his strange companion disappear into the crowd. In a way though, its refusal to explain is a large part of the film's appeal.

雷魚
Dir. Takahisa Zeze, 1997

One Missed Call

Miike phoning it in.

Sorry, couldn't resist. As it happens, it's only partly true - One Missed Call is a slickly effective J-Horror with scares in all the right places. The basic premise is that people receive a call on their mobile phone, apparently from their own number, which leaves an eerie voicemail message foretelling of their imminent death. As one person is killed, another number is called from the victim's phone and so the 'virus' propagates.

In a post-production interview, Miike reveals that he doesn't particularly like straight-up horror films; that he wants a bit more from his ¥1800 cinema ticket than a few scares. Nevertheless, a straight-up horror is pretty much what he delivers - yes, there is a decent back story, centering around child abuse (the abused becoming the abuser) and Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy, but not in the kind of depth that would elevate it into another genre.

Essentially, One Missed Call is derivative of the best J-Horror: if you put Ring, The Grudge and Dark Water into a blender and pressed Go, this is pretty much what you'd expect. Except that with most directors what you'd end up with is a grey sludge, rather than the smooth, vivid cocktail of elements that is One Missed Call: the acting is good, the sets and lighting immaculate (it's hard to imagine a creepier setting than an abandoned hospital), the story coherent, and the script taut. It's also a lesson in manipulating atmosphere - for all the (very effective) supernatural goings on, I think the scene that made me jump highest out of my seat involved a couple of crows banging into the window of a gloomy apartment block. Miike is a hugely accomplished filmmaker, capable of so much more than this, but as J-Horror goes, it's probably still in the top 10%.

着信アリ
Dir. Takashi Miike, 2004

Juon

OK, so this really is the first film in The Grudge franchise - the made for TV movie, Juon. I don't know whether it's because I saw the theatrical release first and had an inkling of what to expect, but Juon was nowhere near as hard to follow. In terms of chronology, it's not linear, but mercifully, neither does it jump around like a frog on a hot plate. Instead, you get six distinct stories - or chapters - each centered around one character and their, usually fatal, experience of the curse. These function nicely as a series of vignettes, putting me in mind of a short story collection like Creep Show, where each episode ratchets up the tension before the pay-off.

I like the fact that more time was spent on the Toshio character as well - the back story of Toshio and Kayako is hinted at in the theatrical release, but details like the neglect of Toshio, Kayako's obsession with Toshio's teacher and her husband's jealousy of him does help to establish more of a context for subsequent events.

Naturally, being a TV movie, the budget is considerably lower and it does occasionally show - but mostly just in terms of flat lighting and slightly cheap-looking sets (interestingly though, the same set is used for the Saeki house as in the theatrical release). Special effects are used judiciously, to create some great moments - the first reveal of Kayako in the attic is very creepy and there's pure schlock horror fun to be had in the scene where a bloodied Kanna ascends a staircase in laboured steps, then slowly turns around to gape jawless at her stricken mother. The ending of the film, which uses no more special effects than a mutual gaze, has to be one of the best WTF moments in recent memory.

呪怨
Dir. Takashi Shimizu, 2000

Rashomon

The second of six films shown at The Barbican as part of their mini Kurosawa retrospective - and the first of three that I plan to see there.

According to the ordinance of the film criti-rati, I should probably be telling you how this is an unimpeachable masterwork, perfect in every respect, but at risk of being labelled a philistine, I have to say, in my view, it isn't. Yes, technically, in cinematographic terms, Rashomon is a cut above. Its distinctive visual style, as well as groundbreaking storytelling techniques have no doubt been very influential on subsequent generations of filmmakers, but thematically I found it to be somewhat unsatisfying.

The basic premise goes thus: three men take refuge from a storm in a temple and relate the story of a bandit's murder of a nobleman and rape of his mistress. The story is told four ways: from the perspective of each protagonist and also from the perspective of one of the three men in the temple, who claimed to witness the event. Everyones' story is different, filtered through the gauze of self-interest, which leads the 'honest rogue' among the three to the conclusion that human beings are incapable of absolute truth and all basically absurd and untrustworthy. A fact which, in Beckettian style, he takes great delight in. This idea might have been new to cinema - in the way it's told, visually - but writers had been employing similar devices for centuries. The fundamental problem with Rashomon though, is that the protagonists are reduced to archetypes - the bandit, the nobleman, the priest, are functions of philosophy rather than fully-realized characters. Now, before I'm accused of blatant hypocrisy at this point by certain parties (you know who you are!), I confess that in a recent debate on Tarkovsky's Stalker, these same observations were made about that film and I poo-pooed them. So yes, I'm a hypocrite.

The ending to Rashomon is also slightly disappointing - it was, dare I say it, a bit of a cop out: having exposed the moral relativism lurking at the heart of humanity, Kurosawa allows sentimentality to creep in, suggesting that the redeeming factor for mankind lies in its continual rebirth and the possibility to evolve beyond a self-serving existence. Compassion, in other words, will be our saving grace. To me, that seems a little trite.

羅生門
Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1950

A Snake of June

From one rain-soaked film to another. As with Dark Water, the torrents that rage beyond soundless, sterile interiors are indicative of a public/private, inner/outer dichotomy which seems to obsess many Japanese filmmakers. In Dark Water, the 'inner' was repressed memory, in A Snake of June, repressed sexuality.

It's not as experimental or extreme as I would have expected from Tsukamoto - the film actually has a fairly linear narrative. A couple, locked in a loveless marriage, are stalked by and drawn into the dark, fetishistic world of a slightly unhinged individual, played by Tsukamoto himself. Despite its restraint (this could easily have gone down the sleazy, exploitative route) and its almost myopic focus on the emotional responses of three characters, it's also a richly symbolic film. Naturally, the symbols are all about sex and death, but then Tsukamoto is a Surrealist at heart.

The fact the stalker/photographer is played by the director suggests that he, and by implication, the audience, are complicit in an act of voyeurism and ultimately A Snake of June is the kind of film that leaves you feeling slightly unclean. It's hard to love - I don't see myself revisiting it for quite some time - but a fascinating slice of Japanese art house nonetheless. With directors like Tsukamoto, Miike, Sono, Kitano and Sabu all consistently producing unique, thought-provoking films of the highest quality, you'd have to say contemporary Japanese cinema is in very rude health indeed.

六月の蛇
Dir. Shinya Tsukamoto, 2002

The Grudge

Halloween occasions the watching of a scary film and this year it was the turn of Takashi Shimizu's Grudge - the original. Now I'm not exactly up to speed when it comes to The Grudge franchise; I know it extends to about a dozen movies, but this was my first experience of the creaking woman and elusive boy who may or may not be a cat.

Was it scary? Hell yeah! As scary as Ring? Well... no, not really. That's partly because there are some familiar motifs, essentially lifted from Ring: mutated faces in photographs, television pictures breaking up freakily, apparitions getting up close and personal on screen, lank haired dead women, the corporeal supernatural, even the curse itself. That creaking though... jesus.

My problem with the film is actually nothing to do with its originality or lack thereof, it's that it doesn't really seem to make a lot of sense. Apparently anyone who goes into the Saeki house is afflicted with a curse and will be haunted and ultimately killed by the ghosts of his murdered wife Kayako and son Toshio. Anyone who hasn't been into the house can't see them (as the scene in the restaurant with Rika and Mariko shows). That being the case though, how and why is the security guard in the social service office killed by Kayako? By the logic of the film, he shouldn't be able to her see her. Is it that anyone who comes into contact with anyone who's been in the house is also affected? Maybe. But then what about the people they come into contact with? Are they OK? Other things that had me scratching my head: Izumi ages about 5 years in no time at all. Her friends suddenly turn into zombies. Mariko is inexplicably relocated to the house, calling for Toshio... The fact the chronology is constantly shifting around doesn't help - it makes it very hard to keep track of what's going on and causes character arcs to become a tad disjointed and confused. The end sequence is puzzling too - it seems to be suggesting Rika is somehow a reincarnation of Kayako, but it's not clear why.

To a greater or lesser extent you can chalk any inconsistencies in plot up to general weirdness; it's quite possible that it's an intentionally disorientating ambiguity on Shimizu's part - drawing on that peculiar kind of twisted dream logic that informs much J-Horror. The real acid test of a good horror film is how effective it is at scaring you and on that level The Grudge definitely succeeds. It maintains a nail-biting level of tension throughout and has plenty of genuine scares, that stay with you after the end credits roll. In a world where horror can all too often be corny and predictable, that's no mean feat.

悪意
Dir. Takashi Shimizu, 2002

The Happiness of the Katakuris

I first saw The Happiness of the Katakuris at Frightfest in London, back in 2002. It's fair to say I wasn't quite so gobsmacked on this viewing, but that's mainly because I knew what to expect the second time around. I was still grinning like a fool for the duration of this feel-good surrealist horror musical pastiche - a berth it doesn't share with too many other bedfellows.

It takes a lot for me to enjoy a musical of any kind. I hate musicals with a passion, but here it just works. It's full of imaginative whimsy and distinctively Miikean touches (with a nod to Jan Svankmajer) - like the opening sequence with the small fellow being forked out of a bowl of soup and stealing the diner's uvula - inspired! In a nutshell, Katakuris is about a family's quest to find happiness in their new life together and the struggle to attract guests to their idyllic, but remote guesthouse in the lea of a volcano. The few guests who do manage to find the place are invariably dysfunctional and have a hard time making it through the night.

This is a slight film for Miike, a comedy farce essentially, but a uniquely enjoyable one nonetheless. He also hits on an ingenious way to save money on expensive special effects - cut to clay!

カタクリ家の幸福
Dir. Takashi Miike, 2001

Dolls

Possibly the most inaccessible of Kitano's films for a Western audience, Dolls draws on the traditional Japanese theatre of Bunraku for its look as well as its core themes. Kitano was inspired by the idea of lovers' suicide in the work of Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Japan's answer to Shakespeare. He takes the central preoccupations of classical tragedy - love and death - and refracts them through a modern medium.

Dolls is unconventional, by normal cinematic standards; it doesn't follow a three act structure and more closely resembles a stage play in many ways, as a series of interwoven vignettes. It's philosophical, but economical with it; there is very little in the way of exposition - the film is ripe with symbolism, but Kitano allows the viewer to make their own connections. A lot of the symbolism of Dolls is uniquely Japanese - the four distinct seasons, cherry blossoms and falling leaves denoting fragility (of the lives and the sanity of the protagonists), the red cord that ties the 'bound beggars' a reference to a Japanese saying about married couples being bound at the fingertips by red string. There are also invisible strings - tying together the tragic fates of disparate characters, guiding their actions and chance meetings - strings pulled deftly by Kitano, as director and puppet master.

Not an easy film - slow-paced and somewhat disjointed - I can well imagine it being dismissed as pretentious or a mere exercise in aesthetics (the cinematography is exquisite throughout), but as a piece of magical realism, a very personal take on traditional Japanese theatre and philosophy, Dolls is unique. It adds to Kitano's impressive oeuvre, underscoring his growing range as a filmmaker.

ドールズ
Dir. Takeshi Kitano, 2002

Dead Leaves

During a pre-screening Q&A at the Tokyo International Fantastic Film Festival, the interviewer describes watching Dead Leaves as like eating raw meat in the morning - I don't think I can come up with a better analogy.

The film grabs you by the balls and doesn't put you down again for its 50 minutes duration. There's zero depth - no time to think, barely time to draw breath - just time to let your senses be pummelled by some of the most insane, frenetic animation ever committed to screen.

Harsh, but watchable.

デッド リーブス
Dir. Hiroyuki Imaishi, 2004

Izo

It looks awesome, it sounds awesome, but what the hell is it all about? The meaning of Shigenori Takechi's scerenplay is elusive to say the least. Miike's direction is typically eccentric, imaginative, beautiful - all the things I've come to expect from one of the greatest auteurs working in cinema today, not just in Japan, but internationally.

If you're looking for a straightforward narrative, or structured character development, then this film is bound to disappoint. If it's important to look for meaning, and I'm not at all sure it is, one line from the 'bard''s commentary may be a clue. To paraphrase, it goes something along the lines of "it's all very well to be anti-war, but what about being anti-human". In a way, that seems to enapsulate the mood of the film.

Izo is like a cleansing fist, crashing through layers of human ignorance-made-flesh at random; as random, in fact, as existence itself. To call this an anti-war film or a meditation on human history as the history of violence is, I think, too reductive. It simply isn't that one-dimensional and resists such a banal interpretation. This is pure surrealism, at it's most random and brutal. It's serious, but then again, ridiculous and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny. It's nihilistic, but it's also about rebirth and the endless hope of renewal. It thrives on contradictions, which is what surrealism is all about.

But if we put all this semantic hand-wringing to one side, what we have is a movie that is fundamentally a BLAST to watch - at least once; the relentless violence might start to become a little tedious on repeat viewings. Taken at face value, it's a demonic undead wandering samurai, who happens to be able to traverse time and space at will (possibly not his own will, judging by his constant state of confusion), putting to the sword whomever should appear in his path, whether it's a class full of school children or an improbably muscular ringer for a Gamorrean Guard. It's a pan-dimensional beat 'em up, where each new character is mid-level fodder or a formidable end-of-level boss, all to be served up and annihilated for the sheer hell of it.

以蔵
Dir. Takashi Miike, 2004

Porco Rosso

Certainly an improvement over the confused Nausicaa and the vapid Ponyo, both of which it's hard to imagine anyone over the age of 5 enjoying. The animation in Porco Rosso is of a wonderfully high standard, consistently wowing you with its incredible attention to detail and the way the screen is always teeming with life and movement - making a lot of anime look static by comparison.

This makes it worth the price of admission alone. But add to that a perfectly coherent (if rather simplistic) story and you have an enjoyable anime. My problem with Ghibli remains that a lot of their films are just so damn childish. I know that's the point - I know that Miyazaki, by and large, makes anime for children, but I can only dream of what he could achieve with such a talented animation team if he made a film purely for adults.

真紅の翼
Dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 1992

Boiling Point

This was, I think, the first Kitano film to feature his trademark technique of interspersing the action with still shots - both 'after the event' type shots showing the consequence of some previous event and surreal stills, like Uehara wearing the crown of flowers or the the three diners smiling with squid ink on their teeth. Along with his deadpan black humour, these kind of directorial flourishes have served to mark Kitano out from the crowd.

Basically a blueprint for Sonatine, Boiling Point follows a couple of days in the life of Masaki, a garage worker and amateur baseball player who gets caught up in a fracas with the local mob. It's about the choices he makes and the downward spiral those choices take him on: after going to Okinawa to get hold of a gun and witnessing Uehara's own run-ins with the mob, he ultimately takes his revenge on the Otomo clan in Tokyo.

Structually, Boiling Point is very similar to Sonatine - local trouble, pilgrimage to Okinawa, kicking about a bit (on a beach), returning home, exacting revenge in a blaze of violence. Thematically too; the baseball game that bookends the film is a metaphor for life - the randomness of the game mirroring Masaki's existence with its arbitrary sequence of hits and strikes. It's just that it was all done a little bit better in Sonatine.

3-4X10月
Dir. Takeshi Kitano, 1990

Blues Harp

I'm starting to think Takashi Miike doesn't make bad films. Even when he's telling a straightforward story, with traditional Yakuza elements and none of his trademark weirdness, Miike does it with considerable panache.

Blues Harp follows the fortunes of a young half-black, half-Japanese bar-worker and blues harp player called Chuji, and his tragic entanglement with ambitious junior Yakuza boss, Kenji. Miike weaves the characters' stories together with a deft touch, counterpointing unflinching violence and tenderness without falling into cliche or sentimentality. Despite its relatively short running time, the characters are nicely developed; the acting is of a high quality, always believable, and some of the cinematography is gorgeous. All in all, a fine little film.

ブルース・ハープ
Dir. Takashi Miike, 1998