23 posts tagged “movie”

I've been catching up on a long backlog of stuff I've acquired but not watched.  I watched SP (the police drama from late last year/early this year, with Junichi Okada) over the past couple days, and it was far less stupid than I expected it to be -- in fact, I'd go so far as to say it was good.  The AAH, I HAVE SUPER SENSORY POWERS OF MYSTERY AAAH premise was a little silly at the start, but it got less so as the series progressed.  Additionally, the music is pretty good (well, the original music anyway -- the insert songs are the overblown melodramatic cockery I've come to expect from Japanese drama.)

Security Police

菅野祐悟

What else have I watched... hmmm...

• Rebuild of Evangelion 1.01: You are not alone
• Drive
• Beautiful Sunday
• Bedknobs and Broomsticks
• Squid Wrestler
• Cosmic Rescue
• Dororo
• Mysterious Skin
• Road Movie
• Russian Ark
• SARS Wars
• Summer Time Machine Blues
• 4.6 Billion Years of Love
  

These are the ones that weren't bad and that I'd suggest watching.  I saw a bunch of other ones (in part, at any rate), but they were bad enough to never ever be seen again.  That's not to say that all of these are masterpieces of cinema or television -- they just had a redeeming quality of some sort.  Check them out, or feel free to ask me questions about these if you like.

reaching for something one can never touch

When I at last noticed, my heart had already become hard from the gradual loss of its youthful vitality.  And on a certain morning, when I at last came to an earnest realization that I had lost everything that was beautiful, I knew I was at my limits, and quit the company.

And here I thought I was jaded and bitter and hard and angry that I couldn't cry anymore.  Shows what I know.

So, the first part of "The Triangle" is on TV.

Sam Neill wants Senator Kelly, some ginger guy, some Aussie prick, and a woman from JAG to find out why his ships are disappearing in the Bermuda Triangle while some chick I should know is taking the piss from the guy from 21 Jump Street. Good times, good times...

EXCEPT, CLEARLY IT IS A FUCKING TRAP! The Bermuda Triangle is CLEARLY the gate to Sam Neill's evil extra-dimensional desert fortress in which he keeps his model of the Universe, which he can use at any time to DESTROY US ALL.

God, why am I the only one who sees this?!

YOU!
It's YOU who is responsible for this sudden popularity of CELINE DION, that French-Canadian BANSHEE, from whom I thought I was safe, in this crazy country. It is YOU who have popularized her music and made sure I can never be free from her again.  It is also YOU who annoy the piss out of me (along with Jessica Simpson, Lindsey Lohan, and some other horrible person) with your ProActiv commercials. TAKE YOUR NIKIBI AND SHOVE THEM UP YOUR ASS.

And now, to share the pain that is my life, watch Yuna Ito sing "My Heart Will Go On".

I watched Japan Sinks. It was pretty good. I mean, it's a disaster movie, full of despair, hope, romance, loss, cool special effects, sappy endings and dodgy science, but I enjoyed it. It was kinda funny though, because during the evacuation scenes, they're showing like, planes leaving from Tokyo, people lining up for boats in Hakodate (before being smashed by a giant tsunami), volcanic ash closing airports in Hiroshima and Komatsu and then.............. Uozu.

People lining up for boats in Uozu, loudspeaker announcements saying that if they land in South or North Korea in private craft, and not the official chartered craft, they'll be treated as illegal immigrants etc. A cruise ship in the distance taking refugees to the mainland... and then a big ol' tsunami comes up, tosses the ship around like a toy, and destroys Uozu. The entire time I'm like hahahahaha Uozu what the hell. Where's your mirage and your sunken forest now, bitches! Anyway, I recommend.

I watched Oyayubi Sagashi (Finding the Thumb). Eight years ago, a bunch of kids were playing in an abandoned hotel. One of the girls (who had a thing for one of the boys, and was looking for excuses to test his feelings for her) taught them a new game, Oyayubi Sagashi. After saying a chant, they'd be transported to a room they'd never seen, and they had to look for a thumb that'd been removed from its body. To return, they had to blow out a candle.

Well, they all got back, except for that one girl. They searched for her, but couldn't find her. The cops decided she'd used the game as cover to run away from home.

Skip ahead to the present, and the remaining friends are at a school reunion. Most of them haven't been able to get over the disappearance of their friend, and so begins the unravelling of what happened, and the slow decline of sanity. I enjoyed it.

I watched Hard Luck Hero, which was kind of interesting. Starts off with a contender in an underground kickboxing match not showing up, so a last minute replacement being drawn from the kitchen staff. The match was rigged anyway, so the replacement just had to make it to the 2nd round.

Needless to say, things to do not go quite according to plan. The story then splits into three seperate threads, following (1) how three groups of people ended up being at that boxing match, and (2) what happens to them as they try to get the fuck away from the venue. It was fun, and kinda unique maybe? I liked it.

I watched Scrap Heaven. It sort of has a Fight Club vibe, in that some people suffer a traumatic experience, it changes them, and in the end they're all trying to blow shit up.

A toilet cleaner, a one-eyed pharmacist, and a cop with a desk job are on a bus. Toilet cleaner guy realizes they're going the wrong way and calls up to the driver wtf is going on. Turns out some guy has hijacked the bus. The cop does nothing, the one-eyed girl loses her glass eye but gets it back, and the toilet cleaner gets shot.

Three months later, everyone's life is different. The three eventually meet up again, by chance, and things take shape.

Did I mention that the pharmacist is Chiaki Kuriyama, and she's also making bombs? Yeah, that's kind of important.

I watched Except Japan, Everything Sinks. As with Japan sinks, some dodgy geology is brought into play. First, America sinks. Then China. Then the rest of Eurasia. Then Africa, then Oceania. ONLY JAPAN IS LEFT. 400 million refugees from around the world descend on Japan. The movie is a humourous look at how such an event would go over, what with the Japanese being xenophobic.

All the English schools close, and a chain of Japanese conversation schools open. "If you aren't A-Rank at Japanese, the Japanese people won't treat you as people. It's in your best interests to learn!"

Foreign celebrities don't have an easy go of it in Japan.

The world leaders all suck up to the Japanese PM ("Oh, China, Korea where have you been all day?" "We were praying at Yasukuni Shrine " "Well, as we know, the only god resides in Japan."

So, this weekend I've had a 4 day weekend.  Friday I just sort of wasted, which is a shame.  Saturday I wasted most of the day too.  I tried to decide if I should pick up FF12 again from where I was, or if FF12 International would have English menu options and subs like FFX International did... I figured I'd put FF12 off until International came out so i could see, and instead, watch movies for the next few weeks.

I started Saturday night with Star Wars, A New Hope through to Return of the Jedi.  I've seen them all before, but like, 3 years ago, I got the box set DVDs, and have never opened them until last night.  Now, since I'd seen them, I figured I'd just skip right to the audio commentaries, which were entertaining enough between the jowls doing George's thinking for him, and Carrie Fisher going on and on about how this one scene was dreadful to do and she had to do the same 3 minute speech for 4 days in a row and she can still to this day do the speech and wait wait she's actually doing it now.  I'd never seen the Special Editions (added CG Jabba in A New Hope, Naboo and Coruscant in the end of Jedi, etc.), and it was frankly offputting.  It was still enjoyable, though.

Today, I went on a movie spree.

I watched The Supermarket Woman today. A new supercentre has opened in the neighbourhood, and the local supermarket is feeling the pinch. When the owner runs into his childhood friend, they begin to plot together to make his little supermarket the best supermarket in Japan.

It's by the same guy as Tampopo, and follows a similar sort of plot, but it's really quite funny, and the chase scene wins.

I also watched Dragon Head, which is post-apocalyptic fun. After entering a tunnel, a shinkansen train hits something, and everyone on the trains are killed, except for three students. One of them claims that he saw 'red light' just before they entered the tunnel and shit happened. Well, whatever, they eventually make their way to the surface and find the sky dark and it's snowing ash.

The rest of the movie involves their getting back to their home in Tokyo, and the dangers they face to get there, as well as theories as to what's going on and why.

It was a little slow maybe, but it was good enough. Though, I do question the validity of the vulcanology involved.

Next watched Ghost House, a Korean... well, it's more comedy/drama than horror, but there ARE ghosts!! The ending is a bit sappy, but it's good enough. Silly Korean ghost movies.

Followed up with I'm a Cyborg, and that's OK
It was weird, but fun. Girl thinks she's a battle cyborg. Her grandmother thought she was a mouse. There's a guy who thinks he can steal people's special gifts and skills. He somehow becomes attached to cyborg girl and tries to help her.

Then, I also watched The Red Balloon . It's a classic, or something. 

My final movie for today was Stacy, a Japanese zombie film from 2001.  Girls between the ages of 15 and 17, become deliriously happy (Near Death Happiness), and then they die. They then return to life as zombies (called Stacy, for some reason), and are covered in a fine, glowy blue powder called BUTTERFLY TWINKLE DUST.  The movie follows a researcher, the brother of the first Stacy, the troops used for re-killing the Stacies (the Romero Rekill squads), as well as the weapons used (The Blues (sic) Campbell Right Hand 2 chainsaw).  There's also a girl who has just entered her NDH phase, and is looking for a special someone who will rekill her when the time is right.  It's really a bizarre movie, it's a bit campy, but it's a must-see, if only for the "what? o lawd, why?" factor.  And now, screenshots.

Stacy

Stacy (2)

Stacy (5)

You should try to find it someplace. It's really worth watching. All the movies I've mentioned are. :)

Man Behind The Sun (6)

Man Behind The Sun (0)

In World War 2, there was a Japanese unit in Manchuria (well, I suppose it was probably Manchukuo then...) called 731.  It is claimed that this unit did all sorts of nasty experiments on humans and animals, did trials with bioweapons, and so on.  All of the victims were Chinese or Russian.  China claims that it was horrendously cruel, the things that happened there, and have long fought for an acknowledgment of the wrongs done there, like they've fought for an acknowledgment to the wrongs done in Nanjing. 

Man Behind The Sun (13)

Of course, Japan denies the whole thing, saying that nothing like what the Chinese accuse them of ever happened in either place.  There's plenty of people who, I'm sure, would attack me for being a China-hugged and a Japan-hater, since it's fairly clear to me that Nanjing was fucking horrible and that Unit 731 did do horrible things.  These people, however, are the worst kind of weeaboo: the "Japan can do no wrong, stop picking on poor innocent Japan" weeaboo.  Go munch on your Pocky in the corner, children; the grown-ups have to talk.

Man Behind The Sun (19)

Anyway, this film deals with several purported incidents, and anecdotal incidents that allegedly occurred in Manchuria under unit 731:  the baby taken from her mother and then buried in the snow, just because it was crying; the woman who had her hands frozen in ice, and exposed to -35C weather for a long time, then returned to the laboratory with severe frostbite, and urged to place her arms in 15C water only to have the skin and muscle fall off; the man put in a pressure chamber until he swelled up and his intestines flew out his ass.  It goes on and on, and if this is your cup of tea, you really must watch it.  Even if it's not your cup of tea, if you're interested in a particular viewpoint of Unit 731, you should watch it too.

I rate this movie 8 mute Chinese boys who exist only to magnify the brutality of the Japanese out of 10.

Eli Eli Lema Sebachthani (5)

I just watched the above-mentioned film.  The title translates as "God, god, why have you forsaken me?" apparently.  This is approximately how I felt about 20 minutes into the movie, and how I continued to feel until it was over.  What a fucking piece of shit this was.

It started off promising.  Two guys walking along a windswept beach, find an encampment where everyone is dead.  They're both wearing masks so that they don't breathe in SOMETHING, and one guy is carrying what appears to be a boom mic.

"A boom mic? Preposterous," I thought to myself, "it must be a low budget movie, and they're using that in lieu of some sort of disease-detector or something."

Eli Eli Lema Sebachthani (0)

No. It was actually a boom mic.  The two recorded noises from around themselves, and then worked it into what apparently passes for music in 2015, but is actually nothing more than noise.

In 2015, people are becoming infected with the "Lemming Syndrome", which causes them to off themselves.  3 million in Japan ("That's the population of Nagoya!") and 8 million in the US already ("That's about the same as Osaka!").

Eli Eli Lema Sebachthani (1)

Then there's a 15 minute segment of one of the asshats making noise with a violin bow, a thick wire, and various pedals and stuff to make the noise even more noise-like.  Then some bitch and her grandfather show up, and they claim that the noise can cure (or, at least prolong the life of) infected people.  The noisemakers get very defensive.  Shit happens, people die, but it's not worth watching.

The only good part was the song the Grandfather and his driver were singing in the ambulance near the end:

In the heart of Tokyo is Marunouchi,
Hibiya Park and the Houses of Parliament;
A cool-looking theater,
and the scary-looking Metropolitan Police HQ.
A line of Ministries and the Babasaki Gates,
the giant Life Insurance building and Tokyo Station.
Where's the train off to, blowing its whistle?

Eli Eli Lema Sebachthani (3)

Oh, it snows at the end.  There, now you don't have to see it at all. You can thank me later.

Rated 1 interesting premise that was turned into a shittyshitty movie out of 10.

As an aside, anyone else noticed that this has turned into a sad sad movie review blog more than anything? :P

Ima, Ai Ni Yukimasu (6)

I just watched Ima, Ai Ni Yukimasu (perhaps known by it's English title "Be With You").  It's a fairly typical tearjerker movie.  A young woman has died of a disease which is never named due to its irrelevance to the story.  She left behind a husband and a young son.  When she died, she gave her son a book, which explained that, though she'd be gone for a while, she would return during the next rainy season, and stay until it was over.  True to her word, on the first day of the rainy season, she appears, but she has no memories.  Over the next six weeks, she lives with her family, and through the stories of her husband and an old journal of hers that she found, regains the memories.

What makes this movie more than your typical tearjerker, however, are the beautiful scenes and backdrops for the film, as well as the 'twist' at the ending (for lack of a better term) that wraps everything up perfectly.

Watch this version now, before the American remake with Jennifer Garner (aka MANJAW) comes out next year.

Rated 9 Unexpectedly Fully Nude Little Boys out of 10.