Recently seen movies #160

The Beast Must Die (Japan, 1980) – 2,5/5

Toru Murakami and Yusaku Matsuda’s last collaboration is an adaptation from Haruhiko Oyabu’s novel, which has been brought to silver screen a few times before. Changes were made to the original story, and the director and star also had their disagreements about how the topic should be handled. Matsuda plays a man who murders four people and robs a casino. But he’s planning something else, too. The approach to the story is interesting, on both Matsuda and Murakami’s behalf. Matsuda’s acting – despite his superstar status – is minimal, weird, and he hardly speaks at all (his first lines don’t come until 15 minutes in). Apparently the actor was quite deep into the role. Murakami’s directing is partly in the same alley. The storyline moves slowly and doesn’t reveal its motives until later on. This makes the film more intesting scene by scene, as it’s building up for something bigger. A high level of intensity is ultimately reached, but the ending is a let down. Matsuda’s underacting becomes severe overacting, and Murakami explains in great detail and constant flashbacks what should only have been vaguely suggested. Even then the final scene is slighty notorious for being difficult to interpret. In this wild mix supporting star Hideo Murota’s policeman performance stands out as being one of the few even elements in the film.

Stray Cat Rock Redux

No, Nikkatsu is not planning to remake their classic girl gang / youth film fusion. Thank God for that. Instead it’s me who’s apparently running out of topics to write about. I recently rewatched the entire 5 film series, and decided the remake my reviews. I left the review of the first film relatively intact, but the others should now provide a bit more information, plus corected ratings since – seeminly affacted by some nihilist critic syndrome – I managed to underrate many of them last time.

Stray Cat Rock: Girl Boss (1970)
Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo (1970)
Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter (1970)
Stray Cat Rock: Machine Animal (1970)
Stray Cat Rock: Beat ’71 (1971)

Recently seen movies #159

Hazard (Japan, 2005) – 3,5/5

Sion Sono’s gritty New York film was shot in 2002 but only released several years later. Just another sad example of how difficult it can be for an indie filmmaker to get a good film into distribution. The storyline follows Shin (Joe Odagiri), a Japanese college drop out who buys a fight ticket to NYC in the early 90’s. Wanting to escape his boring life in the sleepy Japan, Shin discovers a very different kind of world in NYC. After being robbed withing hours of arriving, he hooks up with two small time punks (Jai West and Motoki Fukami) who deal drugs on the streets.

A Japanese director depicting early 90’s New York street culture may not sound like a promising idea, but Sono knows what he’s doing. Instead of classy tourist attractions he went through some trouble to find the dirtiest streets in the city. Add literally grainy visuals and energetic guerilla style shooting, and you’ve got a thoroughly enjoyable gang film only weakened by a couple of dull (communication problems related) scenes. The actors also deserve a special mention. While Odagiri is good, it’s Jai West’s on-fire acting that steals the show. Constantly mixing Japanese and English dialogue (motherfucker being the most commonly used adjective, noun and particle) it’s a gangsta performance by the genre film book. Some of the supporting actors and extras were actually the real deal; for example the Chinatown scenes were shot ”in collaboration” with the Chinese triads.

Recently seen movies #158

Charisma (Japan, 1999) – 2/5

A policeman (Koji Yakusho) meets several people in forest, some of them trying to protect an old tree and some of them trying to destroy it. None of them have very clear motives. Director Kurosawa gives little explanations and avoids genre classifications. It works for some time as it challenges the viewer to come up with his own answers. Placing the film almost entirely in the woods also works to the benefit of it as Kurosawa’s forest is not a shiny bamboo collection. The film is endlessly metaphoric – in fact there is very little else, and this is a problem. Charisma is not nearly as much about characters – mainly drawing allegoric caricatures – as it is about different forces affecting the world. But is there any reason to spend over 100 minutes to make dry societal and environmental observations and present them inside a bottle? Kurosawa’s approach is not entirely serious, though. There’s plenty of humour included, which makes makes the film more obviously fun, but doesn’t really improve it. It’s a bit difficult to say exactly how much Kurosawa intended to emphazise the humoristic aspect. Some scenes and characters, such as a senile elderly woman raving in her bed, could be meant as humour, another allegory, or intentional weirdness/originality/pretentiousness, or all that at once.

Recently seen movies #157

Zebraman (Japan, 2004) – 2,5/5

Zebraman is an exceptionally unexceptional superhero. He wasn’t bitten by a zebra, nor did zebras eath his parents, he simply saw a (fictional) 1978 tokusatsu show Zebraman. 32 years later he makes a superhero costume for himself and receives superpowers for no reason. Being a Takashi Miike film the weirdness hardly comes as a surprise. But Miike does’t quite hit the target. He attempts to make a loving genre parody and a genre film at the same time. The family friendliness becomes a burden and causes the humour to lose some of it’s edge. At 117 minutes the film is also clearly too long. But still, there’s a lot of positive, too. The first half of the film is entertaining, and Miike’s regular star Sho Aikawa is great as a beaten up crime fighter. The ending also features some memorable, cgi enhanced moments of insanity. Miike later returned to the family fantasy genre with a far more successful film, The Great Yokai War (2005).