Nate Hood ponders the merits of TOURISM (2018) Japan Cuts 2018

I like to think Daisuke Miyazaki’s Tourism is the kind of movie Agnès Varda and Chris Marker would make if they were bemused, slightly detached millennials with nothing but a long weekend off from work and two iPhones: a DIY meditation on the essential interconnectivity of mankind that casually blends narrative storytelling and in-the-moment cinéma vérité documentary to create something melancholic yet hopeful, cerebral yet heart-felt, intensely culturally specific yet defiantly globally minded.

I suspect many people won’t make it through the deliberately tedious first half, and for good reason—it’s essentially a video diary of Nina (Nina Endô) and Su (Sumire), two disaffected Japanese twenty-somethings working mind-numbing blue-collar jobs who win plane tickets to anywhere in the world in the lottery. They choose Singapore (largely because you supposedly don’t need to speak English to get around there) and set off on their first trip outside Japan. We’re then treated to the equivalent of a thirty minute Instagram story: them going through airport security, them playing with video filters during the flight, them finding their hotel, them visiting tourist traps, them futzing around with selfie sticks, them window-shopping at malls.

But for all its banality, there’s a hypnotic undercurrent of discovery as these two women slowly realize just how small the world is, even if that realization is subconscious. This subtext becomes overt text in the last act when Nina loses Su and her iPhone and gets lost in Singapore’s slums. As she wanders helplessly through the streets, passing temples and mosques, crowded town squares and darkened alleyways, she finds helpful strangers in the strangest places. A random woman she asks for directions turns out to be a secret otaku who sings her the theme of a Japanese kid’s show. Elsewhere she runs into a Muslim family who takes her into their home and feeds her while joking about the different ways their cultures pray before meals. And finally she attends a roof-top concert where a Japanese Yoko Ono lookalike belts out Beatles covers.

This is the ecstatic wisdom of Tourism: the farther away you go from home, the more familiar things and people get. In a way it reminds me of Joji Koyama and Tujiko Noriko’s Kuro: both films show us a surface narrative about culturally misplaced Japanese women while obliquely hinting at deeper, more esoteric truths. But while Kuro depths may have echoed of horror in a disconnected world, Tourism echoes of hope in a digital one.

Rating: 8/10

Japan Cut Capsule Reviews: SIDE JOB, THICKER THAN WATER, and AMIKO

SIDE JOB
I don’t know what I think about Side Job. I think on some level I don’t have the understanding to full get or connect with the film. The film concerns a woman who is still living in temporary housing with her father as a result of the tsunami of 3/11. Slipping into Tokyo on the weekends to act as a call girl. While I can connect with the drama on a basic level the greater overtones of the damage left by such a huge tragedy eluded me (even when I saw the final image of the sign talking about being okay because we survived).

Despite my inability to connect the film is worth giving a shot for the strong performances and its exploration of how we react in the aftermath of tragedy.

THICKER THAN WATER
Thicker Than Water is the story of three sibling orbiting around each other and trying to get ahead in the world. While I was entertained by the film it didn’t leave me with a great deal to say about it. Blame it on all the other films playing at Japan Cuts. I’m going to have to circle back around and give it another shot

AMIKO
Yoko Yamanaka’s Amiko is a micro-budgeted road film about a 16 year old outside who meets and falls in love with a boy in her class. When he suddenly disappears she follow him to Tokyo. Hip, happening and flashy this film is a snarky ball of energy. For better or worse this is very much the work of a very young filmmaker who is full of wide eyed enthusiasm. While the film as a whole doesn’t reach the epic heights of some of the moments this film should act as a calling card for a filmmaker with great promise.
(This film plays at Fantasia on the 31st)

Nate Hood on NIGHT IS SHORT, WALK ON GIRL (2017) Japan Cuts 2018

Is there an anime director working today as consistently exciting and unpredictable as Masaaki Yuasa? Since his directorial debut in 1999, he has consistently dazzled and perplexed audiences with a string of bizarre features running the range from surreal comedies (Mind Game [2004]), kaleidoscopic children’s fantasies (Lu Over the Wall [2017]), and misanthropic, hyper-violent, hyper-sexualized horror dramas like the Netflix series Devilman Crybaby (2018). His newest film to finally make it over to the West—Night is Short, Walk On Girl—is a bubbly romantic comedy that feels like bathing in warm champagne.

Based on the novel by Tomihiko Morimi, the film watches in sublime amusement as a hapless college student nicknamed “Senior” (Gen Hoshino) tries, fails, and tries again and again to confess his feelings to the mercurial “Girl with Black Hair” (Kana Hanazawa) during one peculiarly long night of drinking and partying. As must happen in these stories, Senior’s increasingly absurd attempts are foiled by increasingly absurd contrivances that eventually become downright Bunuelian. Some of these include having his pants and underwear stolen by a depressed tycoon living on a triple-decker passenger train, being forced to participate in a spicy hotpot eating contest to win a rare copy of a book the Girl loved as a child, and crashing a guerrilla-style street rock opera that’s shanghaied the Girl as the romantic lead. And along the way there are drinking contests, Sophist dance parties, drinking contests, underground societies of erotic ukiyo-e collectors, drinking contests, crossdressing security guards, sudden rainstorms of apples and carp, mischievous gods of used books, and more drinking contests. (The Girl has a superhuman love for and tolerance of alcohol.) Oh, and the very laws of time may or may not have broken down, seemingly propelling Senior and the Girl through the span of an entire year in a single night.

It’s delightful, delirious, delicious madness that perfectly captures the breathless euphoria of falling in love and the first time you truly realize just how scary and wonderful it is. Yuasa once listed Tex Avery as one of his key influences, and the anarchic elasticity of American cartoons is obvious in every frame, particularly in his love of hyper-exaggerated Ub Iwerks squash and stretch where characters can suddenly spaghetti their way across rooms, down alleys, and across frames. For Yuasa, going off model IS the model, and the film clips along with the same infectious sense of spontaneity and joy.

Rating: 8/10

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Yocho (Foreboding) played Japan Cuts 2018

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s YOCHO (Foreboding) is a second trip to the well that gave us Kurosawa’s previous BEFOE WE VANISH. This time Kurosawa enlisted Tomohiro Maekawa the writer of the source play for the two films to help him craft this story of the first stages of an alien invasion.

Conceived as a TV series companion to the earlier film it was then cut together and over an hour of material was removed. The editing is so well done that I would be hard pressed to know that it was ever five separate episodes, or that anything was missing. This film plays as companion/prequel/riff/meditation on the earlier film and its concepts.

The film follows a woman who finds herself dancing at the point of an alien invasion, though he doesn’t know it at first. First a co-worker is afraid to go home. She warns there is a ghost there. It turns out the woman doesn’t recognize her father and has lost all concept of what a family is. Next her husband is acting a little weird, as is her boss at work. I’ll leave it for you to see how it goes together.

More leisurely paced than the earlier film and drifting in and out of nooks not investigated in the previous film YOCHO has some food for thought. What the aliens are doing (stealing concepts) makes for interesting post screening discussions. I saw this film at Japan Cuts with friend and Unseen Films writer Joe Bendel, and our walk back to the subway was one long talk about the film and it’s ideas.

The problem for me is that this time out the 140 minute run time, and a structure that started as a multipart TV series causes the film to drag. Things loop around to fill time. With time to fill our minds begin to wander and the problems with the plot and even the basic flaw of the alien theft of “concept” rears its ugly head. How can you steal a concept when one concept is tied to all the others we hold. How can you understand say the idea of family if you don’t understand all that goes with it. Even the notion of hatred doesn’t work if you don’t know what all the other emotions are. It got so bad that I was wondering why the aliens were doing it since it makes no sense (never mind that it is handled in BEFORE WE VANISH) in the context of this film.

Additionally it’s clear that the budget was minimal with most of the film taking place in mostly empty locations with only the main cast. The city where the action takes place is pretty much a ghost town before the aliens show up with people only showing up if a scene calls for it. It is really noticeable when the otherwise surprisingly empty hospital develops a huge crowd in the lobby for a single scene where the alien doctor walks though and causes everyone to collapse. The scene brought roars of laughter from the audience at the Japan Society for any number of reasons.

While not a bad film, it never rose above being just OK for me. Having seen a good chunk of Kurosawa’s other films I would consider this one of his minor films or one of his doodles where he farts around with a concept to see where it goes. While any of his lesser films is better than most directors best films, so I’m glad I saw it, but at the same time it isn’t anything I need see again.

Tourism (2018) Japan Cuts 2018

I’m going to say upfront that like Daisuke Miyazaki‘s previous film Yamato (California), Tourism didn’t work for me. Part drama, part documentary the film is very close to watching someone’s home movies if they actually took the time to really pick their shots to frame the action.

The plot of the film has a couple of friends going to Singapore to meet up with a friend who lives there. After the touristy places are a bust they go to mall. One get separated and begins to really see the city and its people.

It looks good but it didn’t connect to me. Part of the problem is I really didn’t care for anyone on screen until the second half. I didn’t really care about the characters because they were so bland. Until the touristy stuff goes there is no one here. I think the other problem is that some of the funding came from a tourist board with the result everything has its best foot forward.

If you liked Miyazaki's earlier film give the film a shot otherwise you’re on your own.

For tickets and more information go here

Japan Cuts Shorts

ACROSS THE WATER
Hypnotic piece about a woman, water and dance.
I can't say more since it is a film that is all about the image and sound and how you react to it

BIVALVIA: ACT 1 (Experimental)
A contemplation of the emptiness of life through a look at bivalves.
Odd film will either thrill you make you wonder why. I wondered why a lot

BREATHING HOUSE (experimental)
Cinematic poem about a house

DREAMLAND
Possibly my favorite film at Japan Cuts is 4 minutes of trippy animation. If it ran a couple of hours drugs would no longer be a problem.WOW and then some

How Can You Know Where to Go If You Do Not Know Where You Have Been?
A woman remembers the 2nd world war on the home front. Its good but subtitles get lost on the white background

Nate Hood ponders WE MAKE ANTIQUES (2018) Japan Cuts 2018

Heist movies are always the most fun when they’re about a bunch of bastards ripping off a group of even bigger bastards. I’m not talking about a film’s inherent quality or importance within the genre itself, I’m talking about flat-out, slam-dunk fun. It’s just not as satisfying to watch a group of clever crooks steal from faceless corporate entities (e.g. Logan Lucky) or super-wealthy aristocrats who honestly won’t miss a measly few million (e.g. Ocean’s 8).

This is what Masaharu Take’s We Make Antiques! intuitively understands, giving its crooked heroes a pair of even more crooked villains to outfox: smug and slimy antiques appraiser Seiichiro Takahashi (Masaomi Kondo) and dealer Tadayasu Hiwatashi (Kogan Ashiya). To whit, it’s a joy to watch unscrupulous dealer Norio (Kiichi Nakai) and expert pottery forger Sasuke (Kuranosuke Sasaki) join forces to trick them into buying a counterfeit tea bowl which ostensibly belonged to the sixteenth century tea ceremony master Sen no Rikyū. After a charming first act where they con each other—Sasuke tricks Norio into buying a closet of fake antiques which Norio tricks Sasuke into selling for bargain bin prices—they unite in their common animosity towards Takahashi and Hiwatashi.

Some might argue that this counterfeiting scheme may not constitute an authentic heist. But the story beats are exactly the same: the thieves meet up, identify a target, plan a job, assemble a crew, execute said job while countering complications, and evade the authorities. (The supporting cast of ne’er-do-wells is particularly delightful, especially a suspiciously nonchalant sushi chef who moonlights as a forger and an ancient xylophagic paper maker.) The best sequences involve the actual construction of the forgery, beginning with Sasuke tasting samples of clay to get the right kind—you apparently want slimy, sour clay for older pieces—and ending with Norio sweet talking Takahashi and Hiwatashi during a public auction.

The one problem many audiences might have is the more casual tone and pacing of the film. Unlike Western heist films, the characters are never in any danger of imminent harm or imprisonment. And despite its peppy jazz score, there’s rarely a sense of ribald excitement or chaos. It’s so staid and measured it can occasionally be off-putting, particularly in the third act when all the different pieces of the caper start falling into place. But despite this, We Make Antiques! is a low-key, relaxed little bauble. I wouldn’t mind seeing Norio and Sasuke return for a sequel.

Rating: 6/10

Nate Hood wanders through Mori, The Artist's Habitat (2018) Japan Cuts 208

In his Great Movies review for Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (1988), Roger Ebert explained that the film is “like music or a landscape: It clears a space in my mind.” Watching Shûichi Okita’s Mori, the Artist’s Habitat, I felt the same mental emptying, the same translucent quieting of my subconscious until nothing remained but the stillness on screen.

I say stillness not in the traditional sense of stasis, but in the Daoist sense where one casts off the cares and obsessions of material life and exists totally within the moment, totally in the now, totally in communion with the Dao that Cannot Be Dao’ed. Mori, the Artist’s Habitat has no real plot, no real causative narrative.

Things may happen, but nothing actually Happens: it is simply a day in the life of Morikazu Kumagai (1880-1977), beloved Japanese painter known for his bright colors and simplistic compositions of animals and nature. Morikazu spent the last several decades of his life never leaving his sixty square meter house and garden, receiving visitors with his long-suffering wife Hideko and silently observing the insects and animals in his backyard. He’d spend hours on his stomach watching columns of ants, hours on his bottom contemplating a strange stone, hours on his back staring at the empty sky, pausing only to coo a local cat, slurp a bowl of noodles, or ignore unwanted guests. (The film’s biggest laugh comes when Morikazu nonchalantly brushes off a call from the Japanese government offering him the Emperor’s Order of Culture award, reasoning that accepting it would bring even more visitors.)

The conflict—if one could call it that—comes when a developer of a nearby condo that would block the sun from their garden demands that Hideko and Morikazu take down a series of posters put up by their fans protesting the construction. But even this is downplayed, ultimately leading to a tender scene with the developer’s assistant where Morikazu assesses a painting by his son. He calls it trash, but important trash, for it’s art and the pursuit of art is itself a worthy and noble undertaking regardless of whether or not the artist has talent.

Mori, the Artist’s Habitat similarly interrogates the validity of Morikazu’s cloistered life: can such an existence have meaning or importance? To which the answer is simply yes—its mere existence is its own validation. For Morikazu is. He awakens and eats, he naps and watches. Sometimes he paints, but more often he doesn’t. For his is a life in perfect harmony with the Daoist concept of wu wei (無爲): non-action. By having no pretensions, he has no worries. By having no desires, he has no self-destructive cravings. By living in the eternal now, he settles into the very rhythm of the cosmos.

Near the end of the film, he asks his wife if she could relive their lives the same way all over again, would she. She scoffs and says no. She’s too tired. But Morikazu? He’d be content living the same life over and over again for the rest of eternity. And who could blame him?

Rating: 9/10

MORI THE ARTISTS HABITAT plays tonight at the Japan Society. The screening is sold out however there maybe standby tickets at the door. For more information go here.

Nate Hood wants no part of Violence Voyager (2018) Fantasia 2018

Experimental animator Ujicha’s Violence Voyager feels like nothing so much as a modern update on the boom of hyper-violent, hyper-nihilistic Original Video Animations (OVAs) that flooded the Japanese anime market in the late 80s and early 90s: mean, vicious titles low in sense but high in blood, sex, and human cruelty; the kind of poorly dubbed shlock like Osamu Kamijo’s Violence Jack and Ichirō Itano’s Angel Cop that made Central Park Media and Manga Entertainment industry titans stateside and doomed anime’s reputation as gory porn cartoons for almost two decades. The only difference is these shows tended to involve full-grown adults (usually in futuristic and/or post-apocalyptic settings) and the occasional high schooler.

But the depraved tortures and killings in Violence Voyager are saved almost exclusively for little children, usually naked ones cowering in fear. It follows the fate of two young boys, the brave American Bobby and his cowardly friend Akkun, as they come across the eponymous amusement park on the side of a nondescript mountain. At first it seems like a gigantic water-gun tag attraction where guests must blast Googie robots, but they soon discover a small tribe of lost children fighting for their lives. Turns out the robots are metamorphosed monstrosities made from kidnapped kiddies by a mad scientist intent on creating a new race of organic/mechanical life who also just so happens to have a Lovecraftian/Cronenbergian behemoth locked in his basement laboratory. And those Googie robots? They aren’t armed with water guns like the ones given to Bobby and Akkun—they’re equipped with corrosive acid sprayers that can melt good little boys and girls into screeching skeletons of bubbling flesh in seconds. One by one the children get picked off as Bobby tries to save them all and defeat the dastardly doctor before it’s too late.

Much beleaguered credit must be given to Ujicha’s art style, a unique blend of animation stills and live action puppets he calls “geki-mation.” Of course, if I was feeling particularly grouchy—from, say, sitting through 80+ minutes of child murder—I might point out that almost the exact same technique was used more brilliantly in Sean Meredith’s superb Dante’s Inferno (2007), a film which conspicuously lacks terrified prepubescents getting turned to hamburger meat, and any given number of Monty Python’s Flying Circus shorts. Some might be able to stomach the story for the sake of the art, but I can’t emphasize this enough: child killing is not my definition of a good time. And I’m suspicious of anyone for whom it is.

Rating: 4/10

VIOLENCE VOYAGER screens again tomorrow at Fantasia

Hanagatami (2017) Japan Cuts 2018

Nobuhiko Obayashi’s dream project finally comes to the big screen as a film only the master could have made. A one of a kind cinematic work it’s a must see for anyone who love film and what it can do.

Based on the novella by Kazuo Dan the film tells the story of a group of friends in 1937 and on the eve of what would become the Second World War. The teens (played by adults) know what is coming and they want to live life to its fullest.

A dream like memory play this is a film that is very much the work of Obayashi with charged dialog and magical imagery. It is a film that delights the senses with its expressive use of film/digital technology to tell its story and make us feel something by putting us in the halcyon days of old. I am in love with the look and feel of the film. This is a movie that really is a movie.

As much as I am in love with the film technically and physically I am not quite as in love with film as a whole. For whatever reason the film never fully came together for me. part of it was I was always aware of the technical wizardry going on screen so I never disappeared into the film. Similarly some of the mannered dialog and takes kept me distanced. While I was enjoying the hell out of it I wasn’t connected. As a result there were times I felt the 169 minutes passing.

My reservations aside I highly recommend this for anyone who loves the director or just one of kind films.

Hanagatami closes out this year’s Japan Cut. For more information and tickets go here.

The film played earlier this month as part of Fantasia in Montreal

Nate Hood on KUSHINA,what will you be (2018) Japan Cuts 2018

It would seem the New York Asian Film Festival is not the only local film festival to dole out prizes to suspiciously underwhelming titles(ed note: the film won JAPAN CUTS Award, 2018 Osaka Asian Film Festival: Indie Forum). This year they decided to give an award to Moët Hayami’s KUSHINA, what will you be, a pensive yet ultimately underwhelming film examining intergenerational conflict in a family of women living off the grid.

Following some unspecified trauma, the stern, imperious Onikuma (Miyuki Ono) retreats from society into the mountains with her pregnant fourteen year old daughter Kagu (Tomona Hirota). Fourteen more years later and the two have founded a commune in the woods for women they rescued from committing suicide in the forest. The women have little to do in their rustic paradise other than grow crops to trade for supplies, gossip, and dote on Kagu’s increasingly curious daughter Kushina (Ikumi Satake). But just as Kushina starts to seriously question the world around her, two strangers enter the camp: anthropologist Kazano (Yayoi Inamoto) and her male assistant Harada (Suguru Onuma), both academics eager to study their strange community. Kazano quickly becomes attached to the inquisitive Kushina while Harada understandably becomes the village’s new center of attention, much to the fury of Onikuma. Despite their best intentions, Kazano and Harada are intruders, and their presence demands a costly reckoning that might decide the fate of little Kushina for the rest of her life.

Largely self-financed, Hayami felt free to attempt a more loose, idiosyncratic visual style than many of her Japanese contemporaries, revealing in an interview with Genkinahito that the film’s visual sense came largely from three different sources: Hayao Miyazaki’s awe and respect for nature’s totality, Shōhei Imamura’s obsession with ancillary environment shots in The Ballad of Narayama (1983), and the textures of British academism painter Frederic Leighton, in particular his piece Study at a Reading Desk (1877). Indeed, KUSHINA seems primarily interested in embodying the moods and rhythms of nature itself, regarding its human characters as small parts in a larger web of time and wildness. But it’s so preoccupied with its images that its characters and plot fade into wispy nothingness. It’s not that this approach can’t succeed—Andrei Tarkovsky spent the better part of his career mediating on the relationship between mankind and nature—but there’s no real philosophical or emotional undercurrent stabilizing the whole.

All of this leads to the inevitable question: of all the brave, daring, unique films at this year’s JAPAN CUTS, why was this one selected for an award? The cynic in me says it’s because it’s a micro-budget indie by women about women. But who knows? Maybe the jury members just really, really dug the cinematography. It is first-rate.

Rating: 6/10

Outrage Coda (2017) Japan Cuts 2018

Takeshi Kitano is back as Otomo the one man wrecking crew in the latest in the Outrage series, Outrage Coda, which is a good but not great entry in the series.

The plot of the film has tension happening between Korean and Japanese crime families. It seems that five years after the last film Kitano has quietly gone off to live in Korea. He spends his time fishing and watching over a small criminal kingdom. When a ranking yakuza beats up some of his girls he steps in and demands payment for the damaged goods. Having no idea who Kitano is he agrees to pay for the damage but he then kills the man set to collect. This sets ripples through the crime families as the Japanese families begin to circle each other looking for an angle to get more territory. Meanwhile Kitano decides he is pissed off at the death of friend and he returns to Tokyo to get revenge.

Confused and confusing this is the sort of film that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. There is enough going on that we remain engaged and interested but there is very little makes sense. Its grand plans involving lots of people and it’s hard to follow. It also doesn’t help that writer/director and nominal star Kitano disappears for large portions of the movie. After the first 15 minutes he’s gone for the better part of the next hour, showing up again simply to stir the pot and kill lots of people. He and his buddy neatly wipe out a whole room of gangster in seconds at one point. More talk than action this is a film where the violence explodes in splashes of orange looking blood before disappearing.

It all feels like this was thrown together for the hell of it. I can see Kitano hanging out, wanting to make a movie but not being able to get funding for a passion project so he threw this together. It feels half thought out.

And while I can pick on the film mercilessly I do like it. Great actors get to play bad guys. Its great fun as everyone chews scenery and seems to be having a good time. I say this because it frequently seems like Kitano and his cast seem to be fighting back laughter. Normally that wrecks a film, but somehow here it comes across as charming.

I had a great deal of fun watching this film. I liked it so much that I was up for two hours after my bedtime watching it.

If you’re a fan of the earlier films in the series or Kitano, give the film a shot since any film with Kitano in it is better than one without him.

For tickets and more information on the Japan Cuts screening on July 28 go here.

Nate Hood on Amiko (2018) Fantasia 2018 Japan Cuts 2018

Yoko Yamanaka’s Amiko is the rare high school movie that truly feels like it was written, shot, and edited by actual teenagers, not adults trying to tap into the adolescent zeitgeist. Most, if not all, of this comes from writer/director Yoko Yamanaka who, at a meager twenty years old, was a teenager herself less than a year ago. There are moments where the film seems imbued with that special youthful energy of discovery so characteristic of eager amateurs—of realizing what weird ways cameras can be held, shots composed, moments edited together or torn apart. But these are precious few.

Amiko lazily stumbles forward like a sleep-deprived eleventh grader trudging to their first period desk, hoping against hope that they can put their head down and doze for a while without getting caught. The film follows the eponymous disaffected 16-year-old, a schoolgirl with a bad case of post-pubescent ennui wherein everything and everyone is stupid and pointless. Except for Aomi. Beautiful, sweet, Radiohead-loving Aomi, budding soccer star who’s equally disaffected by the trials of life. Amiko falls for him hard and they initially seem to hit it off, particularly in an achingly beautiful sequence (the film’s highlight) where the two walk the long way home from school over a mountain and through a small city as the light gets darker and darker until they vanish into near-invisible silhouettes of shadow. But one day Aomi unexpectedly drops out of school and runs off to Tokyo with a college student. And not just any college student: a big-eyed, big-boobed, barista-by-day, bar-hostess-by-night bimbo, the very antithesis of everything she thought he stood for. In a fit of hormonal pique she runs off to Tokyo to find him and ask why a Thom Yorke-obsessed cool-guy could fall for someone so…phony.

The last half of the movie is devoted to her aimless big city wanderings in a stream-of-consciousness style reminiscent of the early literary Modernists, interspersing memories, fantasies, and encounters with Tokyo weirdos.

But there’s no momentum, no point, no coherent idea propelling Amiko or the film itself. In what feels like a metaphor for the film, Amiko initially doesn’t seem to know what to do when she finally finds Aomi. She probably should have thought of that before she skipped town, much in the same way Yamanaka should’ve figured out what, if anything, she wanted to say when she started work on this movie.

Rating: 5/10

AMIKO played yesterday at Fantasia and plays again July 31st (Tickets and info here)
It also plays Japan Cuts next Sunday July 29th (Tickets and info here)

Mori, The Artist’s Habitat (2018)

If you click with MORI, then you are going to find one of your favorite films of the year. If you don’t click this is still going to be a good portrait of a day in the life of artist.

Morikazu Kumagai is 94. His wife of 50 years is 76. They really haven’t gone out in 30 years, but that doesn’t mean they don’t experience life, as everyday they go through their paces cooking, cleaning, painting and observing life all around their property.

A mannered and low key celebration of life, this pastorally paced film is going to delight many with its slice of life take. We really get a sense of the slow paced rhythms of the life of Mori and his wife. Scenes seem to play out in a kind of real time as life happens and people talk around them. In a scene certain to slit audiences Mori goes out and wanders through his garden and just observes. On the face of it nothing happens, but everything does. We see the artist's sense of wonder. We get a sense of how the observations fuel his love of life and understanding of everything. By the time the film is coming to a close and the couple are discussing life, she wouldn’t want to live the life over, he is nowhere near done and wants to keep going forever we completely understand why. It is a wonderful bittersweet moment that is as glorious as anything you’ll see all year.

I loved this film a great deal. It delighted me and touched me with its sense and desire of life.

Highly recommended.

MORI,THE ARTIST'S HABITAT is the center piece film at this years Japan Cuts and sold out. For more information and possible last minute tickets go here

Nate Hood looks at BORN BONE BORN at Japan Cuts 2018

Born Bone Born may be one of the worst ever Western localizations of a Japanese film title. Its pithy alliteration feels designed to be forgettable, custom made for getting lost in the backwash of foreign streaming titles on Netflix or Amazon. The original title is both informative and dignified: Senkotsu, the name for a rural Okinawan funeral practice of bathing a deceased person’s bones one year after burial. It seems unfair that Masato Harada’s recent mediocre war epic was allowed to maintain its original Japanese title of Sekigahara while this tiny gem of a dramedy should be burdened by such an aggressively terrible English title.

For this new film by comedian Toshiyuki Teruya is a humanistic cross between the family comedies of Yoji Yamada and the delicate introspective character studies of Hirokazu Kore-eda. The film follows the Shinjo family living on the Okinawan island of Aguni as they prepare for the senkotsu ritual one year after the death of their matriarch Emiko (Mariko Tsutsui). The proceeding twelve months proved tumultuous ones: her husband Nobutsuna (Eiji Okuda) has fallen into a catatonic alcoholic stupor; her eldest son Tsuyoshi (Michitaka Tsutsui) has gone sour and mean after losing custody of his children in a nasty divorce; her estranged unmarried daughter Yuko (Ayame Misaki) returns from the mainland nine months pregnant with her boss’s baby.

Standing above it all and desperately trying to keep them all from falling apart is Emiko’s warm-hearted yet imperious sister Nobuko (Yoko Oshima), who in a cathartic early scene channels Frances McDormand at her crotchetiest when she shuts down the neighborhood gossip for spreading cruel rumors about Yuko’s “condition.”

The rest of the film watches as the family struggles to reconcile their failings and heal their disparate hurts, particularly when Yuko’s boss unexpectedly shows up at their doorstep looking to make an honest woman out of her.

Born Bone Born (ugh) is a warm, relaxing movie as drowsy as a summer’s day at the beach: shots and sequences feel like they end a few seconds after they should, the acting is almost entirely naturalistic and understated, and the cinematography makes the hazy streets and bone-white sand shimmer in the sunlight.

Once or twice the film almost veers into intolerable stillness, but never long enough to prove fatal. Takumi Saitoh’s Blank 13 may be the superior film about a family grappling with the death of a parent to premiere at this year’s Japan Cuts, but Teruya’s little triumph shouldn’t be missed by those looking for a breezy, relaxing sit.

Rating: 7/10

Call Boy (2018) Japan Cuts 2018

A young bartender being drawn into becoming an escort. We watch as he has numerous encounters with various women and takes stock of his life.

Great looking erotic thriller is so damn close to be a full on adult film that you’ll wonder why they didn’t go all the way (no pun intended). It’s also a film that tries to walk the fine line between being deep and meaningful or being about the sex, only to trip over the line and fall on its face. The result is it really isn’t deep and the sex, while good looking, ultimately only has the kink factor going for it. I got bored relatively fast and by the time the film ended after almost two hours I wasn’t really paying much attention to the proceedings. I had been there so many times before with a much more charismatic lead character.

I’m all for erotically charged films but there has to be something there beyond the sex. While the cinematography is ultimately worth the price of admission, the fact that it is tethered to an unremarkable story makes me not want to recommend it. If I wanted to watch an artistic sex film there are plenty of adult directors and cinematographers who are doing similar things without having to pull their punches.

Recommended for people who want arty kinky sex but need an air of respectability.

For tickets and more information go here

Today's Japan Cuts Pick: VIOLENCE VOYAGER

Easily one of the most cheerful transgressive films you’re apt to see, VIOLENCE VOYAGER works because you can’t tell the extent to which that cheerfulness is ironic: it mimics the earnestness of so much anime and manga—let’s be friends!, let’s go on an adventure!, let’s stop the bad guy before it’s too late!—that you find yourself riveted despite yourself. And that's long after any respectable moviegoer has reflected, with equal parts awe and dismay, “Wait, what exactly am I watching?”

Even when the movie is over, you may not be able to answer that question, not in any definitive way. Writer-director Ujicha has executed a near-perfect blend of form and function, with the deliberately primitive animation matching the deliberately naïve plot, characters, and settings. Ostensibly about kids who make the mistake of visiting a sketchy theme park, VIOLENCE VOYAGER recapitulates that premise on the macro level except now you’re the youngster looking for diversion who happens to wander into a world of depraved horror. Be warned.

Sennan Asbestos Disaster (2017) Japan Cuts 2018

This is a documentary that follows ten years in the fight to get justice and compensation for the people of Sennan, Osaka who were put into harm’s way by not only working for the various companies that made asbestos but lived around the factories themselves. After almost a hundred of exposure thousands are sick and dying but no one is paying attention. It was a danger that the Japanese government knew about well before the Second World War but chose to willfully cover up the fact.

I’m going to mention that Sennan Asbestos Disaster runs almost four hours to start because the extreme running time maybe a factor in whether you decide to see it. I also mention it because I was lucky enough to be able to watch the film at home at my leisure so I got to stop and start the film as needed. Don’t get me wrong this is a very good, probably great, film but there is a lot of information and it can be a bit overwhelming.

Decidedly not a neutral telling of events, Sennan Asbestos Disaster wears it’s heart on the sleeve and the filmmakers are very much part of what transpires.This is a blood brother to director Kazuo Hara earlier The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On. Frankly the fact that the film covers so much time and makes so many of the victims out to be real people it would be hard for the filmmakers to disappear into the background. They are on the front line from start to finish whether the government and company officials like it or not. While normally one would like a sense of distance, in this case there is no way to really side against those fighting for compensation, after all everyone knew there were problems 80 years ago, they simply refused to let anyone know. There is not mitigation.

I like Sennan Asbestos Disater a great deal but it is a long film. As I mentioned above I got to take time away from my viewing of the film. I think that helped my connecting with the film and allowed me not to get overwhelmed to the point my eyes glazed over. While I heartily recommend the film when it plays this weekend at Japan Cuts,  I think you should consider the run time before you dive in.

For ticket and more information go here.

Japan Cuts 2018 Capsules: TOWARD A COMMON TENDERNESS, DREAM OF ILLUMINATION, and KUSHINA what will you be

TOWARD A COMMON TENDERNESS
Kaori Oda's personal and almost experimental cinematic essay on her time in Japan and with Bela Tarr at his film factory. Striving to be deep and meaningful I grew weary of it and had completely disconnected by the half way point. I'm sure it speaks volumes for those who connect, for me it was th loss of an hour I will never get back.

Plays July 22nd

DREAM OF ILLUMINATION
Moody and "meaningful" story of a man selling land to foreigners and his high school aged daughter.  He is the bane of the farmers whose land he is selling. She is trying to figure out where she is going in life. This is a film that very much insists its about something.  Personally I'm not not sure what it is since it's moody black and white photography, meaningful silences arty images never came together for me. I kept waiting for some big revelation that never came. Worth a shot if you like arty films.

Plays July 21

KUSHINA, what will you be
KUSHINA concerns a community of women in the wilderness that was started when the matriarch wandered off one day with her daughter. Everything is threatened when an anthropologist and her male assistant arrive to study the group.

To be honest this is a film that didn’t click with me. While I could tell you what happens over the film’s brief running time, I couldn’t really tell you what the purpose of it is. It is the uncertainty of purpose that is going to keep me from fully reviewing the film, I just didn’t think enough of it to take the time to write it up be yond this brief note. On the plus side I loved the look of the film and the performances are first rate.

This film plays July 25

Born Bone Born (2018) Japan Cuts 2018

Born Bone Born presents a problem for me. It is a really good film that has a final image that is truly great. It is a moment that ties everything together including the films exploration of why and how we honor our dead. The trouble for me is the final transcendent moment is so much better than the rest of the film that I want to over sell the film.

On the island of  Aguni the dead are not cremated. The bodies are buried and then several years later the body is disinterred and the bones are washed and cleaned in a special ceremony. Several years after her mother dies, Yuko, returns home very pregnant. Her brother is cranky, her father has disconnected from the world via drink and she is insisting she doesn’t want to be a bother but things spin out in unexpected ways.

A low key comedy the film has good many laughs from our recognizing of the situations we are seeing on the screen. Everyone is people we know from our own lives. While director bends things for his purpose an laughs things remain, for the most part real.

And it all is sweet and nice and low key. It’s a film that largely entertains even as it is clearly angling to make a point or tries to be quirky. I liked the film enough that I ended up seeing it two times. It wasn’t my intention but I wanted to see part of the film a second time for what I was intending on writing on the film and fell into a second time.

However when I sat down to write this piece on the film my thoughts changed. I became less interested in the film then I was in the final image and how it seems to amplify a small little film into something greater. I was consumed with how the film flips in the last instant. Is that enough to call the film great?

While I think in some films I think it does (James Gray's The Immigrant for example) I don’t think it does. I feel that way because in watching the film a second time I realized knowing the end didn’t make the film greater. I didn’t like it more. In a weird way I was kind of disappointed the second time through because I realized that it didn’t live up to the end. No it didn’t become a bad film or even less than it was, just a disappointing one since for me it didn’t live up to the potential I realized it has.

Disappointment or not I do like the film and recommend it when it plays July 21 at Japan Cuts (For tickets and more information go here)