Brief thoughts on THE MAKING OF A JAPANESE (2024)

Closing film of this year’s Japan Cuts is a good look at 1st and 6th graders in a Japanese school as the new year begins.

Playing as a kind of Frederick Wiseman film for the younger crowd. The film is several slices of life as we watch the various kids as they learn the skills and are molded into proper Japanese.

I enjoyed the film a great deal, an I kind of which it was a series more than a single feature because I would have tuned in every week to see what happens next.

If you are wondering why this piece is short it’s more that since the film is the closing film for Japan Cuts I was expecting something meatier. This isn’t a knock against the film, which I enjoyed the hell out of, rather I was ready and primed to see a film full of ideas and thematic threads and instead I got a light, but informative and entertaining film. All of my desire to attack the film and really discuss it disappeared in the cute faces of a bunch of kids I wanted to hug.

Most definitely worth see THE MAKING OF A JAPANESE closes the 2024 edition of Japan Cuts

Following the Sound (2023) Japan Cuts 2024

 

For a film that has sound in the title it may seem odd that there are so many silences, but that is the case.

The film is the story of two women who have a chance meeting and who end up circling in each other. The film is moment of their lives  apart and during their meetings. It’s a film that has its own rhythms. It’s a film you have to go into and just let it happen. You can not go into the film and expect it to be something, you simply have to take it for what it is. I say that because I spent the first fifteen or so minutes fighting with it. I wanted something to happen other than what was happening. It wasn’t until I went Zen and let it happen that I clicked. It was only then that the silences hit me with their power.

If you like small quiet gems of a film seek this film out when it plays Japan Cuts this weekend.

ICE CREAM FEVER (2024) Japan Cuts 2024

The lives of four women intersect at a local ice cream shop.

Director Tetsuya Chihara adaption of  a short story by Mieko Kawakami is a nixed bag. A moving story with a great cast the film is undone by a filmmaker who doesn’t know what to do with the camera.  While the film is shot in a kind of verite style, the images seem to alternate from jiggly hand held shots that feel like the camera person couldn’t get a grip on the camera or in ultra tight  close ups of faces.  It feels like the work of a young  filmmaker making his first film, but while this is Chihara’s first feature he has been working in design and advertising for years so one would think he would know how to frame a shot.

After a while I stopped looking at the images and just focused on the subtitles.

Call me an old fart for not getting it, but I’ve always been one to argue that that the images we see should have a reason for existing, especially with in the context of a film. Why are you showing us this image in this way. Most times I know, but I’m not certain here, with the over riding decision seeming to be we shot it this way because it will be cool, or hip or happening or whatever the kids say these days.

This is a good story with good characters messily told.

Blue Imagine (2023) Japan Cuts 2024

 

An actress is sexually abused by a film director  and left shaken. Her brother, a human rights lawyer, suggests letting it go because of lack of evidence. She eventually drifts into a women’s safe place called Blue Imagine. There she finds support and meets another actress  who was also abused by the same director.

Damning look at the treatment of women in Japan and the film industry in particular. It's a film with a matter of fact and non-histrionic presentation that does more than move the emotions but gets you thinking and  seriously considering how we behave.

This is a film which quietly rattled my cage. I can only imagine how this played in Japan.

I'm going to be honest and say that while I really like the film a great deal, I am going to need a second viewing down the road away from the festival crush, and some recent similar incidents that occurred around me where I can more carefully consider the film and it's low key approach.  That's not a knock only a suspicion that perhaps on a second viewing this film may kick me to the curb.

Recommended.

Mermaid Legend (1983) Japan Cuts 2024

I’m just doing a pointer toward MERMAID LEGEND instead of a full on review.  I’m doing this because when I saw the film listed in the Japan Cuts slate I had a vague memory of having watched it years ago.  Moments after starting it I realized I saw it and that it was never a favorite of mine.

The film is the story of a woman who is married to a fisherman. When he is murdered, she vows revenge and does so, becoming a force of nature in the process.

Years ago I was directed to the film via friends who loved Asian cinema. They loved this crazy and seemingly over the top revenge film. I loved the intensity, but the over the top nature of some of it, particularly in the final moments, just was a step too far.

My reservations aside, I have friends who love this film and are delighted at the chance to see it on a big screen here in NYC.

Worth a look for those interested.

Performing KAORU's Funeral (2024) Japan Cuts 2024

A woman who passed away leaves word in her will that her ex-husband is to be her lead mourner. It sets in motion a wave of memories and chaos. 

 Dark black comedy that moves to the sound of the machine that removes the blood during an autopsy. I’m serious about that. The first sound we hear is that and the rhythm of the film remains that. It’s something that is echoed in the score. The result is a film that is bittersweet, sad and deeply disturbing since the film plays out as if the life and memories of the deceased and the people on screen were bleeding away down the drain on the embalming slab. Once I noticed it I was deeply troubled by the film. 

 As for the rest of the film, it is bittersweet. There is much truth in what we are seeing. As someone who is still dealing with the death of some loved ones years after the fact, I found that the film opened some doors I had hoped to keep nailed shut. Yes the film is funny but at the same time its an emotional ride.

 Recommended.

Nezumikozō Jirokichi (Rintarō, 2023) Japan Cuts 2024

Sadao Yamanaka directed 26 films  from 1932 to 1937.  Only three remain today along with his scripts. Legendary director Rintaro makes his first film in a decade with a film based upon the work of Yamanaka. It imagine the director making a film about a Robin Hood -esque roguish character known as the Rat who takes confounds the police and delights a little boy.

Sweet little film done in the style of Japanese silent films Nezumikozō Jirokichi is a sweet little homage. Running the perfect length for what it is, the film imagines what an unproduced film by the director might have been. To be certain it is seen through the eyes of Rintaro, but it is still a delight.

Recommended- it’s worth the price of Short Films 2 at Japan Cuts

Moving (1993) Japan Cuts 2024

This is just brief word on the newly restored MOVING which was directed by Shinji Somai.

The film is the story of the break up of a marriage from the stand point of a young girl.  Old enough to understand to some degree but not old enough to handle the emotional earthquake, the young woman is forced to figure out the new normal as the uncertainty of it all makes her act out in unexpected ways.

The film looks and feels like a drama a decade or two earlier. In a weird way it reminded me of a less soapy and over wrought Douglas Sirk film. It is a film that very much cares about its characters, all of them.

This is a really good film that still stands up and feels fresh 30 years on.

Go see this and be moved.

Shadow of Fire (2023) Japan Cuts 2024

God bless Shin'ya Tsukamoto. Since bursting on the scenes with TETSUO:THE IRON MAN he has been making films that confound the audience and bludgeon them into stunned silence (in a good way). I have attended several of his films when they screened at Festivals over the years and you always could feel the audience being worked over by the cinematic treats. SHADOW OF FIRE is no exception.

The plot of the film concerns a young woman running a  burned out bar in the days after the end of the Second World War.  She serves her customers food and drink and some times herself. She is nominally protected by a pimp who is never really around. She begins to form a loose family with an orphan and a broken young soldier who doesn’t try and sleep with her.  As events go on as the orphan gets mixed up with a young man of questionable morals.  

I’m not going to go into more detail because the plot will sound broken, and like the people it depicts it kind of is, but at the same time it is emotionally true. Tsukamoto is telling us a story that isn’t really about the “narrative” but the emotional and mental journey of the characters. Its operating in a realm that is beyond words and so trying to use them to explain it will make it seem less than it is.

SHADOW OF FIRE is going to rock you. It’s an off kilter little mind bomb about the effect of war on those who lived it. It is not a shiny happy film about how when the war ended things went back to normal, instead it is a long pained scream  into the darkness about how the trauma lives on forever after the bombs stop falling and the bullets stop flying. It’s a look at the psychic and emotional damage that living under threat of war does to us. It's a crushing film that makes you feel and begin to understand the destruction the leaders ever consider.

This film will leave you broken.

If you can score manage to beg borrow or steal a ticket to the sold out Japan Cuts screening I highly recommend you go.

Kubi (2023) Japan Cuts 2024

Takashi Kitano has been trying to tell this story for so long that Akira Kurasowa is supposed to have said that if Kitano could make the film it would rival SEVEN SAMURAI.  It was only decades later, after writing the story as a novel, that Kitano could get the money and the cast to make his dream project. It may not rival SEVEN SAMURAI but it is a hell of a tale.

Set during the 1582 Honnoji Incident the film is the story of a coup attempt that goes sideways as  everyone is trying to use the hunt for the traitor to get a head... literally since this film is full of decapitations (the opening image ends with a crab crawling out of a neck missing a head).

Where SEVEN SAMURAI is about honor and light in the wake of troubles, this is a bleak black (comedic) tale about how awful everyone is. You are either plotting to get to the next level or you are dying. There is no honor only death and ugliness. People die horribly and no one gives a shit.

This is one of the bleakest films of the year. Its a film where the violence keeps getting greater and greater and it is always horrifying. Yes its funny at times but it's stomach churning. This film is a clear indication that the bad old days of the samurai was monstrous. I got to a certain point and I wanted to hang it up because it was all ugly and I didn't like anyone.

You'll forgive  the lack of details  but as good as much of this film is, Kitano's script is overly complicated.  There are so many characters that he has to put titles with names on them. I'm sure he knows who everyone is, but I got lost. I had big picture of what was happening, but I wasn't sure who is who. I know this is the result of Kitano knowing the story because he wrote the book which was based on history, but as an outsider I was lost. It's not fatal to the film, but it takes what should be a truly great film and makes it very good instead.

If you can take the violence and unpleasantness and are willing to have your view of the past rewritten in to bleakness KUBI is recommended when it plays Japan Cuts.

Rei (2024) Japan Cuts 2024

Toshihiko Tanaka​'s REI is the work of a first time director and a troop of actors and creators who channeled their lack of work during Covid into   a film they could take to festivals (it says so int the press notes and not a smart ass remark). It is a film full of ideas and a desire to put it all out there. The result is a deliberate film that is more like a novel than a film.

The film is the story of a young woman who meets a deaf photographer with whom she ends up having a relationship. It's a story that unfolds in it's own time and its own way. It is a film where the images and the landscapes that the characters inhabit is just as important as the dialog.

Running a dense 190 minutes there is a lot going on here. It plays out in long deliberate  sequences that can be very intense. There are silences, owing in part to one of the characters but also because of other choices Tanaka makes in how he lets the story unfold. It's a film that you have to be ready to engage with and give yourself over to for its whole running time.

I'm going to be honest here and say I was not ready for this film. As I normally do with festival films I went in blind and unaware of what it was about and what its run time was. Normally I don't care how long a film is but there was a point where I suddenly realized that we were no where near done and that there was still another 90 minutes to go. That is my mistake, but at the same time the fact that I was questioning the run time makes me wonder if this couldn't have been shorter.

Okay, yes, call me heathen but normally long films don't bother me and I thought the even longer recent film ABOUT DRY GRASSES flew by.  And it's not that I think the film is too long, but rather it's more in need of a break- there is a lot to take in and process and some times you need to step out, much like when you read a novel sometimes you need to put the book down.

While I like the film, and recommend it, your feelings may vary depending upon your feelings toward dense narratives and deliberate pacing.

Sayonara,Girls (2024) Japan Cuts

On the last two days of a rural high school four girls ponder the past and their future.

Low key slice of life is a film you are either going to connect to or  it's going to make you antsy.  While the film is beautifully shot and performed perfectly by a stellar cast, this is a film with little drama and no stakes.   While this makes the film closer to life, there is something about the presentation, very low key, that doesn't make it as compelling as it should be.

Perhaps the fact that I have zero nostalgia for high school may have something to do with it.

On the other hand if you have an affinity for high school give the film a try, it may click for you.

Brief thoughts on Shin Godzilla: Orthochromatic (2016/2024) plays Japan Cuts 2024 July 14 and 21

I'm not going to re-review SHIN GODZILLA now that there is a black and white version. I still think it's one of the best films in the series. 

That said I am not going to lie and say that the film doesn't play differently. The film seems more firmly on the humans and less on the monster.  The film also feels like an old school drama from 60 years ago. It feels like a another version of the same story even though it is exactly the same.

For me the biggest difference between the two versions is how the lack of color mutes some of the reactions we have to things. When the early form of the monster begins to dump  the blood like substance from its gills  it doesn't look like anything. When I saw the film in color in theaters the audience audibly was grossed out. Here it was just a dark liquid.  Additionally when in the color version when Godzilla let loose with a purple ray it was arresting, it black and white it's less so. It's the result of the image loosing color differences in monochrome -certain shades all look the same as white.

To be honest the only really complaint I can level at this version is that shifting to black and white made it possible to see the compositing of the effects into the film. And it is the black and white that's doing it since I rechecked some sequences and they look good in color.

Minor quibbles aside I really like this version of the film. and if you love it as much as I do, you must give this version a try. If you've never seen it, go see it because this is a great film.

Brief thoughts on : Shunga The Lost Japanese Erotica (2022) Japan Cuts 2024

A look at the efforts to restore, reproduce and recreate Shunga erotica which was done in a  wood block style

Don't come into SHUNGA thinking you are going to be aroused. This is an informative, literary and a bit dry look at the erotic art form in Japan. It's a beautiful film which is going to tell you everything you ever wanted to know about classic Japanese erotica and then some.  It is a really well done film....

...that is much too long for what it is. 

Yes it is excellent. Yes it is informative. But it is so low key and detailed that you may nod off. I knew I was going to have a love hate relationship with the film when it showed us what it takes to carve pubic hairs.

It's not bad, but you should be aware of what you are walking into since the film plays at 9PM on a Saturday. Unless you a bringing a scholar you are not getting lucky after this film.

MOTION PICTURE CHOKE (2024) Japan Cuts 2024

Post apocalyptic tale set in the far off future follows the life of a woman living in a partially collapsed building.

A low budget caveman like tale the film seems to have been built around a limited number of locations all a short distance from each other. Shot in black and white and having no dialog this is a film you are going to either click with or not. 

I have seen way too many similar films, and this film didn’t really click with me. While the basic story is good the execution is mixed. The clothes are too perfect. No one shows signs of bumps and scrapes and their hair and cleanliness are perfect. It all feels like dress up and the wrong sort of make believe.

I never connected.

Bottle George (2024) Japan Cuts 2024 NYAFF 2024

Tonko House and Akihiro Nishino (Poupelle of Chimney Town) will break your heart with the animated gem BOTTLE GEORGE.

The film is the story of a thing in a bottle that lives with a little boy and a fat cat. What happens is the movie.

Actually, what the film is is an allegorical telling of addiction and a family. It’s a beautifully animated tale that will make you laugh, crush your soul and make you cry bittersweet tears.

I was watching the film during a lunch break and an I had to explain to several people why I was a sobbing mess.

Who said that stop motion animation can’t make you cry?

This film is a masterpiece and highly recommended. See it in Shorts Collection One at both Japan Cuts and NYAFF.

All The Long Nights (2023) plays Japan Cuts 2024 July 16

One of the best films at Japan Cuts is slowly finding a permanent place in my heart. It's the quiet story of two damaged people who collide and become better people as a result.

Misa has severe problems with PMS. She is being treated but it makes as they are adjusting her mes she is still uneven emotionally. Eventually she finds a place she likes working that makes science toys for kids. There she meets Takatoshi who has severe panic attacks which force him to have daily rituals and to be a loner. What happens when they meet is the film.

This isn't what you expect and we are better for it. This is the sort of low key, yet joyously involving slices of life that no one in America really does. Its a film about people, end of story. There is nothing more than that, no grand drama, no romance or comedy, just lives being lived. The films are very much like novels. And yes this is based on a novel.

I was directed to this film by a friend who was dying to see it at Japan Cuts. He had been told by a friend who raved about it in such loving tones that he had been trying to track himself a copy of the film. The love with which I was told about the film made me want to see the film too and instead of watching the new Takeshi Kintaro film as my first Japan Cuts film it was this one. The result was it set a level of greatness for the fest that I don't think any film can match.

This is glorious filmmaking. It's pitch perfect acting. It's cinematic joy of the highest order.

Don't get me wrong- there are no artificial highs and lows- just life as lived and time among people we want to hug and never ever let go. It's simply the story of two people who were changed for the better by knowing each other.

You MUST see this- trust me it's going to be one of you gems of the year-its on my best of the year list.

ALL THE LONG NIGHTS plays Japan Cuts on July 16. For more info and tickets go here

Look Back (2024) Japan Cuts

Two young women meet in school and bond over a love of drawing comics. Over the course of the film we watch as the pair are shaped by their relationship and their art.

Tatsuki Fujimoto, creator Chainsaw Man goes in another direction in a story about friendship, creation, finding someone who shares your passion, and how our lives go in unexpected ways. It is also a wicked exploration of what if we don't do what we love.

In one way or another this is my life. I lived almost every god damned moment of this film. From being king, to finding out you may not be, to giving up what you love, to returning to it, to finding people you can create with and then having life intervene. I lived some form of this, and I sobbed ugly repeatedly a I connected to the tale of the need to create at all costs played out. For  me this wasn't a drama but a waking memory

This is the cinematic version of the the song from A Chorus Line, What I Did For Love. The song is not about romance with another person, but the love of the things we do, and what happens when we can't do it any more. (It's sung after an injury has a dancer leave after a probable career ending injury occurs). This film is a look at what we all do so we can do the thing we love.

I have no words. I suspect that if you create, especially if you do it with friends you too will have no words - other than to express how the film will make you feel seen. 

As a straight forward film it's a very good film. Yes, the narrative is bumpy with some links missing, but at the same time, it's not the literal narrative that's important. It's the emotional journey. Its that journey that will kick your ass to the curb.

This was an unexpected treasure. It is a film I will forever hold tightly to and press closely to my heart.

LOOK BACK is currently sold out at Japan Cuts. Keep checking the website to see if they release more tickets because you need to see this.

Whale Bones (2024) plays Sunday at Japan Cuts.

This is not going to make sense until you see the film- so just go with it and see the film

Takamasa Oe, who co-wrote DRIVE MY CAR with Ryusuke Hamaguchi, strikes off on his own in a tale of loneliness and strange turns.

The film follows a young man who, after getting dumped, tries a dating app. The first date he has goes sideways and things happen, with his date disappearing. Obsessed with the young woman, he begins to track down the site specific messages she left around the city.

If that seems awkward in the telling, not to worry the Japan Cuts write up isn’t much better. This is one of those films where I can tell you what it’s about but if I do that I’m going to wreck the trip that is what the film is about. It’s a film that changes as it goes on, making you thing and feel different things all through it, including a sense, for a while, that this doesn’t seem to be working…. Which is gamble because you can’t bail on the film because what doesn’t seem to be working does eventually pull it together. Once it does pull it together it becomes a film of quiet power.

More succinctly put this is a film where the power of storytelling over comes our expectations to become something truly special.

If you love good, a typical movies, or if you loved DRIVE MY CAR, give this film a try.

The Six Singing Women (2023) Japan Cuts 2024

Yoshimasa Ishibashi who's Milocrorze: A Love Story wowed the Japan Cuts Audiences a little more than a decade ago, returns with an environmental tale wrapped in a strange mystery.

When a photographer's father passes away he is has to return home to sell his father's things which are located deep in the woods.  While heading home with a real estate agent of questionable motives, they find they can not leave the woods. They are in fact held captive after a fashion by six beautiful but strange women.

The hows and whys of what is going on takes some time to unravel and as it does the films shifts from a kind of mystery into the territory of environmental fable. It's an odd shift that allows for some amazing sequences that draw us in  as the beauty and strangeness of what we are seeing makes us lean in. This is for much of its running time a very compelling film 

At the same time the shift untethers the narrative just enough that Ishibashi can't reign it all in. Plot threads shoot out from between his fingers and there is a sense that everything doesn't matter so long as his point is made. The result is a film that almost works but doesn't quite do so because the director stopped caring one connecting the path to the ending and just jumped there.

I was disappointed. 

While the film isn't bad, it also doesn't work the way it should.

despite over all reservations there are enough moments that the film is worth trying, especially if you are a fan of the director.