2024/12/29
Lengthy, isn't it? These chair-splintering, back-busting motion pictures range from good to great, and I recommend all of them.
He loves an unhinged hippie (Tuesday Weld), but an ordinary nebbish (Philip Proctor) can't compete with her insane reveries, or the excitingly personable rakehell (Jack Nicholson) who periodically uses her for sex. He's been rightly chided for imitating Woody Allen, but Henry Jaglom's dreamily drifting first feature anticipates the superior filmmaker's sober portraits of unstable eccentrics, and nostalgic and ironic application of old records from the '40s and '50s. Scrupulously cut by Pieter Bergema, the middling BBS Production's surrealism amounts to little, but it's a fine display of its stars' talent; those fond of Weld's emotional sweep and pulchritude will probably love it. Orson Welles affects a cheesy Balkan accent and performs some impressive magic tricks in flashbacks of Weld's madwoman.
An acquaintance's suicide, incessant abuse from bullies (Ye Zhou, Ran Liu, Xinyi Zhang), and harassment by creditors who expect remuneration from her derelict mother (Yue Wu) are all sustained by a bright, demure student (Dongyu Zhou) who's studying for the daunting exam that'll determine her eligibility for collegiate admission. Encounters with a poor, petty criminal (Jackson Yee) who rescues her from a gang prove ministrative, though his efforts to help her complicate both of their lives. Quality propaganda that aggressively denounces school bullying and promotes the gaokao doesn't skimp on action, mystery, and sweet if prognosticable romance, for which Zhou and Yee cogenerate heat sans tawdriness. Contemporary Chinese pictures deliver their messages loud and clear as genuinely moving dramas....even if this one's conclusion is foretold by the limits of the CCP's authoritarian tolerance.
Lies backfire when a sweet, lovely blind girl (Konatsu) falls mutually and literally for a benignant ventriloquist (Shota Kotaki), but accidentally sleeps with and dates his handsome, cavalier protege (Yota Kawase). Mauger its explorations of vulnerability, disingenuity, and obsolescence, Daisuke Goto's sweaty, tragicomic pink flick doesn't skimp on sex or humor, and its leads are keenly attuned to his balance thereof. As aging, squabbling manzaishi, Yutaka Ikejima and Horyu Nakamura provide both comic relief and some perspective on the decline of entertainments.
In a forest's pond, the body of a maid (Susi Stach) employed by a wealthy matron (Nicole Heesters) is discovered, then investigated by a degage, argus-eyed detective (Fritz Karl) who suspects the cultured, Nietzchean son (Michael Rotschopf) of the decedent's employer. A young officer (Michael Steinocher) newly assigned to his district has reason to believe that what may be homicide is somehow related to the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend (Henrietta Rauth) years before. Fans of Götz Spielmann shouldn't expect from his small, tightly plotted murder mystery the meditative profundity of his best pictures, but his story unfolds with a deceptively relaxed tone and pace within the temporal and budgetary restraints of Austrian TV. Once known for his urban crime dramas, Spielmann's repaired repeatedly to the countryside for his last few pictures, perhaps coming full circle to the agrestic wholesomeness of his early shorts.
=]=:< <"You know what this movie needed, right? Yep: an alligator to eat that old broad's carcass. It would be neater if they had to identify her by her bones."
Six budding directors (Won-kyung Choi, Byeong-deock Jeon, Jisam, Jang-mi Kim, Gwang-Jin Lee, Wally Seo) breathe some freshness into shopworn scenarios of their surprisingly good horror anthology concerning a cult's gory rituals surveilled by an undercover reporter (Chae-eun Kim), which recounts how the sources of organs and tissues were harvested in five vignettes concerning cursed perfume of a suicidee that's claimed by a young woman who knew her, a clairvoyant who's coerced by the coworkers who bully him to introduce them to the afterlife in a manner that they didn't expect, an exorcism remotely conducted by students to help a possessed friend that's recorded on numerous video feeds, the haunted apartment for which its new domiciliar is warned to keep in pristine condition, and two residents of adjoining apartments who wake one day to find that they're tethered by the neck, and have limited time to free themselves. Five of these six stories satisfy, and the directorial sextet's capable casts and warmly colorful photography help them to reinvigorate their tired subject matter.
Does the deranged deportment and violence experienced by an increasingly erratic master chef (Mutsuo Yoshioka) at culinary classes where he instructs and elsewhere betoken his descent into schizophrenia, a deeper mystery, or more unresolved thematic arcana in the vein of Charisma? This reviewer honestly has no idea, but Kurosawa's first of three pictures in 2024 is almost perfectly shot and played, harkening to his best, most enigmatic pictures of the late '90s and early aughts. Don't necessarily expect this disquieting treat to make much rational sense for observing its characters' psychological disintegrations.
=]=:< <"I don't get this one either, but imagine how amazing this movie could be if everybody who committed murder was feeding their victims to the same alligator, and they didn't know about each other until a climax or conclusion. Now, that's peak cinema, right there."
Contemporaneous performances and extensive interviews with Fagen, Becker and many of the nearly 40(!) superb musicians that they employed for its recording sessions illustrate the popular British series' analysis of this famously fastidious jazz-rock outfit's celebrated masterwork from 1977. Many pop acts are fortunate to enjoy simultaneous qualitative, commercial, and critical success, but only a handful did so with such painstaking precision, sophistication, and artistry. Within, its founding dyad remain refreshingly insouciant and slightly self-deprecating as they pore over and discuss unused takes, discarded ideas, and their qualified satisfactions. Enjoyable for newcomers, this is obviously required viewing for fans of the Dan.
One perfervid, unbalanced marine (Dong-gun Jang) posted at the shoreline of Korea's DMZ mistakes a drunken couple for spies and kills one (Hae-jin Yoo), after which both the sentinel and his victim's girlfriend (the late Ji-ah Park) descend into madness manifest as delusive promiscuity and violence from which more tragedy eventuates. Outstanding direction and editing by Ki-duk and Sun-min Kims (respectively) and another blistering performance by Jang intensify Kim's shattering admonition regarding the pressures and ingratitude sustained by many of South Korea's soldiers, for whom assigned power may be a terrible burden.
=]=:< <"These movies drive me nuts: humans shooting, exploding, grappling in water, and nobody's around to gobble up what's left of them. I was famished by the time it was finally over."
One prickish, popular FM talk show host (William Shatner) cleverly murders a former employee and best friend (Jack Laufer) of his adopted daughter (Molly Hagan) before he can convince her to relocate away from her domineering dad and pursue an auctorial career. He didn't expect the pestiferous probe of a seemingly ungainly investigating lieutenant (Peter Falk), who, as ever, pecks away until clues emerge. Shat shats way over the top, far harder than usual, in an otherwise middling episode of the perennially popular series that's also among its funniest. It's so fun that you may forgive its underwhelming conclusion.
=]=:< <"Some 'people' think that RoBu hates Jews, but he loves Falk and Shatner so much that he positively reviewed an episode where Shat's caught and cuffed by cops in bike shorts. One of them is even A WOMAN!"
He was an executive's first choice to be the host of a televised true crime program before the career of a chain-smoking, veteran news anchor (Peter Haskell) was undermined by the calumny of an underhanded, egocentric criminal psychologist and televisional producer (George Hamilton) who purloined his position; when the recovered alcoholic reemerges to blackmail his suave smearer with a pornographic video in which he and an underaged teenager performed years before, his rival decides that murder is preferable to the relinquishment of his celebrity. Is the disheveled detective (Peter Falk) who's harrassing him merely searching for clues, or has he a coherent theory? Viewers are sure to notice a few mistakes of Hamilton's second perpetrator in Sonia Wolf's, Patricia Ford's, and April Raynell's cleverly concocted and slightly sloppy story, but Falk and Hamilton interact as amusingly as they had sixteen years before; the permanently bronzed character actor was always a natural selection for one of this series' upstage, homicidal narcists. Daryl Duke doesn't direct with quite the panache that he demonstrated in the previous year's Columbo Cries Wolf, but its convolutions are as fun to follow as the reappearance of slothful old Dog.
Heavy debt incurred by numerous inept wagers and investments, the probability of divorce from his mutually unfaithful wife (Jo Anderson), and imminent termination from the practice overseen by his father-in-law (Paul Burke) rouse a handsome dentist (James Read) to reverse his fortunes by ingeniously and remotely murdering his spouse's dashing lover (Marshall R. Teague) and framing her for his crime. Nobody would've investigated the possibility of homicide except one unkempt detective (Peter Falk) whose investigatory persistence is eventually as revealing as aggravating. A fine plot, an excursus during which Columbo meets a convocation of celebrities (Dick Sargent, Nancy Walker, Ron Cey, Victor Bevine, John Roarke) at their weekly poker game, and a hilariously prolonged instance of the lieutenant's passive-aggressive harassment result in a very good (not great) episode of the series' second run.
During a summery vacation, two brothers are enamored with and subtly seduced by an alluring beauty (Mie Kitahara), whose sordid secrets can't deter the lust and love that she's inflamed in both the jaded elder (Masahiko Tsugawa) and innocent younger (Yujiro Ishihara) siblings. Quintessential Sun Tribe youth drama was the second based on one of Shintaro Ishihara's novels in which his baby brother appeared, and the first to present that buck-toothed, future superstar as a talent of note. Ko Nakahira's largely routine conduct is punctuated with tight close-ups that survey its discontented young men, and distanced long shots in which Kitahara's entrancing presence and potent sensuality with Ishihara coruscate. Eurasian heartthrob Masumi Okada exudes swaggering cool as one of the brothers' rowdy friends. Masaru Sato's and Toru Takemitsu's jazzy, haunting, early score magnifies its miasm. Ishihara and Kitahara co-starred in several subsequent popular pictures until their marriage in 1960. Nikkatsu's dramas articulated and capitalized on the disaffection of young postwar Japanese more effectively than those of others studios; onscreen, nothing domestic was as vocally rebellious, and very little anywhere so erotic as this in the '50s.
=]=:< <"If you've seen the benthonic end of this, you know what I'm gonna say, right? Yeah: two corpses, not a saltwater allegator or crocodile in sight to eat them. Sighhhhhh...."
Accompanied by a long retinue of porters in snowy northern Pakistan, and Werner Herzog with his skeleton crew, accomplished mountaineers Reinhold Messner and Hans Kammerlander expound on the Herculean nature of their exploits and recount harrowing stories of tragedy and survival before and after they surmount Gasherbrums I and II at the Chinese border. Stunning outlooks of the mountains shot by Herzog and his crew below, as well as Messner and Kammerlander with an 8mm film camera during their ascent to its apex, are only slightly more impressive than their truly moving accounts before a fixed, objective lens. Haunting, beautiful, ultimately triumphant, it may be Herzog's best documentary shot in the '80s.
With Homer Van Meter (Harry Dean Stanton), Harry Pierpont (Geoffrey Lewis), Charles Mackley (John Ryan), Pretty Boy Floyd (Steve Kanaly), Baby Face Nelson (Richard Dreyfuss) and other transient confederates, the great bandit of banks and folk hero John Dillinger (Warren Oates) robs branch offices, dominates his Métis lover (Michelle Phillips), battles local law enforcement, and dodges dogged federal agent Melvin Purvis (Ben Johnson), who'd rather see him interred than imprisoned. Crude, sanguinary first feature by John Milius has its great cast chomping his meaty script like ribeye steaks with plenty of personality and traces of depth. His remarkable resemblance to Dillinger is as much a credit to Oates as his spicy, seething, magnetic interpretation of the famed felon, and those aforelisted supporting players are every bit as wildly colorful. Typecast Johnson plays Purvis as hard as nails -- just one of many historical inaccuracies that enhance Milius's drama. On a limited budget, this American International Picture is exciting throughout, but seems relatively tame until the second act, when the first of many shootouts erupts with bloodshed as federal and local law enforcement episodically slaughter Dillinger's accomplices, who take plenty of the lawmen with them. A postscript composed by J. Edgar Hoover that fulminates against Dillinger's glamorization was read by Paul Frees -- only because the FBI's director died weeks before he was to record it himself.
The meticulous planning and initially flawless execution of an abduction should've ensured its success, but shortcomings and surprises of a wealthy family's seized, sole scion (Gemma Arterton) and her kidnappers (Martin Compston, Eddie Marsan) complicate what should've been the smooth receipt of her ransom. Prodigious performances worked by Jonathan Blakeson's taut, tense direction and screenplay make for great viewing, even during those few predictable of his plot's kinks.
Had she not aroused the lust and ire of a loony, perverted salesman (Daijiro Tsutsumi), he probably wouldn't stalk and terrorize a housewife (Keiko Takahashi) who's minding her luxe apartment and cute, bratty son (Takuto Yonezu) during a few days of her husband's occupational absence. Banmei Takahashi's stylish, suspenseful direction optimizes fine, intense histrionics from his wife and crazed, sleazy Tsutsumi, Yasushi Sasakibara's beautifully luminous photography, and modish interior sets paired with an apartment complex's exteriors. It gets goofy and gory during its last twenty-odd minutes, but the prolific softcore porno auteur's sullen, suggestive thriller is never dull; an overhead tracking shot following Takahashi during an energetic chase is especially worth seeing. Boasting an infectious theme and variations thereof, Goji Tsuno's polyrhythmic score is a cherry atop.
=]=:< <"You know, I like this one: almost pornographic, but actually wholesome and gory. Why do so many of you humans lose your shit over sex?"
The last and least of Leone's westerns packs a dynamitic punch by relating how a poor, patriarchal Mexican bandito (Rod Steiger) and a former Fenian warrior (James Coburn) who specializes in explosives are drawn into the Mexican Revolution despite their initially mercenary objectives. It can't compare to his best pictures, but all of the director's hallmarks are present here: pitch-black humor, anfractuous plot, brilliantly staged action, dreamy cutbacks, and admirable antiheroes in Coburn and Steiger, who loom larger than life. Leone's Zapata western would probably be more popular if he didn't attack the right and left alike for their barbarisms and hypocrisies, or fill his characters' mouths with vitriol for the ruling classes and revolution alike -- evincing in Leone and his co-screenwriters Luciano Vincenzoni and Sergio Donati a rare, mature, unexpected political sagacity. Come for the shootouts and explosions, and stay for the historical weight that demonstrates how sacrifice is often either a prerequisite or impetus for insurrection.
=]=:< <"More deserts. No."
Ozu's stirring story of spouses (Ryo Ikebe, Chikage Awashima) whose marriage is destabilized by his affair with a coworker (Keiko Kishi) is a splendid account of postwar professional drudgery and domestic discontent, when it isn't misfocused on numerous unnecessary excursus involving colleagues of Ikebe's salaryman. He's one of very few filmmakers who excels by telling rather than showing, as spoken reports and intimations from his characters barely delineate omitted details and events that provoke the viewer's imagination. Like all of Ozu's movies, it's beautiful, precise, genuine, and deeply fulfilling when it finally attends to its protagonistic couple.
It isn't the masterwork that his fans asseverate, but Yoshishige Yoshida's highly experimental, semi-fictionalized biopic of philandering anarchist Sakae Osugi (Toshiyuki Hosokawa) is still extraordinary for Yoshida's compositional, editorial, and dramaturgic ingenuity, whereby his film's dynamics often express its themes as much as his script co-written with Masahiro Yamada. In the Taisho era, handsome, shiftless, penurious Osugi obstinately practices free love as a means to defy and potentially destroy established order by maintaining amorous relations with his wife Yasuko Hori (Masako Yagi) and feminist authors and activists Noe Ito (Mariko Okada) and pseudonymous Itsuko Masaoka (Yuko Kusunoki) -- an arrangement to which two of them object. In the Showa '60s, two students (Okada again, Daijiro Harada) study and discuss his life, work, and murder. As a dramatic examination of political and philosophical pretenses to justify libertinism, it's not bad; as cinematic surrealism, Yoshida's ham-fisted symbolism and melodrama are as embarrassingly sophomoric as those of Peter Greenaway. Alas, the tremendous potential of his best concepts and conceits are squandered on underwhelming subjects, and could've been actualized with greater pull in an apolitical context. By induing undue depth to self-indulgent ideologues, Yoshida posits that Osugi's lifestyle was a personal expression of a sincere desideratum, and that the Amakasu Incident -- Osugi's, Ito's, and his nephew's murders by army lietenant Masahiko Amakasu and squad of military police contiguous to the Kanto Massacre -- was not a simple, truculent crime but an attempt to preclude a future that his life projected. In this instance, style exceeds, and may be easily mistaken if not substituted for substance. For those of us who are unimpressed with Yoshida's political misconceptions and maladroit iconography, his burden that normality may come to follow one's example is nathless refreshing. The nearly intoxicating sensuality of his wife Okada (one of postwar Japan's most gorgeous and versatile acresses) isn't hard on the senses, either.
=]=:< <"What a load of shit. This guy should've just adapted a good book like Teshigahara, who doesn't bonk us over the head with dumb shit like hot Japanese chicks being crucified, or whatever. Imagine how much more respect we'd all have for that anarchist guy if he just broke the fourth wall and admitted, 'Okay, I'll be honest: I just want more pussy. I want all the pussy.' Sure, he's still a scumbag, but at least he'd have honesty and human motivation."
Note: those are orexes. --RoBu
=]=:< <"Note: whatever, Gongora."
Are they round or flat? Nobody in a circle of preteens can agree which shapes are assumed by fireworks as they prepare to visit their local festival thereof, but one of them (Takayuki Sorita) is more concerned about the domestic troubles plaguing a pretty schoolmate (Megumi Okina) on whom he's crushing. Shunji Iwai's sweet, funny, much-loved episode of the telecast anthological series If:Moshimo evidenced how he saw the best in kids well before he plumbed their worst, and proved so popular that it was screened theatrically two years later as the success of Love Letter launched him to celebrity. At least four versions exist: that of the original broadcast, and those recut for theatrical release, some rebroadcasts, and home video.
Has she felt and espied the ghost of her late daughter (Jill Bennett), or is an American housewife (Mia Farrow) who's relocated to London verging on contact with another who died decades before? While dodging her imperious husband (Keir Dullea), she probes her leased home's former residents with a friend (Tom Conti) who's skeptical of her theories, though not her sincerity. Quality dramatization of Peter Straub's novel Julia boasts a terrific cast guided well by Richard Loncraine at the helm, and Peter Hannan's magnificently rich, misty, often glowing cinematography. Another of so many great performances by Farrow is met equally by those of Dullea and Conti, but her best co-stars shine brightest in one scene apiece: Robin Gammell tempers an alcoholic reprobate's sleaze with profound sensitivity while disclosing information less essential than that related by a depraved old bedlamite by whose portrayal Cathleen Nesbitt proved that she'd still a flair for unnerving characterization well into her late 80s. Colin Towns's score is memorable, though its shrillest of synthesized parts don't consort with the movie's subdued tone. Were it neither so wantonly unfocused nor predictable, this would be a classic.
Incommodious circumstances oblige an unassertive tenant (Hiroyuki Watari) to relocate to his spacious new apartment on Christmas Eve rather than in mid-January, but silly, spunky spirits (Ranran Suzuki, Dave Spector, et al.) have unofficially preoccupied his new domicile for the holiday, and will stop at nothing to get and keep him out. What are they concocting in there, and why? His episode of televised, cibarious series La cuisine is probably Iwai's zaniest effort, and heavily reliant on cozy nostalgia and strident, sprightly Suzuki's knack for slapstick. As festal fluff comes, it's as amusing as affecting -- a rare work by this cineaste that's fit for family.
Employment comes hard to a mundivagant engineer (Ryan O'Neal) who partners with a diamond merchant's equally venturesome daughter (Anne Archer) to search for her missing sister in Colombia, with the support of a magnate (Omar Sharif) who dominates that country's trade of emeralds, and has designs on her with ulterior motives. For the experience of camera operator and cinematographer Ernest Day in his directorial foray and his accomplished DP Gilbert Taylor, this occasionally grim, glossy actioner is as attractive as its stars, and a decent showcase for beautiful Mexican vistas, a glitzy, high-tech vault, one heist by hot air balloon, and plenty of beautifully verdant stones. If more of its considerable budget ($10M-$14M) had been allocated to the development of a compelling story rather than location scouting, this might've been a minor hit. Regrettably, its disappointing theatrical run was overshadowed by the success of Romancing the Stone a few years later.
=]=:< <"All that water, all that murder, and not a single onscreen crocodilian. Sad."
In Taiwan's lush country, friendly Gaoshan preteens (Buya Watan, Watan Silan, Suyan Pito), play, poach, and navigate their unstable familial circumstances with a spirited optimism undiminished by their candor. On a trip to Taipei, they deliver to a radio station an audiocassette whose recording demonstrates the talent of their crippled teacher (Esther Huang), who'd aspirations to become a professional singer. Laha Mebow's dear snapshot of indigenous life treads lightly but veritably after its juvenile heroes to document the ethos of a tiny and fragile culture in the shadow of a sympathetic Han majority.
One missing mogul's loveless second wife (Lauren Bacall) hires a pranking, pessimistic P.I. (Paul Newman) to locate him -- a task that's more flexuously formidable than he'd expected, and for which he gives and recieves no few lumps for his trouble. Another cunning novel by Ross Macdonald is cheekily dramatized with plenteous wit and action, pairing and pitting its handsomely rangy star with and against an array of friends, associates, and suspects (Robert Wagner, Julie Harris, Arthur Hill, Robert Webber, Shelley Winters, Strother Martin, Jacqueline deWit, et al.) whose motives seem initially clear. Even for those who've little interest in hard-boiled mysteries, it's worth seeing for one of the funniest prank calls ever shot.
As much an exhibition of the tremendous longanimity exercised by Sandrine Bonnaire and the handlers of her autistic sister Sabine as a loving portrait of the unfortunate woman who likely suffered cerebral damage from overmedication whilst hospitalized, the accomplished actress's and former sexpot's simple and effective documentary juxtaposes footage from home videos with that shot contemporarily to demonstrate the contrast of her sibling's previous functionality to her later, addled debilitation. It also touches on the limits of French public funding earmarked to support shelters and centers that house and treat the mentally handicapped. Notwithstanding the infirmities that limit her expression, Sabine's requited adoration for her famous sister is incontestable, voiced during those few glimpses into the depth of a personality that's suppressed -- not extinguished.
=]=:< <"This bitch is annoying! In the interests of conservation and my diet, retards and severe austistics should just be fed to us."
He's so sick of his agency's corruption and the ineptitude of his arrogant, bumbling section chief (Ned Beatty) that one of the CIA's field agents (Walter Matthau) absquatulates to Europe to pen a memoir that'll expose his superior's stupidity and misconduct with the ministration of his rich, peckish Anglo-Austrian lover (Glenda Jackson). Brian Garfield, Bryan Forbes, and Matthau reworked Garfield's novel into a lighter, dryly attic international caper that amuses with minimal cloak, dagger, or seriousness. His sardonic spy fits Matthau like the sort of glove that he resembles, and the wit of his dialog is perfectly deadpan in both monologues and raillery with co-stars. Unfortunately, that rogue operative has but one interaction with the admiring special agent (Sam Waterston) assigned to catch him. Compositions by Mozart that were selected by Matthau and Ian Fraser befit the picture's breezy tone, restrained pace, and narrative tortuity. Recommended for a double-bill with Burn After Reading that would pair a smart satire with a deliberately dumb farce of fictional espionage.
She hoped for pastoral peace when a retired bureaucrat (Barbara Stanwyck) inherited an old home in Gettysburg, where she domiciles with her niece (Kitty Winn). Haunting dreams, a poltergeist's tumult, and incidents of spiritual possession prompt they, a neighborly professor (Richard Egan), and his contentious student (Michael Anderson Jr.) to investigate the residence with historical research and seances conducted by a medium (Doreen Lang). It isn't likely to keep you awake, but this televised version of Barbara Mertz's novel Ammie Come Home is adapted intriguingly by screenwriter Henry Farrell and genre director John Llewellyn Moxey, who breathe nuance (if not originality) into its shopworn scares. Moxey's cast also do him credit -- especially Stanwyck and Winn, who was probably selected by William Peter Blatty for a prominent supporting role in The Exorcist a few years later for the intense versatility that she exhibits here.
Every letter to his brother in Brazil has been returned, leaving a former boxer (Yujiro Ishihara) almost as despondent as the ailing singer (Mie Kitahara) who accepts his invitation to work at his shabby restaurant. Their feelings for one another can't be overcome by the petty yakuza boss (Hideaki Nitani) who demands her presence at his cabaret, but their inquiries concerning his sibling and her contract bring them closer to the truth, each other, and certain danger. Solid noir by Nikkatsu starts slowly and ends pugnaciously, and its inhibited romance is tastefully intimated by frequent stars and future spouses Ishihara and Kitahara (see Crazed Fruit above). Atmosphere of his first feature at the helm alone benefits tremendously from Koreyoshi Kurahara's stygian scenery and unostentatious style. It wouldn't be his last hit to star Ishihara.
=]=:< <"It's pretty cool. Nice to watch a movie where the people in love aren't slobbering all over each others' faces."
On a placid lake, patrons who lodge in a fishing resort's floating cottages are provided ferries, food, and whores by its mute, morose rentor (Suh Jung). Love, abuse, and murder result from her passionate, tempestuous affair with a suicidal fugitive (Yu-seok Kim) who seeks shelter and finds far more at one of her cabanas. Beyond its splendiferous photography and alarming grue, Ki-duk Kim's fourth feature is allusively rich and vehemently, voicelessly expressed by its superb leads. Kim's idiomatic speechlessness, transgressive misbehavior, and nexusses of love and violence can be observed in several following films, but seldom were they iterated with such satisfying lyricism.
=]=:< <"If Kim decided to give that crazy chick a pet alligator, his story would've been a lot shorter and more entertaining. You humans don't know how much you need us until the floating bodies pile up!"
From casting and location scouting to its disappointing theatrical reception to its success on home video and beyond, every stage and phase of the gory cult classic's production, distribution, and legacy is comprehensively documented in Michael Matessino's surprisingly good documentary, which is bundled with special features on DVD, Blu-ray, and UMD editions. Highlights include: interviews with Carpenter, screenwriter Bill Lancaster, DP Dean Cundey, production designer John J. Lloyd, SFX specialists Rob Bottin, Susan Turner, Peter Kuran, and Stan Winston, matte masterpainter Albert Whitlock, editor Todd Ramsay, and half of the cast; heretofore unseen 16mm footage of the cast's storied and disasterous Alaskan bus ride; an embarrassment of raw footage shot during production and post-production. All of the aforementioned interviewees recall memorable anecdotes pertaining to spectacles, victories, and mishaps during the film's lengthy, grueling shoot in Alaska and Los Angeles, or the many challenges that were met to actualize its impressive practical effects. Director/producer Matessino and editor Vince Stancarone ably compiled ample materials into an enjoyable, wholly accessible runtime of 82 minutes -- not a complete account of Carpenter's ingeniously bloody industrial masterwork, but certainly the first that every fan or cinephile should see.
Did a South Korean soldier (Byung-hun Lee) stationed at a border house kill two officers in North Korea's obverse post athwart the Bridge of No Return in an unprovoked attack, or after he was kidnapped? In the course of an investigation by Swiss (Young-ae Lee) and Swedish (Herbert Ulrich) officers for the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission, reports by the wounded suspect and a battered North Korean border guard (Kang-ho Song) coincide with neither one another, nor evidence recovered from the scene of dispute. Its briefly unprecedented success at South Korea's box office patefies an enthusiasm of that country's populace for ethnic kinship over ideology and Chan-wook Park's riveting vision, by which his military drama addresses mutual corruption of both nations' governments, the difficulty of neutrality for facts both witheld and revealed, and the potential of rapprochement for a people divided only by politics. Those coruscations seen in Park's Vengeance trilogy surpass this by leagues, but his directorial flamboyance and ambition in dramatization of Sang-yeon Park's novel DMZ is still mesmerizing, both for and despite CG of varying quality. Subsequent patriotic pictures that humanized the country's brothers to the north further capitalized on the Korean appetite for an institutional nationalism that views the border as an obstacle to be cleared, and those thereover to be someday embraced.
Did he, or did an unemployed gambling addict (Si-eon Lee) drunkenly black out in the wrong place at the worst time? In the course of his investigative pursuit, an aging police detective (Nae-sang Ahn) traces the steps of his case's victim (Ji-hye Wang) and chief suspect, and a vicious loan shark (Ji-young Seo) to whom the latter's indebted to uncover more criminality than he'd presumed. His adequate, anachronic first feature adapted from Na-ri Hee's slyly plotted webcomic was capably scripted and helmed by prolific director of telecast commercials Ha-ra Kim to undidactically but unequivocally convey its anti-gambling message.
=]=:< <"This is an OK movie with a great title. Of course I was disappointed."
She hasn't spoken a single sonant since her family perished in the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011, but a homeless busker (Aina Iitani) in Tokyo is helped to her feet by a bewigged friend (Suzu Hirose) who was once tutored by the reluctant fiancé (idol singer Hokuto Matsumura) of her deceased sister (also Iitani). Success seems all but inevitable for the gifted singer-songwriter, whose original songs and covers impress passersby and industry insiders (Tatsuya Ishii and Yukiya Kitamura, largely playing themselves) alike, but she can't help friends who are insensibly digging their personal ruts ever deeper. Bloated, heartfelt drama highlights not all of Shunji Iwai's strengths and a few weaknesses; there's no denying that its full runtime of nearly three hours is self-indulgently overlong, but the hour shorn from its theatrical cut contains substantive scenes that shouldn't be excised. As in his eponymous novel, Iwai's story transitions frequently, smoothly, accessibly, almost indifferently between scenes of its oberrating protagonist's life in 2011, 2018, and 2023 in a manner that anyone (save for some especially stupid Anglophonic film revewers) can follow, and his cultivation of suspense incident to his audience's foreknowledge is a rare treat that few other filmmakers (as Wilder, Kubrick, Kiarostami) have executed effectually, but the prolongation of his portents wears thin late in the second act. Like Kurosawa, Lynch, Miike, et al., Iwai's elicited good dramatics from many musicians, and whispering Iitani lovably enacts her taxing dual roles well with fresh and familiar faces alike. Her ballads composed with Iwai's longtime composer Takeshi Kobayashi are quite good, and her voice is charming when she sings moderately -- but when Iitani belts it out at shrieking registers, paint peels and dogs howl! Thirty years later, Fireworks lead Megumi Okina enjoys a small maternal part opposite plumply successful Shinji Higuchi (who'd a small but amusing moment in All About Lily Chou-Chou whilst in Gainax's employ) through the latter's mutual association with Hideaki Anno. As much he has since the '80s, sexagenarian Iwai still adores aimless, aspirational, beautiful, messy, vivacious, irresponsible youth -- an adoration to which his novel and film are a sincere, if overstated testament in text and through floating lens.
=]=:< <"Um. This would work for me as a silent movie. It may as well be: Iwai doesn't explain anything unnecessary, and this bitch sounds like a cat having a nervous breakdown when she sings. Less is more, right?!"
Can an undercover insurance agent (Donald Sutherland) apprehend a leggy, lovely, suspected lapidary fence (Jennifer O'Neill) who's slipperier than all of her pursuers? More importantly: after he's been charmed by his target in contrast to a gruff bureaucrat of the justice department (Robert Duvall) who's investigating her circle, does he still want to? Star power, fine photography, and a subtly sinuate story (curiously conceived by an uncredited Terence Malick!) couldn't save this rather mild crime drama from failure and obscurity, but it's worth a watch for all those aforementioned merits.
Reputedly, a sultry beauty (Virna Lisi) who he can't forget committed suicide between the visits that a novelist (Peter Baldwin) paid to his preferent resort town, where he's lodged again in his prior room during the off-season. Evidence secreted by a photographer and photodeveloper (Pier Giovanni Anchisi) with whom he's acquainted convince the author that she was murdered, but suspects among the family (Salvo Randone, Valentina Cortese, Philippe Leroy, Pia Lindrom) who owns the hotel where he's quartered and she was employed haven't any apparent motives. Intriguing mystery slickly helmed by Luigi Bazzoni and Franco Rossellini, and photographed with umbratic beauty by Leonida Barboni draws the viewer in from its first few minutes and effectively misdirects him -- often with the dreams of Baldwin's writer, which betray his immediate, unspoken jaundice, prejudices, and misconceptions. Renzo Rossellini's score is decent yet discordantly blaring, but can't spoil a tension that builds through the story's duration.
He seldom carries a sword, vestures casually, and lives for wine, women, and song, so how is a bureaucrat's dissolute son (Tatsuya Nakadai), who's been appointed magistrate of a region notorious for its ungovernably felonious enclave, supposed to bring law and order to a neighborhood that thrives on vice and the concerted corruption of yazuka bosses and local officials? Kihachi Okamoto's incredibly funny televised chanbara reunites him yet again with his (and everyone else's) best and favorite leading man, whose thalian instincts are sharper here than they were in their first comedic collaboration, Kill! Clumsy and drunken hijinks abound as Nakadai's putatively cavalier samurai alternates between profligate playboy and upstanding lawman however circumstances compel, before the adroit swordplay of an exciting third act that recalls the director's best efforts in this genre (The Great Buddha Pass, Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo). Produced between his much more ambitious and excursive theatrical projects Blue Christmas and At This Late Date, the Charleston, this shows that Okamoto's bent for humor and action wasn't diminished by a small budget -- as long as he had some of his preferred players on hand.
Premium players, costumes, and (mostly French) locations (including the actual chateaux Fontainebleau and Vaux-le-Vicomte) enrich ITC's televisional, Anglo-American screening of that most frequently filmed third of Dumas's classic The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. Debauched King Louis XIV's twin brother (both Richard Chamberlain) lives a happy, modest life unaware of his royal provenance, until he's manstolen away by the king's razor-sharp, peculating finance minister (Patrick McGoohan) to an insular prison, and fitted with that titular metal vizard. Aided by a chevalier (Ian Holm) who's keen to unseat that rotten official, valorous Musketeer d'Artagnan (Louis Jourdan) resolves to rescue the bewildered sibling, cultivate his proprieties, and covertly install him to the throne. Its 17th-century trappings are exquisite, and befit ideally selected thespians; calculatingly sinister McGoohan and Jenny Agutter as the king's cowed, innocent mistress are especially entertaining. Thankfully, Mike Newell directs without application of treacle so slathered upon his nauseating studio pics. Connoisseurs of Dumas's work will likely be as perplexed by the unnecessary alterations in this version as they are of those in James Whale's popular feature from 1939.
For a bounty with which he can prolong his self-destructive alcoholism, an aging, widowed ronin (Ikko Huruya), once an instructor of kendo, hunts a clerk's accused murderer (Eiichiro Hunakoshi), who seeks refuge with a yakuza family -- the honcho (Yosaburo Ito) of which wouldn't scruple to exploit the samurai's skill for forthcoming combat with a rival family. Unexceptional little televised chanbara is worth watching, particularly for Huruya's touchingly believable alternations between anguish and apathy. It deserved better than its awkwardly inconclusive ending, which was obviously truncated to accommodate an hour's timeslot.
A pink parody of Ozu's Late Spring was probably unavoidable, but Daisuke Goto's perverted perspective of that classic's familial dynamics is truly touching. An old farmer (Horyu Nakamura) cohabitates with his son's affectionate widow (Ryoko Asagi), who strips and poses as his deceased cow every morning so that he can believe that he's milking her. That's more than he could expect from his contemptuous daughter (Yumeka Sasaki) who opposes their relationship, or a horny local (Seiji Nakamitsu) who wants to buy his farm as cheaply as possible on behalf of an agribusiness. Pruriently humorous yet achingly sad, his raunchy little drama is as concerned with the simple satisfaction of rural life, losses suffered to senescence, and how from loneliness love arises oddly as it is with coitus indulged by young women, for which Goto again substantiates his reputation as an exceptionally humane, comical, and mature pornographer.
Sweaty, softcore homage to The Postman Always Rings Twice variates how a declining printing press's miserably crippled proprietor (Yoshikata Matsuki) is cuckolded when his foxy wife (Mayuko Sasaki) surrenders to the advances of a lusty drifter (Keisaku Kimura) who they've hired. Her sapphic fling with a shameless physician (Koharu Yamasaki) hardly deter an emergent amor that incites her to ponder the disposability of her abusive, impotent, immobilized spouse. Co-screenwriter/director Daisuke Goto hasn't much to communicate here, but his characters' amoral, often amusing lasciviousness is played as realistically as gratuitously.
Loneliness provokes an aspiring authoress (Andrea Riseborough) to record to a blog her dolor for a deceased, nonexistent offspring, feign pregnancy to establish a connection with a bereaved stranger (John Leguizamo), and contact the parents (Steve Buscemi, Jean Smith-Cameron) of a juvenile abductee who vanished thirty years before, to whose probable, age-progressed appearance she bears an unmistakable similitude. Strangely slight but substantial, Christina Choe's story amounts to little but conveys much regarding the glacial tristesse concomitant of bleak personal solitude, and what it might incite from otherwise innocuous people. Reserved underperformances are first-rate all around, particularly from protean Riseborough, who breathes to her untalkative shamstress a genteel tenderness.
While her grandfather (Ryo Ishibashi) researches cerebral microorganisms that may inflict fatal philia, a scopophobe (Nana Komatsu) slowly cultivates a relationship with a sequestered mysophobe (Kento Hayashi) who's developing a computer virus that could destroy the world's online electronics. Sugaru Miaki's novel is probably meatier than Kensaku Kakimoto's lightweight but likable vehicle for breathtaking Komatsu therefrom, but the commercial director's workmanship, toasty photography by DP Kateb Habib that verges on garishness, and gifted players young and old carry it through. Some cuts on the soundtrack by Akeboshi, Christian Fennesz, and Manami Kakudo tickle the ear, but two versions of slurringly, irksomely affected Sarah Hemi's I Love You deserve to be muted.
=]=:< <"Humans need to relax about parasites. We all got 'em. What you do with them is what counts."
Multifarious, radiocast news and entertainment enjoyed by a working-class Jewish family (Seth Green, Michael Tucker, Julie Kavner, Josh Mostel, Renée Lippin, Dianne Wiest) of Rockaway Beach is an audiocultural backdrop for they, their neighbors, and numerous radio stars (Tony Roberts, Don Pardo, Mia Farrow, Wallace Shawn, Kitty Carlisle Hart, etc.) in Woody Allen's poignantly, often hilariously nostalgic reminiscences of casual wartime society. Exceptional costumery, set design, and theatrics vividly convey the period's transitory spiritus mundi, through which Green's impish juvenile protagonist experiences and reports odd, sad, funny anecdotes, all narrated by unseen Allen as his older self. Perhaps no better fictional cinematic conspectus of American radio's lost golden age exists, graphically communicated from the memories of Allen and his collaborators.
=]=:< <"Again: you retards think RoBu loathes Jews, and he writes something like this. Neat flick, but looking at Josh Mostel for more than one second isn't what I'd call fun."
It hasn't the invention or playful balance of tragedy and comedy common to most of Shunji Iwai's movies, but Naoto Kumazawa's lugubrious tearjerker makes the most of his script co-written by Ami Sakurai and Miyuki Saito. In the wake of her sudden death in a stateside plane crash, a television studio's obtuse but goodhearted gofer (Hayato Ichihara) reminisces about a filmmaker (Juri Ueno) who he'd stalked before befriending, with whom a romance never quite bloomed. Kumazawa's understated but powerful pathos all but overwhelms when Ueno's inhibited tomboy slowly deliberates aloud on the inadvertent destruction of her life, Ichihara's staffer reluctantly stumbles into a relationship with a sweet, secretive girlfriend (Wakana Sakai), or when the deceased's friends screen a doleful short film that she completed before her final trip abroad. Yu Aoi quietly steals her every scene as the dead striver's blind, gentle sister. Recommended for fans of Iwai and his most successful stars from Lily Chou-chou; those averse to morose endings shouldn't bother.
=]=:< <"You know that dictum, 'misery loves company?' Well, in RoBu's catalog, 'company' usually just means Japanese."
A toy company's diligent employee (Win Morisaki) finds adventure, misery, love, and eventual ruination by giving unstintingly of himself to help a mansuete, mysterious stranger (Kaho Tsuchimura) whose problems he shoulders as his own. Feature-length concatenation of the eponymous, telecast series based on Mochiru Hoshisato's manga runs for nearly four hours without a second's tedium, and its engrossing story, Koji Fukada's indistinct guidance thereof, and his cast's naturalism are almost enough to distract one from its characters' melodramatic impetuosity, intended as much to manipulate audiences' emotions as to impel Hoshisato's narrative. Long-typecast Shugo Oshinari plays an industrialist's venal, suicidal scion, who would seem preposterous in the hands of a lesser actor. If not better, the serial's episodic format is certainly more convenient; watch this only if you've a long, free afternoon or evening -- preferably with someone who loves you.
In the 1880s, the upright judo master (Susumu Fujita) defends Japanese citizens from abusive Americans, weathers tests of his integrity, questions his calcified ethics, and faces the furious brother (Akitake Kono) of his defeated nemesis (Ryunosuke Tsukigata) during a period when the bitter rivalry between judo and karate flares, and western boxers challenge fighters of both disciplines in the ring. One can easily espy the seams of this low-budget propaganda that was shot as Japan's war effort wound down, but Akira Kurosawa's sequel to his directorial debut is still admirable for his fundamentally sound craft, and his protagonist's staunch nationalism and probity. Mindless leftist critics and historians reflexively quail from that former, often without acknowledging the humanity of its hero, which consists in all those of The Emperor's works.
With her baby aback, a young mother and erstwhile star volleyballer (Doona Bae) sets out to rescue her devoted, drunken husband (Tae-woo Kim) from a nightclub's sleazy swindlers while dodging coloful gangsters who she's unintentionally insulted. Can she evade clumsy thugs, find the club, recover her spouse, shelter her little one, then repair to their apartment to prepare dinner for a familial feast when scheduled? Maybe not. Early vehicle for Bae highlights its cute leading lady's faculty for physical and verbal comedy, especially when trading bitchy barbs with her mother (Doo-shim Go, as usual). Good comedies are ever rarer, so even this trifle should be treasured.
A seemingly intimate photograph snapped of a prominent painter (Toshiro Mifune) and famous singer (Yoshiko Yamaguchi) is wildly and profitably misconstrued by a scandal sheet as evidence of an amorous tryst. After the irate artist proclaims that he'll sue the paper on grounds of libel, he reluctantly accepts the solicited representation of a pissant lawyer (Takashi Shimizu), whose own indulgences, hardship, and venality complicate their case. That pettifogger's failings and troubles drag Kurosawa's condemnation of kasutori culture into melodrama, but eventually elevates its secondary message of sacrifice as a means of and spur to redemption. As usual, The Emperor's tasteful balance of humor and drama are comfortable to watch, as are two of his best leading men. Overshadowed by the severally anteceding and contemporaneous successes of Stray Dog and Rashomon, this lesser work probably deserves greater notice.
With great daring, a recently blinded equestrian (Mia Farrow) flees the maniac who murdered her uncle (Robin Bailey), aunt (Dorothy Alison), and cousin (Diane Grayson), and who's stalking her through the woods beyond their estate. With pizazz aplenty and his crack cast and crew, ever-versatile Richard Fleischer coaxed every potential drop of suspense from Brian Clemens's simple, misdirective script by putting his waifish lead through her staggering paces. It's probably the best of Fleischer's thrillers, and another British exhibition of Farrow's traumatized variations.
=]=:< <"It's a good movie, but imagine if everybody in it was raising and riding allegators and crocodiles instead of horses! The possibilities are mind-boggling."
Their friendship of fourteen years is tested by reciprocal suspicions and divergent lifestyles, but two friends (Da-mi Kim/Soo-hyung Kim, So-nee Jeon/Ji-an Ryu) who bond over their fondness for art and nature can't forget one another for absence, permanent or otherwise. Prettily photographed, well-acted remake of Derek Tsang's Chinese hit that screened Anni Baobei's novel at first seems like an Iwaish take on its source, but veers too often into the melodrama that Tsang skillfully avoided. Would that screenwriters Hyun-joo Kang and Yong-geun Min treated of this material with a sensitivity and grace matching that of director Young-Keun Min, his DP Guk-hyun Kang, or his lovely leads. It's good enough to remind viewers that it shouldn't be laden with so many clichés.
Her only seemingly certain memory is a murder witnessed by a comely amnesiac (Bonnie Bedelia) before suffering an automotive crash; as her smitten psychiatrist (Peter Riegert) helps to revive her memories, they're both harassed and hunted by mobsters who want her dead....but only after they learn where she secreted a choice article of evidence. Cheesy yet well-made, attractively photographed Argenine-American thriller lapses frequently into silliness, but screenwriter Dan Gurskis's plot twice twists cleverly, especially at the start of his third act. Riegert and Bedelia haven't quite the charisma or chemistry to carry a feature as leads, but they're nonetheless good in demanding roles, if at times overshadowed by Ricardo Darín and Cecilia Roth in supporting parts. Most interestingly, David Spielberg -- long typecast as attorneys, accountants, and doctors -- effectively underplays an assassin posing as a medical specialist! Picturesque locations in and arond Buenos Aires are respectively substituted for those of Los Angeles.
Rival companies of a mining town are cozened by a traveling, womanizing confidence man (James Garner) who convinces them that he's a renowned gunslinger (uncredited Chuck Connors), whose upcoming arrival is a bigger problem for him than his compulsive gambling or unspeakable dermal malady. Follow-up to Support Your Local Sheriff! (see below) isn't as funny as its predecessor, but enjoys better direction and production design by respective vets Burt Kennedy and Philip Barber. Many of the first picture's supporting actors reappear (Jack Elam is another dopey sidekick), but Suzanne Pleshette's psychotic love interest is far wilder than was Joan Hackett's quirk chungus. Not bad, but don't expect to laugh as hard or often.
His arrival in a goofy boom town proves auspicious, as a whip-smart, crack-shot (James Garner) is the only one around who isn't prepossessed by prospection, and willing to oppose a family of toll barons (Walter Brennan, Bruce Dern, Dick Peabody) who are gouging their municipality's denizens for use of its single road. His deputization of an amiable village idiot (Jack Elam) and interest in the mayor's wackily combative daughter (Joan Hackett) doesn't improve his odds of survival or success. Likable lead and co-producer Garner facetiously meets his co-stars in his farcical western that's light on action and heavy on gags. For those fond of Garner or broadly funny Old Hollywood fare, it's great; others may be disinterested.
Wanton rapes, murders, and torture of samurai and peasants alike, exorbitant expenditure of public funds to rebuild his domain's palace on the grounds of Fukui Castle, and an opulent lifestyle in disregard of the poverty and illness that are decimating his populace are among the many misdeeds committed by Fukui's young daimyo, Naritsugu Matsudaira. For the Shogunate's Minister of Justice (Tetsuro Niwa), Matsudaira's impending admission to Ienari Tokugawa's Counsel is an intolerable risk, so he calls on a veteran swordsman (Tatsuya Nakadai) to assemble a group of friends, students, and mercenary ronin to ambush the sadistic noble's comitatus and assassinate him during its biennial march from Edo -- a plot known only vaguely to his friend (Tetsuro Tanba), who stalwartly leads Matsudaira's retainers. It's inferior in most respects to both Eiichi Kudo's original movie from 1963 and Takashi Miike's second remake from 2010, but has what they haven't: its leading man's evocatively haunted, thousand-yard stare. Acting, martial choreography, and direction are good through most of the movie, though Takuji Tominaga misframes the first few minutes of the third act's prolonged assault terribly. Graying Tanba had a prominent supporting role in Kudo's original flick, and shines as brightly as Nakadai here as the formidable chief retainer who cuts down with masterful ease his confronting adversaries -- except one.
They don't know him, but five career criminals (Biff McGuire, Addison Powell, Gordon Pinsent, Yaphet Kotto, Sidney Armus) selected for their metiers heist $2.66M from a Bostonian bank in precise compliance with the instructions of a sporty millionaire (Steve McQueen), who masterminds such operations more for fun than profit. A rigorous probe conducted by the bank's insurance company and a glamorous private investigator (Faye Dunaway) who it's hired lead her to the dashing and sophisticated culprit, with whom she enjoys a swanky affair. Can she trust him to commit another robbery for which he'll be caught? Equal parts crime thriller and romantic travelogue finds Jewison at his trendiest, employing overabundant split-screens famously introduced at Expo 67, where McQueen was an impressed viewer. Such excesses hardly slake the heat or tension between its sexy leads, who tower over a skimpy plot that ends satisfyingly.
=]=:< <"I....*snif*....I always cry during happy endings. With a little luck, that bitch went to prison! God bless your suave, smoky soul, Steve!"
Because indignant factory workers (Fred Williamson, Richard Bright, Joseph Carberry) receive occasional admonition but scant support from local police in their blighted neighborhood, they've come to relish their underhand brutalization and termination of rapists, pimps, drug dealers, and gangsters as a favorite pastime. A co-worker (Robert Forster) shies away from such corrective satisfactions until his wife (Rutanya Alda) is hospitalized and son (Dante Joseph) murdered by a street gang, whose jefe (salsa pioneer Willie Colón) is granted a suspended sentence by the same corrupt, irresponsible judge (Vincent Beck) who, for contempt of court, sentences the bereaved to a month in county lockup -- where he can barely rely on the succor of a lifer (Woody Strode) to survive. William Lustig's crime drama is cheesy but gratifying and well-shot, boasting quality direction, grimy locations, and performances that play as good as it looks. Lustig's first assistant director and associate producer -- former NYPD detective and actor/producer Randy Jurgensen -- lends some gritty personality to the proceedings as a jaded detective (essentially himself), and Joe Spinell greasily steals a few scenes playing the repugnantly oleaginous lawyer who secures freedom for Colón's flagitious felon. What a paradox: a simple, silly genre picture has a more substantial message to relate regarding urban crime and its repercussions than most supposedly serious sociological cinema.
A brief, brutish stint in prison scarcely fazes Kan Shimozawa's tough, sightless, graying masseuse/gambler/swordmaster (director/co-screenwriter Shintaro Katsu), who in his late fifties wanders into and settles near a mountain village where he encounters its sadistic samurai inspector (Takanori Jinnai), conniving, rival yakuza bosses (Katsu's son Ryutaro Gan, Yuya Uchida), a fetching senior gangsteress (Kanako Higuchi), a sweet teenager (Toyomi Kusano) with whom he lodges, and a compassionate and admiring ronin (Ken Ogata) reluctant to satisfy's his employer's request to assassinate the blind brawler, who still has plenty of tricks and an enduring verve for swift, slicing slaughter. Sixteen years after Zatoichi's Conspiracy and ten following the conclusion of the Zatoichi televised series, during which the once-prolific actor/singer/filmmaker was only occasionally active, and publicly and professionally reviled for his misconduct, the popular appetite for Katsu and his most famous character had been long-sated and faded. The accidental death of supporting actor Yukio Kato by Gan's blade hardly improved the commercial prospects of this cinematic series' belated, twenty-sixth entry, which easily ranks among its best. For Katsu's remarkably dynamic direction, Mutsuo Nagamura's warmly gorgeous photography, terrific performances all around, and a cunningly deliberate plot interspersed with sly humor and intrigues, this late vanity project by one of Tokyo's most profligate talents deserves recognition for its excitement, hilarity, and a tender poignancy that informs a conclusion tinged with tragedy. Ever-fertile Ogata (see below) seems almost wasted for the limits of his screen time, but indues pathos to a part that's significant, though inessential. Katsu and Higuchi were reunited a year later in his last picture, the muddier of two Ronin-Gais.
For over forty years under three emperors, a maniacally patriotic entrepreneur (Ken Ogata) seeking prosperity in Hong Kong serves as a shopkeeper, barber, spy, plantationer, and pimp -- and in those last two capacities, finds his fortune by selling crops and sex to Chinese natives and Japanese colonists alike with his adoring yet unfaithful madam and ladylove (Mitsuko Baisho), on whom a suave, scheming, sincerely smitten Chinese mob boss (Chun-Hsiung Ko) has designs. Alacritous Ogata waxes manic in Shohei Imamura's epic satire, which pokes fun at patriotism and prostitution alike, and into the humorous soup of which he characteristically immingled grievous drams. Essentially a thematic sequel to The Pornographers, the film's flesh for sale is only part of the background for Imamura's fascination with blind nationalism -- in this instance, that of a tireless whoremonger who literally wraps himself in the flag of his empire without its auspices. No other filmmaker plumbs societal depths with Imamura's tragicomedic ingenuity, and his fourth and final feature with his best leading man is among his most idiosyncratic.
© 2024 Robert Buchanan