Yes, yes, I know, it's already the middle of April and I hadn't written my movie reviews for March. I watched so many films, it took a little while to write up my short summaries. But I finally completed them today and I don't think there is one Hollywood blockbusters in my choice of films for the month. Strange. I usually watch at least a couple of major Hollywood films. This month, the majority of films are either Japanese, independent, or from another country aside from the U.S. or Japan. And now for your viewing pleasure (in case you decide to rent some these):
グミ・チョコレート・パイン [GUMMI CHOCOLATE PINE] (2007) - A coming-of-age story that’s not really a coming-of-age story. It starts off with a single salaryman getting laid-off from his job and heads back to his parents house located right outside of Tokyo. His mother had saved all his bills and letters for the past few years and when asked why she didn’t forward them, she tells him, she never knew what his address would be from one day to the next. But among the letters is one envelope with no return address but has the name of the girl he had a crush on and the letter had only one sentence – “It’s all because of you.” When he calls a classmate and friend about what happened to the girl of his dreams, he’s informed that she had recently committed suicide. Now, salaryman’s wondering if it was something he said or did that caused her to take her life – and this is where the movie reverts back to his school days and how he became friends with the girl in question. It’s actually quite a clever movie. I rather enjoyed it.
THE RAMEN GIRL (2008) – Brittney Murphy’s final film before passing away at the young age of 32. Abby is a woman who follows her boyfriend all the way to Japan, only to be dumped by him. Left alone in her now ex-boyfriend’s apartment, she has nowhere to go and is stuck in a foreign land where she doesn’t know anybody and can’t speak the language. Located right across from the apartment she’s staying at is a small ramen shop. Even though the shop is closed, she breaks down in tears in front of the ramen master, so the wife of the ramen shop says to go ahead and make a bowl for her. Abby falls in love with the taste of ramen and finally finds direction in her life. She aggressively asks the ramen shop owner to take her on as an apprentice, which he reluctantly does. The ramen shop owner is played by the well known Japanese actor Toshiyuki Nishida, most famous for playing the fishing-crazy salaryman movie series “Tsuribaka Nishi”, that would be the “Free and Easy” series for you Americans.
ANVIL : THE STORY OF ANVIL (2008) – The DVD went on sale today (April 13)! One of the best music documentaries you will ever see. The film opens with Japan’s Super Rock Festival held in 1984 with the narrator stating, “In the summer of 1984, some of the biggest bands in the world toured Japan together. All of these bands went on to sell millions of records…except one.” Along with Anvil, the line-up featured Bon Jovi, Whitesnake, the Scorpions, and the Michael Schenker Group. That makes it simple to know which band wasn’t the one that sold millions! What makes this documentary different from Metallica’s “Some Kind of Monster” or Bon Jovi’s “When We Were Beautiful” is the simple fact that Anvil never made the millions or topped the music charts. But that doesn’t stop Steve “Lips” Ludlow and Robb Reiner, the founders of Anvil, from pursuing their dreams of becoming rock stars, even if it takes the rest of their lives. You will find yourself rooting for them to make their dreams come true, as you see that they’re just ordinary family men who work ordinary jobs and yet cannot give up on the thought of making it big. Thanks to long time fan and band friend Sacha Gervasi who directed this movie, Anvil is once again touring the world with two shows in Tokyo on the 19th & 20th of this month.
THE VISITOR (2007) – I found this independent movie by director Thomas McCarthy quite entertaining. Professor Richard Vale is a widower who currently lives in Connecticut and teaches only one class, just living one day after the next with no exciting plans for the future. One day he finds himself reluctantly attending a conference in New York City to be a speaker for a paper he co-authored. He has also kept his apartment in the city and when he goes home, he finds two strangers living there. A Syrian musician named Tarek and his Senegalese girlfriend Zainab. As he sympathizes with the plight of the immigrants, he invites the two to stay. The Professor becomes fascinated with the African drum that Tarek plays, who then offers to give lessons to the professor. After playing in the park and heading home on the subway, an incident occurs which gets Tarek arrested and sent to an immigration center. This is where the film takes on a more serious atmosphere. This film which takes place after 9-11, portrays the ugly face of white cops on the beat that don’t take the time to listen to Tarek or the Professor. The Professor than hires a lawyer to help with Tarek’s case. Tarek’s mother also shows up the in city unannounced and a short romance evolves with her and the professor as well. Meeting and making friends with Tarek, Zainab, and Tarek’s mother gives the Professor a new spark for living. The ending is rather sad and poignant but gives the film a healthy dose of reality.
LARS AND THE REAL GIRL (2007) – Another excellent independent film. Lars is a shy, introverted young man who lives next door to his older brother and sister-in-law. His sister-in-law consistently invites him over for breakfast or dinner but Lars consistently refuses. So when Lars announces to his brother and sister-in-law that he has a new girlfriend and wants to introduce her to them the following week, they couldn’t be more happy for him. When Lars shows up the following week, his new girlfriend turns out to be a life-size love doll named Bianca who he says he met on the internet. He even gives Bianca a short history, that she is of Brazilian and Danish descent, is wheelchair bound and was a former missionary. Thinking that Lars has gone a bit crazy, they talk Lars into taking Bianca to see their family doctor, who is also a psychologist. What makes this such a great film and not a run of the mill comedy is the fact the Bianca never comes to life. She’s quite alive in Lars’ mind. The psychologist suggests to the family to go along with his delusion and to have him bring Bianca in to the clinic every week as well. As Lars lives in a small community, soon Bianca becomes a member of the community as well. It’s a very heartwarming tale as well.
THE RELIC (1997) – I was just getting ready for bed, when this film aired on television. It was 2:00am! Unfortunately, I got sucked into watching the entire thing. Now this I could definitely say is a B movie. It stars Tom Sizemore and Penelope Ann Miller, not the biggest names in Hollywood, so I didn’t have high expectations for the flick from the beginning. This starts with some professor bringing back some research materials from South America to the Natural History Museum in Chicago. However, when the crates are received, they’re empty and the professor is nowhere to be found. Also, the crew of the ship that carried the cargo have all been killed in a grisly and gruesome way. Now, there has also been a murder in the museum as well. It’s a blending of “The Fly” and the plots of other B-movies. Oh my, yep, I watched the entire flick which means it was nearly 4:00am when I finally went to bed. Was it worth it? Not really, but fortunately, I had the following day off as well.
私は貝になりたい [WATASHI WA KAI NI NARITAI] (2008) – Released with the International English title of “I Want to be a Shellfish”. Any Japanese will know this famous line based on a book by Tetsutaro Kato. Toyomatsu Shimizu was a barber and father in a small town in post-war Japan. On a day like any other, he is arrested by the Prefectural Police. The Occupying Forces has accused him of being a B-grade war criminal for the attempted killing of a U.S. soldier. Shimizu feels that he didn’t do anything wrong, he was following his superior’s orders, and if he did not follow through, his superior would kill him as well. This film was a re-make of the 1959 film of the same name and stars Masahiro Nakai of popular boy idol band SMAP and popular actress Yukie Nakama. The story may sound familiar as it nearly parallels the plot of “Ashita he no Yuigon (Best Wishes for Tomorrow)”. What makes this one different is that “Best Wishes” is told through an officer, whereby “I Want to be a Shellfish” is told through the eyes of a regular soldier. In the end, Shimizu is sentenced to die by hanging. Before he goes to meet his maker, he writes a long letter to his wife and kid, and says, “If I am reborn in another life, I wouldn’t want to be a human. No…I want to be a shellfish, living at the bottom of the ocean,” or something like that.
HERENCIA (2001) - This was an entertaining movie from Argentina. It was released with the International English title of "Inheritance". In Japan it was released as "Olinda's Restaurante" which is where most of the movie takes place, and Olinda being one of the main characters. Peter, a young German man has traveled all the way to Buenos Aires to go in search of his Spanish girlfriend. As he drops into a restaurant to ask directions, he’s hit in the head with a flying plate thrown by the owner of the restaurant, an Italian immigrant named Olinda. As Peter goes back to the hotel he’s staying at, his money and wallet is stolen. With nowhere to go, he heads back to the restaurant. Olinda takes pity on him and says he can stay at the restaurant temporarily. When she asks Peter why he’s come all the way to Argentina, she finds that Peter’s story was similar to hers and a friendship slowly develops. Excellent film.
REDACTED (2007) – An experimental film by director Brian DePalma. Inspired by the true incident of the rape of a 14 year old Iraqi girl by US soldiers. The film is a collection of different scenes and perspectives of the war in Iraq. It shows a US soldier who films everything with a handheld video camera to document what’s happening in Iraq in real time in the hopes that this will be his ticket to get into film school. Also shown is a group of French journalists who film the US soldiers working at a military check point. A sergeant who carelessly moves some pieces of garbage only to be blown up by an improvised explosive device. Soldiers breaking into an Iraqi home to take revenge on the lost comrade (this is the scene where the soldiers rape the young girl and kill her baby brother as well). Another scene shows some insurgents kidnapping a soldier than beheading him on the internet (the scene isn’t graphic unless you use your imagination). The only thing you can conclude about this movie is that war is bad and that it brings out the worst in humanity. This definitely isn’t for everybody, but still worth watching.
DIE HERBSTZEITLOSEN (2006) – Released in the US with the International English title of “Late Bloomers”. This may have been one of the best films I’ve watched so far this year. A heartwarming tale from Switzerland. Marta is an 80 year old woman who has recently become a widow in a small rural town in Switzerland. With her husband she had been running a small mom and pop store. Her son, who is the local preacher, advises his mother to close the shop. However, one of Marta’s friend discovers that Marta has a hidden talent. She is a great seamstress. Marta tells her friend that it has always been her dream to open a small lingerie boutique. Her friend says why not start now. So, Marta and a few of her other friends help Marta make her dream come true. Of course, her son who is the local preacher thinks Mom has gone out of her mind and is an embarrassment as well and decides to take matters into his own hand and shuts the shop down. But when Marta finds that her own son, the Preacher, is having an affair, it gives her the motivation to continue to pursue her dreams even without her son's blessing. If you get a chance, you must look for this film in your foreign film section. It’s beautiful and you will be glad you watched it.
TAKEN (2008) – A “Jason Bourne” like film which stars Liam Neeson. What makes this different from the Bourne series though, is that Bryan Mills (Neeson) knows who and what he is, a retired Secret Service agent who only wants to spend more time with his estranged daughter, Kim. The ex-wife who now lives with a very wealthy man talks Bryan into signing a consent form so his daughter can go to Paris with her friend Amanda. Dad finds out that it’s not just Paris they were going to but were actually going to follow a U2 concert tour. Dad agreed on the condition that his daughter calls him when she lands in Paris, to give the name and phone number of the place she’s staying, etc. When in Paris, daughter and friend meet up with a young guy named Peter who Amanda takes an immediately liking to. Unfortunately for the girls, Peter works as a scout for a group of Albanians who work in the sex-trafficking business. When Amanda finally calls her father, she witnesses her friend being abducted in another room. This is when Dad’s old skills come into practice. He tells his daughter, "Now", he tells her, "you must listen very closely to me....you are going to be taken." When the kidnappers find Kim, she drops the phone and as Bryan listens and hears the intruders voices, he says into the phone, "I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you." Bad guy says, “Good Luck!”, and then you’re in for a hell of a ride. Damn fine action movie.
TAU MING CHONG (2007) – Released in the US with the International English title of “The Warlords”. This stars three major Asian stars – Jet Li, Andy Lau, and Takeshi Kaneshiro, and is a Chinese epic. Unfortunately, I watched it in its original language with Japanese subtitles but the subject was too difficult to follow, and you couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad guys. So doing a little research on the IMDB website to see what the actual story was about and found it to be based on something called “The Assassination of Ma”, a Qing Dynasty story of the killing of a general named Ma Xinyi. I think the next time I try to attempt to watch a historical Chinese epic, I will have to watch it dubbed in Japanese, (English if there is that choice). After watching this film, it has made me postpone watching John Woo’s “Red Cliff” which I still have lying around somewhere.
BROKEN FLOWERS (2005) – This is an interesting road movie directed by Jim Jarmusch and stars Bill Murray. Don Johnston (Murray) is a man who loves being single. After being dumped by his latest girlfriend he receives an anonymous letter in a pink envelope. The letter says that Don has a son who has just turned 19 and is looking for his biological father. His neighbor and friend Winston, suggests revisiting all his former girlfriends to find a clue as to who might be the mother. Winston is also an amateur detective and with the information Don provides of his old flames it sets a plan in motion where Don will confront his former girlfriends one old girlfriend at a time. But is it just me or are the latest characters Murray portrays all the same? – “Lost in Translation”, “The Life Aquatic”, even “Rushmore”. One of my friends will be happy to know that I actually enjoyed this film which wasn't directed by Wes Anderson.
THE KEEPER (2009) – Okay, even though I hate to admit it, I’m a big Steven Seagal fan. And he’s still cranking ‘em out and I keep watching ‘em. Of course, his latest films all seem to have the same plot. And dude isn’t getting any younger. In fact, he looks like he’s put on a lot of weight as well. His films are like the Harlequin of martial arts. Actually, this film is pretty lacking in the martial arts department and the beginning of the movie doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the rest of the movie. The flick starts off with a raid on a smack-house. All the baddies are killed and Seagal says to his partner to call for back-up. His partner though has other ideas, as there is two million dollars in the house and says it could be theirs for the taking. But Seagal doesn’t go along with his partner’s plan, so partner shoots him. This being a Seagal film, of course he doesn’t die. He’s lying in the hospital supposedly in a coma. A police-woman colleague visits him, he takes her gun without her noticing, plays possum again as his old partner comes to visit to finish him off. Old partner gets shot up and dies, and then the movie kicks into an entirely different story which has nothing to do with the stolen two million and nothing is ever mentioned again of his bad cop partner. This time, instead of his own daughter, an old friend living in New Mexico wants to hire the man to be his daughter’s personal bodyguard and to be head of security for his very large home. You guessed it - friend’s daughter gets kidnapped, old man has to rely on his experience as former elite cop, whatever, and is off to go kick some butt.
MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA (2008) – A Spike Lee joint film. In 1983, a postal clerk working in New York City shoots an apparent stranger with a German Luger. When the police investigates the postman’s apartment, they find the head of a famous statue that’s been missing since the war. When a journalist goes to interview the postman, he nearly breakdown in tears and says, “I know who the Sleeping Man is.” The answer to why Mr. Postman shot a seemingly innocent man takes us back to a small Tuscan village in Italy where four African-American soldiers of the 92nd division, the “Buffalo Soldiers”, find themselves stranded, along with a 8yr old boy who only speaks to an imaginary friend named Arturo. When the men finally meet up with their unit, they are ordered to capture a German soldier with the help of the Italian Partisans who are fighting the same enemy. However, there is a traitor among the Partisans which holds the key to the murder in New York.
DRIVEN TO KILL (2009) - Oh no! I did it again. I watched another Steven Seagal film. The "Harlequin novel of martial arts" has changed the story line just a tad bit. No longer is he an ex-CIA covert field operative or an ex-policeman or an ex-soldier. Nope, this time around he's a former Russian Mafioso. And his daughter is about to be married to the son of the current Mafia boss who wants his son to follow in his footsteps. However, Junior has no desire to become a mobster himself and just wants to marry the girl of his dreams. But because this is a Steven Seagal movie, you know that ain't gonna happen. Junior's dad sends some thugs to put a scare into him to make him change his mind but in the process the old man's daughter gets shot and is carted off to the hospital and is in critical condition. Now, you don't mess with "the Man's" daughter. Okay, so the plot falls back into his winning formula but what the hell, it is a Seagal movie after all! And you know the baddies will get what's coming to them!
山形スクリーム [YAMAGATA SCREAM] (2009) – I think Naoto Takenaka has made too much money and had a little too much time on his hand. He created a horror-comedy film that isn’t scary and not all that funny. It’s too bad because I really like Naoto Takenaka. This might have been okay as a fifteen minute skit or maybe a thirty-minute short, but as a feature-length movie it is God-awful! To make a long story short, sometime way back in the days of the samurai, an incident took place in a small rural town in Yamagata Prefecture where the samurai’s woman was killed. Shoot forward to the present day. A group of four high school girls and their teacher are on some kind of class trip to that same small town in Yamagata. At the same time, some old stone idol is scheduled to be demolished against the townspeople’s wishes. But torn down it is, and of course the long dead samurai comes back to life. The samurai sees one of the high-school girls who’s the spitting image of his lady-love and falls in love with her. Oh but wait. The samurai has a few other samurai who have returned from the dead…Wait, there’s still more. One of the spews forth a blue-slime like substance which turns the townspeople into….are you ready for this?....Zombies!! I enjoy B-movies and such but this doesn’t even make the grade. A total disappointment.
キラー・ヴァージンロード [KILLER VIRGIN ROAD] (2009) – Released in the US with the title [Killer Bride’s Perfect Crime] – This stars Juri Ueno (of Nodame Cantabile fame) and Yoshino Kimura. I found this to be quite entertaining. Hiroko (Ueno) is about to be married and is telling her landlord that she will be moving soon. But the landlord who lives in the room next door has been stalking Hiroko since she moved in and doesn’t want her to leave. They get into a little scuffle and a pair of scissors sitting on top of the dresser falls straight into the back of the landlord. Unintentionally killing her landlord, she puts him in a large suitcase and plans to dump the body in a popular suicide area called Aokigahara Jukai. Fukuko Kobayashi (Kimura) is a woman who keeps attempting suicide but never seems to get things right. Just as Hiroko is looking for a place to dump the body, when Koboyashi falls on the hood of car from another failed attempt at suicide by hanging herself from a tree. When Kobayashi sees the stiff in the trunk that has fallen open in the back seat, she runs from the car yelling, “Don’t kill me! Somebody save me!”, but comes running back to Hiroko when she’s chased by a gang of motorcycle hoodlums. And from this moment, a friendship develops between Hiroko and Fukuko. Crazy movie but a lot of fun to watch. And both actresses are so cute, you can’t help but like this movie.So, what did you think? An eclectic choice wouldn't you say? Hm, eighteen films this month (March). This month (April), I have only watched four films so far, but my local DVD rental shop had a 100yen campaign for old titles and 1000yen for any four new titles so of course I've already rented a bunch that are still waiting to be seen, but you will have to wait until next month before I write about them.
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