Category Archives: Film

One Cut of the Dead (カメラを止めるな）

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  • カメラを止めるな（One Cut of the Dead）

8/15/18 (Wed), Tokyo

This zany film – literally, “Don’t Stop the Camera!” or “Keep It Rolling!” – has become a sensation in Japan, a low-budget little-film-that-could by a no-name director and cast that has spread like wildfire from a single out-of-the-way theater to nationwide release. Shows were sold out from morning to night in the peak o-bon holiday season. No one would tell me anything more about the film than that it involves zombies, which would normally make me turn the other way. But the word was so strong that I finally gave in to the hype and snagged a late-night ticket.

The first half-hour is taken up by an amateurish film with overripe acting and questionable direction, where actors making a zombie movie encounter actually zombies. My heart sank, and I started wondering what I was doing there. But then there comes a sharp change in gears that makes it all worth it. Continue reading →

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

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  • Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

7/29/18 (Sun)

I was never a big fan of Mr. Rogers, who seemed embarrassingly old-fashioned to me back in the day even before Sesame Street was blowing the neighborhood away. But I’m regretting all those years of neglect after seeing this superb documentary of his life – his view of the role of the emerging medium of television in communicating with children, the radical ideas cloaked in his retrograde and laid-back style, his ability to reach out to children (the most difficult audience in any medium). Rogers felt that the pie-throwing and banana-peel humor of the early children’s shows were downright destructive to little minds seeking simple truths, and sought to bring kids up to his level rather than the other way around by addressing them honestly and directly. It’s difficult to imagine today how strange that must have seemed at the time, especially in the show’s childlike setup: sock puppets, crude sets, basic storylines, unhurried style, simplistic themes. But what could be cloying comes out as oddly compelling in the face of Rogers’ earnestness.

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Phoenix (不死鳥)

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  • 不死鳥 (Phoenix)

6/23/18 (Sat), Tokyo

Kinoshita Keisuke, who helmed the fine Twenty-Four Eyes (二十四の瞳) and Like a Wild Chrysanthemum (野菊の如き君なりき), tends to walk a fine line just this side of sticky sentimentality. In this 1947 work Phoenix, he crosses it. Continue reading →

Shoplifters (万引き家族)

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  • 万引き家族 (Shoplifters)

6/15/18 (Fri), Tokyo

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

The family at the heart of Shoplifters, directed (and conceived and written and edited) by Hirokazu Koreeda, does not appear to let dire poverty get it down. The dad is a construction worker, the mom toils at a huge laundry and the daughter works at a dodgy club giving guys thrills through a one-way mirror, and they only manage to get by with the help of the grandmother’s pension from her late husband. Still, their home is full of activity and warmth, and it feels like a loving family. But all is not as it seems. Continue reading →

Yoshiwara

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  • Yoshiwara, 4/7/18 (Sat)

A French-language piece of Japonisme made in 1937 (when Japan was already well at war in Asia) by Max Ophüls. The film is set in Tokyo in the Meiji years, when foreigners have become a not-uncommon presence. Kohana, born into an aristocratic family, is forced humiliatingly by circumstances to sell herself to a brothel in the still-active red light district Yoshiwara, where the girls are now being taught how to give greetings in English, French and such to welcome foreign business. The servant Isamu (spelled Ysamo in the subtitles, but that’s too ridiculous), who delivers her by rickshaw to the brothel, loves her and is desperate to win her over despite the impossible difference in social status, even with her decline into prostitution. Unfortunately a rival emerges in the form of a Russian officer, who begins an intense affair with Kohana. Much to Isamu’s misery, she and the officer are soon deeply in love. The jealous servant gets involved in a scheme by the authorities to entrap the officer, who, it turns out, is in Japan on a secret military mission. Isamu’s actions, however, unwittingly put the girl herself in danger, and things quickly spiral out of control.

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Ballad of Orin (はなれ瞽女おりん)

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  • はなれ瞽女おりん (Ballad of Orin)

10/4/17 (Wed), Tokyo

I was curious about this 1977 movie after seeing the excellent puppet version, which was based on this source rather than the original play or novel. The director, Shinoda Masahiro, was also behind the muddled curiosity Double Suicide.

The story revolves around a lonely wandering blind singer who falls in love with a soldier. While he is clearly devoted, he refuses strangely to engage with her sexually, a source of great frustration to her. Still, she takes happiness where she can. The reasons for his unusual behavior are revealed in a tragic ending.

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Twenty-Four Eyes (二十四の瞳 )

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  • 二十四の瞳 (Twenty-Four Eyes), 1/16/11 (Sun), Tokyo

With the death of the great Takamine Hideko at year-end, I gathered friends to watch one of her most successful films. It is an unabashedly sentimental piece from 1953 about a new teacher and her 12 charges in a poor village in Shodoshima over a 20-year span from 1928-1948, i.e., before, during and after the war.

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Conflagration (炎上)

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  • 炎上 (Conflagration), 1/23/11 (Sun), Tokyo

Ichikawa Kon’s 1958 film version of Mishima’s then-recent novel Kinkakuji (The Golden Pavilion), a fictionalization of the notorious incident just a few years earlier when a crazed monk burned down the centuries-old structure. The novel is filled with ruminations about the nature of beauty versus reality by a narrator isolated from society by his own insecurities over his crippling stutter. His image of Kinkakuji (called here by a different name), described by his father as almost other-worldly, sets him up for a devastating letdown when he encounters the actual dilapidated structure. The temple in his mind represents an ideal that, when violated, prompts him to destroy the former to protect the latter.

The film can’t begin to compete at that level, but it is a dutiful recounting of the main events and is highly effective on its own terms. Continue reading →

Spielberg’s (!) West Side Story

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  • Spielberg’s (!) West Side Story 

Steven Spielberg’s intended film remake of West Side Story is apparently a go, for better or worse. While the original 1957 stage show was a modest success, it was the smash 1961 film that put the musical on the map with the second-highest grosses of the year and ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The love was not shared by its creators, who did not approve of the numerous revisions in song order and such, and it has not aged particularly well, coming off today as rather stagy despite its on-location shooting. Still, it is an historic work with a perfect cast, that amazing score and the iconic Jerome Robbins choreography, making the challenge of a remake formidable. The innovative approaches of recent musical films like Sweeney Todd and Hedwig and the Angry Inch (as well as the NBC Live musicals) do suggest a new path for musical film, and a creative look at old material is always welcome. (The stage show itself could stand some polishing if the Robbins estate would ever allow it.)

So why am I skeptical? Let us count the ways.  Continue reading →