Kantoku Banzai! (Japan, 2007) – 2,5/5
It’s official, Kitano has gone mad. Kantoku Banzai! makes his previous work Takeshis’ look line a coherent piece of cinema. No wonder he shot this movie in secret. While the first 40 minutes, where Kitano plays a film director with no success at the box office, actually make some slight sense, the rest is just 100% Kitano’s brain waves transcribed into film frames (and those ain’t no Hana-Bi waves). Everything is incredibly stupid and childish, but also confusing enough to be funny. Shame about Anne Suzuki’s talent being wasted in a mess like this, but then again, the film is all about Kitano and nobody else. I wonder if any director has ever made a film as egocentric as this before.
Gemini (Japan, 1999) – 1/5
Shinya Tsukamoto’s awful identity horror features some slightly interesting psychological dimentions, but it’s not enough to save the film from being a horrible mess. Tadanobu Asano appears for a few minutes and manages to bring in some dignity with his voice. The man himself is under heavy make up and looks ridiculous… which is pretty much in line with the rest of the content. The original novel by Edogawa Rampo was also used as one of the several sources for Teruo Ishii’s legendary Horrors of Malformed Men.
- dvd / Warner Bros