Insanity and ingeniousness can be hard to tell apart. What is sure however is that Riki Takeuchi’s beyond-this-world performance as the host of a japanese TV cooking show can cause the viewer physical injuries. Just try not to fall from your chair following the man raising the bets everytime they let him in front of the camera. The actual storyline is about two brothers (Ryuhei Matsuda and Arata) separated as kids, who have both grown up to be world class chefs. Yu Yamada and her lovely shorts play the female lead. Too bad the film suffers from several flaws, such as the dull first half, which leaves no choise but to take away some points from the film’s rating. But there’s still a lot to enjoy, and no one can take away Yu’s pants.
- TV
What an unbelievable coincidence. Yesterday a friend told me about a cute girl named Mitsuki Tanimura. Today I watch Lemon no koro, and after being impressed by the performance of a certain super sweet girl in it, I go find out who she was. Turns out her name was Mitsuki Tanimura… Anyway, she’s the best thing about this rather decent mainstream school drama. The first 30 minutes is weak but I started enjoying the film after that. It never gets too special, appart from a few moments with Mitsuki, but it’s also far from the worst of its kind. The cinematography is pretty nice, too. The ending is a bit sugary but I liked it nevertheless.
- questionable methods
Jun Ichikawa’s masterpiece is near perfect movie making from start to finish. Beautiful film with no underlining or rush. Well acted throughout. Films like this make modern cinema worth watching.
Starting the legendary series from the beginning without the participation of Kaji or Ito may not sound like the greatest idea, but the outcome is surprisinly satisfactory. Yumi Takigawa takes over the lead role, and Yutaka Kohira sits behind the camera. The middle part drags a bit, but the last 20 minutes is jaw dropping pinky violence perfection.
- dvd / Pathe
The last of the 70’s Sasori films stars Yoko Natsuki, who looks very cool in the right clothing but doesn’t manage to bring much life into the character. The supporting cast is thankfully excellent, including Masashi Ishibashi as the warden and Takeo Chii and Hiroshi Tachi as guards. Kohira’s direction is less solid than before, but the last 30 minutes offers plenty of high quality entertainment.
- dvd / Pathe
Rika Aoki is back, but half of the kick is missing. The sequel features a weaker soundtrack and notably less wild storyline. Supporting cast is a bit dull, too. However, Rika still looks hot, wears some totally awesome costumes, and steps on stage a few times, even if her songs are not as good as before. The ending, as well as the closing credits sequence, are kick ass, and the film features one of the strongest ’wtf’ moments in recent memory. Good fun for genre fans, other may consider skipping.
- dvd / Exploitation Digital
Norifumi Suzuki knows how to make small budget pinku eiga look like an epic. Ero shogun to 21-nin no aisho stars a wide variety of genre starlets, including Yoko Mihara, Emi Shiro and Miki Sugimoto, as the women of the shogun’s inner palace. The most memorable is Reiko Ike as a sexy female ninja! Her sword-inside-an-umbrella fight scene in the rain was later re-used by Teruo Ishii in Female Yakuza Tale. Suzuki’s film however is not an action pic but a stylish and often over the top drama-comedy that only suffers from too much flesh.
- dvd / Toei
Yasuhare Hasebe’s Assault! Jack the Ripper has a reputation as one of the best, and also most notorious violent pinku films ever produced by the Nikkatsu studios. Unfortunately the film doesn’t quite live up to the expectations. It’s a nastly film but not an especially graphic one. The story of a shy young man who after being provoked by his wild girlfriend slowly turns into a murderer is fascinating, but ultimately underdeveloped, partly because of the short running time and overload of sex scenes. Hasebe’s direction is quite original but not fit for all tastes.
- dvd / Geneon
As much as I’d like love this one the flaws are just too obvious. Hasebe’s films has potential even to be one of the definitive serial killer analyzes, but the fast tempo and the unnecessarily frequent sex scenes make the film less impressive than what it could be. Acting is surprisingly good, but the characterization is left half way. The mean spirited murder scenes are unsettling, partly due to the uncompromising use of music. Humour is plenty, but always pitch back and hard to stomatch. Several single scenes are brilliant and make you wish the whole movie would retain the same quality.
- dvd / Geneon
Japanese terrorist want kill Dalai Lama… uh, Daka Lama I mean, in this mentally insane Wong Jing actioner. Alan Tam, who looks like Alan Tam without glasses, according to his own words, plays a cop who tries to stop the terrorist and find a blood donor before it’s too late. Any Lau has his own reasons take part in the game. Eric Tsang appears in diapers. Sounds confusing? Or just brilliant? Well, the film is both. There’s also enough gunplay for the British video distibutor to retitle the film as Hard Boiled 2 back in the days… although this one was made a year before the Woo classic.
- dvd / Mega Star
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.
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.
It’s incredible what a long way Shu Qi has come in such a short time. In five years from a nude model to elegant director Hou Hsiao-hsien’s favourite leading lady. Her performance in Millennium Mambo terrific and perfectly in line with the director’s mix of hypnotic mood pieces and zero sentimentiality character drama. The cinematography is loaded with great images and long takes, and the scrip is not over-written. The ending is excellent, too.
- dvd / Accent
Before reaching for the mainstream success with Linda Linda Linda Nobuhiro Yamashita was one of Japan’s most interesting directors. His near-perfect second film No One’s Ark is even better than my previous Yamashita favourite, Realism no yado. The well written storyline of a young couple trying to set up their own business in the early 90’s Japan is simple but engaging. There are several scenes that in the hands of a less talented director could easily turn awkward but Yamashita handles them masterfully. The film is filled with silent humour, and director’s skill with music and visuals create several impressive scenes. The acting is perfect.
- dvd / R2J
Jeon Yun-su’s futuristic sleeping pill doesn’t feature a single interesting element. The storyline is an exceptionally uninteresting cliche collection. Technical execution is equally dull. While not the most repulsive movie I’ve seen it is hard to think of any positive things about this scifi actioner.
- TV
Chang Yoon-Hyun’s Fincher esque serial killer film comes just in time to restore my hope for Korean crime cinema. The gory thriller stumbles with its script, but the tech side from the cinematography to the use of music is so superb that most story related flaws can be forgiven. The characters are rather good, and the film features an exceptionally tense atmosphere.
- TV
A very basic early 80’s Jackie Chan period film. Lots of silly but entertaining humour and good action, although the amount of fights is relatively small. The storyline makes little sense but it’s not really a huge problem. The film will be best remembered for the crazy â€
I almost went to praise Danny Lee for creating a solid, Billy Tang esque cat III thriller until I found out Billy Tang was indeed the second director. Dr. Lamb combines court drama, that however takes place at a police station (expect some police brutality), and audio-visually captivating and intense suspense scenes a bit similiar to those seen in Red to Kill. The HK dvd is a censored (for uncut version look for the german dvd) but still comes with a big red throw up warning. Humour is black and sick as it should. Simon Yam does excellent gob portraying the film’s pathetic psychopath, and Danny Lee himself plays a cop, as always.
- dvd / Winson
When a director’s debut film is a masterpiece one shouldn’t expect the next one to be as good. That doesn’t seem to apply to Makoto Shinkai. At least on the first viewing The Place Promised in Our Early Days felt about twice as good as Voices of a Distant Star. It’s still not perfect as it’s a bit over-written and stumbles with some scifi content that could’ve been left out for the most part. Nevertheless, if it wasn’t for Shinkai’s next film, which is out on dvd but hasn’t reached my mail box yet, I’d say it’s gonna take a decade before we’ll see another movie as beautiful as this.
- dvd / ADV
Takashi Ishii’s extremely tense and strangely beautiful rape thriller is no doubt one of the best japanese thrillers of the past 10 years. The film kicks off a bit too fast but Ishii’s direction is stylish, hard hitting and fascinating. Taking place almost fully in one appartment the film has an almost claustrophobic feel to it. The final image will burn into your mind for quite some time.
- dvd / R3K
David Chung and Michelle Yeoh team up again in this enjoyable WWII adventure. While Michelle is in top form she is sometimes over shadowed by Chindy Lau (who may not be as talented as a fighter, but is twice as cute). Hong Kong’s best comedian Richard Ng steals every scene he is in (as usual).
- dvd/ HKL
Yamashita directing a mystery thriller after his mainstream hit Linda 3 didn’t sound like a good idea, but I thankfully I was wrong. In fact, Matsugane not even that much of a mystery thriller, it just sounded like one. Dark but slow moving small town comedy would be a better definition. The film isn’t as good as the director’s early works, and feels more slick, probably because of the bigger budget, but still, it’s very recognizable Yamashita. There aren’t really any obvious crowd pleasing elements other than the storyline which however isn’t nearly as bizarre as it could be. Some hippy promo pics and posters that had made me suspicious about the film turned out to be just an ad stunt, none of that stuff is in the film.
Seem like these movies are just not for me. I know some people have been blown away by Rope Cosmetology, but to me it was even more miserable than the previous Naomi Tani film I saw, Flower and Snake. The film begins alright with miss Tani as a sexually frustrated high class lady, which is the role she was born to play. The first candle scene is also decent, and the ending brings a smile to your face. Usually these would be enough to grant a film 1,5/5 rating, but Rope Cosmetology goes so far below the scale during it’s dog scenes (you don’t want to know) that anything above the minimum rating is out of question. I usually force myself to watch movie from beginning to end with no cheating, but this time I had to fast forward about half of the last 25 minutes. There’s sex, sex, sex and people acting like dogs (literally). An obvious classic.
- R2J source
SPL villain Wu Jing plays the hero in Dennis Law’s weird combination of youth film and manly fighting movie. The characterization is awful and almost everybody acts badly, but the girl is cute, Wu Jing wins over the audience’s symphathy, and then there’s Suet Lam. The fight choreography is good and the film remains entertaining from start to finish. The ending is original and terrible, but not in an all bad way.
- dvd / R0 HK
This is probably the most sexually suggestive show ever (without any actual sex). And not any better than you’d expect. There’s a couple of funny moments, and more than once had hard time believing my eyes, but otherwise Eiken has very little to effer (although â€
I’m not even gonna try to describe this film. The Boxer’s Omen is one of those movies that you won’t believe unless you see it yourself, and maybe not even then. The gross out level is high and snacks are not recommended while watching this black magic circus. Bolo Yeung’s kick boxing and Wai Ga Man’s naked body are used as filler footage whenever the special effects crew is taking a brief break from their ever impressive work. A sure hit among genre fans, but for some reason I found myself only entertained, not blown the moon.
- dvd / Image
I found Yoon-Hyun Chang’s previous film, serial killer flick Tell Me Something, highly impressive. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about Some. The cop thriller is technically well made and features a good male lead, but it’s a bit hard to come up with reasons for this movie to exist. Appart from from one weird element in the storyline the script doesn’t offer anything interesting, and the director doesn’t even manage to create any single stand out scenes. Some car crashes are ruined with ugly cgi. Not a terrible film by any means, just an unnecessary one.
- dvd / R3K
Gotta admire this structure: have a woman being interrogated (read: tortured) in front of the ancient, merciless court. She tells her story (sex) in flashbacks, because whenever she tries to remain silent she gets tortured (violence). Brilliant. Only that the torture isn’t as much â€
Sammo Hung’s Hong Kong western is an entertaining action comedy with little sense, but several funny scenes. The last 20 minutes offers one of the best action orgies on Hung’s career. The cast is unbelievable: Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Kenny Bee, Yasuaki Kurata, Eric Tsang, Phillip Ko, Richard Norton, Dick Wei, Rosamund Kwan, Emily Chu and the world’s best comedian Richard Ng, just to mention a few. Special mentions to the female kicking machines Yukari Oshima and Cynthia Rothrock, whom I actually managed to like this time.
- dvd / Dragon Dynasty
Although Battles Without Honor and Humanity didn’t fully convince me, Yakuza Graveyard leaves no room for doubts. Fukasaku’s study on the thin red line between the police and the yakuza is some of the best crime cinema I’ve seen in ages. The storyline holds up well, and the main character, played by Tetsuya Watari, is an excellent combination of cinematic anti-hero and realism. The female lead is played by Meiko Kaji, who gives another solid performance.
- dvd / Kino
I can’t believe it took me this long to realize that every single Makoto Shinkai movie is about distance, either physical or emotional. 5 Centimeters per Second sets its storyline on smaller scale than the directors previous tow films, but it also avoids their mistakes. There is no longer unnecessary scifi content or complex plotting. This is how it should be. The film consists of three related parts, running 25, 22 and 14 minutes.
- dvd / R3 HK
