I recently landed a role as contributor to V-Cinema and I have reviewed a number of films for the website. I have been something of a fan and enjoyed listening to their podcasts when they have covered Japanese cinema so I’m pretty excited to be a part of the team and helping to highlight Japanese cinema. Writing reviews is something I enjoy doing and I hope people enjoy reading my reviews!
Here’s a snippet of my review of the film Petal Dance (2013) images plus a link to the full review follow. The film itself is a further refinement of Hiroshi Ishikawa’s style which is all about long takes, unscripted dialogue, minimalist aesthetics, and a love of showcasing huge skies and Aoi Miyazaki’s acting.
It has been a bit of a quiet week for me. I managed to watch no Japanese films but I am making a renewed effort to finish the anime Le Chevalier D’eon (I started it last year but stopped watching due to Christmas). Anyway I posted a trailer for Kim Jee-Woon’s Hollywood debut, TheLast Stand, the line-up for Scotland Loves Anime and a trailer for Berserk Movie III: Descent. What is happening in the charts?
Rurouni Kenshin
The Avengers
Prometheus
Umizaru 4: Brave Hearts
The Wolf Children Ame and Yuki
Total Recall (2012)
Ushijia the Loan Shark
Pokemon: Best Wishes 2012
Kamen Rider Fourze the Movie: Everyone, Space is Here!
The Dark Knight Rises
Two of the Japanese films released last week enter the charts with Ushijima taking seventh place while Rurouni Kenshin takes the top spot. This has been the biggest opening of any Warner Bros. Japan’s releases… I think… and it has grossed $7 million. Pretty impressive. Prometheus entered at three and Umizaru and The Wolf Children remain in the top ten at four and five respectively.
What is released today? Lots of Japanese films! What a mix!
Jinsei, Irodori
Japanese Title: 人生、いろどり
Romaji: Jinsei, Iridori
ReleaseDate:01st September 2012 (Japan)
RunningTime: 112 mins.
Director:Osamu Minorikawa
Writer:Noriko Nishiguchi
Starring: Sumiko Fuji, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Yuta Hiraoka, Eri Murakawa, Mie Nakao, Tatsuya Fuji, Shigeyuki Totsugi
The third film from Osamu Minorikawa, Jinsei, Irodori is one of a couple of forthcoming films tackling the issue of the ageing population of Japan. It also reminds me of the anime Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita due to the plot involving food and a woman coming in from a large “agency” and helping a community… Tenuous, I must admit. Anyway the film stars a mixture of new talents like Eri Murakawa who starred in Train Brain Express (I keep referring to it as Take the A Train), Shigeyuki Totsugi (Mitsuko Delivers), and venerable talents like Kazuko Yoshiyuki who has starred in a wide variety of films like Maiko haaaan!!!, Glory to the Filmmaker, Departures, Gohatto and Lady Snowblood 2, Sumiko Fuji who has appeared in Summer Wars, Hula Girls and the original Thirteen Assassins and Tatsuya Fuji who I last saw in Bright Future.
Based on a true story, Kamikatsu in Tokushima prefecture is a small town where nearly half of the population are elderly people and its once thriving tangerine industry has collapsed. When a woman from the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation named Eda arrives and endeavours to revive the town by selling vegetables from the local area. She meets opposition but three women named Kaoru, Hanae, and Michiko join forces with Eda.
Toshiaki Toyoda (9 Souls) follows up Monsters Club with this thriller about a religious cult which stars a whole load of stars including the handsome Kento Nagayama (Villain), Tatsuya Fujiwara (Death Note, Battle Royale), Ryuheu Matsuda (Nightmare Detective, The Suicide Song), the beautiful Kiko Mizuhara (Norwegian Wood, Helter Skelter) and Mayu Harada (The Millennial Rapture) Happy birthday, Mayu! It also stars Itsuji Itao (Love Exposure, Tokyo Gore Police, Ghost Train, One Missed Call Final) who uses his ability to by slimy well in this.
Rui (Fujiwara) is the charismatic leader of a new religious group who attracts the attention of the media after a car accident leaves a man dead. He retreats to his group’s compound in Okinawa where his chief aide (Itao) hires three bodyguards (Matsuda, Nagayama, Nakano) to look after him, his sister (Harada), brother (Kitamura). Why the need for bodyguards? What is the threat and is Rui happy with the life and his religious group?
Noriko’s Dinner Table is billed as the prequel to Suicide Circle and while it may be set in the same universe and explore the same ideas it drops gore for a more intimate and surreal story.
Noriko Shimabara (Fukiishi) is an inexperienced girl who lives a quiet and comfortable life with her journalist father Tetsuzo (Mitsuishi), her mother Taeko (Miyata), and her younger sister Yuka (Yoshitaka) in Toyokawa. Noriko craves excitement and wants to head to a university in Tokyo but her conservative father is set against it and wants Noriko to head to a local university. Noriko feels alienated from her parents but finds refuge in the internet on the site Haikyo.com, a place where teenagers from across Japan gather. Noriko grows especially fond of the website’s chief who goes under the username Ueno Station 54. Noriko runs away from home to Tokyo and meets Ueno Station 54 at Locker #54 in Ueno station. The mysterious Ueno Station 54 turns out to be a young woman named Kumiko (Tsugumi) who introduces Noriko to her business named I.C. Corp which offers clients actors who provide role-play services. Noriko falls into this shadowy world of role-playing. Six months later, 54 school girls act out their roles and jump in front of a train at Shinjuku station. Back in Toyokawa, Noriko’s sister Yuka has become a member of Haikyo and aims to track down Noriko. In order to do this she heads to Tokyo. This sets in motion Tetsuzo’s search for his daughters and his investigation into a cult named Suicide Club.
Noriko’s Dinner Table is based on a novel Sion Sono wrote in 2002 named Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition which wraps around the events of Suicide Circle, resolving questions and expanding on the story and themes.
Making links between the two films is interesting as we get an insight into who orchestrated the chaos of Suicide Circle and their motives. Whether you wanted an explanation of the site haikyo.com or a behind-the-scenes of some of the most audacious moments of the first film you will get it but as a follow-up to Suicide Circle’s gory events Noriko’s Dinner Table feels very different thanks to its restraint in dealing out black humour, horror and violence. They never overwhelm proceedings but inform them. Noriko’s Dinner Table shows that Sono has grown as a writer and director and he has thought carefully about what he wants to film.
I was ripe for growth
In essence this is a mystery/family drama about existential growth. Noriko’s Dinner Table leaves behind the spectacle of mass suicide and gives a more fulsome examination of the issues of alienation, the generation gap between parents and children, and the battle between individual authenticity and conformism.
Based on a novel by Yasushi Akimoto, Miike brings in a cinema friendly horror film that owes quite a debt to Ringu.
Yumi (Kou Shibasaki) is at a party in an Izakaya when a friend named Yoko (Anna Nagata) gets a strange voice message on her cell phone. The message is dated two days in the future and from her own phon. The message contains the Yoko’s voice as she complains about rain then suddenly screams. Yumi is spooked. A friend named Kenji (Atsushi Ida) offers to take the party to a hotel his parents own so the group swap phone numbers. Two days later Yoko dies. Yumi wonders if the mysterious call had anything to do with it and when discussing events with Kenji she discovers Kenji got a similar mysterious message. Yumi is now in a race against time to stop the death-messaging call.
Far more accessible and audience friendly than Audition One Missed Call is like Ringu in that it hinges on haunted technology as ghosts use modern everyday items to torment people. In this film victims receive mobile phone messages from the future that predict their death. Cue a set of gloriously inventive and blackly humorous death scenes as characters get bumped off in a series of unexpected ways.
Genkinahito 