Kinji Fukasaku had a mad career, making all sorts of pictures, including loads of crazy yakuza flicks and a movie about teenagers killing each other. This is a rather bleak, but still wild and wooly crime drama. I reviewed the new Blu-ray from Radiance over at Cinema Sentries.
I often requests movies that I’ve never heard of before to review. I usually do look around at Letterbox reviews before I make a request just to get a general idea of whether or not folks whose opinion I appreciate enjoyed it or not. But it is always taking a plunge. I love it when the movie turns out to be better than expected.
The Inugami Family is terrific. It is very much like a Japanese take on an Agatha Christie story and almost certainly influenced Rian Johnson’s Knives Out series.
It is a murder mystery set in a grand old house filled with quirky family members and a disheveled detective trying to solve it all. I loved it. You can read my full review here.
I don’t know how to talk about this movie without spoiling a major plot conceit. So, if you like to go into movies completely blank, I’d skip this review. I will say that I liked it, and if you do go into it without knowing anything, make it past the 30-minute mark before giving up.
And now, on to the review.
One Cut of the Dead is like a horror version of Noises Off! It begins like a micro-budget zombie movie. Or rather, it is a behind-the-scenes take on a group of people making a micro-budget zombie movie that is beset by actual zombies.
As the title of the film suggests, it is shot in a single take. They use a handheld camera with natural lighting. There are some clever moments and a few funny bits, but I spent the first half hour wondering why so many people rated this film so highly. I can enjoy a low-budget horror film, but this felt amateurish in parts.
The camera work was shaky, the acting not great, and numerous moments felt like the filmmakers didn’t know what they were doing. Like they hadn’t rehearsed well enough, or that something had gone wrong, but because they had this single-take conceit, they couldn’t do anything about it. I was mentally writing this review arguing why the single-take idea was a bad one.
But then, right around the half-hour mark, our hero defeats the zombies. There is a triumphant crane shot and actual credits roll. A title pops up telling us we are headed back in time a few months.
We meet the cast and crew of the film we just watched. The fearless director Takayuki Higurashi (Takayuki Hamatsu) is approached by some TV producers launching a new zombie channel to make a one-take zombie film. We get to know everybody a little bit and watch them in rehearsals, etc.
This section lasts about another thirty minutes. Then we watch them make the film we just saw. We get to see all the behind-the-scenes action on how they made this one-take horror film. But we also see why that film was not very good. All kinds of crazy stuff happens, causing everybody to rush around trying to fix it.
This stuff is excellent. It really ties that first act together and makes it worth watching. Those first thirty minutes are tough to get through. I expect more than a few people have bailed before that change is made. So, you do need to stick with it, but if you do you’ll be heavily rewarded.
Jinsei was written, directed, scored, and animated by first-time filmmaker Ryuya Suzuki. That’s an impressive feat, and this is an impressive film. But also a very confusing one. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. I’m still not sure. I’ve sat here for quite a while trying to figure out what to say for this little blurb. It isn’t a bad film; in fact, it is quite interesting. I’m definitely glad I watched it, but I can’t say I have any interest in watching it again. So, yeah, anyway, come read my review.
Radiance Films has become one of my favorite Boutique Blu-ray companies. They typically put out films that I’ve never heard of, but when I watch them, I discover that they are actually quite good.
Usually. Of late, I’ve found their movies to be a bit disappointing. The Boxer is a Japanese take on Rocky, but more dour and a whole lot less fun. It isn’t bad, and definitely not as bad as the reviews on Letterboxd would have you believe, but it isn’t good either. I don’t know if that makes you want to read my review of it, but if it does, you can find it over at Cinema Sentries.
My daughter has become something of a gamer. She’s not hardcore about it, but she enjoys playing. She also enjoys watching others play games on YouTube and the like. There is one YouTuber that she likes who plays a lot of horror games. I figured she might have watched him play Exit 8 and thought she might like this movie. She had not watched him play the game, but thought she’d maybe seen someone else play similar games. But anyway, she said she’d watch the movie with me. A rare treat.
The film plays out very much like a game. In fact, it begins with a first-person point of view, something I hoped would not last. Thankfully, it didn’t. An unnamed man (known as Lost Man in the film and played by Kazunari Ninomiya) stands, listening to music on a crowded subway. He hears a baby crying and watches as another man berates the mother for not keeping the child quiet. Lost Man wants to say something to this man, but instead puts his earbuds back in and ignores the situation.
Later, his girlfriend will call him on the phone, announcing that she is pregnant and wondering what he wants to do about it. He doesn’t know. This situation on the subway makes him think that perhaps he should not try to care for another human being.
As he exits the subway, he finds he is lost inside the labyrinth of underground corridors. Soon he is alone, and the corridors have turned into a game. A sign tells him that he must look for anomalies. If he finds one, he must turn back, but if there are none, then he can keep moving forward. He must make it to Exit 8 to get out of this place. If he makes a mistake, he will start over at Exit 0.
There are basically two corridors that he passes through. The first has several posters, some doors, and vents to look over; the second has a series of lockers and a few other things. He carefully takes note of everything so that he can determine if there is an anomaly.
In the first corridor, a man walks past him. This man does not speak or look at him and is unresponsive to Lost Man’s attempts to talk to him. This man is called Walking Man (Yamato Kochi). Later, we will follow Walking Man as he tries to escape this subway labyrinth. There will also be a young boy (naturally called The Boy and played by Naru Asanuma).
I’ve not played the game, but my assumption is that the anomalies are difficult to spot. Otherwise, it seems like the game would be too easy. I can see players staring at every bit of the wall looking for some slight difference in something. I might be wrong in that assumption. Certainly it isn’t that way in the movie. Though Lost Man looks closely at the posters and doors, etc., almost every time the anomaly is something easy to spot.
Once Walking Man turns and follows him. Another time, one of the doors opens and reveals, well, I won’t reveal what it reveals, but it certainly isn’t a way out. On another occasion, the lights go out, and creepy things happen. These aren’t difficult things to spot, but the characters pretty regularly fail the test. I guess it wouldn’t be much of a movie if they got out in ten minutes. I will say the atmosphere the film projects is pretty thrilling. And sometimes it is effectively creepy. This is a film best seen in a theater, or at least at home at night with all the lights off.
I’ve talked about Radiance Films many times in these pages, mostly because I review a lot of their films. They put out international arthouse films that I’ve never heard of, but I always appreciate. Well, mostly. I had a hard time with this one. It is a punk rock film about a pretty horrible person. I appreciated some of the filmmaking but struggled to find anything else to enjoy about it. You can read my full review here.
I’ve always been a fan of exploitation films. As a young teen, I loved the babes, the sex, the violence, the gore, and the exploitativeness of it all. I still love that stuff now, I guess, but I really love the unabashedness of those films now. Exploitation films are exactly what they say they are going to be. They don’t try to wrap that stuff up in artistic pretensions like so many other films do.
Sometimes they are actually good movies too, as is the case with at least two of the Female Prisoner Scorpion flicks. I reviewed the Arrow Video box set of all four films back in 2016 and now you can read them.
Once again we’ve run into a film that I had forgotten I watched. I pretty much request to review anything that is offered from the Criterion Collection because they are always good, or if not good, at least interesting. Seeing this title, I instantly remembered I had seen it, but I couldn’t tell you anything about it. Reading my review makes me want to watch it again.
The story is about a Japanese kid who wants to be an actor but isn’t very good at it. He has to make many a sacrifice to hone his craft, as does his lover. The film dives into what it takes to make great art and if the sacrifice is worth it. You can read all my thoughts here.
This Japanese drama is loosely based on a real guy who kept breaking out of jail only to be sent back shortly after (then he’d break out again.) In the film this becomes his entire identity. He cannot live in the hell that is prison, yet when he escapes he doesn’t know what to do with himself so he always gets caught and finds himself back in prison.
It is more of a character study than any type of thriller, but it is a good one. You can read my full review here.