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Reviews
3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain (1998)
Epic
Every once in a while a film comes along that makes you glad to be alive. Cinema is a beautiful art form, and no cinema is more gorgeous than 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain. Epic on a grand scale, the cinematic majesty on display would make Kurosawa's corpse reanimate just so it could kill itself in shame at never meeting the grandeur of vision presented herein. I saw this movie and broke down in tears, as I knew my eyes had witnessed the most beautiful sight since Stallone and Carl Weathers flirting with each other on the beach in one of the Rocky films. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll curse yourself for thinking that the greatness of the previous 3 Ninjas movies could ever be topped.
Bravo. Bravo.
Marebito (2004)
Interesting film
First off, I hated Ju-On. I thought it was derivative garbage of the J-horror variety (most J-Horror, which many American's think is "cult", is the equivalent of teen slasher flicks in their respective countries). That said, I was expecting nothing from this film. Instead, I got a Japanese David Cronenberg film, for all intents and purposes. This film would make an excellent companion piece to Cronenberg's Videodrome.
Both deal with technology and alienation in an urban setting. While in Videodrome it's the proliferation of mass media that causes the protagonists reality slip, here it's the creation of such media. The main character is a freelance videographer who makes a living filming the horrible things that people do to each other (and themselves) in the crowded yet isolated world of the big city. He eventually comes to understand that nothing is more cruel than what he does. He is, in a figurative sense, a vampire. He sucks the blood of the living into his lens, and thrives off the rewards. But he is lost.
Then he meets...a girl? A creature? A vampire? A hallucination? The fact that she has no recognizable emotion or attachment, and lives only to feed on the blood of people is a projection of what he is so ashamed of.
This film really gets into the feel of alienation (much the way "Clean, Shaven" and Cronenberg's "Spider" did) and makes you feel the way the populace who views his videos do. Disturbed, but secretly glad and thrilled that misery was put on film.
Which leads me to the presentation. Many have griped about the Digital Film approach, which, as most cinephiles know, leads to a harsh lighting scheme and stark contrasts- none of the lushness of film- and jerky movement feel. Shimizou could have easily done this on film if he had wanted to, but instead, I feel, made a choice to use digital...it's the same format that his protagonist records horrible images on. One turn deserves another. I enjoyed this aspect, as the presentation aspect of a film is rarely intrinsic to both the style and subtext of the film.
That said, it's not entirely successful. A few scenes could have used better FX work or shot choice/editing, but, hey, he shot this on the fly in 8 days, on his way to make another J-Horror "scary-kid" schlockfest. This film shows he is more capable than that. Fans of J-horror may want to avoid this, whereas if, like me, you're a fan of shock-cinema and narrative surrealism (Lynch, some Cronenberg, you) may enjoy this.
Goremet, Zombie Chef from Hell (1986)
So bad it's not just good, it's epic.
Ah, the golden days of High School. My twin brother and I would go to the local video shop, located in the deep shadow cast by "Mega-Video Mall and Lobotomy" across the street, and spend our summer days trying to find the WORST horror film ever made. And by "worst", of course, I mean "best".
To some people Vertigo changes their view of film. For others it's a Godard piece or a Kurosawa study. For me, my epic is Gore-met Zombie Chef From Hell. A movie so ludicrous, inane, bad, lame, and annoying that every frame REEKS of the love for film. Nobody could EVER see a 'production' of this sort to completion if there wasn't a bone deep, cellular level love of all things film. This movie is almost a tragedy in that sense. People actually took the time and effort to create, film, and release what was probably not a good idea in the first place, no matter how drunk they were when it came to them. I've heard rumors that this was an attempt by porn filmmakers to make a legitimate film that would rescue them from the fringes of show business. If that is true, as I used to believe as a high schooler, then it is akin to watching a calamity in which no one survives: you feel horror, shock, pity, and anger, touched with a sense of wonder and a strange desire to latch onto the feelings the moment stoked in your heart. This movie should be played in a modern art museum somewhere.
So bad it achieves a level nearing beauty. So inept as to be almost unbelievable. So unwatchably bad that it actually re-enters the other side of the spectrum as fan-freaking-tastic.
I wish someone would track down the cast and crew and write a screenplay about the filming of this movie.
Gokudô kyôfu dai-gekijô: Gozu (2003)
Fascinating film that out-Lynch's lynch and out-Cronenberg's Cronenberg
Takashi Miike is an interesting character. I've been following his career since the US release of Audition (Odishon), and have slowly but surely worked my way into his back-catalog as much as is possible in the US without spending a fortune (the Dead or Alive films, Visitor Q, Ichi, Fudoh, Ley Lines, Shinjuku Triad Society, among others).
For me, the key to Miike is separating his "films" from his "movies"....Miike is a man very in control of his craft when he wants to be (Audition, Gozu, Rainy Dog, among others) who often lets his cinematic Id run rampant (Dead or Alive, Ichi, Visitor Q). Now the latter group are entertaining as all hell, often imbued with a more resonant 'deeper meaning' than the surface shock value would initially imply,funny, disturbing, and thought provoking all at once. However, I still refrain from calling them great films. To me, Miike is all the potential of modern pop-cinema melded with the love for film that powered the old masters. However his subject matter sometimes doesn't lend itself to movies that are truly as disturbing as he thinks they are. A film that is 2 hours of organs hitting the camera is entertaining, but not great cinema.
However, when Miike hits his stride, he hits it well, making highly cinematic films that show a masterful eye for shot composition, pacing, cinematography, lighting, etc. That he can combine these films with the sick images floating around in his head makes them all the more disturbing....that is why I rank Gozu right behind Audition as his best films.
Gozu makes Blue Velvet by Lynch seem like a 1950's soap advertisement. The people in this film have issues. Miike layers on the levels of surrealism (how does the car get into Nagoya? Why is Nose sitting in a field reading porno? Who wrote those cue cards, and how did they know what he was going to say?) to the point of high comedy, but with enough disturbed goings on to keep one always mildly-freaked out. He explores themes prevalent in previous movies (specifically Visitor Q), but this time with a controlled, beautifully off-kilter cinematic view.
This is twisted surrealistic film-making at it's best. As Minami remains in Nagoya, reality seems to dissolve until a identity switch of Lynchian proportions occurs. Is this really happening to Minami? IS he crazy? Is he being eaten away from the insides by his guilt over Ozaki? Is this his guilt waging war with his mind, and Ozaki's death and rebirth are simply visualizations of how he views duty vs. friendship, with the ending shots being the only reality based scenes since he avoids the river? All are fascinating scenarios, and all are equally valid. nothing in this film is concrete, instead playing like a demented tone-poem to unease.
Easily a must see, and the several interviews with Miike on the DVD are quite worthwhile as well.