Yakuza vs Teens

P.P. Rider (1983) - Somai Considered to be Shinji Somai's first masterpiece, the free wheeling, madcap coming-of-age tale by way of combating authorities - teachers, cops, yakuza is an unruly, wild ride, taking place in sweltering summer heat when the school's out. Three high schoolers - Jojo, Bruce and Jisho witness the kidnapping of a fat, bully schoolmate in the school yard and even though they don't like him, they decide to track down the kidnappers. It's the summer vacation and anything is possible. It's that manic energy of youth Somai is tapping on and P.P. Rider is nothing if not that forward momentum from the beginning, long tracking shot (supposedly used 3 cranes to manage) to the very end. On the trio's journey (one girl named Bruce, and two boys), they meet many characters - cops, a druggy yakuza named Nobody (Gombei), played by Tatsuya Fuji (In the Realm of the Senses), and their school teacher who decides to help them out, perhaps infected by her student's youthful exhuberance and more.

Getting the fatso back is not really the main point of P.P. Rider. The chaos is. The world outside school is truly dangerous place - they get beat up, get shot at constantly, offered drugs left and right, and have to face a lot of physical hurdles on the way. Nothing really faze them. They sing, dance, exchange their clothes and appearances and shoot their way through the obstacles.

The physicality of the film is astounding. The trio constantly climbs up and down grimy concrete walls and barbed wires: the prolonged chase scene at the lumber yard near the harbor where they jump from a floating log to log and constantly falling into water, I really do not know how Somai and team achieved that. It's much less coherent and compact than his later masterpieces like Typhoon Club and Moving. But it's P.P. Rider's unkempt, daring attempt at capturing the manic exhuberance of youth that is commendable.

The Lost Generation

Sway (2006) - Nishikawa Miwa Nishikawa (Dear Doctor, Under the Open Sky), a pupil of the great Hirokazu Kore-eda, proves herself to be a fine writer and director in her debut feature with Sway. One could make a comparison between Sway and Rysuke Hamaguchi's recent Evil Does Not Exist. But while I find the city/country dichotomy a little unsubtle and naive in Hamaguchi's latest, Sway examines it with much more nuance.

Takeru Hayakawa (Joe Odagiri), a hip photographer in Tokyo, goes back to a small rural town to attend his mom's funeral. He confronts his gas station owning father and his older brother Minoru (great character actor Teruyuki Kagawa). It seems Takeru was the one who got away from drabby small town living and Minoru, always a mediator, remained and has been taking care of things, like working at the gas station. There is Chieko (Yoko Maki), a childhood sweetheart, who now works for the gas station too - after the economic downturn costed her job, couple of years prior. It is also clear that Minoru has feelings for her. After the funeral and all the blame game and awkward exchanges, Takeru and Chieko spends the night together. There are a lot of unsaid yearnings in her looks toward Takeru which he is oblivious to or doesn't care enough. He just wants to get back to his life in Tokyo. Next day, by the urging of Minoru, the three of them go to the picturesque gorge with a swaying drawbridge across. It's Hayakawa family picnic spot which their father often took the brothers to when the they were young. After a confrontation on the draw bridge between Minoru and Chieko, she falls to the water and drowns. The rest of the movie is mostly a courtroom drama where the family dynamics were examined.

The film presents the deep chasm that can't be bridged between the generations in Japanese society amid the crippling economic downturn. Minoru's confession to the cops, originates from the mixture of envy, humiliation and resignation for meaningless life in the boring rural life as a gas station attendent, still living under the old school patriarchy. But Nishikawa shows that his envy of Takeru's success in the city is also misplaced, since Takeru's life is just as meaningless in superficial surroundings - a cool vintage car, a leather jacket, lots of one night stands. Nishikawa makes a subtle point to have Takeru's car break down near the end of the movie.

Nishikawa presents a snapshot of a Japanese society in mid-2000: one escapes the old school patriarchy to a meaningless life in superficiality. The other, full of envy and resentment, still trying to appease the old generation and living in a self-imposed prison. Odagiri and Kagawa are both terrific in their roles.

Hare to the Throne

Starve Acre (2023) - Kokotajlo Parents' grief manifests into a supernatural horror in Daniel Kokotajlo's moody, slow burn Starve Acre, based on a book by Andrew Michael Hurley who also co-wrote the screenplay.

Richard (Matt Smith) has moved back to his father's estate with his family - his wife Juliette (Morfydd Clark of Saint Maude) and their young son Ewan. He is a lecturer of archeology in nearby university. With his long hair and an outsider status, Richard doesn't really get along with his colleagues and neither does Ewan, who demonstrates violent tendencies. Jules is worried about their child but Richard is not. Richard's distance from his family stems from the physical abuse he received from his father when he was a young boy. He chastises his neighbor Gordon for telling the boy about the local folktale of Jack Grey and an oak tree that can reanimate the dead. Country folks are backward and full of superstitions. But the family can't shake off the feeling that there is something spooky about the nature that surrounds their house.

Ewan suddenly dies from an asthma attack and it pulls Richard and Jules farther apart. Guilt stricken and grieving, Jules can hardly get out of bed and Richard spends much time alone digging through the mud in the yard. Harrie (Erin Richards), Juliette's sister, comes to stay to comfort the grieving mother. It's the séance performed by Mrs. Ford, a neighbor that puts the idea in Jules' head that Ewan's spirit is still around.

Richard experiences a supernatural phenomenon when the bones of a hare he dug up near the oak tree of the old folklore, slowly starts to reanimate Hellraiser style - tissues appearing around the bones, then organs and muscles, eyes and hair. Is he imagining things out of grief or does the folktale about the oak tree and Jack Grey contain some sort of truth? He first hides this ungodly occurrence. But soon enough, a fully reanimated large hare is hopping around in their house. They release the hare to the wild but it comes back, wrecking havoc in the grieving parents' minds. According to Starve Acre, a research book left by Richard's father, they need three sacrifices to finish the ritual.

Smith and Clark are superb as grieving parents who are desperate to hold on to the idea of their dead son coming back, even if it takes a physical form of an animal. Cinematographer Adam Scarth’s expansive landscape shots and tinkling score by Matthew Herbert help accentuate the film’s sodden and moody tone. Grief and the power of folklore make great combination for a creating great unsettling, atmospheric horror. Starve Acre is one of the very fine English folk horror films to come out in recent years.

Riverman

Only the River Flows (2023) - Wei Based on Yu Hua's short novel Mistakes by the River, Wei Shujun's the film is a neo-noir set in provincial, changing Chinese town in Jiangdong in the lower reaches of Yangtze river in 1995. It tells a story of a police detective being obsessed with an unsolved murder case that pushes him into madness. Only the River Flows is a gritty, police procedural gone wrong, with the look of bygone era cinema, shot on film with soft edges and noticeable film grains.

Ma Zhe (Zhu Yilong), a seasoned detective who is up for promotion with a pregnant wife, is tasked to solve a murder of an old woman by the river. The perpetrator used a blunt instrument to kill her. Everything points toward the murderer to be a vagrant with a mental problem. The old woman took him in and took care of him - this is a village idiot well known to the villagers. But the man remains elusive. In the meantime, Ma follows the clues in a woman's hand bag that was left at the murder scene - a music cassette tape with a message; a forlorn love letter recorded in a woman's voice. At this point, Only the River Flows plays out like a good police procedural, as Ma and his young lieutenant steadfastly follow the clues. The recording leads to young lovers who attend poetry readings. Their illicit affair turns up nothing, but only more clues- there was a long wavy-haired woman when the murder took place as witnessed by the poetry reading man. Then suddenly, the poetry reader turns up dead and the village idiot is caught with a bloody cleaver in his hand. Like that, the case is solved. But in Detective Ma's head, it is too obvious of a conclusion to the case. What about the lovers? what about the mystery woman with the wavy hair? What about the factory hairstylist with a rap sheet? For Ma, the case is an unending rabbit hole.

The complications with his wife's pregnancy and following arguments, unable to locate the old certificate of his merits as a policeman from another town (was he ever a decorated officer as he says he was, or is he misremembering it?), and a lot of unanswered questions in his mind, Ma hesitates to turn in his final report on the case, much to the annoyance of his superior. After the death of hairdresser who jumped to his death in front of him, Ma has a mental breakdown. He keeps seeing the village idiot, smiling, taunting him.

Only the River Flows makes the connection between the film medium as a truth telling, seeing is believing device in the age of information technology, fake news and the AI. In the beginning of the film, we are presented with the police station moving into an old, abandoned movie theater. No one is going to the theater anymore, the police chief says. Ma is seen setting up his office in the projection booth. There is constant shots of Ma playing out his fever dreams on the big screen in front of him. Shot on 35mm in constant rain, it is a gorgeous film to look at, reminiscent of the good old days of 90s Wong Kar-Wai and Zhang Yimou's cinema.

The film questions what is considered truth in our complicated modern society. Should we take the obvious answer that is dangling right in front of us and take it as an acceptable truth? Or do we dig deeper into the murky depth and devote our life to find the real truth where there might be no bottom? Only the River Flows ponders these hefty ideas on its celluloid illusion.

Rebel Rebel

L'eau froide (1994) - Assayas Baby faced Gilles (Cyprien Fouquet) and Christine (Virginie Ledoyen) are always in trouble. When they steal stacks of records at the music store, Christine ends up getting caught. She pulls some wild stories at the police station about a store security guard mistreating her sexually. Their parents, don't know what to do with them. Christine's dad who owns a hardware store, sends her to a mental asylum. He's done it before. Gilles, who's from more privileged background, will be sent to a boarding school if his shenanigans keep up. Christine's mom and her boyfriend chastise Gilles;It might be a silly game for him, but for Christine, he is toying with her life.

Christine breaks out of the asylum, ends at the party in the woods where young ones hang out. There's Bonfire, drugs, alcohol and music. Christine asks if Gilles wants to run away with her to some artist colony that her friends lives. There won't be running water or electricity or phone. It will just be she and him. He hesitates first, then says yes.

Always in tight close up with a handheld camera, Assayas creates raw, intimate portrayal of young rebels without a cause. Their pledges of love and promises seem as fleeting as the water stream Christine bathes in. L'eau froide, epitomizes the adolescent genre French cinema is known for. Ledoyen has the same rawness and volatility of Sandrine Bonnaire in A nous amours and stunning in her youthful beauty. The fitting soundtrack consists of many of the 60s rebel anthems by Joplin, Dylan, Cohen, Twisted Sisters and more.

Caked-Up Dread

Longlegs (2024) - Perkins In a sodden Oregon town, there lives special Agent Harker (Maika Monroe) who has some sort of psychic abilities. After the death of her newly appointed partner in the field, where she had a premonition, she is assigned to partner up with her superior, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood, who doesn't get roles in films which I do not understand), in pursuit of a serial killer known only as Longlegs because Carter believes Harker, with her abilities, can be of help with the investigation. Longlegs' MO is killing the whole families who have a daughter on the 14th of some months (what month of the year it is is not crucial info so are many things in the film). Coincidentally, Harker's birthday also falls on the 14th, and so is Carter's young daughter's. The killings involve some life-sized creepy doll and fathers of the families going berzerk and killing everyone.

Harker constantly talks to her mom (Alicia Witt of Twin Peaks) on the phone who keeps pushing her to say prayers at night to protect herself from Nasties of the world. Longlegs keeps killing. Then Carter remembers that Harker had a scare as a child with some creep at her home with mom. Maybe mom remembers who that man was. She should check that out.

Oz Perkins, director of such films as Blackcoat's Daughter and Gretel and Hansel has a great visual sensibility in creating sense of dread. He tinkers with all the conventions of police procedural and supernatural horror genres, but floats over all of them, and the film doesn't quite make a solid landing. The symbology, breaking the codes, accultism are all suggested but comes off as an afterthought, not even plot devices. Harker is treated as some kind of genius but her methodology is never shown. It's all in her head, man. She just knows. There are no real surprises in Longlegs. Everything is revealed early on. Nicolas Cage's turn as a glam rock psycho-killer-devil in heavy make-up is already revealed early in the film. It's a simple movie, plotwise.

And yet, the images Perkins presents in Longlegs linger in your head (well, not as impactful as its trailer campaign its distributor Neon put out). His framing, the uneasy atmosphere plus Cage's inspiring, unhinged performance makes this movie worthwhile.

Japan Cuts 2024 Preview: Treasure Trove of New and Classic Japanese Films

North America’s largest Japanese film festival presents two weeks of contemporary premieres, including new films from Kei Chika-ura, Takeshi Kitano, Gakuryu Ishii, Shunji Iwai, Sho Miyake and Shinya Tsukamoto. 31 films including 5 International Premieres, 10 North American Premieres, 4 U.S. Premieres, 2 East Coast Premieres and 7 New York Premieres. Includes the International Premiere of SHIN GODZILLA: ORTHOchromatic.

Special guests include iconoclastic director Gakuryu Ishii, appearing for the East Coast Premiere of The Box Man as well as a retrospective screening of August in the Water; director Noriko Yuasa will appear at the International Premiere of Performing KAORU’s Funeral, winner of the JAPAN CUTS Award at the 2024 Osaka Asian Film Festival; and actress Tomoko Tabata will appear at a restoration premiere of Shinji Somai’s undisputed masterpiece, Moving.

Kubi - Kitano Beat Takeshi tells a bloody and surreal chapters in Japanese history of power struggles among many samurai warlords in Sengoku period.

A sadistic, tyrant lord Nobunaga (Kase Ryo) is in charge, abusing his subordinates and pitting against one another by promising them the positon of next-in-line to rule, while plotting to kill them all. There's Baldie Mitsuhide (Nakajima Hidetoshi, Drive My Car), there's Monkey Hideyoshi (Kitano) and there's Racoon Ieyasu (Kobayashi Kaoru).

Asano Tadanobu also shows up among an impressive ensemble cast. As expected in Kitano film, there are plenty of beheadings, violence and absurd humor throughout, as well as epic scale battle scenes.

Kitano accentuates the irony of all the shenanigans playing Toyotomi Hideyoshi, an illiterate samurai warlord who rose from his peasant background to prominence and seemingly incapable of doing anything without the help of his younger brother and his general Kanbei (Asano). He also ups inherent homoerotic nature of samurai culture- as warlords are in love and constantly banging each other.

Like his many yakuza films, Kitano takes on the extremely macho conventions of swordplay genre & samurai stoicism and turns them upside down and presents a cynical look at the revered, almost mythic Japanese history.

Whale Bones - Oe A tech worker Mamiya just got dumped by his girlfriend. In his depressed state, he takes up his colleague's offer to join a dating app. He meets Aska (J-pop star ano) who turns out to be a highschool student and takes her home. But after he comes out of a bathroom after a shower, he finds that Aska committed suicide by taking pills on his bed with a cryptic message left on the bedside, "Enjoy me while I'm still warm." Panicked, he wraps her body in a blanket and drives to a mountain to bury her. But her body has disappeared. It turns out, Aska is a major figure in Mimi, a GPS based social app where she 'buries' herself in a 'hole' - recording herself in a liminal spaces in Tokyo and appears in the app for people to find her. She has a big following.

Dealing with urban loneliness, obsession and internet stardom in a social media generation, Oe Takamasa (co-writer of Drive My Car)'s film hits all the right notes with empty, night time photography in liminal spaces in Tokyo. I just wish the metaphysical implication of Aska only existing in the app plays out little more.

August in the Water - Ishii The grand theme of all life on earth originated from somewhere else in the universe and technology taking over the human form (computer chips for human consciousness, therefore we don't need physical bodies), the film charts very much the William Gibson, JG Ballard territory, yet very Japanese. Mixing New Age spirituality, animism, astrophysics and advancement in technology, Ishii Gakuryu's trippy 90's relic, August in the Water can be seen as the quintessential film for vaporwave - the synth tinged soundtrack, dolphins, rainbows, dated computer graphics, aliens, etc. Do not miss the opportunity to see this movie in 35mm print as it might be only only chance to see this treasure from the 90s in theaters in North America or anywhere else.

Moving - Somai Moving works largely because of Tabata Tomoko, a cat eyed child actor not afraid of delving deep into physical and emotional journey of acceptance and letting go. Sômai Shinji's always moving camera, doesn't lose focus on the young heroine and never gets bogged down in cheap sentimentality. The almost silent long sequence two-third of the way where Ren gets herself lost in the forest at night, is breathtaking.

Parents, however selfish, are not monsters and do care about you and love you. Sometimes it doesn't work out. It might be hard to grasp for a 6th grader. Children still can count more good memories with their hands and run out of fingers than old people do. Accepting that they can keep only a handful of those memories is tough. Using the backdrop of fire festival and the power of burning and renewal, Moving is an infinitely wise and beautiful film about growing up.

Mermaid Legend - Ikeda It plays out like a softcore melodrama in the beginning. But the last 15 minutes of a trident rampage scene with Mari Shirato covered in arterial spray of about 100 men she killed is a sight to see. A true cult classic!

All the Long Nights (2024) - Miyake Based on Seo Maiko's novel, Yoake No Subete, All the Long Nights is a perfectly pitched, calm, novelistic film about human connections and compassion.

Fujisawa (Kanishiraishi Mone) can't hold on to a job because she suffers from an acute PMS and being mercurial. She ends up in a small company making children's science kits in a small town. There she meets Yamazoe (Masumura Hokuto), an antisocial young man, who finds the job mundane and beneath him. He is demoted from his coporate world job, because his panic attack episodes.

Because of their disorders, Fujisawa and Yamazoe slowly build a mutual friendship. All the Long Nights is a beautifully drawn film where every character shines, and a deeply compassionate look at life without much unnecessary drama.

Shadow of Fire - Tsukamoto The second part of Tsulamoto Shinya's War Trilogy after his Fires on the Plain remake in 2014, Shadow of Fire shows how the war turns young men into PTSD suffering, violent zombies basically after the war. The first half plays out like a tight chamber piece, taking in one small room with a nameless young war widow (Shuri), surviving by selling/trading her body for goods in a firebombed building, a PTSD suffering young soldier who clings to her for a good night sleep and a young street urchin whom she pours out her maternal instinct to. The second half tells another guilt stricken returning soldier trying to find the redemption with the help of the boy. Stark, and unflinching and masterfully directed and top notch acting from everyone involved.

The Box Man - Ishii An oddity, based on Japanese Nouveau Roman scribe Abe Kobo's book of the same name, reunites the team of their cult hit Electric Dragon 80,000 V team- Nagase Masatoshi, Asano Tadanobu and director Ishii Gakuryu in The Box Man. Just like Abe's perennial masterpiece adaptations- Face of Another and Woman in the Dunes, there's much existential musing going on in The Box Man.

'Myself,' played by Nagase, shunned the world of consumerism and turmoil and in seeking solitude and anonymity, lives in the cardboard box with a rectangular hole for the view. Even though he wants to be left alone, there's a fake doctor assassin (Asano) who wants to know the secrets of the Box Man so that he could become like him. And there's Yoko (Shiramoto Ayana), who could be his salvation.

Hefty metaphors and paradoxes aplenty, so are the absurd sight gags as two box men duke out in the street for the supremacy.

Lacking some of the crazy kinetic energies of Ishii's earlier films, The Box Man doesn't quite conjure up its magic to be a cult classic, but its amusing enough for the fans of two lead actors.

Strays

Paradiset brinner/Paradise is Burning (2023) - Gustafson In the tradition of kitchen sink realism of Andrea Arnold and Lynne Ramsay, Mika Gustafson's feature debut Paradiset brinner paints young sisters trying to survive in working class neighborhood in Sweden. There's a teenager Laura (Bianca Delbravo), the oldest of the sisters and the head of the family and two preteens Mira (Dilvin Asaad) and Steffi (Safira Mossberg), running wild in a household without any parental supervision. Mom's gone since Christmas and dad was never in the picture. Steffi still wets the bed, teething and has tendency to bring stray dogs (and sometimes street kids) home - there's a theme of strays throughout the film, Mira is having her first menstruation and Laura is skipping school and taking care of her younger sisters. Things are tight, so Laura resorts, with the help of her sisters, to stealing things from their neighbors, laundromats, supermarkets, etc. She and her marauding strays/friends constantly break into other people's houses to party and swim in their pools. Laura befriends a bored housewife Hanna (Ida Engvoll), who finds Laura's lawless behavior fascinating and stirring something inside her. Hanna suggests that she wants to tag along when Laura breaks into other people's houses. For Laura, Hanna is an obvious mother figure, needing her company. Their bond deepens.

Laura hides the fact that social services are on them from her younger siblings. She knows that like other friends she knows, the social services will try to separate them and put them in different foster care facilities. She cannot let that happen. As the appointment for a visit from the social services, Laura slowly breaches the subject to Hanna, of pretending to be their mom.

Gustafson gets phenomenal performances out of young actresses. Delbravo's Laura, a girl who's been put in a position to grow up fast is great, as is Asaad and Mossberg who plays Mira and Steffi. They are utterly believable at playing close sisters who put enormous amount of trust in one another. Paradiset brinner brims with vitality and emotional honesty seldom seen in teen/preteen films beautifully captured by Gustafson. A real stunner.

WKW Facsimile

Motel Cactus (1997) - Park Before Korean cinema was a thing, the popularity and influence of Wong Kar-Wai in Korean cinema loomed large. The year wa 1997s, this Bong Joonho scripted (he also served as an AD), Chris Doyle shot film is a wall-to-wall facsimile curio of WKW aesthetics. It loosely tells 4 different stories of young loves in one location - a conveniently large, primary colored seedy love hotel room for Doyle to run around and document the trysts of young lovers up close and personal with wide lenses. It's all asthete and nothing else. But all so pretty.