Movie Review: Perfect Days (2023)

Title: Perfect Days
Release Date: December 21, 2023
Director: Wim Wenders
Production Company: Master Mind Limited | Spoon Inc. | Wenders Images
Summary/Review:

“Shadows…Do they get darker when they overlap?”

Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho) is an aging man who lives alone in a modest Tokyo apartment and spends his work days cleaning public toilets in the wealthier parts of the city.  He’s very assiduous about his work and finds contentment in reading books, listening to classic rock on cassette tape, and photographing the sunshine through tree branches.  Hirayama doesn’t talk much but he is well-received by the staff at the cafes where he dines regularly.

Perfect Days is a detailed examination of the life of an individual’s hidden work, not unlike Jeanne Dielman…, with Hirayama being something of a cypher like Chance in Being There, although neither of these films are perfect comparisons.  There are story vignettes within the quotidian depiction of Hirayama’s life.  The flaky junior employee of the toilet cleaning company Takashi (Tokio Emoto) needs help to impress his new girlfriend Aya (Aoi Yamada). Hirayama’s niece Niko (Arisa Nakano), visits after running away from home, and the two find that they have a lot in common.  Later, Takashi quits his job suddenly and Hirayama refuses to take on his workload for more than one day. His final interaction is a beautiful shared moment with a stranger.

There’s a lot we never learn about Hirayama.  Why is he alienated from his father and his sister? Why does he live and spend so much time alone?  What makes him able to find such contentment in a life that appears outwardly dreary?  We’ll never know, but we care about Hirayama due to the brilliant acting of Yakusho who can say everything with his eyes and a smile.

Rating: ****1/2

Movie Review: Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Title: Godzilla Minus One
Release Date: November 3, 2023
Director: Takashi Yamazaki
Production Company: Toho Studios | Robot Communications
Summary/Review:

The original Godzilla is a classic because it is a human drama metaphorically representing the trauma of war in age of atomic weapons.  Plus it has a terrifying monster rampaging through Tokyo.  Godzilla Minus One follows a similar premise, set at the end of World War II and in the immediate years afterwards as the survivors of the war deal with shame, loss, and stresses of everyday survival.  It also shows the resilience of a people who work together when they will receive no support from their own government or that of their victorious opponent.

Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is a kamikaze pilot who fakes a mechanical problem with his plane to avoid carrying out his mission.  He lands his fighter on Odo Island for repairs and overnight the base is devastated by Godzilla.  Only Kōichi and the mechanic Sōsaku Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki) survive.  Plagued by guilt and remorse, Kōichi returns to a devastated Tokyo where his family has not survived.  He takes in a young woman, Noriko Ōishi (Minami Hamabe) and an orphan baby she is caring for, Akiko.  The form a found family, although Kōichi and Noriko are not romantically involved initially.

Kōichi finds work on a minesweeper ship and begins to rebuild his life.  But then Godzilla returns and attacks the mainland.  Turns out that a member of the minesweeper crew, Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), has a plan to destroy Godzilla which is both entirely practical and kind of hilarious.  Kenji forms a civilian organization to carry out his plan, while Kōichi plots his own revenge with a fighter restored by Sōsaku.

The movie has a lot of action and heroism worth of a popcorn flick.  But it also deals deeply with a lot of the emotions that the characters are dealing with going through multiple traumas.  The movie is both cynical about the society that let them get to such a low point while also optimistic about the power of the people working together.  In short, it’s just an absolutely brilliant film on multiple levels.  My only wish is that Noriko didn’t get sidetracked for a better part of the movie’s duration, because it’s a rather man-heavy film, and she’s an interesting character.

Rating: ****

Movie Reviews: The Boy and the Heron (2023)

Title: The Boy and the Heron
Release Date: July 14, 2023
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Production Company: Studio Ghibli
Summary/Review:

During the Second World War, teenager Mahito Maki (Soma Santoki) loses his mother in a hospital fire. He moves with his father (Takuya Kimura) to the countryside to live with his mother’s sister Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura), who marries his father.  Upon arriving he is frequently harassed by a Grey Heron (Masaki Suda) who leads him to a derelict tower that proves to be a portal to a fantastic alternate universe.

This is (allegedly) writer and director Hayao Miyazaki’s final film and if so serves as a capstone on his storied career.  The film builds on ideas and imagery from Miyazaki’s earlier career imaginatively creating a film that is strange, visually spectacular, and often very funny.  It’s a coming of age story that deals with generational trauma and grief, and it’s conclusion could very well symbolize Miyazaki’s farewell message as he passes the baton on to other creators.

I’m happy I got to see this wonderful film on the big screen in a full theater at Coolidge Corner Theatre.

Rating: ****1/2

90 Movies in 90 Days: Cat Soup (2001)

Every day until March 31, 2024 I will be watching and reviewing a movie that is 90 minutes or less.

Title:  Cat Soup
Release Date: 21 February 2001
Director: Tatsuo Satō
Production Company:Sony PCL | IMAGICA | J.C.STAFF
Summary/Review:

Aww….it’s an animated movie about an adorable kitten!  Wait….WTF?!?!

Nyata is the young feline protagonist who has to travel to land of the dead to try to retrieve the soul of his older sister, Nyaako. That’s what I got from the synopsis, but watching the film is more like a series of surreal sequences that are mind-bending and at times disturbingly gruesome.  In many ways it feels like the kind of film that you let wash over you more than analyze, akin to Un Chien Andalou or The Green Knight.

Rating: ***

90 Movies in 90 Days: Angel’s Egg (1985)

Every day until March 31, 2024 I will be watching and reviewing a movie that is 90 minutes or less.

Title: Angel’s Egg
Release Date: December 22, 1985
Director: Mamoru Oshii
Production Company:  Tokuma Shoten Studio Deen
Summary/Review:

In this beautifully animated and deliberately paced film, a girl (Mako Hyōdō) wanders an desolate city while protecting a large egg. The city seems occupied by people frozen in time who only come alive to hunt shadowy fish that float through the sky.  The only other person in the film who feels “real” instead of a ghost is a young man (Jinpachi Nezu), possibly a soldier, who pursues the girl to learn about the egg.  With very little dialogue and allusions to myths and religious beliefs, this film is open to many interpretations.  It definitely fits in the the category of fantasies with gorgeous imagery that make you say “huh?” alongside Fantastic Planet and Son of White Mare.

Rating: ****

 

 

75th Anniversary Movie Festival: Drunken Angel (1948)

Title: Drunken Angel
Release Date: April 27, 1948
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Production Company: Toho
Summary/Review:

The alcoholic and curmudgeonly Doctor Sanada (Takashi Shimura) treats patients in a rundown section of postwar Tokyo.  One night a gangster named Matsunaga (Toshiro Mifune in his first sixteen collaborations with Akira Kurosawa) comes in with a bullet wound.  Sanada notices that Matsunaga likely has tuberculosis and begins pestering him to rest from his wild lifestyle and get treatment.  The better part of the movie is about the two cantankerous and stubborn learning to trust one another.  Things are only made more difficult when Matsunaga’s sworn brother in the crime syndicate Okada (Reisaburo Yamamoto) returns from prison.

The movie was made during the American occupation of Japan, which is not directly addressed, but the uncertain conditions of the neighborhood and the diegetic American R&B music in the soundtrack reflect the times. It’s a sad movie but a tour de force for two of Japan’s great film actors.

Rating: ****

50 Years, 50 Movies (1988): Akira

I will turn 50 in November of this year, so my project for 2023 will be to watch and review one movie from each year of my life.  The only qualification is that it has to be a movie I’ve not reviewed previously. 

1988

Top Grossing Movies of 1988:

1. Rain Man
2. Who Framed Roger Rabbit
3. Coming to America
4. Crocodile Dundee II
5. Twins

Best Picture Oscar Nominees and Winners of 1988:

• Rain Man
• The Accidental Tourist
• Dangerous Liaisons
• Mississippi Burning
• Working Girl

Other Movies I’ve Reviewed from 1988

• Beetlejuice
• Camille Claudel
• Cane Toads: An Unnatural History
• Cinema Paradiso
• A Fish Called Wanda
• Grave of the Fireflies
• Hairspray
• The Land Before Time 
• Miracle Mile
• Mystic Pizza
• The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
• Oliver & Company
• They Live
• The Thin Blue Line
• Young Einstein

Title: Akira
Release Date: July 16, 1988
Director:  Katsuhiro Otomo
Production Company: Tokyo Movie Shinsha
Summary/Review:

I’m going to start off by noting that Akira is a movie I can respect as a obviously well-crafted film but it is clearly “not my thing.” Set three decades after World War III in the year 2019 (just like Blade Runner!) in the part-glamorous/part-derelict city of Neo-Tokyo.  Tetsuo (Nozomu Sasaki) a young member of a teen biker gang comes in contact with a child with extra-sensory abilities (called an “esper”), causing him also to gain extraordinary powers. He soon finds himself in the middle of secret government plots and military action. Tetsuo’s friend and leader of the gang, Kaneda (Mitsuo Iwata), seeks him out with the help of a girl in a resistance movement Kei (Mami Koyam).  But Tetsuo goes mad with power and seeks out the legendary remains of a powerful esper named Akira buried beneath the construction site for the upcoming Olympic Games (curious that the actual 2020 Summer Olympics were also planned for Tokyo!).

This movie is visually-stunning with an amazing animation style.  It also was clearly an inspiration for Stranger Things that I had not been aware of. But it is also full of a graphic and gratuitous violence. The latter part of the movie seems to be an endless series of explosions followed by gorgeously-drawn smoke clouds enveloping the characters.  The story is complex and I confess that I didn’t follow what was going on a lot of the time.  Like I said at the top, though, this movie is not my thing so what I have to say should have little effect on the movie’s reputation as an all-time classic.

Rating: ***

 

 

Halloween Horror Movie Festival: Godzilla (1954)

Title: Godzilla
Release Date: October 27, 1954
Director: Ishirō Honda
Production Company:  Toho Co., Ltd
Summary/Review:

Off the coast of Japan’s Odo Island, ships are suffering catastrophic disasters.  Rumors spread of an ancient sea creature named Godzilla returning, but the reality proves even worse as a Jurassic Era dinosaur-like creature begins wreaking havoc on the mainland.  Dr. Kyohei Yamane (Takashi Shimura) determines that the creature has been released from underwater caverns by hydrogen bomb testing.  Yamane’s daughter Emiko (Momoko Kōchi), who is the emotional heart of the film, is romantically involved with salvage ship captain Hideto Ogata (Akira Takarada), but earlier had broken off an engagement with the inventor Dr. Daisuke Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata) and learned that he created a powerful device that could kill Godzilla. But at what cost?

I remember when I was a kid a local TV station had regular monster movie weeks with Godzilla and other kaiju characters.  I’d assumed that I had watched the original Godzilla, but in researching for this review I could have only seen the heavily-edited American version which intercut scenes with Raymond Burr playing an American journalist.  My memory of these movies is that they were pretty campy, but Godzilla is not campy at all.  In fact it is very somber.  The metaphor of the creature Godzilla to the destruction of Japanese cities by the atomic bomb is not subtle as the characters discuss Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as controversial American H-Bomb tests in the Pacific Ocean.

The movie is well-paced with a growing sense of tension, wisely holding-off a full view of Godzilla until well into the movie (much like Jaws would do a couple of decades later).  This is a monster movie but it’s not about the monster so much of the people caught up in political intrigue and moral dilemmas.  The score of the movie is also excellent and adds to the feeling of solemnity of the movie.  I’m pretty sure that later movies took the idea of monsters attacking Japan and made it camp, but this movie plays with documentary-style seriousness and is better for it.

Rating: ****

60th Anniversary Movie Festival: High & Low (1963)

Title: High & Low
Release Date: 1 March 1963
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Production Company: Kurosawa Films | Toho
Summary/Review:

Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) is a wealthy executive for a shoe company based in Yokohama.  When a faction of directors decides the company should begin making lower-quality shoes for bigger profits, Gondo plots to buy up shares to control the company by mortgaging everything he owns.  Just as is set to put his plan in motion, a kidnapper (Tsutomu Yamazaki) attempts to abduct Gondo’s son, but takes the son of Gondo’s chauffeur Aoki (Yutaka Sada) instead. Gondo is faced with the decision of paying the exorbitant ransom at the cost of ruining himself financially.

Inspector Tokura (Tatsuya Nakadai) leads the (inordinately large) team of police investigating the kidnapping. Much of the film is a police procedural where each bit of evidence is enumerated and investigated in great detail.  This contributes to the 2 hour, 23 minute run time, but it never gets boring as Kurosawa keeps the suspense building.  The movie is also an indictment of economic inequality in rapidly modernizing Japan.  There’s a thrilling scene set on a high-speed train, but at the other end of the spectrum the horror of the complete destitution of a community of heroin addicts in a back alley. Kurosawa also does some fascinating things with the blocking of the characters, with many shots of groups of people standing or sitting in different spots with the speaking character(s) not the center of the focus.  A really remarkable film!

Rating: ****

50 Years, 50 Movies (2013): The Wind Rises

I will turn 50 in November of this year, so my project for 2023 will be to watch and review one movie from each year of my life.  The only qualification is that it has to be a movie I’ve not reviewed previously. 

2013

Top Grossing Movies of 2013:

1. Frozen
2. Iron Man 3
3. Despicable Me 2
4. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
5. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Best Picture Oscar Nominees and Winners of 2013:

• 12 Years a Slave
• American Hustle
• Captain Phillips
• Dallas Buyers Club
• Gravity
• Nebraska
• Philomena
• The Wolf of Wall Street

Other Movies I’ve Reviewed of 2013:

• 42
• 20 Feet From Stardom
• An Adventure in Space and Time
• Anina
• Before Midnight
• Blackfish
• Boy and the World
• Dear Mr. Watterson
• Frances Ha
• Fruitvale Station
• Gravity
• Her
• Inside Llewyn Davis
• Koch
• Let the Fire Burn
• Monsters University
• Saving Mr. Banks 
• Short Term 12
• Thor: The Dark World 
• The Way, Way Back
• The World’s End
• The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet

Title: The Wind Rises
Release Date: 20 July 2013
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Production Company: Studio Ghibli
Summary/Review:

The Wind Rises is a fictionalized historical drama based on the life of Japanese aircraft designer Jiro Horikoshi (Hideaki Anno), most notably responsible for the Mitsubishi A6M Zero used by Japan during World War II. Jiro is presented as a dreamer who wants to create beautiful things, his dreamworld frequently mixing with reality.  In some ways this reminds me of the Francis Ford Coppola movie Tucker: The Man and His Dream. In addition to his career designing airplanes, the movie also portrays the romance with his Nahoko Satomi (Miori Takimoto).

The movie is beautiful to watch with exceptionally fluid animation.  The depiction of machines – airplanes, trains, cars, factories, et al – is particularly exceptional.  The story gets melodramatic at parts, but is still very moving.  Culturally, it’s a bit of a challenge watching this romanticized history of a man who created one of Imperial Japan’s greatest weapons.  But the movie relies on Horikoshi’s personal opposition to war to give him an out.  I think the movie could’ve explored the conflict around making weapons of are better, but it’s still pretty good.

Rating: ***1/2

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