Why are Japanese films so terrible?

haha, "love exposure" is more than just "odd"! it's a spectacle!

sono is probably the most interesting filmmaker working today (not counting malick as he's on the way out, shane carruth hasn't done enough for me to really tell). (weerasethakul is up there too)

only sono i've seen is Cold Fish, which was a p good, slightly overextended, serial-psycho killer movie

definitely check out noriko's dinner table and strange circus, then love exposure if you're feeling daring.

I'm p sure i watched the first hour of Love Exposure a few years ago

I hated Cold Fish, but adored Love Exposure. Oh, and Strange Circus is pretty great, too. I can't wait to see Himizu!

Land of Hope played at last years PIX, and I pretty much loved it. But I have family who fled Fukushima, so it hit close to home. Had never seen a Sono before. He has another, apparantly more horrific, playing this year, and I'll see it.

http://www.ica.org.uk/whats-on/seasons/yoshitaro-nomura-film-season

^ Looking to catch something from this season. Anyone know him?

Completely ignorant of him. Anyone know Kohei Iguri or Muddy River?

http://www.japansociety.org/event/muddy-river

yeah, it's a good one. art theatre guild production if I'm not mistaken.

i wish I had more time to keep up w/ contemporary Japanese cinema. I could post some suggestions later if anyone wants 'em.

btw the thread title is probably the wrongest thing ever posted to ILX. :(

i have "why don't you play in hell" lined up for watching this weekend.

I saw Kitano's Outrage Beyond being reviewed earlier this year, did anyone catch it? I was really pleasantly surprised by it, has some really great scenes in it.

last couple of JP films I've seen have been hard work - am now onto the silent ozu gangster set. think I need to switch up to major films by minor directors rather than minor films by major directors and stop watching 80yo films. that said, I've also just bought the yamanaka box.

you're right, outrage is pretty good, although it probably benefited from my very diminished expectations after over a decade of kitano going from failure to failure (some more interesting than others).

koogs, make sure you watch shimizu films, they are the best.

haven't seen outrage II: outrageous, though.

(which shimizu? imdb lists a couple, one active in 30s, the other the ju-on guy. I do need to pick up copies of that and ringu, yes, as it's been a while)

finished the bfi ozu gangster set. all silent, which isn't my thing, really.

and he did that thing where he takes a film he made 3 years earlier (Walk Cheerfully) and uses the same initial premise for another film (Dragnet Girl). so you get a secretary who is proposed to by her boss but isn't interested, and a bunch of gangsters hanging out in a boxing gym. and identical shots between the two films (slow pans across a row of typewriters...). and only then do they diverge...

(Dragnet Girl also features a scene in a yoyo jazz club, which is a bit bewildering. i assume it's jazz - it's silent so you don't get to hear...)

lots more motion in these films than in later efforts. you get some of the two-people-both-talking-straight-to-camera conversations and he's already got the pillow-shots down but you also get movement.

oh, and early chishu ryu roles in a couple of them, playing a policeman each time

(which shimizu? imdb lists a couple, one active in 30s, the other the ju-on guy. I do need to pick up copies of that and ringu, yes, as it's been a while)

― koogs, Thursday, March 20, 2014 7:28 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes, there are two hiroshi shimizus. i mean the one who worked from 1920s to 1950s (I believe). there's a cheap criterion eclipse set featuring four of his 1930s films, it's the best thing you will ever buy for yourself IMO.

http://www.criterion.com/boxsets/601-eclipse-series-15-travels-with-hiroshi-shimizu

(you can find it for 1/2 that price, just look around the interwebs)

not so available in the uk... £30 on amazon but likely to attract import tax.

hmm, well I would head to the torrentosphere then.

also the films are on criterion's hulu plus channel.

The what what?

oh, you britishers.

http://www.hulu.com/movies/criterion

Has anyone seen Miike's Big Bang Love, Juvenile A? It's supposed to be a slow, moody, overtly homoerotic Brecht/Genet prison thing, which sounds awesome, but I've been burned before.

Can only be watched from the US.

big bang love is great, def favorite miike

I saw Sion Sono's latest, Why Don't You Play In Hell, last night, wrote a bit about it here: http://centrifugue.blogspot.com/2014/04/cphpix-day-2-jealousy-why-dont-you-play.html Short version: It is mad, but fun and really well made. I need to see more Sono.

I've also seen Miike's 13 Assasins on Mubi. My first Miike. Don't know how much I feel the need to see more.

At least see The Bird People in China! Trust me, you won't regret it.

I love Bird People Of China. Possibly my favourite by him. I love that crazy drug scene that sticks out like nothing else in the film.

We were talking about Sono on the 2005 - present horror film thread, this is my rundown of his films I've seen...
ok lets all shit our pants to something new: post 2005 horror film thread

> I've also seen Miike's 13 Assasins on Mubi. My first Miike. Don't know how much I feel the need to see more.

i liked his 13 assassins, probably more than the original. but it was obviously cut for a 15 certificate and that started to annoy me after a while.

his remake of harakiri is also worth a watch

my fave miike is Happiness of the Katakuris but your average viewer should also prob see audition, ichi, bird people, shinjuku triad and if you want to put a capstone on it, citizen q

Thanks for the list, Robert Adam Gilmour, I'll use that as a guide.

I'm considering catching Shield of Straw at the festival, anyone seen that? Logistics, and all that. Also, I saw Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Tokyo Sonata last wednesday, which is amazing, and I think I'll catch his new, Real, tomorrow.

I saw Shield of Straw on a plane. Fun for a while.

Any fans of Great Yokai War? Some terrible cgi and an overlong sentimental scene, but manages to be beautiful, joyous and magical nonetheless, one of the best family films I've seen. Lots of Chiaki Kuriyama looking like a hot King Of Fighters character and a cameo by Shigeru Mizuki. My second fave Miike.

As far as "light" Miike goes, Zebraman and Zebraman 2 are a hoot as well. The latter is one of the weirdest film experiences I've had.

Just been reading Midnight Eye's films of 2013 and one guy really hated Land Of Hope, he said that a Japanese film magazine rated that and Himizu as the worst of last year. Ouch. I didn't mind those films but I am becoming more convinced Sono is best at crazy stuff.

Midnight Eye in their recent annual roundups have painted a convincingly bleak picture of recent Japanese film.

They might be right. Saw Kurosawa's Real and Kore-Eda's Like Father, Like Son and it was kinda lifeless. What's the last really good Japanese film? Tokyo Sonata?

Haha, they loved Like Father Like Son. I'd recommend their best in year lists, but since they see a lot of films in festivals and in Japan, you might never see some of the interesting films they cover.

@clouds, I loved Zebraman! I saw it at the cinema with a bunch of other people and we were laughing at the WTF-ness.

Talking about Kore-Eda, last night I saw Nobody Knows. That really got to me :( Beautiful film.

I'll look through this thread for another film to watch tonight!

I loved like father like son

Surprised to see Tatooed Swordswoman/Blind Woman's Curse on fancy dual format release yesterday. I've saw a few other Teruo Ishii films but none really grabbed me.

midnight eye is pretty much what i rely on to "follow" the commercial japanese cinema that doesn't make it to the US (which is the vast majority of it, of course).

the quality may be dire on the whole, but the japanese share of domestic box office is pretty good these days. most of the big japanese hits appear to be series films, some of them anime, some not. without fail i know next to nothing about these films, and even variety and film international tend to avoid discussing them at all.

i wonder how japanese film attendance per capita compares with u.s. film attendance these days.

i'm a little wary of kore-eda. early on he seemed to chase fashions a bit (even when he was making great movies like after life and—especially—maborosi) and not so long after he introduced a twee element (yes, even in nobody knows) that i find hard to stomach. but there's no denying he's a kind of master and his recent films, however much i wish they went down a little less easy, are leaps better than the sort of comparable indie dramas that america pumps out.

Million Ryo Pot this morning. pictures of Yamanaka with Ozu in the accompanying booklet but the style is a bit more dynamic, the content a bit more humorous.

http://updateslive.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/sadao-yamanaka.html

I've written a bit about Like Father, Like Son on my blog: http://centrifugue.blogspot.com/2014/04/cphpix-day-1112-3x3d-like-father-like.html It's the second one.

finished the last of my bfi ozu's this afternoon*, went to order the melodramas box only to find it'd gone up £8 overnight. argh.

* "Good Morning". lovely to look at and all but, y'know, fart jokes. also, a bottle in every scene...

the fart jokes are the best

Anyone seen Kumashiro's film Ichijo's Wet Lust (sometimes titled Sayuri Ichijo: Following Desire)?

I've been interested because this is apparently placed high in the Japanese canon (I don't know if there are many others with a similar position). I think it's half documentary about a stripper, half sexploitation.