RENTAL FAMILY**** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Day 9

RENTAL FAMILY is a delightful, heartwarming and laugh-out-loud funny film that flirts with a social critique of contemporary Japanese society but is ultimately uninterested in anything gritty. Its message is rather trite: kindness and empathy matter and the families we make are sometimes more fulfilling than those we are born with. But if the message is simple and obvious, it still hits home, especially in such dark and divisive times. 

Brendan Fraser, last seen at the London Film Festival in a devastating performance in THE WHALE, now plays Phillip, an American out-of-work actor in Tokyo. Finally he finds a steadily paying gig being rented out to customers as a husband or father or friend. These rental families are apparently big business in Japan, affording lonely people solace, but also papering over social bigotry. A lesbian pretends to marry Phillip so she can leave Japan with her actual lover. A single-mother hires Phillip to be father to her child for an admissions interview at a snooty school. Neither would be necessary in a more liberal society but the movie is only glancingly interested in this. The film also draws a parallel between the actors providing emotional release and Phillip using a sex worker for physical release, and even goes so far as to humanise her. But it’s interesting that she’s the only character with whom Phillip has no resolution. Perhaps that would have been a little too much reality. 

As Phillip, Brendan plays to his public persona as a kind, sweet, charming, schlubby middle-aged man. In fact pretty much every character in this film is kind, sweet and charming. The exception might be legendary Japanese actor Akira Emoto who plays an old and retired actor suffering from dementia. That guy has a rogueish swagger all of his own and earns both the biggest belly laugh and creates the most emotional scene of the movie. 

Writer-director Hikari (Beef) and her co-writer Stephen Blahut do a serviceable job with plot and direction although most viewers will guess the plot twists. The whole point of this film is NOT to shock and awe but to delight, and in that end it succeeds. It’s just a shame it hadn’t dared to be a little spikier.

RENTAL FAMILY is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 103 minutes. It played Toronto and London. It opens the US on November 21st and in the UK on January 9th.

DIAMONDS IN THE SAND**** - BFI London Film Festival 2025

Filipino director Janus Victoria is nominated for the Sutherland Trophy for debut feature for her film DIAMONDS IN THE SAND. It’s a low-key, low-budget, utterly charming dramedy that takes us into a world we might never have otherwise encountered.  

The iconic Lily Franky (SHOPLIFTERS) plays Yoji, a deeply lonely middle-aged salary-man in Tokyo.  He is shocked into action when he one day discovers his neighbour’s decomposing remnants - apparently a tragic end so common in Japan that it has its own terminology and specialist cleaning services. And then his aged mother passes away, apparently warning him of his own sure fate. So when he forms a tentative friendship with his late mother’s carer, Minerva (Maria Isabel Lopez), he throws caution to the wind and follows her back to the Philippines for a holiday.  While there Yoji discovers a ramshackle, poor but friendly neighbourhood full of casual invitations to supper and real community spirit.  He meets Minerva’s newly graduating daughter Angel, and the rogueish gambling addict Uncle Toto. 

There’s always a tension in the film as to how transactional the relationships are.  Yoji is clearly much wealthier than his newfound friends. And Angel laments the futility of studying when she will earn more as a carer in Japan.  Meanwhile Minerva regrets that whoever is in power in Manila, the drug-related violence and corruption endures. Despite the harsh reality and uneasy cross-cultural tensions, DIAMONDS IN THE SAND retains its optimistic belief in the power and indeed desperate importance of human connection.  It is a film that is full of a nuanced understanding of the world it is depicting, and is full of compassion. Kudos to the director and all involved in so vividly realising memorable people and a sense of place on a micro budget.

DIAMONDS IN THE SAND has a running time of 102 minutes.

UNBROKEN

You can listen to a podcast review of this movie below, or subscribe to Bina007 in iTunes.

One of the less edifying revelations of the Sony hack was producer Scott Rudin's contempt for Angelina Jolie's talent as a film-maker and his bile at her leave of absence from his CLEOPATRA project to make UNBROKEN. So I approached this World War Two biopic with some interest and maybe some scepticism. What I am happy to say is that UNBROKEN is a handsomely made film about a true wartime hero, that while conventional in its approach, has so much authentic concern with the human condition that it left me with real tears, as opposed to some of those more mawkish and manipulative films that want to make you cry but don't. (THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING, I'm looking at you here.)

47 RONIN

In eighteenth century Japan, a young half-Japanese half-English boy called Kai is taken in by Lord Asano. Suspected as an outsider, Kai grows up and falls in love with Asano's daughter Mika. The problem is that the evil Lord Kira also wants Mika, and uses a Witch to manipulate Asano into attacking him and therefore forfeiting his life.  Mika must now marry Kira, unless Lord Asano's now leaderless Samurai, joined by Kai, and armed with magical swords, defy their Shogun's orders and take revenge on Kira. 

With the exception of the character of Kai, and the supernatural aspects,  this is the traditional Japanese story of the 47 Ronin which has inspired many a film, book, opera, print and TV show. In this latest big budget Hollywood outing, it is made accessible for a Western audience with the inclusion of the outsider character, Kai.  Sadly, this late inclusion is obviously unnecessary.  The Kai character doesn't really add to the story - the on-screen love story doesn't convince - and the charismatic gravitational pull of the film always seems to be toward Oishi, the chief Ronin.  It is then, Hiroyuki Sanada's film and not Keanu Reeves'.  The emotional search for justice, the deep trauma, the nobility in going outside of the Samurai code and the horrible price paid - that is all the narrative arc of Oishi not Reeves, and maybe reflect not just his better lines, but also his greater acting ability.  I think there is something in the screenwriters actually acknowledging this in a key final scene where it is Oishi and not Kai who holds up a key totem.

I heard about 47 RONIN long before I saw it. It felt like The Hollywood Reporter had been running articles on it for literally years, calling it a troubled production in the same breath as JOHN CARTER and WORLD WAR Z.  The director, Carl Rinsch, had never directed a feature length film before, let alone one budgeted at $170m.  The movie was originally meant to come out in 2012 and then got bumped into 2013, and then it got moved back from Feb 13 to Christmas.  And it turned out Universal Pictures were writing down the losses over a year before it even hit movie screens.  Some blamed the director.  Carl Rinsch hadn't directed a feature film before and, among other things, the entire final battle sequence had to be reshot.

But I don't think the movie is an utter failure. In fact I rather enjoyed it.  You just have to cruise past the Keanu scenes and just watch it for Oishi/Sanada, the lavish costumes and beautiful sets.  I don't think the movie needed the supernatural element, but you can't help but find the Witch's transformations elegant.  And who cares if the final battle had to be reshot? It's amazing! All of which adds up to say that inside this over-long and over-altered film is a leaner more faithful Japanese film waiting to get out. Someone just needs to take to it with FinalCut Pro.

47 RONIN is on global release. It has a running time of 118 minutes and is rated PG-13.

THE WOLVERINE

To listen to the podcast review of this film, listen here, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

Hugh Jackman's latest outing as THE WOLVERINE is a pleasant surprise - a summer superhero blockbuster that is brooding without being portentous;  has a killer action sequence without being one loud thing bashing into another; has a plot that's twisty but also makes sense; has female characters that can kick ass without getting their kit off; and has a sense of humour without being dominated by the persona of the star. As a result, it feels like a far more balanced and easily enjoyable watch than MAN OF STEEL, STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS or IRON MAN 3. 

The story starts where the last X-MEN movie ended: Logan/Wolverine is grieving for Jean Grey, and hiding from his superhero nature in the Yukon.  Still, he's too good a man to resist a damsel in distress, and when summoned to Tokyo to meet the dying man he once saved, he ends up becoming the protector of his beautiful grand-daughter Mariko.  She's being hunted by the Yakuza, intimidated by her father, and sleazed on by her politician fiancé.  And as the movie unfolds we discover why she's so valuable, and why Logan suddenly can't self-heal.  

This is perhaps the most interesting part of the story - and allows Jackman to play Logan in an emotional range that has hitherto been denied him.  I've always found Jackman the perfect embodiment of the character, and watching him perplexed by his mortality, but also drawn to it, is fascinating.  In fact, it struck me that his character in this film is not so different to Jean Valjean in LES MIS - a man with a big secret identity and a strange strength, who appears on screen bearded, desperate and struggling with whether he should embrace that identity, and how best to seek justice.  That said, Jean Valjean was not as cut as Logan!  Hugh Jackman has said that he finally had enough time to train for this role and to create the body that he felt the Wolverine should have, and boy does it show!

It's also worth mentioning the fact that the plot of this film, based on an initial script by Christopher McQuarrie (THE USUAL SUSPECTS) feels a lot more like a Bond movie than a conventional X-MEN film, perhaps because it focuses on one hero, the girl he's trying to save, and a classic evil supervillain in the form of Svetlana Khodchenkova's brilliantly camp Viper.  We even get the classic third act showdown in a super-lair.  The negative aspect of the Bond-like script is the childish simplicity of the two plot twists which any fool will guess about an hour before they are revealed. 

Behind the camera, James Mangold does a fantastic job as director - and given his CV of directing character-led dramas like WALK THE LINE, the action sequences are surprisingly good. The bullet train fight sequence is particularly impressive, but I also liked the imagery of Logan as a kind of Saint Sebastian in the third act, as well as the fact that Mangold makes sure that both female leads - even the simpering love interest - have some fighting chops and are never gratuitously shot in their bikinis (JJ Abrams, I'm looking at you!)  The  one negative thing is that the addition of 3D in post-production adds nothing to the movie, other than an extra few dollars to the ticket price. 

THE WOLVERINE is on global release. It is rated PG-13 in the USA and 12A in the UK. It has a running time of 125 minutes. 

London Film Fest 2012 Day 2 - THE SAMURAI THAT NIGHT

THE SAMURAI THAT NIGHT is a tough watch - dismal, drab, desperate - a tale of a woefully ineffectual impotent metal-worker and a sleazy bully, brought together by a casual act of violence and a disturbed act of vengeance.  The movie is tense, occasionally grotesquely funny, and less thrilling than enervating - an exercise of directorial control of pace and tone.

The movie is adapted and directed for the screen by Masaaaki Akahori from his own stage play about the meek worker, Ken, whose wife is the victim of a hit and run by charismatic bully Kijima.  At first, Ken's inability to get over his wife seems pathetic and weird, but when we realise he is preparing to kill Kijima and then commit suicide we become morbidly fascinated with the at times black comedy of this ineffectual man.  His scenes are intercut of those of Kijiima, who at first appears to just be a selfish idiot, but turns out to be a sadistic bully.  We almost want Ken to kill him, even though that would be to sanction Ken's psychosis.

But this is the genius of the film.  Because, to my mind, what it's really about is bad things happening because weak, bored, stupid people let them.  In each case of violence in this film, a bystander allows it to happen by either being actively complicit or refusing to stop it.  The women, too, seem to act out of a kind of stupour - like the security guard who walks slowly to her fate.  What does this tell us about Akahori's portrayal about contemporary Japanese society?  Of people complicit in their own terror because, to paraphrase, there's nothing on TV. The questions this film raises are provocative and worrying.

Which is not to say that the film is perfect.  I had a lot of problems with the cinematography. I get that the director wants the film to seem grubby and desolate but the grimy colours and murky shadows were frustrating - I kept wanting to wipe the camera lens.

THE SAMURAI THAT NIGHT played London 2012 and opens in Japan on Nov 17th.

iPad Round-Up 2 - TATSUMI

TATSUMI is a wonderful animated film that works on two levels.  Most obviously, it is the life story of Japanese manga artist Toshihiro Tatsumi, based on his award-winning graphic novel/memoir, "A Drifting Life".  It shows him growing up in war-torn Japan, making his name as a young Manga artist, and finally pioneering a new type of comic for adults, dealing explicitly with sexual frustration, ennui and social issues in post-war Japan - in sharp contrast to the Astro Boy comics of his idol Osama Tezuka. To that end, the movie works as biopic for manga fans, interspersing the impressively frank autobiography with short animated films of some of his most famous short stories. This was interesting, and elegantly done, but as a person who has never read a single manga story, I found the movie more compelling as a document of social history. Thanks to Tatsumi's keen eye and honesty, we learn a lot about the social, sexual, political and economic changes in Japan, from the horrors of the nuclear bomb, to deprivation, to the economic boom. There were all sorts of little facts that shocked me - I was shocked at my own ignorance - such as the fact that the Japanese couldn't travel abroad until 1964 and even then with only a dollar's worth of Yen. So, for me, this film was entertaining, moving and educational, and I would recommend it even to people who have no interest in manga at all.  The visuals are beautiful, elegant and powerful, and have prompted me to start reading "A Drifting Life".

TATSUMI played Cannes 2011 and opened last year in Singapore and Hungary. It opened earlier this year in Ireland and the UK and is currently on release in the USA. It is available to rent and own. 

London Film Fest 2011 Day 5 - HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF A SAMURAI

Writer-director Takashi Miike, the master of gory violence, is in altogether more sombre mood with his remake of Masaki Kobayashi's iconic 1962 feature "Harakiri". Takashi Miike's film takes the form of a highly formally controlled, slow-paced, beautifully depicted tragedy.  The form is particularly complex and satisfying - a tale within a tale within a tale, book-ended by acts of wince-inducingly graphic and stunningly choreographed violence.  It is both a personal, family tragedy, and a lament for the unbearable burden that the honour code of the samurai places on its follower.  

The movie is set in seventeenth century Edo, where peace has left the samurai caste impoverished and unemployed. The desperate ronin (samurai without master) apply to local lords to commit ritual suicide in their courtyards "to restore honour", but hoping the lords will pay them to leave.  As the film opens, Hanshiro Tsugumo (Ebizo Ichikawa) is making just such an application and the Senior Retainer warns him not bluff this particular house.  This is the outer layer of the story.  The retainer tells the tale of the previous applicant, Motomo Chijiwa (Eita) whose bluff was called.  The second layer of the tale.  And then, we get to the very heart of the film, Tsugamo's reply to the Retainer, which reveals that he knew Chijiwa well.  In fact, the boy was his son-in-law - husband to an ailing wife and son, desperate for a few pennies for medicine.  

In the telling of the three tales, Takashi Miike depicts with unflinching gaze the truth behind the exotic myth of the samurai - that their fortunes are swept up in wider feudal conflicts - a knife-edge walk between poverty and glory - the lack of humanity in their strict honour code.   This is done not just through the graphic depiction of ritual suicide, but more subtly in the colour palette of the film.  The reality of life is depicted in shades of grey.  Real life is dark, unlit, unwarmed, grim and bleak. This contrasts with the burnished red coat of armour lovingly given pride of place in the courtyard - the only shock of colour in the film, constantly in the glow of candles.  It's as though society has been up-ended, inverted - and the prison-like samurai code is being given the upper hand over life itself.

HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF SAMURAI is an amazing film.  Moving, never melodramatic despite the tragedy, formally beautiful, with set pieces that are unbearably tense and vividly depicted.  It is not the typical film one has come to expect from Takashi Miike and his long-time fans may be disappointed at its serious, almost lyrical tone. But I found it to be his best, most mature, most artistic work to date.  The only quibble is that the 3D adds very little to the experience. 

HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF A SAMURAI played Cannes 2011 where it was the first film to be shown in 3D.  It opened in Japan on October 15th and opens in France on November 30th.

Late Late review - London Film Fest 2010 Day 11 - 13 ASSASSINS

13 ASSASSINS is a fantastic film. I literally bounced out of the cinema having watched it! On one level it's a brilliantly lavish Samurai film in the classic mould - beautiful costumes, whole villages created as sets, codes of honour broken, elegantly choreographed sword-fighting - and it reminded me how much I loved Samurai films. On another level, it's typical Takashi Miike mischief - satirising the violence of Samurai movies with a level of gore and blood that is quite simply ridonkulous - and making the village idiot actually a better sword-fighter than the pompous Samurai.

The plot is straight out of Shogun Total War 2. It's mid 19th century Japan with the Shogunate on its last legs but still rich enough to hire Shinzaemon (Kôji Yakusho) to assassinate the evil pretender, Lord Naritsugu (Gorô Inagaki). The first half of the film is a Kurosawa style "putting the band back together" narrative, with the cool twist of having Yusuke Iseya play the provincial dolt who gains a place alongside his hard-core Samurai team-mates. And in the second half of the flick, they turn the town of Ochiai into an A-Team style booby-trap setting up a brutal, bloody massacre.

The first thing to say about 13 ASSASSINS is that it looks amazing. The production design is lavish in style and flawless in its period detail, creating a look typically associated with epic historical drama. The photography (Nobuyasu Kita) echoes this lavish style with Kubrick-like deliberate framing and slow, stylised camera movements. Interior scenes are lit by candelight to give an authentic feel and the detail of the costumes is breath-taking. The second thing to say is that beyond the historic detail, Takashi Miike remains the Director of the Egregious - from the audacious sadism of Naritsugu (e.g. the women crippled so extremely by "total massacre") -  to the egregious and dogmatic code of honour of Shinzaemon -  to the balletic, operatic, monumental final display of bloodshed in the village. Miike creates a film that is utterly modern in its gorging, self-indulgent, obese display of blood and violence - but also a film that is curiously nostalgic for the age of the Samurai when that bloodshed was part of a self-sacrifice for honour. His film is, then, a bravura performance - modern, nostalgic, bloody, but with depth. Undoubtedly one of the finest films of the London Film Festival.

13 ASSASSINS played Venice and Toronto 2010 and was released in Japan in September. It opens in the UK in May 2011.

NORWEGIAN WOOD

Sweet tap-dancing Christ, NORWEGIAN WOOD really is the most boring, self-indulgent, opaque, pointless film I have seen in a long time. I didn't care about any of the characters. I didn't find any of their actions authentic. I didn't understand any of their motivations. All that was left was a series of ponderous still shots and a fascinating soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood.

Not having read the widely acclaimed and popular Murukami novel, all I can judge is what the movie gives me.  And from what I can tell the story is basically about a boy called Toru (Kenichi Matsuyama), whose best friend committed suicide in high school. A few years later he's at college in Tokyo in the 60s and meets the best friend's ex girlfriend Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi). They start hanging out, maybe to rekindle memories of the dead boy - they fuck - and this precipitates a nervous breakdown for the girl, who goes off to a rural sanitarium where she share s a room with another patient called Reiko (Reika Kirishima), who will later throw herself at Toru. Toru continues to believe he is in love with Naoko but starts hanging out with Midori (Kiki Mizuhara), a pretty flirtatious student who apparently already has a boyfriend. Her easy sexual banter contrasts strongly with Naoko's frigidity. 

But of course, this is pop psychology 101. Toru clearly has issues. He's wandering through life passively falling in with any girl who toys with him - bland and banal and acted upon. The three girls he fucks might seem superficially different but they are all essentially the same - emotionally unavailable and inordinately needy. This could have made for a fascinating psycho-sexual drama, and I suspect that's what the novel delivers. But given the opacity and lack of interiority shown in the movie, what we get is an truly uninteresting, banal story: a plastic hero and his three emotionally needy, unavailable women. 

What this film needs is a sense of humour. It also needs to offer us some explanations of why people do what they do. It needs to be firmly embedded in its time and place. Beyond some period costumes and a particularly cheesy use of the Beatles' song, I want to know why students are marching - to feel more of the sixties vibe. And, most of all, what this film needs is a sense of interiority - of Toru's emotional journey through various love affairs toward maturity. It lacks any kind of beating, bleeding centre that might elicit our empathy, let alone sympathy. 

NORWEGIAN WOOD played Venice and Toronto 2010 and was released last year in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Russia, Vietnam and Hong Kong. It was released earlier this year in the Netherlands and the Netherlands. It is currently on release in Thailand and the UK. It opens this weekend in Sweden; on April 14th in Singapore; on April 21st in Hungary; and on July 7th in Germany.

Late, late review - HEART, BEATING IN THE DARK/YAMIUTSU SHINZO (2005)

With HEART, BEATING IN THE DARK, Japanese director Shunichi Nagasaki remakes and reimagines his own 1982 movie of the same name. Filmed on both 35mm and Super-8 the movie attempts to recreate the punk energy and moral ambiguity of the original tale of a murderous couple on the run from their own consciences. That film was short (seventy minutes), grimy, claustrophobic and bleak. The remake is about people who are trapped even moreso than the original. Not only do we see the original dilemma - a young couple on the lam - played out, but this new couple meets the characters from the original film, still trapped by their past. And it's as though the director himself seems mired in the earlier version, incorporating actors and clips from that film. The resulting movie is an intellectually involved film about the nature of movie-making and taking a point of view, as well as about the original fears that coloured the first film. I found it an exhilarating and provocative movie, but I'm not sure how far it will make sense to anyone who hasn't seen the original. 

YAMIUTSU SHINZO/HEART, BEATING IN DARKNESS played London 2006.

London Film Fest 2010 - Day 15 - COLD FISH / TSUMETAI NETTAIGYO

COLD FISH is basically insane. It's an insanely conceived movie about insane people. It's hilarious, sexually explicit, ultra-violent, horrifying and ridiculous. It's the sort of movie that you sit through, alternately laughing and nauseous, and when the lights come up you think, 'what the hell just happened here?!'

J-horror director Shion Sono based the movie on a true case of a serial murderer in 1980s Japan, but this is very much just a nod to past history rather than a straight re-telling. In the movie, Sono transposes the action to modern Japan, and turns the serial killer into a Fred and Rosemary West-style couple who get high on sexual power-games and butchering people with an attention to detail that is pretty impressive in a fucked up way. They lure in unsuspecting idiots with their over-the-top courtesy and generosity, find their weakness and then exploit it for kicks. In this case, the killers, Aiko and Murata, alight upon the weedy, emasculated middle-aged man, Shamoto and his dissatisfied wife Taeko, offering to give their teenage daughter a job and a place to stay. Pretty soon, the mischievous old Murata (Japanese comedian Denden) is porking Taeko and forcing Shamoto to be help dispose of corpses. 

There's something brilliantly, finely-balanced in how we are often grossed out and laughing our asses off at the same time in this movie. I loved the gore, the chavvy outfits, the lo-fi gonzo look of the film, the day-glo colours, and the screetching sound-track. This is angry, funny film that sticks it in the eye of bourgeois sensibility, with its social satire of repressed domesticity and inter-generational misunderstanding. I loved it. Even when it made me want to vomit. But at its heart, there is something much more profound going on - a sort of demonic argument for repressed people to act on their impulses and, crudely put, "man the fuck up". What else can we make of a scene where Murata literally forces Shamato to have sex with Aiko, or the fact that Shamato's journey in the film is ultimately one of forced self-empowerment. In order to get to the point where he can physically and psychologically save his wife and daughter he has to become, for a moment, as evil but also as powerful as Murata. Shamato is the cold fish, and he is freezing his wife in suburban hell as the movie opens. Is it better to live, frozen, or die, alive?  Unpalatable truth, maybe.

COLD FISH was released in Japan earlier this year and played Venice and Toronto 2010.

Overlooked DVD of the month - TOKYO SONATA

Japan is the only country where the unemployment rate has a positive correlation with the suicide rate. From such a statistic, J-horror director turned dramatist, Kiyoshi Kurosawa carves a story of a contemporary Japanese family in emotional crisis. Typically authoritarian father and salary man, Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) cannot bear the loss of face involved in telling his family that he has lost his job. Similarly, repressed housewife Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi) cannot bear to tell her husband that she knows he now has a job as a lavatory cleaner. Their sons try to find meaning in a society based on rules of appearance and repression. Elder son Taka (Yu Koyanagi) is so desperate for purpose he joins the US Army and younger son Kenji (Inowaki Kai) deceives his parents by taking piano lessons.

The direction and framing capture the ennui and embarrassment of modern life - of people psychologically buckling under the weight of societal expectations. It's a simultaneously beautiful and disturbing film - anchored by a searing performance from Kyoko Koizumi as the mother. The only mis-step is a third act filled with action that borders on absurd, but all is forgiven with a painfully beautiful resolution of sorts, with perhaps the best use in film of Clair de Lune.

TOKYO SONATA played Cannes, where it won the Un Certain Regard prize, and Toronto 2009 and was released in Japan last year. It is available on DVD.

KAMIKAZE GIRLS - There is a light that never goes out out

Call me insular, but there is so much about contemporary Japanese culture that I find just plain sinister. Take, for, instance, the fashion sub-culture in which grown woman dress up as Victorian children, complete with frilly, embroidered caps, parasols and hooped skirts. KAMIKAZE GIRLS goes some way to explaining why a young country girl, daughter to a small-time crook, craves such luxurious escapism, scheming her way into enough money to make it to Tokyo and the real-life boutique, Baby, The Stars Shine Bright. Events become even more bizarre when the "Lolita" girl hooks up with another girl who's a member of a "Yanki" biker gang. This involves looking like a goth crossed with a biker and generally being bad-ass. The two girls go shopping together and then there's a bust up at the end. The exaggerated, cartoonish style of the movie and the colourful costumes are amusing for about half an hour and then becomes hard-going. Also, am I imagining things or are the pseudo-toddler and butch biker a gay couple?

KAMIKAZE GIRLS was released in Japan in 2004, in South Korea in 2005, in France in 2006 and the UK in 2008.

VEXILLE - sci-fi thriller cum political critique

VEXILLE is the follow-up feature length CGI animation from the team behind APPLESEED. As with that flick, the 3D backgrounds are stunningly rendered and knock the socks off anything produced by Western animation artists and the 2-D action is perfectly rendered using motion-capture. Ladies and gents, this is the future of animation.

The movie is essentially a sci-fi thriller on the surface but a political discourse on Japan's inward-looking culture underneath. In 2077, Japan has invented robotics technology of such power that the rest of the world is essentially dependent on its OPEC style monopoly on production. The UN reacts by legislating against it, at which point Japan retreats from all international discourse and returns to its C17 isolationism. The meta-narrative is, then, all about questioning Japanese cultural tropes. On the surface, the movie is an action flick. Vexille is a US agent sent on a secret mission into the heart of Japan to spy on the super-tech. The resulting movie is intelligent, imaginative, fast-paced and visually stunning - and one that repays repeated viewing.

VEXILLE played Toronto and London 2007 and was released in 2007 and 2008. It is available on DVD with a very insightful commentary.

London Film Festival Day 7 - TOKYO!

TOKYO! is a three part movie comprising three thirty-five minute shorts loosely linked by surreal goings-on in Tokyo. The first and most successful segment is directed by Michel Gondry called INTERIOR DESIGN. An aspiring art-house film director and his supportive girlfriend are struggling to make ends meet. They’re camping out at her friend’s cramped apartment, dodging questions about how long they’re thinking of staying, and taking menial work to pay the fine to get their car out of the pound. One day, the girlfriend, fed up with being the artist’s practical support, finds herself turning into a sturdy wooden chair! And, once in this state, she’s picked up by a random passer by who takes her/it to his flat. There, she carves a contented existence, providing practical support when he’s at home and living a nice unhurried life as a real girl when he’s not. It’s a rather touching and bizarre little film.

The next segment, directed by Leos Carax, slips nicely from simply odd to scarily ghoulish. One day, a disfigured man with a red-beard emerges from a sewer and causes havoc in downtown Tokyo, despite the fact that he’s not actually doing anything more threatening that being unwashed and insolent – that is until he stumbles upon a box of hand grenades. He’s picked up by the authorities and we get very funny news reports showing that the government’s first reaction is to tighten immigration laws. The strange man is eventually tried and sentenced to death on the urgings of the ultra-nationalists, but to everyone’s chagrin is reluctant to die. He may hate people, especially Japanese people, but he love’s life! MERDE is a provocative short, taking some nice pot shots at media hype and showing real visual flair in the scenes in the courtroom and on death row. I guess you could also read something into it regarding the Japanese attitude to foreigners, but it was fairly ambiguous.

The final segment is a film by Joon-ho Bong (THE HOST) about an obsessive-compulsive hermit whose perfectly ordered and repetitive life is disturbed when he falls for a pizza delivery girl. She’s so moved by the perfection if his apartment that she hands in her notice and decides to become a hermit too, forcing him to leave his apartment for the first time in eleven years to meet her. SHAKING TOKYO is a bittersweet, delicate romance featuring a moving central performance and lovely production design. It's a million miles away from THE HOST, which might, however, disappoint fans.

Overall, I remain unconvinced about these collections of shorts. The links between the segments always feel forced, although they’re clearer here than in the random jumble of PARIS JE T’AIME. I can’t say that I got any greater insight into the segments by virtue of watching them back to back. Nonetheless, whether viewed together or singly, they make for interesting viewing.

TOKYO! played Cannes and London 2008. It was released earlier this year in Japan and is currently on release in France and Singapore. It goes on limited release in the US on December 5th.

SILK - lavish but strangely uninvolving

SILK is writer-director Francois Girard's adaptation of Alessandro Baricco's best-selling novel. Set in 1860s France and Japan in the 1860s, it focuses on a young couple Herve and Helene Joncour (Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley). Herve is hired by Baldabiou (the wonderful Alfred Molina) to travel to an isolated village in Japan to buy silk-worm eggs. The mission is a success but Herve's marriage is lost. He becomes obsessed with a Japanese woman, and even when he returns to France, is transfixed by her love letters to him, begging him to return.. Nothing much actually happens but everyone looks miserable.

Michael Pitt does his typical moody, longing schtick and Keira Knightley follows suit with a series of emotionally pregnant glances that prefigure her (far better) performance in THE DUCHESS. The denouement tries to inject some drama but, given the simpering that preceeded it, it struck me as quite out of character.

On the plus side, SILK does look beautiful.

SILK played Toronto 2007 and was released in the US, Canada, Italy, the UK, Hong Long, Singapore and Greece that year. It opened earlier this year in Taiwan, Japan, Israel, Thailand, Mexico, Kuwait, Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Australia, the Netherlands and Argentina. It opens this week in Belgium and is also available on DVD.

London Film Fest Day 9 - EKESUTE/EXTE - HAIR EXTENSIONS

EXTE – HAIR EXTENSIONS is a body-shock J-horror that is more spoof than scary. Playing heavily on the audience’s familiarity with hair-fetishist horror like the JU-ON flicks, the director creates a central character who also has a Grudge. Kidnapped by thugs who harvested her organs and cut off her hair, she’s now a zombie corpse, held hostage by a hair-fetishist morgue attendant. He is entranced by the fact that, even in death, lustrous hair is growing from every one of her bodily orifices. He harvests the hair and sells it as hair extensions that murder their new owner. The movie rambles on for ninety minutes, raising more than a few belly-laughs with its absurdist visuals of chicks pulling yard long hairs from their eye-lids. It culminates in a final show-down between the nut-job, the hair-spewing zombie, our heroine (a kind-hearted hairdresser) and the munchkin she has rescued from an abusive mother. I’m not sure the movie adds up to much in the end. It’s certainly nicely produced but, unlike SEVERANCE, fails to deliver both laughs AND scares. Finally, it’s little more than an elaborate in-joke. Passing fun, but probably not worth more than a DVD rental.

EXTE - HAIR EXTENSIONS played London 2007 and was released in Japan earlier this year.

London Film Fest Day 2 - GLORY TO THE FILM-MAKER!/KANTOKU BANZAI!

"Beat" Takeshi Kitano of DOLLS and ZATOICHI fame, purveyor of ultra-violence to the masses, has vowed never to make another violent movie. GLORY TO THE FILM-MAKER! is his movie about his inability to make a different kind of genre movie. Kitano spoofs genre after genre with genius precision and derisory wit. From Ozu to Ju-On to Wire-Fu to the Matrix, Kitano puts himself in the frame and puts the genre down. The continuity device is a series of fillers showing Kitano with a papier-mache life-size doll of himself. He looks glum at his inability to find another outlet for his cinematic skill. After every failed attempt, the dummy gets it.

Every cineaste is going to get a kick out of this movie, checking off references and noticing the funny script written on computer screen in the back-ground. (In the opening hospital scene, the dummy is called Akira Kurosawa.) But after an hour I have to confess that my interest started to wane as it does with all those infinitely inferior SCARY MOVIE type flicks. Fundamentally, while it's kind of cool to see Kitano sounding off about the vacuity of modern cinema, I needed something more to keep me hooked - some actual plot or character development, say. So, one for hard-core fans alone, methinks.....

GLORY TO THE FILM-MAKER!/KANTOKU-BANZAI! played Venice, Toronto and London 2007 and was released in Japan in June 2007.

LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA deserves its critical acclaim

To my mind, LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA is a far more successful film than its companion piece, FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS. In the latter, director Clint Eastwood relies on an overly complicated non-linear plot to make an essentially simple point. It is an important point but not especially emotionally engaging. By contrast, LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA has a simple narrative structure. Its power lies in telling a story that we have not seen before through engaging characters and evocative photography.

The action of IWO JIMA takes place largely on the infamous island. We see the soldier digging pill-boxes on the beaches in anticipation of the American invasion. Much like the Americans in FLAGS, the Japanese soldiers realise that they are up against great odds, especially given that they can expect no support from air or sea forces. Added to their tactical difficulties is a literally suicidal factionalism within the high command. Ken Watanabe plays a General whose common sense rationale will not see scarce troops commit "honourable suicide", but who knows that the battle is essentially a suicide mission writ large. But he faces opposition from the old guard who demand death rather than escape to fight another day. And make no mistake, Eastwood does not shy away from showing us the extreme brutality of such actions on the ordinary soldiers tunnelled into the mountains.

In short, LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA makes for uncomfortable viewing, as it should. But it is essential viewing all the same.

LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA was released in Japan and the US in 2006 and played Berlin 2007. It is on release in Greece, the Netherlands, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Belgium, France, Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Singapore, Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Norway, Turkey and the UK. It opens in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Hungary and Brazil next weekend and in Brazil on March 9th, Sweden on March 9th, Russia on March 15th and the Czech Republic on March 29th.