A few lessons imparted by Survive Style 5+:

1. Home invasion can be fun.

2. If a guy who looks like Vinnie Jones gives you a hard stare and asks you "What's your function in life?" - just run.

3. Never, ever let yourself be hypnotized.

4. If you take steps to murder your wife, you'd better make sure she's really dead, because if she isn't... Look out.

5. If someone thinks they're a bird, maybe they are.

Easily one of my favorite viewings this year. Perfectly demented.

(Monkey Records)

Accepting everything, leaving the meaning. Burglars to lovers. Bird-talking through your days. Accepting your spouse despite their undead status. Existential hitman. Life here is short, but not for everyone. Pop art The Hourglass Sanatorium-esque production designs. The purpose of this reality is acceptance, no matter how unpredictable life is. Batshit insanity to beautiful sentimentality. Hyperlink cinema on an undefined mind-altering substance. Let's become birds, let's be free. We've come to accept it all, that's the style of surviving in an absurdist reality.

The payoff of the dad-bird storyline is undoubtedly one of the absolute best joke payoffs in the history of cinema. A perfect setup and perfect payoff. I was almost unable to contain my excitement at the moment. The rest of this film is oddly touching. Completely insane and ridiculous but the way it slowly turns into a sort of a statement on acceptance and oddly enough, forgiveness (of ourselves, of others) was genuinely felt. I absolutely adored this.

Magnolia, but the anti-depressants have kicked in.

What is your function in life?

vinnie jones and tadanobu asano in the same movie is just so random and insane to me but i loved it , its fucking bizarre and the ending was perfect

Police storming my house: WE GOT YOU SURROUNDED, GO WATCH OTHER MOVIES
Me, hiding under a desk watching SS5+ on my phone for the 100th time: I LOVE TADANOBU ASANO, I LOVE THE TRANSITION BETWEEN THE FINGER SNAP AND THE DOOR BREAKING, YOKO IS MY COMEDY SOUL MATE, COME BABY, COME, COME, BA–

“what is your function in life?”

slapstick surrealist supreme—a film that finds sentimentality amidst the bizarre, weaving multiple threads of singularity into repetition to a degree of instant familiarity to find either wildly amusing, endearing, or, unreasonably farfetched, all completely in-tune with Gen Sekiguchi’s tone of farce and morality/mortality. color and texture excitedly pop right off the screen, imbuing the comedy with the perfect amount of captivation needed on the surface level to ignore its lack of introspection, and, even better, not even ask to forgive it for omitting it—nothing short of a riot.

2000s
2022 Favorite First-Viewings

a proper mind-melter of a movie that is wonderfully strange and surprisingly wholesome. the epic cast, absolutely juiced score, all-timer ending, and ridiculousness of it all make it an easy 10/10!

at first i was afraid, i was petrified,
kept thinking i could never live without you by my side,
but then i spent so many nights, thinking how you did me wrong
and i grew strong

and i learned how to get along