Wood Job!

Among the hero based action movies "Wood Job" is a fresh, exciting and enjoyable movie. Wood Job! is a Japanese drama written and directed by Shinobu Yaguchi and based on the novel Kamusari naa naa Nichijō by Shion Miura. The film was filmed on location in the mountains of Mie Prefecture. With great nature scenes this movie takes you away from the rush of your crowded cities and shows how a simple life can give you happiness.

Yuki Hirano (Sometani), is a student most teachers are happy to see the back of. After he fails his college entrance exams and is dumped by his girlfriend, this boy decides to make a fresh start and join a one-year trainee program for forestry workers, aka lumberjacks after he saw a girl on the brochure of this program.

When Hirano arrives at his destination a village in the forest he quickly tries to go back, but circumstances prevents him,and he soon finds himself in dasai work clothes and a hard hat, being schooled in the basics of lumber jacking.

During the movie we watch Hirano improving slowly, becoming a hero from zero incidentally, gaining the community's respect and sympathy. You feel the naturalness of the life if you give up your provisional desires, passion for more.

Take your time and enjoy this movie. You won't regret.

This is my first movie review, not just only in IMDb but really the first. Normally I do not read movie reviews. So, please bear with me, my wording may look weird for you who read a lot of reviews.

I feel like this is one of the great movies you should not miss. I saw it got 7.7 points from IMDb which I think it is too low. I have to write something about it.

The movie is categorized as comedy. However, it is not like LOL movies, it will just keep you smile. I got "feel good" while I was watching the movie.

Actors, all of them, are perfect. I really want to see them in personal and tell them that they are perfect in this movies. If you are not familiar with Japanese culture and something like forest spirit, you may feel weird while watching, which actually there is nothing weird, Just keep in mind, it is just another culture.

The directer is quite detail. I never watch his movies before but I am going to be his fan for sure. The small pieces in the movie relates to other scenes pretty well, not too much, not too less, just pretty well.

I just want to take "thank you" for all of people in this movie. They have made a really good movie.

This is simply a great film! Fine acting, especially the children. It is educational and funny with drama, danger, romance, mysticism, and Shintoism. The film seems to capture what life in a remote mountain community might be like (and why you might want to try to live there for awhile - sign me up!). Fine photography. Score and titles are OK. Viewed at JICC J-Film event. WILLIAM FLANIGAN

The Japanese do some great romantic comedies, and this is definitely one of the better ones. It's the only I have watched a number of times.

The theme of the city folk visiting a small town and coming to grips with the quirky locals is common in Japanese film, but this is one that does it particuarly well. A city guy, goes to the country to meet a girl he saw in a brochure. Along the way, he begins to get respect for the quirky locals, and their odd habits, who he begins to realise while working with the forest, are also one with it.

There is lots of quirkiness, cultural conflict, funny moments and romance. A really great film, and of my favorite Japanese Rom coms. I watch a lot of Japanese cinema, and I would probably put this on my top 20.

Okay, so I was ready to watch a comedy by master Shinobu Yaguchi, famous for his amazing Swing Girls movie but instead I got a sort of coming-of-age feel-good movie about finding one's own roots.

Don't get me wrong, there are fun and silly moments throughout the movie with fun characters- as is usual in a Shinobu Yaguchi movie but this time the tone is a bit more realistic that gives way for emotional and affecting moments to take the center stage in this movie.

The plot is quite simple, a scoundrel city boy decides to work and train in forestry on a whim (decided by his attraction to a girl on a poster, very silly!) and the movie is set around this whole training year where he learns a lot of life lessons including Japanese folklore and the beauty of working for nature.

The movie is shot beautifully, the nature shots stand out the most obviously- I wish this movie would've been made around the beginning of the 00s for that gorgeous scrappy feeling that his older movies have but otherwise it's great!

The actors are fun and play both seriously and comedically with the standout being ruggedly handsome Hideaki Ito as Yoki- however the characters aren't very well-developed that's one of the negatives, a few sub-plots involving the villagers don't get resolved and the movie has a bit of a fakeout during the beginning where we get introduced to Yukis (the main character) classmates only for them to appear at the tail-end of the movie.

A bit of a negative is that it's perhaps a bit too long? It could've used for more efficient storytelling as in his past movies but otherwise it's good- the 1hr 56 mins of runtime still passed by without a hitch!

More than the surrounding plot I find the depictions of Japanese myth and traditions to be really emotional in this movie- it definitely ties it together in a wonderful kind of way.

I'd say this is not his best movie but it's definitely worth a watch- even if the elements of his older movies aren't quite present you can still find something great about his newer films! Check it out!