frostbow

Every Day is a romantic movie about a married couple, with a supernatural gimmick. It has some funny moments, but is not really a comedy, more of a sentimental drama. There have been many movies with a similar plot, and it follows common patterns, but without plot holes.

Where it differs is the atmosphere, which is calm, clean, and contemplative. There is a lot of silence. Sometimes there is piano background music. The style is realistic, depicting every-day office-worker life. Adding to this it has an gimmick of depicting memories via photographs.

It seems that it wants to express certain ideas. How much it is successful in this is unclear. Most people would probably not find much of interest, but there might be a few who can recognize something that is relatable to their own life.

However, there is a sense of emptiness because of things missing. A practical example of this is when one character was said to be somewhere, but we never got to actually see it. This creates a sense of unrealness and needless suspicions of an unreliable narration.

Another example is that the secondary characters do not always behave as if they are aware of the main plot, even if it is no secret to them, so their dialogues and actions are sometimes misplaced considering the situation.

A more concerning point is the relationship within the married couple. They are cute together, but even though a bit of background story is given, there is no evidence of passion or any real explanation of the reason why they married in the first place. It seems almost like a marriage of convenience.

The best acting performance was clearly made by the actor of the male protagonist, who was able to make varied and detailed face expressions, and delivered emotional lines in a believable way. Unfortunately, the writing makes the character spineless and empty. He is just an ordinary man working to support his family, while everyone is constantly nagging him about how lazy and pathetic he is. He has many mannerisms but does not seem to have any interests or individual thoughts outside of what concerns the plot. To be clear, the problem is not that he is weak, but that he is lacking an inner life except for his reactions.

Other actors are also very good, and the quality is generally good, with some nice or intense scenes, and also subplots for the secondary characters.

Many viewers might find it a boring humiliation ritual to watch a depressed man getting disrespected by random people. But it also gives you things to think about. Maybe it is depressing enough to get interesting.

By now it is clear that there exists a specific subgenre of Japanese romantic comedies or dramas with a small supernatural gimmick, often involving time shenanigans. Maybe the most known examples are the anime movies Your Name and The Girl Who Lept Through Time.

Like the title says, this one is about a man with the superpower of acting a second before everyone else, and a woman with the superpower of always being one second behind everyone else, which most of the time is quite crappy. The gimmick is not used for action scenes though, but mostly to set up jokes.

A lot of focus is put on the Kyoto setting, with thick accent, local songs, and as many locations and tourist spots as possible crammed in. Furthermore, a lot of jokes based on local customs, and prejudices that different neighbourhoods have about each other. This makes the setting real and grounded. Particularly inhabitants and tourists of Kyoto will probably enjoy it immensely.

There are also a lot of jokes about reading kanji the wrong way, in case you like that.

Even more peculiar is the plot, which is not too complicated, but has its gimmicks, a few mysteries, and zero plot holes. It unassumingly takes its own path in a way that must have involved very intentional and detailed planning from the screenwriter. So much so that I suspected it to be based on a novel, but after a little research it turned out to be a remake of a Taiwanese movie called My Missing Valentine.

An example of the originality is that it neither involves time travel nor amnesia, two tropes endemic to the genre. In my opinion, both tropes are terrible because they create plot holes, reset the character development and makes most of the the story pointless. Just because of this, I will recklessly add a point to the score.

The attention to details and the quality thinking stretches into all aspects. Not least in the camera work, with many nice shots that look funny or interesting regardless of the dialogue.

Everything is so well polished that the only flaw one can possibly find is that it might feel slow at times. Especially in the beginning, before you understand where the plot is going, and in some later parts, that drag out but still have enough contents to not get boring.

The main character Hajime is a lively and rude but sympathetic young man who is good as a protagonist and comical character. He is a little goofy and irritating, but he and the movie in general is not too goofy. It seems that they deliberately did hold back on comedy clichés and overacting. While impulsive, he is reasonably smart, sparing us from drama based on misunderstandings.

Even better is the female lead, who really immerses in her peculiar personality, also without overacting. She pulls off the best performance in a scene with just face expressions and two short words. It might be a comedy but it also has a few serious and intense moments and confrontations that almost makes it feel like a drama.

But the funniest character is Hajime's mother, played by Hano Aki. Well, all actors did a good job really.

Maybe I'm over-praising it. It is just that I have been looking for good love stories for a long time, and it is rare to find one as cute as this.

Seldom does a title describe its movie as well as "Girl Dorm". Knowing the title, and that it is a horror movie, you can already kind of guess half of the story.

Immediately in the first scene, it is established as low-budget and low-effort. Two people are having a discussions on the phone, with the dubbed dialogue badly synchronized with the movements of the lips, and we are also shown an obviously computer-generated clip of an airplane. The synching seems to became better later though, or you just get used to it.

The sound design may be the weakest point of the production. The worst example is a scene when the main character Zhenxin is seen alone in a library, but the added sound is generic cafe noise from many people talking in the background.

The visuals are not much to speak of, with hardly any view standing out as beautiful. At least they look clean and not too cluttered.

In a way, the supposedly low budget might be an advantage in that it goes well along with the setting of a poor university for low-achieving students, and the elements of depressing social realism depicting an education system in slow decay.

The low tempo, lack of interesting action, and sparing use of special effects actually reinforces a creepy atmosphere befitting a horror movie. The small number of actors further increases the desolation and the sense of danger.

Surprisingly, the first major scare is absolutely terrifying. Although it contains nothing original, it is well constructed and timed. Probably the impact is amplified many times by the build-up and established atmosphere.

Zhenxin reacts pretty well to the scares, but what makes her original as a heroine is that she is quite stubborn and aggressive, even yelling at older people sometimes, even if they don't fully deserve it. This small part of her personality that is unsympathetic makes her more funny, and is good for driving the story forward, which is the role of a protagonist in the first place.

While it is obviously meant as a pure horror movie, the number of deaths is lower than average, and there are also other aspects that might disappoint some horror fans. Still, it is relatively logical, and there are also aspects that can be interesting from a horror point of view.

One thing is that the story, while containing some common tropes, is not wholly derivative and in part has its own unique elements. Also, the real threat is different than usual in a way that can feel disappointing, but on the other hand can feel dark and depressing in another way.

It is hard to recommend this low-quality movie, but somehow its atmosphere and uniqueness makes me come back and like it more every time I watch it.