Film reviews in 500 words or fewer

Tag: Drama

  • Disappointing consummation: Haruhiko Arai’s ‘It Feels So Good’ (A review)

    Disappointing consummation: Haruhiko Arai’s ‘It Feels So Good’ (A review)

    I don’t often feel so strongly about narrative direction in films going the wrong way, because stories are expressions of creative freedom and I think the respectful way to go about it is a matter of preference (I did like it) and not of correctness. But that’s definitely what I felt after watching It Feels So Good, Haruhiko Arai’s 2019 banger of a film (pun definitely intended) about two former lovers who agreed to temporarily rekindle their passion before one of them set out to get married.

    There’s a lot to like about this film, not the least the depiction of sex, which was deftly acted by Tasuku Emoto and Kumi Takiuchi. I don’t usually go about seeking to watch erotic films, but I can say that the physical realism and believability of the intimacy scenes are some of the best I’ve seen in film. It’s not prestige sex of airbrushed skin and cheesy soft lighting—there’s a lot of humanity portraying the “messiness” of getting to and doing it, which adds to the carnal appeal of the scenes. Even so, nothing was gratuitous.

    And while the sex was very visual, the keyword that governs the viewing experience of intimacy is feeling. There’s the feeling of power that the woman has over the man. There’s the emphasis on rawer physical sensation, with the camera trained on whole bodies doing the act and faces contorted to unabashedly display pleasure.

    And despite the more controversial and taboo aspect of the sex (hint: “blood is thicker than water”), there’s pervading feeling of comfort of being with someone from your past that comes through to the viewer. Indeed, there’s a lot of nostalgia, both happy and wistful, in this movie: from memories of childhood, to memories of young adulthood in the city, to the devastating memory of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.

    Which is to say: this film is a moving reflection of that great disaster from a very personal and intimate point of view. For the protagonists, their intimate reunion is a powerful affirmation of life, being alive, and perpetuating life after devastation. It initially felt jarring to me, but after watching this film, I now strongly feel that the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and the disaster it wrought is something that is deeply ingrained in the contemporary Japanese psyche in ways that much of the outside world hasn’t fully grasped yet. But this film showed how bodily convulsions and tectonic tremors can be combined in one potent narrative.

    Which leads me now to that unceremonious end to what could’ve been a 5-star film. It might be the obsession with disaster, but it truly seemed overkill that the film doubled down on an already effective message about its personal effects with an amateurish narrative turn.

    I can only liken it to the festival dance featured in the film, depicting the wandering spirits of the dead that cannot enter heaven—full spiritual consummation. The film was almost there towards a sensible resolution, but unlike the two protagonists many times in this film, it just didn’t come.

  • Villain, dir. Sang-il Lee (2010)

    Villain, dir. Sang-il Lee (2010)

    I want to begin by saying that it will not be difficult to point out who the namesake villain of the movie is if we base it on the efficient cause of what happened to the victim. If that’s the whole story, the film would’ve ended at about the halfway mark. Thankfully, Sang-il Lee’s 2010 Best Film awardee (Mainichi Awards and Kinema Junpo Awards) is not just about a villainy or even villainies, but so much more.

    On the surface, Villain is a very competent and entertaining thriller that will keep the audience glued to the screen despite a slow start. It even makes a more-or-less substantial exploration of what really makes a villain. But it’s different from the usual crime-fugitive fare with how it rises above the conventions of its genre to explore a universal and almost unique human ability: the capacity to cherish another human being.

    While the visual style is not necessarily “meditative” (e.g., lingering shots, long takes, sparse camera movements) this film is indeed a meditation on what the act of cherishing does to the one who cherishes. I am careful to highlight this because narratively, it’s easier to show the things that the one who cherishes does to the cherished (not that that aspect wasn’t also explored by the film).

    For Villain, cherishing reveals our true selves and, in the process, changes us.

    This exposition stands on the heart-rending performances of Satoshi Tsumabaki and Eri Fukatsu, Tsumabaki, in particular, as the uninspired young man Yuichi, delivers an engrossing character study in a role that is at once familiar and strange. Yuichi’s central inner conflict, the unquiet specter of his own depravity as his affection for Fukatsu’s Mitsuya grows, produced some of the most intense scenes in the film, including the most emotionally charged sex scene I’ve seen so far in Japanese cinema.

    Veterans Akira Emoto and Kirin Kiki also delivered in their supporting performances as the father of the victim and Yuichi’s grandmother, respectively. Their stories of cherishing are underscored by loss—unjust loss of a beloved daughter, and the loss of a grandson to waywardness.

    I wouldn’t miss mentioning how surprised I was again that Joe Hisaishi did the score for this film. As with Hana-bi, I was clueless about his involvement here but unlike in that movie, I wouldn’t have guessed that it was Hisaishi who wrote the music for Villain.

    Listening to the score on its own, which also includes the closing credits track Your Story, I wouldn’t have guessed that it was the score for a crime movie (one reviewer even described it as “a soothing treat”). Equal parts contemplative, foreboding, sweet, and wistful, the score underscores what I think is the main point of the movie as I’ve shared above: that cherishing and loving someone reveals your humanity, including your depravity, and changes you along the way.

  • Harmony or distraction? Music in Listen to the Universe (A review)

    Harmony or distraction? Music in Listen to the Universe (A review)

    Here’s a little trivia about the Oscars: Did you know that there is an existing category called Best Original Musical in the Academy Awards? However, since it was established in 2000, no year has seen enough original musical films (read: not an adaptation) for a competition to be considered (there must be at least 10).

    But the thing in the rules for this category that made me remember that trivia in relation to Listen to the Universe is the qualification of narrative relevance. To be considered, the music in the film “must further the storyline of the motion picture.” This is different from the film’s score, or say, a soundtrack that goes with the movie but exists outside of the narrative, both of which usually only serves to heighten the emotional aspect of the work.

    I am bringing this up because in the case of Listen to the Universe, the music and the musicianship of the four competing young concert pianists are too much at the center of the story that it begs the question: Do these musical pieces, especially the classical ones, “further the storyline of the motion picture?”

    There’s no question about whether music belongs in the film; the score is expertly crafted. But how does Clair de Lune or Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto no. 3 move the story forward? Why were these pieces chosen and not the others? While undeniably beautiful and significant, they ended up stealing the show without contributing much to the plot or character development. Their complexity, while impressive, can be intimidating to ordinary viewers, narrowing the film’s potential audience.

    This point about “ordinary people’s music” versus the highfalutin fare that the elite usually enjoys has been tackled but quite insufficiently to make a solid emotional impact. Aside from that, the film also attempts to explore a range of other themes: artistic inspiration, the nature of genius, and the purpose of art in the artist’s life.

    But with four distinct performers, it struggles to dive deeply into any one theme. The subplot involving one character’s journey with grief, which seems to be the movie’s emotional core, feels underdeveloped and doesn’t quite land, although the character’s rousing final performance offers a brief emotional payoff.

    That said, Listen to the Universe has its strengths. While none of the actors are actual concert pianists, their performances—directed by Kei Ishikawa—are convincing. Along with nimble editing, the film made virtuosos out of them.

    And where the film falters in using music as diegetic sound, it compensates with a striking score. The score and the visuals work together, contrasting or complimenting each other to heighten the “textures” or the “feel” of various scenes so that in some ways, the harmony between humanity and the universe that the title evokes somehow rings true.

  • Not a review: An initial survey of Japanese cinema

    Not a review: An initial survey of Japanese cinema

    Full list here with ratings and short reviews for each film: https://boxd.it/CUx1G

    One of my movie-watching goals this 2025 is to dig deep into Japanese cinema. I thought about going the auteur way (i.e., watch movies by director) but I felt like I wanted to do a proper survey that covers the diversity of what Japanese cinema has to offer in terms of style, themes, genre, and form. With that in mind, I thought that going over all the winners of the Japan Academy Film Prize Picture of the Year award would be a good start.

    I understand the limitations of this approach. In terms of historical scope, the Japan Academy awards has only existed for 48 years. I view this positively as I didn’t want to dive head on into older works while I try to get used to how the Japanese create films, both in form and content.

    Secondly, film academy awards such as the Oscars and the BAFTAs are not always viewed positively for a myriad of reasons, and the Japan Academy Film Prize is not an exception. However, I chose to watch this list first, and not, say, Kinema Junpo’s list of Best Films (annual, not the top 100), because the fact remains that academy awards are unique in that they are chosen by those who work in the film industry itself–producers, directors, actors, editors, cinematographers, etc. I’m always fascinated by how artists view theirs and others’ works, vs. non-artists, critics and the masses (all of which are also equally important constituencies). I think this kind of reflexive exercise is all the more important in the motion picture arts, which almost always involve more than one person in the creation process.

    Are these movies the best that Japanese cinema can offer? The word “best” is always contentious, and admittedly, some of the works in this list I personally thought were undeserving given the competition they had during the years they were given the award. Some were downright disappointing. Curiously, it doesn’t have one film by one of the two “winningest”** directors in Japanese cinema, Akira Kurosawa, although he wrote the screenplay for one. (The other winningest director, Shohei Imamura, has three in the list).

    But some have also been universally acclaimed, within and outside Japan. There lies the other thing I was thinking why I wanted to begin with this list. I felt like this is a way for the Japanese film industry to say which films are best for them, that is, according to their own terms and not the terms of the West or Hollywood. Throughout the history of Japanese cinema, Orientalism has been a consistent issue both within the industry and among critics and scholars. Japanese cinema has been curiously seen as “the Other” in contrast to Hollywood/Western cinema, and outsiders have tended to simplify what kind of good should be expected of films from Japan. So while I personally think that Akira Kurosawa is really up there among the great filmmakers of the world and of all time, the fact that he is not in this list is less about him not deserving it but more of recognizing works and filmmakers that have not necessarily made a name in the West but have made significant achievements in appealing to the sensibilities of the local Japanese film audience and industry.

    Still from Our Little Sister , dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda (2015).
    Still from Spirited Away, dir. Hayao Miyazaki (2001)
    Still from Begging for Love, dir. Hideyuki Hirayama (1998)
    Still from Confessions, dir. Tetsuya Nakashima (2010)
    Still from Black Rain, dir. Shohei Imamura (1989)
    Still from The Twilight Samurai, dir. Yoji Yamada (2002)
    Still from A Taxing Woman, dir. Juzo Itami (1987)
    Still from Departures, dir Yojiro Takita (2008)
    Still from My Sons, dir. Yoji Yamada (1991)
    Still from The Ballad of Narayama, dir. Shohei Imamura (1983)
    Still from Princess Mononoke, dir. Hayao Miyazaki (1997)
    Still from Shin Godzilla, dir. Hideaki Anno (2016)
    Still from A Man, dir. Kei Ishikawa (2022)

    The films on this list are a very diverse bunch. Aside from two animated movies (both from the legendary Hayao Miyazaki), it has two Godzilla movies, family dramas, a head-spinning psycho-horror, films about dancing, films about dying moms (among five total films about old age!), coming-of-age films, and of course period films and samurai films. I think Ken Ogata has the most lead actor appearance in these films. Some of these are thoroughly entertaining, some requires much patience with the long takes and sparse dialogue and plot that would ultimately be satisfying in the end.

    These are 45 movies and can take a while to get through, but if you’re interested, here are my favorites from each decade:

    1970s-80s

    • A Taxing Woman, dir. Juzo Itami (1987)
    • Black Rain, dir. Shohei Imamura (1989)
    • The Ballad of Narayama, dir. Shohei Imamura (1983)

    1990s

    • My Sons, dir. Yoji Yamada (1991)
    • Princess Mononoke, dir. Hayao Miyazaki (1997)
    • Begging For Love, dir. Hideyuki Hirayama (1998)

    2000s

    • The Twilight Samurai, dir. Yoji Yamada (2002)
    • Departures, dir. Yojiro Takita (2008)
    • Spirited Away, dir. Hayao Miyazaki (2001)

    2010s

    • Our Little Sister, dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda (2015)
    • Confessions, dir. Tetsuya Nakashima (2010)
    • Shin Godzilla, dir. Hideaki Anno (2016)

    2020s

    • A Man, dir. Kei Ishikawa (2022)

    Have you watched any of these 45 films? What are your thoughts and favorites? Let me know in the comments!

    *I can’t find any way to watch Half a Confession (2004) and Rebirth (2011).
    **Obtained the most number of Best Film awards from the five longest-running film awards in Japan since 1946: Kinema Junpo, Mainichi Concours, Blue Ribbon, Hochi, and Japan Academy. Both Kurasawa and Imamura have seven.

  • Maborosi, dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda (1995)

    Maborosi, dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda (1995)

    Light is the language of cinema, and this work is an embodiment of that fundamental truth about films. In Hirokazu Kore-era’s first full-length narrative feature, light is not just what goes into the camera—it is a character of its own masterfully directed to play a silent but important role in the story of a quietly unfolding grief. The film, after all, is called Maboroshi no hikari, or an illusion of light, and while that refers to an important plot point, it is nevertheless an appropriate reflection of the way Kore-eda worked low-key magic with how he wielded light in this film.

    This film is patient, and it is smart about where to spend what kind of shot and for how long. As such, it requires the same patience from its audience. Sequences and scenes are not lingering here, they are downright long in a way that the passage of time fills you. The story is actually very, very simple and is captured in a penultimate scene but I believe that the point of the film is to elucidate humanity in sadness through visual storytelling. 

    That the film is full of long takes doesn’t mean it’s boring. On the contrary, I think this is one of Kore-eda’s most beautifully shot movies. From the raw but cleanly composed urban scenes of Osaka, to the breathtaking wide-angle sweeps of the ocean in a coastal town along the Sea of Japan, this movie has that signature Kore-eda polish while still somehow looking very grounded. Masayuki Suo’s Shall We Dance? and its similar mise-en-scene that is almost feels unstaged came to mind while watching. My favorite is the funeral procession scenes, both the overhead shot and the ultra-wide shot backgrounded by the sea and a dark sky. They are unassuming but they are two of the most memorable I’ve seen so far in Japanese cinema. 

    As I’ve been tracking year’s best Japanese films based on awards from the 40s to the present, I thought that Maborosi would have a place among those honored for 1995. But that year was dominated by A Last Note of veteran director and screenwriter Kaneto Shindo, winning all best film honors from the five longest-running awards that year and deservedly so. (Maborosi was very hot in the international festival circuit though). I think it’s always futile to compare which is the better film in context of awards because of myriads of reasons (incl. differences in awards constituencies, etc.). However, if one wants to know the best films in Japan in 1995, Maborosi would definitely be among them. Heck it was in Roger Ebert’s year-end best-of-the-year list.