Film reviews in 500 words or fewer

Tag: thriller

  • The Moon, dir. Yuya Ishii (2023)

    The Moon, dir. Yuya Ishii (2023)

    “No one wants to see the truth.” But in attempting to open one’s eyes to the truth and tell it to the world, what will one actually come to know?

    Seeing the truth and knowing it are two different things. This is a powerful dichotomy that runs through Yuya Ishii’s The Moon, giving this film guiding threads to pull together its disparate themes.

    Yoko, played with signature tenderness and nuance by Rie Miyezawa, is an award-winning writer who begins a caregiving job at Crescent Garden, a facility for the disabled. This facility, nestled deep in a forest, plays a major emotional role in the movie as it emanates a tension that never quite eases. It is depicted with classic horror tropes— the ominous score hinting at an impending or already happening disaster, the dimly-lit hallways, the overhead shots suggesting someone/something is watching, and the uncanny demeanor of the people who work here.  

    It is through Crescent Garden and what it stands for that the film explored various questions; it is the object of the truth that needed to be seen, known, and made known.

    For example, Yoko wanted to work in this facility to help her deal with past personal trauma, but will she, as a writer, open her eyes to the horrific truth about the facility and write about it truthfully? Or will she succumb to conceit and write only what would sell? This is a challenge constantly raised by her co-workers–her namesake Yoko (Fumi Nikaido), who aspires to be a writer of the same caliber as her, and Sato (Hayato Isomura in a brilliant performance), a seemingly sympathetic caregiver with an increasingly mysterious undercurrent.

    Both Yoko 2 and Sato’s own personal issues are also dealt with through the lens of the facility. For Yoko 2, it’s the question of personal worth. For Sato, it’s the meaning of being human itself. Concurrently, the film also tried to address the grief of Yoko 1’s husband, Shohei (Joe Odagiri), although not directly in relation to the facility itself.

    While well-intentioned, this attempt to offer answers to every philosophical question that the narrative met along the way has made for an unnecessarily long but somehow incomplete film, as some of the big questions that the film opened were not satisfyingly answered. It is also a bit uncanny that the film tries to be about the disabled, disability, and their place and dignity in society, but much of the exposition of this theme comes from the abled.

    The film naturally resolved from the perspective of Yoko 1, who saw the truth and knew what it meant for her personally and in relation to exposing it to the public. But in the end, you will be hard pressed to know what kind of film this is. A melodrama? A psychological thriller? A philosophical slasher? There are a lot of films that are genre-agnostic, but the sort of thematic mishmash in The Moon didn’t quite build into a solid whole. 

    3/5

  • 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.

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

    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.