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Author Topic: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts  (Read 561821 times)

flieger

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1420 on: October 14, 2010, 11:26:39 PM »

How can anything with a shot like this lose?  :) Great reviews, matt.

Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1421 on: October 15, 2010, 01:55:44 AM »
This is actually the first Jackie Chan I've ever seen. I'd definitely be up for more.


Yeoh is great in this one. Loved the pinning-the-guy-to-the-table-with-her-leg move.

Great review, if you are going to check out more go for his HK stuff in preference to the US, and leave the Aus stuff to much later. I would suggest Armour of God 2, Project A Part 1 and 2, or any of the Police Stories as an excellent starting point.


mañana

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1422 on: October 15, 2010, 02:02:25 PM »
I would suggest Armour of God 2, Project A Part 1 and 2, or any of the Police Stories as an excellent starting point.
the first two (which are much better, by the way).
Police Story 4 is in another world (actually, it's Australia, but still). So good.
Thanks for the suggestions, y'all.


How can anything with a shot like this lose?  :) Great reviews, matt.
I know, right? I'm telling ya, like this and this, it's so much better out of context.  :)
There's no deceit in the cauliflower.

ProperCharlie

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1423 on: October 17, 2010, 12:42:32 PM »
Two films about women reaching very different moments of change in their lives...

Omocha (1999) aka The Geisha House


A set of interlocking stories set in and around a traditional geisha house in 1950s Kyoto.  A madam, an elderly house-keeper, three working geisha and a younger apprentice live in a traditional world quite apart from a turbulent modernising world outside. Anti-prostitution legislation has been passed threatening their livelihood, cheap call-girls are undercutting their business, younger men don’t understand the appeal of the geisha as their fathers have.  What’s more the rich patron of Madam Satoe wants to withdraw his multi-million yen support - leaving the house with no funding, funding needed to pay the bills for kimonos, funding needed if young Tokiko is to become a maiko, the last step before becoming a geisha.

This plays out as an early Merchant Ivory production of a minor Jane Austen novel that just happens to revolve around the world of 1950s geisha, featuring some of the cast from a live-action Totally Spies!   Beautiful, historically accurate kimonos, screens, make-up and tales of old values in a more modern time, with some of the most high-pitched enthusiastic laughter your ears can experience.  If that sounds horrific, it’s not.  It’s engaging with its own pace and charm.  Right up until the final 15 minutes that is, but more of that later on.  

There is a hint of Pride and Prejudice about the set up.  A house without an income, four young women in search of a man with a sizable fortune.  More than one man each preferably.  Each of the geisha has their own personality.  One is headstrong but shrewd, it would be a foolish man to cross her...  One is quieter yet attractive and not averse to stealing the men from the others.  One is ditzy, but don’t let that fool you.  If you’re a man with money - she’ll remove it from you in short order.  Tokiko, the young, soon-to-be maiko is quiet, diligent and trying to support her poor family who don’t wholly approve of the her career choice.  

The acting is mixed. Sumiko Fugi is good as Madam Satoe is fine as the quiet, strong matriarch who knows the sacrifices that a geisha must make, the mask she must wear, and who despite her age has to make them again.  Maki Miyamoto as Tokiko is the heart of the film, and she does well without much dialogue to work with.  I’m less sure of the three geisha who have the lion’s share of the lines.  Their roles seem caricaturish, but they bring the energy and drive to the various plot lines pushing them forward in a flurry of kimono-silk and a cacophony of girlish giggling.  The men, well, they’re mostly generic bumbling fools.  

The direction is passable, although there are a couple of ham-fisted emotional scenes when Tokiko has to confront her decision to become a geisha - when she goes to say goodbye to her handsome son-of-a-sawmill owner romantic interest, she just misses him as he goes out to deliver timber.  It’s all a bit clumsy.  Otherwise the stories go in interesting directions, and take you into the heart of the geisha’s lives, showing that behind the fragile, delicate dignity are strong, feisty, independent young women.  Not the norm for Japan.

BUT - then comes the final 15 minutes when you can forget about anything good in this film,  because it all goes horribly wrong.  Director Fukasaka smears the lens with an entire tub of Vaseline, brings in some stirring scoring with many, many inappropriately triumphant and romantic crescendos and uses blatantly obvious imagery in lieu of acting for what should be both strong scenes for Tokiko (now named Omocha - after a type of toy...) and a distressingly painful one.  It’s a complicated scene to act and to direct, with range of conflicting emotions that have to be expressed in an environment that does not allow freedom of expression.  It’s an utter failure and sadly disappointing.  

I’m sure there are subtleties I’m missing.  My cultural awareness has many blind-spots. What’s going on may be deeply ironic and critical.  But to me, this looks straight; a paean to traditional values made for an older, male audience.  It ruins what went before, rendering all the other characters and plots insignificant.  This is what it’s all been leading up to, and it jars.  Less care has been taken with the period setting for this part.  1990s cars can be seen on the roads, it’s as if the film has shot forward 40 years. It feels like this finale has been made by someone else and tacked on.  

An altogether uncomfortable experience for all the wrong reasons

Omohide poro poro (1991) aka Only Yesterday


Taeko, a 27 year-old Tokyo office lady, decides to go out to the country to pick safflower for her annual holiday. Throughout the holiday she’s drawn back to memories of her 10 year-old self as she reflects on where she is now and whether it’s where she wants to be.

Those moments from Taeko’s childhood that are what remain with you after the film, both the happy and the sad.  There’s one particular scene that stuck with me.  Taeko is sitting on the floor of her room with a 1960s black & white TV playing a puppet show which continues in its manic, upbeat, surreal way.  Suddenly far too innocent for the sad and lonely girl who’s had her dreams whisked away by parents who she both loves and yet doesn’t understand.  You see the room reflected in the small, old, highly curved screen as she sits in silence.  Dreams being shattered quietly while the rest of the world carries on oblivious.  A wonderful moment of both mood and recollection of a time gone by.

There are many such moments to enjoy.  They're gift-wrapped ready to reveal themselves to us every time we take a journey back into Taeko’s past.  You don’t know if you’re getting happy or sad, fun or serious.  

Her family are ordinary but perfectly written. Her taciturn father who has absolute authority, his few words carry an infinite weight; her worrying mother who nevertheless doesn’t recognize her daughter’s feelings and experiences; her impatient sisters in their own, older worlds who think their youngest sister is backwards.  From such normality springs emotional inertia trapping Taeko where she is, unknowing and unaware.   It’s that unawareness of her own 27 year-old feelings and desires that’s probably the best thing about this entire film.  It’s a tricky issue to portray - how to make it apparent both that she has such deep unfulfilled desire while at the same time that she’s contentedly finding her passage through life without noticing?  It’s achieved simply and clearly.  Brilliant writing.

If there are any criticism, it’s that it can drag.  I think this may be a drawback of animated films in general - if things progress too slowly you’re sat there willing them to draw faster!  I started noticing points where the production team seemed to be trying to save on animation costs by reusing backdrops or not animating movement with as many intermediate cells as they could.  Sometimes the nostalgic mood could evaporate as the film threatened to grind to a halt.  It was always brought back again.  I’m uncertain as to what the editing process is with a film such as this - but in a film with so many silent moments of stillness, it must be a challenge to animate it in a way to hold the mood which would be considerably easier with cinematography.

Of my current top ten films I’ve seen this year, five concern childhood or incidents occurring in childhood.  It’s not surprising then that I love this wonderful adult animation about letting go of childhood and moving on in life

No question as to which film’s progressing: Only Yesterday continues
« Last Edit: October 26, 2010, 10:05:53 AM by ProperCharlie »

roujin

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1424 on: October 17, 2010, 12:48:49 PM »
Awesome. Only Yesterday is great.

MartinTeller

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1425 on: October 17, 2010, 12:56:38 PM »
Only Yesterday is one of my favorites.  It's very Ozu-esque (in fact I think there's a passing reference to Early Summer).

BlueVoid

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1426 on: October 17, 2010, 08:55:21 PM »
Enjoyed the writeups ProperCharlie.  It looks like the right film is moving on.  Nice to see some animated films in round 3.
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Bondo

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1427 on: October 18, 2010, 12:30:26 AM »
Ringu (Hideo Nakata, 1998)

So I watched The Ring back when it came out and consider it quite successful at being terrifying (this would be a film that would perhaps be too intense in 3D). Like many others, this sparked a fascination in some of the J-horror (and other Asian horror) that was coming out at a rapid pace, seeing films like The Grudge and The Eye (original versions) and liking them a lot too. But I never went back to the original with Ringu.

While I understand some of the basic plot points, I don’t remember much of The Ring at this point so I think that helps view it fresh. Watching Ringu says that either I can be reassured that Americanized remakes of foreign films sometimes do work out (contra Let Me In) or the whole business wasn’t quite as good as I remember.

We see one indication of difference right at the start with the two girls talking about the urban legend and the one informing the other that she saw the video a week prior. This scene is played much more graphically in the remake but also in a more suspenseful way. Moving on from this I just feel like Ringu has a combination of rough transitions and a lot of scenes that drag a bit that I didn’t notice as much in The Ring. Like many claim with Let Me In (though in that case I’m not inclined to agree), a remake can use hindsight to tighten things up. Combining this with the resources and higher quality acting available to the American film really does make it the superior take.

Now, I don’t want to go too far here. This is the same basic story and that is enough to earn this a passing grade, but it just doesn’t have the same energy. Though like I said in my Poltergeist review, the use of television as part of the source for terror is kind of brilliant for something you watch on a television. I’d also like to think the fact that phones figure in so centrally to a lot of horror films is because phones are evil. Phones, like clowns, are scary enough when they act normally.

License to Live (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1998)

This marks my second K. Kurosawa film after seeing Pulse for my 200X marathon. That was a film that had an interesting mood and setting about it but didn’t quite fit together in a way that inspired great affection but does certainly have me approaching this film with some anticipation.

The basic premise is this kid wakes up from a ten year coma, now in his 20s, but having not been awake for ten years still experiences things from the perspective of a younger person. This premise would be exploited poorly as a raunchy comedy or something in the US and would be terrible. Here it is a much more contemplative tone to match Kurosawa’s glacially slow pacing and lethargic camera movements, though not above the occasional humorous moment.

As you might tell by some of my word choices in that last sentence, it didn’t fully work for me. Kurosawa really tests my patience and while there is much of interest there were many aspects of our main character that didn’t say “teen in an adult’s body” but “teen with a major behavioral problem.” Which would be fine I suppose if I felt like the film was going for that. We don’t get much indication of his personality prior to the coma but it seems like a rather radical shift. This shift could easily be explained by the emotional stress of the situation or by the trauma that put him in the coma, but I’d like the film to address it a bit more forthrightly.

The film plodded along well enough until the final 15 minutes when it takes a sharp turn that just didn’t do anything useful for me and rather ruined the mood I was getting from it. Even if I wasn’t loving the film it was rather disappointing to see it implode in this way.

Verdict: I was prepared to give this one to License To Live until its final 15 minutes when it nuked the fridge and made me settle for the reasonable but underwhelming Ringu.

BlueVoid

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1428 on: October 18, 2010, 01:34:28 AM »
Ack! Tough to see a Kurosawa go down.  I remember having problems with the ending myself, but I did enjoy the film a lot overall. I thought it dealt with the subject matter in an interesting way, and was completely enamored by the boys desperate attempts to regain some sanity in his life. 

I always wanted to check out Ringu though, so I'm not totally torn up over the verdict.  There is at least one Kurosawa going on to round 3, and the fate another lays in my hands. :)

Nice job Bondo.  Just curious though.  What did you think of Kôji Yakusho in his role?
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Bondo

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1429 on: October 18, 2010, 08:47:02 AM »
What did you think of Kôji Yakusho in his role?

I don't have overly strong sentiments but I do think it was a good character as the one with the strongest bond. Looking him up I realize he's the lead in The Eel, which I dispatched in the first round. Anyway, it was a very tough call. I didn't really think Ringu needed more exposure but ultimately it is the film I liked more and I didn't feel right taking out the seeded entry (and the one people can find a bit easier) by placing them on a curve.

 

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