Round One Resurrection Forecast, Films 81 - 85Dangan Runner (Sabu, 1996)
Lost to Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Overture to a New War (verdict by Melvil)I spent much of the running time here making comparisons to
Postman Blues – and that was before it even clicked in my head that the films are from the same director. I can pretty much just copy and paste
my Postman Blues review here and be done with it. Let's see:
The opening of this sets up a movie I'd really like to see. Oh yeah, totally.
Dangan Runner opens as a coolly comedic heist film, as a nervous loser tries to get his life on track by robbing a bank. I imagine I would've really enjoyed that film, and Sabu – who is generally a very talented director, at least in terms of pacing and style – could have done a great job with it. But the heist goes off the rails before it even begins, and the film becomes an over-the-top comedy about a day-long foot chase through the city streets.
Most of the moments of sheer silliness just don't work. For sure, and sheer silliness is more than an element of
Dangan Runnerr; it's the foundation.
It's as though the filmmakers purposefully undercut the story because they didn't have complete faith in their material. Still true. The difference, though, is that
Postman Blues still manages to be a decently entertaining film, on the whole, whereas
Dangan Runner goes steadily downhill to the point of being infuriating — even while there's somehow still something a little likeable about it.
In other words, pretty much what roujin said. Yep, except in this case, I mean Melvin.
Black Republic (Park Kwang-su, 1990)
Lost to Moe no suzaku (verdict by roujin)Yet another early 90s Korean film that I failed to watch all the way through. There are, as roujin said, some interesting elements buried within the narrative, but the film makes so little effort to engage with them (at least, not in the forty minutes I allotted it). I was again reminded more of a television aesthetic than a cinematic one. The slow pace doesn't feel at all meditative, but instead just like the producers needed to draw out the story to fill a two-hour time slot. As such, the film is innocuously watchable but hardly entertaining or compelling. It really could have used some commercial breaks to spice things up. Fear not, though, South Korea. I'm sure you'll make a strong comeback in the 2000s Far East Bracket.
King of Chess (Yim Ho, 1991)
Lost to The King of Comedy (verdict by FLYmeatwad)I still have forty-five minutes left to watch of
King of Chess, and I'm determined to do it, despite the film's best efforts to dissuade me. I thought I remembered FLY really loving this film and being reluctant to kick it out (in actuality, he said, "a nice little film to watch, just nothing that is really spectacular") — and between that and the title, I went in pretty much expecting a resurrection. Then the film started, and shit got weird. Like, really weird. First of all, the credits listed both Hou Hsaio-Hsien and Tsui Hark as producers. My mind still can't even process that. And the resulting film is similarly incomprehensible. It opens with a five-minute montage of Mao parades, gatherings, and things, all backed by a very earnest sounding rock song (the lyrics of which weren't subtitled, unfortunately). There immediately follows an audio montage, this one about two minutes long, of random, generic television clips. I guess we're being set up for a dialectical exploration of the cult of personality or something, but then we spend another seven minutes just sort of wandering around a tv studio, not really latching on to any particular character or idea. When the woman who most seems like our protagonist goes to seek help from a friend, we find ourselves immersed in
his childhood flashback. We're like twenty-five minutes into the film at this point, mind you, and most of this is edited in that awkward and abrupt early 90s Hong Kong style that always feel so unpolished to me, especially when combined with really awful dubbing (the Cantonese track here is only marginally better than the Mandarin one). And all the while, I'm getting really pissed off, thinking, "Where the f—k is the cute kid who can predict the future?" He eventually does show up, and he's every bit as adorable as the above screenshot would have you believe, but it's kind of all for naught within the mess of this film. It's much more a Tsui Hark movie than a Hou Hsiao-Hsien movie, which is too bad. (Tsui reportedly took over the direction after Yim Ho left the project in frustration.) I'm guessing the source novel is really, really fascinating. I mean, it just has to be.
Samurai Fiction (Nakano Hiroyuki, 1998)
Lost to Dr. Akagi (verdict by smirnoff)Oh right, this movie. It feels like the work of very talented high schoolers. "Hey, dudes, let's make a samurai flick this weekend." "Aw, why? They're so old-fashioned." "Not our movie, man. We'll get Koji's older brother to play some electric guitar solos during the fight scenes? It'll be awesome!" And more power to them, I say. It's just not for me. I gave up after twenty minutes. Maybe if the black-and-white photography had looked better, or if the fight choreography held any interest, or if the jokey anachronistic stuff had been funny, or if I'd watched it with Tequila's younger self. One thing I did like, though: the three hundred-year old story is being recounted in voiceover by a samurai in the present day. That intrigued me, leading me to believe the movie was going to be like a Japanese
Highlander meets
The Navigator: A Mediaeval Odyssey. But no. And the original Japanese title,
SF: Episode One, had me thinking it'd be like
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. But no.
Sumo Do, Sumo Don't (Suo Masayuki, 1992)
Lost to He's a Woman, She's a Man (verdict by roujin)I so so so want to resurrect this. But even taking into account my occasional sumo fandom, it's just not good enough. I enjoyed it more than anything else this round, though. As roujin said, it's just another movie about a sports team made up of a band of misfits. Very predictable, but pleasantly so. I really liked most of the leads and am curious to track their progress throughout the rest of the bracket. (And maybe now I'll finally watch the Oscar-winning
Departures, just to see what Motoki Masahiro is up to seventeen years later.) It's simultaneously homoerotic and homophobic, which is always an interesting blend, and it definitely had me smiling on more than a few occasions (and not just at offhand references to Wakanohana and Takanohana). Overall, though, it just needed a bit more polish and a bit more spark to the narrative. I've been wanting to see it since well before this bracket started, and I'm glad I finally caught up with it, but I'd stop short of recommending it to anyone else.
Up next:
Eighteen Springs,
Bad Movie,
Getting Any?,
Love Letter, and
Ermo.
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