Author Topic: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts  (Read 561685 times)

pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2230 on: November 05, 2016, 05:21:59 PM »
Round Three Bonus Resurrection Review


My Neighbors the Yamadas  (Takahata Isao, 1999)
Won over Black Jack (verdict by Bill Thompson)
Lost to Tonight Nobody Goes Home (verdict by BlueVoid)

Yamadas was supposed to get resurrection consideration at the end of the last round, along with Rainclouds over Wushan and Adrenaline Drive, but we got to a point where I already had six worthy resurrection candidates and we were anxious to start the third round. I actually did give Yamadas a brief look back then, watching about 15-20 minutes, but it seemed a bit too episodic for my liking, and a bit inessential. But in the three years since, I've really regretted not giving Takahata's film a fair chance — even moreso recently, with the film back on my radar for the 1999 Retrospots and my own Animation Marathon. So here we are.

The other bit of backstory here is that I've recently been considering myself tested for ADHD. It's getting harder and harder for me to watch a movie from beginning to end without multiple interruptions. Two hours is too long for the right hemisphere of my brain to focus on anything. A film like Yamadas, with its lack of any sort of through-line, is pretty much worst case scenario for me. As cute and pleasant as some of the individual scenes are, they're too discrete my for liking (and/or for my viewing capabilities). The film is the equivalent of leafing through a comic strip collection and reading various pages at random. Watching the DVD chapters out of order wouldn't really diminish the viewing experience at all.

I really appreciate the minimalist impressionism of the animation here — the way the film is like a watercolor sketch in motion — but there's a sameness to it all that bored me a bit after a while. I was grateful for any deviations, like the dad's Masked Avenger fantasy sequence or the "Que Sera Sera" finale. My favorite moment by far, though, was the ninja-like battle pictured above, with the mom trying to change the channel on the tv from the baseball game to a movie, and the dad using a newspaper to block the remote's sensor. ("Any movie that features a remote controller versus paper ninja showdown automatically wins my heart," agreed Bill in the first round.)

When all is said and done, I empathize completely with BlueVoid's second round verdict. I probably would have made the exact same decision, with the exact same caveats. So My Neighbors the Yamadas won't be re-entering the bracket for the fourth round.

Bonus Resurrection Standings (the top film will earn resurrection)
  • My Neighbors the Yamadas

Up next: Another film from Japan. In fact, all five films under consideration for this bonus resurrection are from Japan — a combination of coincidence and the fact that I took the quality of the available transfer into consideration when trimming down the list. A Borrowed Life, Don't Cry, Nanking, and Hill of No Return fell out of consideration for this reason.

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« Last Edit: November 06, 2016, 12:26:11 AM by pixote »
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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2231 on: November 05, 2016, 06:28:01 PM »
Shame you didn't like it more, but there are at least a handful of better Ghibli films still in the bracket.

pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2232 on: November 05, 2016, 09:55:21 PM »
Round Three Bonus Resurrection Review



This Window Is Yours  (Furumaya Tomoyuki, 1994)

You know the guy on his front porch in It's a Wonderful Life who chastises George Bailey, "Who don't you kiss her instead of talking her to death?" This Window Is Yours turns everyone in its audience into that guy.

Furumaya's low-budget debut feature is a quiet meditation on the incipient sexual desires of a group of teenagers in the lazy days of summer. It at times calls to mind Wedekind's Spring Awakening and a heteronormative Like Grains of Sand, but with the rhythms of a Jim Jarmusch film. There are just seven characters: three newly lusty guys and three newly lusty girls, plus one nerdy guy with glasses who will no doubt be a total player once he gets to college. The six main characters form a series of overlapping love triangles, with the guys all attracted to most every girl, and vice versa. The friendly interactions between them all are increasingly flirtatious, but almost in an unknowing way, like boys pulling ponytails on the playground. These teens are mostly at a loss to understand what they're feeling, let alone articulate their thoughts. As a result, the film is littered with wry silence and passive-aggressive jealousies, reaching the peak of sexual tension during a water fight with a garden hose.

The pacing of the film matches that summer setting, teetering between charming relaxation and anxious boredom. The score does its best to keep things playful — often sounding like a 70s rock cover band jamming between sets — though there are a couple scenes where it detracts from the moment rather than enhances it. At its best, the score feels like it's smiling at the characters with knowing adult wisdom and memories of having lived through similar times years before, with the electric guitars gently singing, "Ah, youth is wasted on the wrong people."

This Window Is Yours was going to have a be almost a perfect film in order to earn entry into the bracket, for it's the only film in this batch that's not available in a quality transfer. Really I just wanted an excuse to watch it now, eight years after first reading about it when researching films for this bracket and seeing an IMDb review that referenced "FLCL meets Kurosawa." But it's by no means a perfect film. Instead, it's typical debut feature from a promising director, rough around the edges but made with good instincts and a lot of care. I'm glad to have finally seen it.

Bonus Resurrection Standings (the top film will earn resurrection)

Up next: The feature film debut of a director whose sophomore effort has already advanced to the fourth round.

pixote
« Last Edit: January 03, 2017, 08:40:36 PM by pixote »
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pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2233 on: November 06, 2016, 12:22:30 AM »
Round Three Bonus Resurrection Review



2/Duo  (Suwa Nobuhiro, 1997)

Want to pick the scab of an old breakup? Then have I got the film for you!

2/Duo is one of those minimalist films that puts its characters under a microscope and watches them burn. The characters in this case are Kei and Yu, a young couple in a tumultuous relationship. Suwa films them in long-takes, with very little camera movement and just occassion bits of score, letting the frame of shot confine us within this couple's dysfunctional love. It's a very effective style, especially the tendency to leave one half of the couple just outside the frame, or with their back to the camera (as pictured above, from a shot that lasts three minutes), leaving us only to guess how that actor is reacting, the same way these characters are struggling to read each other's minds, since they're both so emotionally inarticulate.

I'd be marginally okay with granting 2/Duo entry into the bracket, but I'm really hoping that one of the remaining two films surpassess it in the standings. I imagine it will be a love-it-or-hate-it experience for a lot of people, as has been the case with many of the Jonathan Rosenbaum-approved entrants. I'm a bit mixed on the film myself, having been disappointed by the characters' tendency towards emotional violence and psychiatric deterioration. Those aspects made the film feel overly written too me. I wish the screenplay had better matched the subtlety of the direction throughout — something I hope to find in Suwa's M/Other, when I finally get a chance to watch it.

Bonus Resurrection Standings (the top film will earn resurrection)

Up next: A film from a director that had three films in round one but zero films in round three.

pixote
« Last Edit: November 06, 2016, 12:26:50 AM by pixote »
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pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2234 on: November 06, 2016, 12:25:41 AM »
For anyone interested, here's an English-subtitled excerpt from early on in 2/Duo, giving you a sense the film's style and tone.

pixote
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smirnoff

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2235 on: November 06, 2016, 01:29:56 AM »
Rooting for the next two to be great! :) Good luck!

BlueVoid

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2236 on: November 06, 2016, 11:07:19 AM »

Up next: Another film from Japan. In fact, all five films under consideration for this bonus resurrection are from Japan — a combination of coincidence and the fact that I took the quality of the available transfer into consideration when trimming down the list. A Borrowed Life, Don't Cry, Nanking, and Hill of No Return fell out of consideration for this reason.

pixote

Darn! 'Don't Cry Nanking' was one of my favorites in this bracket. It was tough to kick out.

Great set of review Pix! Hope one of the remaining films is more of a home run for you and gets into the next round.
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pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2237 on: November 07, 2016, 09:59:01 PM »
Round Three Bonus Resurrection Review



































Moe no suzaku  (Kawase Naomi, 1997)
Won over Black Republic (verdict by roujin)
Lost to Comrades, Almost a Love Story (verdict by smirnoff)

So, funny story. Halfway through the third round, I randomly started wondering how Moe no suzaku was faring in the bracket. It was one of the films I was most looking forward to seeing, but it wasn't on my lineup for resurrection, nor had I seen it advance to the fourth round. When I checked the results page, I was shocked to see that it had been eliminated back in round two. That didn't seem possible to me. How did I miss considering it for resurrection then?! I must have been drunk when I exiled the film to the waitlist, writing, "smirnoff was sort of elliptical in describing why he wasn't a fan of this movie, which seems fitting, given roujin's mention of Kawase's 'sometimes elliptical way of showing narrative information.' I'm definitely intrigued, and I'm not even sure why." I honestly don't know what I was thinking, given how enthusiastic I had been to watch this fiction feature debut from Kawase. My bad.

Now that I'm somewhat righting that wrong, I can say that the film is more or less what I'd hoped it would be: a quiet, patient movie that makes the most of its beautiful mountain village setting. At the same time, I can completely understand how it got kicked out of the bracket. For one thing, Comrades, Almost a Love Story is too good of a film for Moe no suzake to have faced in just the second round. And, more importantly, smirnoff is absolutely the last person here I would have recommended Kawase's film to! There's not even the slightest hint of a plot point until about thirty-five minutes in. Most everything is meditative suggetion. I tend to like that sort of thing, but even I bristled when, seventeen minutes in, right as I was finally adjusting to the film's rhythm and identifying with the characters, the story jumped ahead fifteen years. And then later, when there finally are some major narrative moments, they're so downplayed as to leave you unsure exactly what the heck just happened. Simulatenously frustrating and appealing.

Moe no suzaku deserved resurrection after the second round. It's borderline as to whether it still deserves it a round later. I can't really imagine it making any sort of dent in the bracket beyond one more matchup, and the stylistic niche it fills is already well covered by the superior Spring in My Hometown. But it's definitely a film that deserves to be seen and discussed, so I'd be happy to help continue that conversation.

Bonus Resurrection Standings (the top film will earn resurrection)

Up next: A film that two different people over the years have messaged me about, in relation to its absence from the bracket.

pixote
« Last Edit: November 07, 2016, 10:05:14 PM by pixote »
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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2238 on: November 07, 2016, 10:55:15 PM »
Love the framing in those stills, love your description. I could see myself liking this film. If I get the chance, I'd totally pick it in a matchup.

pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2239 on: November 08, 2016, 12:14:22 AM »
Round Three Bonus Resurrection Review

















































Moving  (Sômai Shinji, 1993)

Here's an abbreviated list of films that came to mind as points of comparison during my screening of Moving: Kramer vs. Kramer, Mrs. Doubtfire, The Family Game, Ordinary People, Paris, Texas, Boyhood, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Love Exposure, Ponette, Léolo, The Four Hundred Blows, All About Lily Chou-Chou, and An American in Paris. That maybe gives you some idea of how Sômai's film is very familiar and yet, simultaneously, very distinctive.

If your pattern recognition skills are operating at or near indutry standards, you'll have rightly guessed that Moving is a Japenese film about a young girl coming to terms with her parents' separation. If you're in the advanced class, you might have further deduced that Sômai's film artfully adopts the subjective point of view of the young protagonist and culminates in a twenty-minute ballet sequence (or the equivalent). But you don't have quite enough clues at your disposal to know that Tabata Tomoko, as Renko, gives one of the all-time great child performances. The role demands that she play Renko not as the confused, vulnerable girl she probably is, but rather as the completely self-possessed girl Renko sees herself to be. And Tabata is absolutely phenomenal. Sômai puts the whole film on her back, and she carries it with the preternatural poise of her character. (Had Moving been a remake of The Exorcist, it might well have been the scariest movie of all time.)

Sômai is an artful director, with a knack for orchestrating long takes in a way that disguises their length and keeps them more absorbing than distancing; and the script, despite its familiar trappings, is fairly savvy about veering in the less expected direction, both between scenes and within scenes. Still, there's something about Moving that makes it a movie I admire more than I like — on least on this initial viewing. I haven't quite pinpointed why that is. One certain problem is a repetitiveness that dogs the film's second act, with Renko rebuffing a parent and running away on too many occasions. The subjective portrayal of her character and her parents can be very frustrating at times, and I bet myself that I'd find at least one reviewer that couldn't enjoy the film because they spent the whole viewing wanting to spank her (and I won). There's definitely something to that; but then the final act of the film is as unexpected as it is redemptive.

Even though I didn't fall in love with anything, I'm still really happy with the batch of films I chose to consider to fill out the fourth round of the bracket. Yamadas got me off to a solid start, and then each film after that was progressively better. That's not exactly a coincidence: I watched them in the order of what I guessed the likelihood of resurrection would be. I'm not sure if I truly guessed right, or if it was self-fulfilling prophecy. It's especially hard to tell because This Window Is Yours, 2/Duo, Moe no suzaku, and Moving are all perfectly solid films, with very little to separate them, in terms of quality. This Window Is Yours, despite ranking fourth, might actually be the most likely to win an audience award. But what ultimately sets Moving apart is its distinctiveness. There's already another Suwa film in the bracket, and there are other films stylistically close to Moe no suzaku, but to my knowledge, there's nothing quite like Moving, not even among Iwai's many entrants. Sômai brings a fresh voice to the bracket, and so I'm happy to add his film into the mix. It doesn't hurt, either, that it's available on YouTube; and that roujin, worm@work, and some Scottish guy discuss it at length on this podcast.

Bonus Resurrection Standings (the top film will earn resurrection)

Up next: Round four!

pixote
« Last Edit: November 08, 2016, 01:51:36 AM by pixote »
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