Author Topic: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts  (Read 561661 times)

Jared

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2300 on: December 07, 2016, 10:11:15 PM »
Sopyonje vs The Road Home

I don't really base which movies I select for this thing based on anything...just happy to watch new stuff, and this far into the bracket, where we are whittling the original list down to its top 10%, I'm not worried that anything is going to be a waste of time. It is a happy bit of coincidence, however, to get two movies with somewhat similar plots. Much easier to compare apples to apples.

Both movies tell the story of a middle aged man returning to the village he once called home as a child, and a good deal of both movies are spent in flashback.


Sopyonje


Dong-ho reflects on his childhood, when he was adopted by his mother's singer boyfriend Youbong following her death. Youbong is a pansori singer and takes Dong-ho on as a drummer. His other adopted child is Songhwa, a girl who he teaches to sing.

The family travels Korea, performing here and there. The movie really takes the time to put the music on display, which is really moving and interesting if not exactly pleasant to listen to. The best of these scenes comes about halfway through the movie, where in one static shot we watch our three leads start a song from way in the background on a patch of country road, and they sing and dance for about 5 minutes as they slowly approach the camera.

Youbong is determined that the music will be best if it is twinged with suffering, so he subconsciously and sometimes very purposefully tries to inflict it on his children at several troubling scenes throughout the movie.They eventually fracture apart because of this and we learn that a lot of Dong-ho's search is an attempt to reconcile these severed ties.

I thought this was a really nice movie with some heartbreaking moments and some alluring music that really pulls you in.


The Road Home


A man returns to his country village upon the death of his father. As the townspeople talk to him about the school house that his father wanted to rebuild and how is mother is requiring a more challenging funeral ceremony, he reflects on his parents' love story. It really is a wonderful story.

Zhao Di (Ziyi Zhang) becomes the main character once we get into the flashback, and we watch her painstakingly attempt to woo the new teacher in town, and we see pretty quickly that the affection is mutual.

It is a beautiful film that just lets you set in its world for awhile, taking time to show us all the ins and outs of everyday life in the village: cooking, getting water from the well, repairing a bowl, etc.

I was really surprised that I ended up kicking a Yimou Zhang film out in my last verdict. I really liked To Live, but having now seen this, I don't even think To Live would be one of my three favorites of him in the decade.


The Verdict

A really enjoyable match up for me...hard to complain about anything in this 4th round so far. I like Sopyonje and I am really glad I watched it, but with the Road Home I felt like I was in the hands of a master. The Road Home is a terrific movie and has to be the one that moves forward here.

smirnoff

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2301 on: December 08, 2016, 12:37:46 AM »

After Life
(Hirokazu Koreeda, 1998)
Round 1 review by Bondo
Round 2 review by BlueVoid
Round 3 review by Beavermoose

               VS               

Musuko
(Yôji Yamada, 1991)
Round 1 review by Melvil
Round 2 review by roujin
Round 3 review by Bluevoid
Resurrection review by pixote






After Life


I'm not sure if a person is better off knowing the premise of this story ahead of time or not. I did not, and that made the first 15 or 20 minutes quite different. Clues trickled in at a satisfying pace and finally I understood where I was and what was happening. I might've understood sooner but the film adopted such a plain and honest manner that I didn't suspect anything so whimsical. Eventually there was no other conclusion left to come to though, at which point I thought "this is neat".

The matter of fact style, which early on ran so contrary to my initial expectations, came to serve this imaginative film so well. The humbleness of the world and its characters was very endearing and put me on the film's side as it explored or provoked a lot of thoughtful ideas. And the film provides such a variety of perspectives for interpreting those ideas that it almost guarantees you'll recognize yourself among the characters.

While asking deep and difficult questions the film spins it own small dramas. Office politics and romances of a sort. I liked the real-worldiness this aspect of the film added to the already earthy style more than I liked the actual ins and outs of that particular drama.

This is not a film of emotional outbursts, which is a bit strange when so many characters are making big cathartic breakthroughs. There were more than a couple of occasions where my sentimentality wanted to see some of these emotional moments get milked for more than controlled melancholy. In that regard the film is, in my opinion, rather too humble.

It's important to note though that these criticisms came after the film had ended. They occurred to me after having time to consider the experience as a whole, and knowing, in the back of my mind, I would have to weigh this film against another. The viewing itself was unblemished. Or nearly so. Engaging, thoughtful, and pleasant, with a few small wows.



Musuko






I familiarized myself with this film by reading a few bits of previous reviews before selecting it. It seemed to have surprised everyone who watched it in one way or another:

Another terrific surprise from the Far East bracket! :)

The brow is right in the middle, but I didn't mind. For once.

This type of story frequently bores me, but here it works exceptionally well and I was engaged with every character.

I remained adequately entertained and engaged but kept waiting and waiting for at least one exceptional moment — some sharply observed characterization or a scene of heightened drama. And wishes do come true, for then Yamada delivered a scene of such cumulative impact that it instantly reshaped my appreciation of the entire film to that point.

Everyone seemed to land somewhere between glowing and very positive, and my own reaction falls somewhere within that same range.

The father and younger son character split the screen time and both of their journeys engaged me. I don't know what made it engaging exactly... I couldn't write out what happens and make it sound very interesting. I guess I liked that it spanned a good amount of time and made some real progress on the things in set up in the first act. Most scenes feel like a step forward. And there's  some resolution towards the end.

I especially liked when the film got to the point where the son character had established a relationship with the girl. I would've liked to see their story carry on if the film had been longer.

I don't find I have much else to say about the film, but like After Life it was a very good experience.



Verdict: Very close. I watched After Life first, and then Musuko a few days after. My first impulse was that Musuko was the film I liked more. Later I thought that After Life was the film I would rather watch second time, which speaks to its depth. It felt like I could really go either way on this excellent matchup. Then I considered that being so close I might advance the film that had already been defeated once (Musuko), and in doing so both films might advance, as I think After Life would have a good chance at resurrection. I usually wouldn't game the system like that, but in a tight race like this and finding myself so undecided I don't mind considering it.

Ultimately though, after thinking and writing about the films, and with a couple weeks behind me since my seeing them, After Life seems to be sitting on a higher step. So I'll go with After Life.

smirnoff

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2302 on: December 08, 2016, 12:44:14 AM »
A really enjoyable match up for me...hard to complain about anything in this 4th round so far. I like Sopyonje and I am really glad I watched it, but with the Road Home I felt like I was in the hands of a master. The Road Home is a terrific movie and has to be the one that moves forward here.

One of the few matchups where I've seen both films. I'd definitely have gone the same way. Happy to see The Road Home advancing.

pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2303 on: December 08, 2016, 12:45:33 AM »
So much to respond to later ... but for now I'll just say that I'm glad there are a very limited number of resurrections this round, as it's forcing all of us to make some hard choices. I think if the safety net were larger, there weren't be the same amount of wonderful tension in all these verdicts.

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pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2304 on: December 08, 2016, 04:44:45 PM »
Round Four Resurrection Reviews



Wing Chun  (Yuen Woo-Ping, 1994)
Won over Beat (verdict by Melvil)
Won over Kagerô (verdict by smirnoff)
Won over Supercop (verdict by Jared)
Lost to Pickpocket (verdict by PeacefulAnarchy)

Only 15% of the films in this bracket have one-word titles, but Wing Chun faced four of them. Sadly, that's just about the most substantive thing I have to say about this movie, having lost the review I wrote a month ago. I can say that I enjoyed the film, albeit with reservations. The set-pieces are decently fun but the interstitial shenanigans are lackluster and occasionally frustrating. The film peaked early ("If you can smash this piece of tofu, you win") and late ("If you can extract the spear in three moves, I'll let them go"), with the second act mostly making me want to watch Fong sai yuk or its sequel again. Wing Chun is a decent time at the movies, largely thanks to Michelle Yeoh — and in spite of the fact that there's nothing at all mannish about her (to echo a common complaint in the verdicts).





Hard Boiled  (John Woo, 1992)
Won over The Mission (verdict by mañana)
Won over White Badge (verdict by michael x)
Won over Too Many Ways to Be No. 1 (verdict by BlueVoid)
Lost to After the Rain (verdict by smirnoff)

Man oh man. There are so many good moments but it's all ultimately so stupid. matt didn't bother to recap the plot in round one, thinking that everyone had seen this already. I hadn't, and my response from then makes me chuckle now: "I have no idea what it's about. My guess is it has something do with guys flying in slow motion through the air firing sideways guns in both hands." I was more right than I knew. What's the point of the undercover story? The key info on the triad comes from a completely different character, so all the bloodshed related to the undercover operation seems pointless. And what's the point of the bad guys killing all the hospital patients? A hostage situation never materializes, so it's just cruelty for its own sake. All the death seems irrelevant, so long as it's not that of a main character or one of the damn babies in Labor and Delivery. Frustrating. It's also one of those films where bullets fired at extras always hit their marks but it takes two thousand shots to hit a principal. Fat and Leung are cool, though, and there is plenty of sporadic awesomeness, highlighted by the long take through two floors of the hospital. A dramatic surprise happens there, and it's one that all the senseless mayhem had me rooting for ahead of time. It was extra gratifying that the granting of my wish precipitated such a cool shot. Everything involving Mad Dog is also highlight (except his exit; and his out-of-character disappearance from the first showdown between Fat and Leung), along with all the randomly cool shots, like the blood on a floured face near the start of the film. But there is an equal number of dumb things, like electrocuting yourself on a million-in-one chance it'll open a locked door; or using cables to swing down safely from an exploding building, even though the cables remain slack the whole way down and do nothing to lessen the impact of the fall (that job falls to invisible wire work). The editing annoyed me in the first act — I entertained myself by counting off "one one thousand, two one thousand, three--" and laughed at how consistently the cut came on that same beat. But the editing in the last fifteen minutes comes much closer to the "masterful" art I was told to anticipate. I expected to like this way more than Bullet in the Head, but they're actually very close for me. Glad to have now seen both, though.















Ringu  (Nakata Hideo, 1998)
Won over Fudoh: The New Generation (verdict by Clovis8)
Won over License to Live (verdict by Bondo)
Won over Maborosi (verdict by BlueVoid)
Lost to Cure (verdict by ProperCharlie)

It's rare to see a script this bad result in a film that's so close to being good. Ringu might set the modern-day record for expository dialogue in a horror film. The show-don't-tell moments are no better, relying as they sometimes do on the protagonist's ex-husband randomly demonstrating psychic abilities (what?!). The real horror here is VHS technology and all the standard definition televisions. Terrifying. If the girl behind the cursed videotape had been a better seer, she would have damned a DVD instead. The whole premise teeters on the brink of silliness throughout, but there are enough nice, atmospheric touches to almost sell it all. The examination of the tape was a missed opportunity for a longer sequence in the style of Blowup, but I was always happy when images from the video reasserted themselves in the visuals. I liked the end, too, even though it's only earned by the script's title page and not the hundred subsequent pages. The photography certainly helps, too, and I hope the kid is in one of the sequels, because he's maybe the best part of this movie. Innocent victimhood has never been so creepy.





Pom Poko  (Takahata Isao, 1994)
Won over Tenchi: The Movie (verdict by FLYmeatwad)
Won over Talking Head (verdict by Beavermoose)
Won over Dang Bireley and the Young Gangsters (verdict by Jared)
Lost to Perfect Blue (verdict by BlueVoid)

I wanted the screenshot above to be the gathering-of-forest-creatures moment that struck me as a deliberate reference to Bambi, but I couldn't quickly find it again when scanning back through the DVD. I went with this other image instead because I think Pom Poko appealed to me the most when it operated at the ends of the realism spectrum — either going for a wholly natural representation of raccoons, as above, or venturing into the surreal, like in the wonderful parade of goblins. I was reminded quite often of Spring and Chaos, a film I liked but failed to resurrect after round one; but also of a pothead's fan edit of The Gummi Bears (though the male-to-female ratio of the raccoons is more in line with The Smurfs). There's a lot of wonderful animation in Pom Poko, but it's all at the mercy of a really muddled script with a distracting obsession with testicles (what?!). The reliance on a narrator is very distancing, and the absence of a clear protagonist becomes a barrier to engagement. The terrorist killing of humans made me uncomfortable, from an ethical standpoint, and the limits of the raccoon's shape-shifting powers confused me, from a logic standpoint. (I wonder if "shape-shifting" is poor translation, because the powers seem to extend well beyond that.) I love the imagination on display here, and I agree with the previous verdicts that the various animation styles applied to the raccoons in different contexts is a major highlight, but the two-hour running time felt a lot closer to three. If I watch Pom Poko again, it'll be projected onto a wall with no sound at someone's drunken rooftop party. That'd be the ideal way to view the film, I think.




Audition  (Miike Takashi, 1999)
Won over Yellow Fangs (verdict by Bill Thompson)
Won over Don't Cry, Nanking (verdict by BlueVoid)
Won over Charisma (verdict by Beavermoose)
Lost to Rice People (verdict by Teproc)

I'd seen this before, but almost all I remembered about it was that it was a Kurosawa Kiyoshi film starring Yakusho Kôji — neither of which is true. There are enough similarities here that I can understand my confusion. The textures of Audition's first half aren't quite at Kurosawa's level, though, and a few scenes show flashes of the occasional imprecision that I've come to expect from Miike. But it's still a exquisitely paced slow-burn thriller that masquerades at times as a possible romantic comedy — right until the first shot of girl waiting by her phone, which is one of the great shots of this bracket. The film peaks at that point, for me. Things get less interesting as the thriller takes full hold, occasionally in cartoonish fashion, and with a muddled mix of dream, memory, and fantasy. The final sequence rights the ship, thanks to Miike's patient direction and the Shiina Eihi's terrific, gleeful performance. Audition definitely would have been resurrected after the third round. I suspect it'll fall just short this time around, but we'll see.


Resurrection Standings (the top three films will earn resurrection)
  • Audition
  • Hard Boiled
  • Wing Chun
  • Ringu
  • Pom Poko

Up next: To Live

pixote
« Last Edit: July 07, 2017, 12:58:34 PM by pixote »
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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2305 on: December 08, 2016, 04:48:42 PM »
Standings look about right.

Jared

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2306 on: December 08, 2016, 04:51:17 PM »
Wonderful resurrection reviews....standings in basically the exact opposite order Id put them in though :'(

pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2307 on: December 08, 2016, 05:57:30 PM »
Wonderful resurrection reviews....standings in basically the exact opposite order Id put them in though :'(

You'd have Ringu first and Audition last, right?

How long since you watched Ringu? Has it held up for you over multiple viewings?

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Beavermoose

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2308 on: December 08, 2016, 07:24:29 PM »

Sonatine
I've seen some of Takeshi Kitano's later more humorous takes on the Yakuza genre. (Outrage 1 and 2) The characters in both those movies demonstrate an enormous indifference to death and violence but the violence is so cartoonish that there is never any doubt to the films' comedic nature.
Sonatine is a much more subtle and darker movie. The yakuza wear their flowery shirts which just seem much more appropriate on the beach than in a bloody street gang fight, so about a third through the movie Kitano decides to send them to the beach. The tone goes from tense and violent to playful and meditative as the men find various ways to keep themselves entertained. They have bottle rocket fights and perform a light-hearted stop motion sumo wrestling dance. The indifference to violence is present in this movie as well but is played with a much darker nihilistic tone, there is no fear of death, they are constantly facing it head on, they all know they are headed to their inevitable demise. I really enjoyed this movie and how it contrasts the pain and playfulness of existence.



Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade
Jin-roh, like Mamoru Oshii's other movies, (although he didn't direct it) is impeccably animated, high concept, emotional roller coaster of a movie. A military officer meets and develops a relationship with the sister of a girl for whose death he was responsible. The movie deals with the main character's ptsd like trauma and emotional/romantic response to meeting this girl. The ending is a real gut punch and left me quite bothered and angry which I guess is to the film's credit.
My main problem with the movie (and a lot of other anime) is its lack of subtlety. There is too much voice-over dialogue that seems unnatural, the script unnecessarily pushes the Red Riding Hood allegory so far down our throats with every word the characters speak when it is already so obvious from the movie's title and the character designs.

Sonatine moves on.

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2309 on: December 08, 2016, 08:52:52 PM »
Nice!