Japanese

Yakuza Deka: The Assassin

Given that I know a fair bit about horror and thrillers (especially the lowbudget 70s European attempts!), they’re not that difficult to write about or evaluate in some form. I do, after all, have plenty else to compare them with. This becomes a sort of self-sustaining reason for me not really writing about much else on this blog. You see the word ‘Western’ in the banner above? Not once have I written about a Western (although I have watched loads…). The same with Noir. And, for that matter, Slashers flicks too.

Nowhere in the banner above does it say ‘Japanese Action’. I don’t know much about Japanese action. I’d even go so far as to say I know almost nothing about Japanese action films. The ‘almost’ in that sentence is important, however, as I am currently sure of one important fact concerning these Far Eastern flicks: Sonny Chiba kicks ass.

-–This review does, technically, contain spoilers.—
-–But they won’t spoil your enjoyment of the film—

I bought volume 1 of Optimum Asia’s digitally remastered Sonny Chiba collection some time ago and, although I have previously watched all three of the films, a re-watch of Yakuza Deka: The Assassin last night reminded me just how good they are. Chiba is a relentlessly charismatic star, his round-ish face and wry smile grinning out from under a wide-brimmed leather hat announces his arrival in the film and, with no disrespect to the other actors, the scenes without Chiba on screen positively drag compared to his screentime.

Yakuza Deka: The Assassin gives us a fairly routine action plot: Chiba plays Hayata, a policeman is sent deep undercover by his force, infiltrating and working for a Mafia gang, a gang whom he later betrays - in a wonderful blaze of gunfire - in order to earn the respect of a rival marijuana smuggling gang. He does, of course, eventually gun the rival gang down too. Whilst none of this is exactly ground-breaking stuff, it does allow us to go on a fast-paced dash through streets, brothels, drug-dens, amorous horserides (!) and Mafia HQs.

And that’s where my action flick vocabulary runs out. I think it’s a mark of a decently paced action film that they do, in fact, resist description. There’s hardly a moment to pause to think amongst the double-crossing, the sniper rifles, the chases and the fighting and this is very much to the film’s advantage (the only slow scenes - especially a drug-induced hallucination - are pretty tiresome). All I shall add is that the movie does manage a satisfactory explosive ending, rather than limping to a quiet finish, and will almost certainly leave any fan of action films grinning from start to finish.

2LDK - Stop pushing boundaries!

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

Let’s look at modern films. With a few notable exceptions, cinema seems hellbent on the bizarre (and frankly WRONG) notion that more = better. From Lord of the Rings (MOAR FIGHTING PEOPLE!), to Avatar (MOAR DIMENSIONS!, MOAR MONEY), to Inception (MOAR LAYERS OF REALITY!) there is a definite trend towards the idea of giving you “more bang for your buck”. As cinema prices skyrocket, some bright spark seems to have formulated an idea:

If we throw millions of characters, a mountain of subplots and the biggest special effects ever made at the audience, all spread across roughly 3 hours, then they can’t possibly leave the cinema disappointed and wanting their money back.
Can they?

Well yes. They can. Every time I leave the cinema with a numb rear-end from 3hrs in a seat, having just watched special effects equivalent to the GDP of a small country I feel slightly hollow inside. Modern blockbusters tend to be simply too sprawling, too epic, too mammoth. They need to be cut down to size. Even Inglourious Basterds (my favourite of last year) clocked in at 3hrs or so and would’ve benefitted from being much shorter. Tarrantino had talked about having enough material to make several films; he should’ve done just that, rather than bashing them together into a film which (although wonderful) was simply too much.

So imagine my delight when I stumbled upon this:

The Duel Project was a challenge issued to Ryuhei Kitamura and Yukihiko Tsutsumi by producer Shinya Kawai during a night of drinking. The challenge was for the two directors to see who could make the best feature film with two principal actors/actresses battling in one principal location in the time span of one week.

Quote from wikipedia.

So… hardly any characters, a single location and an incredibly tight schedule? Fantastic. This is the kind of back to basics approach that cinema needs.

To date, I have only seen 2LDK, Tsutsumi’s half of the project. It clocks in at about 70 minutes. It has only two speaking characters. It’s entirely set in one flat (2LDK is a Japanese term to describe a 2 bedroom shared apartment). It’s fast, funny, witty, brutal and violent in equal measures.

The two characters are rival actresses, competing for the same role and discussing their chances. The two very different people begin to needle each other, moving from gentle jibes to cutting remarks and finally escalating to full-on fighting. It’s fantastic. There’s not a single dull moment as the tension is slowly cranked up from a relatively mundane beginning until the outbreak of violence is almost a relief.

I clearly wouldn’t want every film to follow this pattern (though I’m certainly anxious to see the other half of the Duel Project) but it is very refreshing to be shown what can be done with so little. Hollywood terms would have us believe that “low budget” meant only “crappy horror” (no bad thing!) or “over-earnest indie dirge” (which is all too often true!). 2LDK is a timely reminder that there is a lot more to a film than the MOAR IS BETTER fallacy that blockbuster cinema perpetuates.

Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla (Gojira VS Supesugojira )

Chopping Mall Video: Watch SpaceGodzilla arrive on Earth and bully poor little baby Godzilla. See below or CLICK HERE! [Video deleted by request from Toho (Godzilla copyright owners). You’d have thought a single teaser scene, linking to a positive review would be free marketing for them, right? No, as we move into 2010, it seems big money studios are still too technology-illiterate to imagine the internet might actually help them]

IMDb

Since I’ve been writing this blog, I tend to watch films with half a mind towards writing them up here. When I’m watching films on my laptop – most of the time – I’m also on the look-out for screenshots, just a handful of images that I can represent the film with. Most of the time this means that, every now and then, I’ll press the screen capture button during a particularly impressive scene, leaving me with a few shots at the end that I can pick and choose between.

When I’m watching a really good film however, I often forget to do this. It’s easy to get so caught up in a good story that suddenly it’s the end of the film and there’re no screenshots. This is a pain of course, as I have to go back and scan through for important scenes or interesting shots.

At the opposite extreme, there are some films where I end up with thousands of screenshots. There are clearly two reasons for this. Either the film has some really impressive visuals (where impressive can mean beautiful, unusual or just downright bizarre) or the film has a ‘plot’ so paper-thin and dull that looking at the pretty pictures and tapping F9 is far more engaging. Sometimes both reasons can be true.

Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla is both interesting in terms of visuals and entirely dull in terms of plot.

Yep, that’s more or less the only conclusion possible.

Tokyo-stomping time

Ok, basic plot, such as it is: the army wants to kill Godzilla. They build Moguera, a giant robot (somewhere between MechaGodzilla and Transformers) to do so. Before they do, SpaceGodzilla arrives on Earth. SpaceGodzilla is an alien mutation of Godzilla’s DNA and has arrived on Earth intent on destruction. They all fight a bit.

There are good bits: baby Godzilla is funny as anything and the bonkers lady who hallucinates Mothra comes out with some wonderful lines. She also manages to lift the bed she’s strapped to a couple of feet into the air using her mind, and then explains “it’s telekinesis – I’ve never tried it before”. Must be beginner’s luck, I guess.

Mothra-hallucinating lady tries to see into Godzilla’s head…

Moguera, in all his shiny metal transformers-esque beauty.

The film has been savaged in on-line reviews by Godzilla-philes, who pick out series inconsistencies (BabyGodzilla looks different than in previous films, Godzilla’s atomic breath is the wrong colour, etc.). As should be patently obvious by now, I know nothing much about the Godzilla series: my criticism is that the film is dull.

It’s roughly split into thirds. The first third is all about the characters. It’s dull, but forgivably so; we’re being introduced to people who’ll be important to the plot, right? The next third is easily the best. SpaceGodzilla and Moguera fight in space, SpaceGodzilla arrives on Earth and bullies baby Godzilla (see the video!), SpaceGodzilla turns on Tokyo. The final third though, is rubbish. The three-way battle is long, slow and very boring; the destruction is fun, but for a climactic scene it drags on endlessly. I’d stopped caring long before the end.

I suspect, as with so many films of dubious quality, this one would be a whole lot better if watched whilst tackling a quantity of beer (or drink of choice…).

To close, I’ll quote the important moral of the film, one as relevant today as it was in 1994 (if not more so): “If the universe is polluted, another space monster will arrive pretty soon. [SpaceGodzilla] was a warning to mankind”

Ebira, Horror of the Deep / Godzilla Vs The Sea Monster

Now with added VIDEO. See below! ChoppingMall brings you handpicked scenes from reviewed films!

Now, I can’t pretend to know a lot about Godzilla. Nor, for that matter, Japanese cinema in general. Or even Asian cinema. In fact, as far-east film culture goes, I am mostly ignorant. This has always seemed a shame - I know I should really make more of an effort - but for once I was thankful of the fact; my ignorance of the Gojira/Godzilla series meant that I was entirely unprepared for what this 1966 film threw at me.

Oh sure, I knew what Godzilla was. Big monster, yeah? Scaly equivalent to King Kong, yeah? Breathing fire, making noise and bashing things, yeah? Whilst those might all be true, I wasn’t expecting quite the level of bonkers fun that Godzilla offered.

From some of the most sublimely ridiculous dialogue ever encountered to a long battle between Godzilla and crab-lobster-monster Ebira that mostly involved chucking a rock backwards and forwards between each other, the film is 90 minutes of well-paced, self-consciously silly, mega-monster fun.

I don’t really need to describe this in any further detail: just go and watch it. It has Godzilla reawakened by lightning a la Frankenstein, a nuclear bomb and a massive lobster. And some wonderful puppetry. What’s not to like?

UPDATE:

ChoppingMall brings you more! Here is a specially selected scene from this film, available to watch on the Chopping Mall YouTube channel. Expect lots more from other films to come!

Mini Moni the Movie: the Great Cake Adventure

This is, without doubt, one of the strangest things I have ever seen. Too weird for IMDb to even list it, Mini Moni the Movie: the Great Cake Adventure is just too damn odd to be true.

From film diary

It clocks in at a little less than an hour and is mostly animation with some live scenes. So far, so good. It’s entirely set in a café that serves the most fantastic cakes and, er… as you might (or might not) expect, this involves a rogue, body-image obsessed queen who hates cakes, fairie minions who turn the cakes into stone, a talking fridge, legions of asexually reproducing gingerbread men….

I knew Japanese films had a tendency towards the weird but this is something entirely unexpected!

Please watch this if ever you get the chance!

The trailer I found is sadly unsubtitled but is stil worth a watch, if only to get a sense of how truly mad this really is: