Nodame Cantabile The Movie Part 2 (2010)

The 2nd and concluding part of the Nodame Cantabile movie double bill. Chiaki is asked to do a piano concerto with Rui Son which makes Nodame lonely and depressed however much of a brave face she shows around Chiaki. In her mind, she thinks Rui will take Chiaki away from her. With Nodame at her lowest and most vulnerable, the flamboyant conductor Stressman breezes in and having listened to Nodame playing a piece on her piano decides to whisk her away to Prague where she debuts with him doing a Chopin piece. She’s a huge success but Nodame still isn’t happy and hints that she could quit music and become a kindergarten teacher. She also starts to drift away from Chiaki. Can Nodame and Chiaki overcome their differences and find a way to get back together again?

A fantastic conclusion to the whole Nodame Cantabile saga. Some old faces return for a small cameo and the storyline ends on a very satisfying note. But is it really the end? I still feel there’s another story to be told about Nodame and Chiaki so watch this space. Given the huge popularity of the franchise, I wouldn’t be surprised to see another installment appearing in the next couple of years. Highly recommended.

Sadako’s Rating: 4 out of 5

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The Man Behind The Scissors (2004)

This movie centers around two murderers – the cool but methodical serial psycho Yasunaga and Chinatsu, his sweet but sullen younger sidekick who is plagued with her own self-destructive desires and over whom Yasunaga has an inexplicably strong hold. After stabbing their way through a couple of high school girls with a pair of scissors, they soon find that someone has already got to their next potential victim, 16-year-old Yukiko, and done the job for them. Finding themselves called as witnesses to the crime, they embark on a series of double bluffs and deceits with police investigator Isone and his deskbound superior Horinouchi involving feeding information to a gutter press journalist out to do some muck-raking and toying with an innocent bystander seemingly unconnected with the victim, all the while trying to pinpoint the identity of the older man Yukiko was spotted with just before the murder.

This is an interesting and somewhat bizarre psychological film about a killer, a copycat killer, and the police trying to find both killers. Though starting out fairly straightforward, the film has many twists and turns and it keeps viewers on their toes. The story is quite good throughout, and the music is surprisingly unnerving and minimal. The atmosphere is pretty great. Also, you gotta love the fact that a movie from 2004 looks like it was filmed in the 80’s. Performances are good for most of the characters. It does its problems though as it’s a bit inconsistent in tone. At times, it tries hard to be as serious as possible and it usually works. However, whatever bleakness the movie conveys is immediately broken by a bit too much campy humour from the stupid, bumbling police officers; specifically to blame is the lead police officer who just acts completely ridiculous throughout the whole thing. The pacing could have been better as it’s a bit too long. This movie really could have been something special but it was missing something. It’s still worth checking out though.

Sadako’s Rating: 3 out of 5

I can’t find a trailer unfortunately.

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My Darling Is A Foreigner (2010)

Saori (Mao Inoue) is a manga artist. She meets language geek Tony (Jonathan Sherr), who lives in Japan after falling in love with the language. As the couple become closer, Saori is inundated with strange questions about the language from Tony. Are these weird questions a trait of his foreign background? Or is it because of his linguist preoccupation? The majority of Saori’s family seems fine about the couple except that is for her father who is very much against Tony seeing his daughter.  Can their relationship survive?

This was just a below-average movie in the end and is based on the real lives of the author Saori Oguri and her white husband Tony Laszlo. It’s supposed to take a light-hearted look at cross-cultural relationships, namely Japanese women and foreign men. You’d think that this would provide opportunities for some great humour but it doesn’t and the plot mechanics are sloppy. Numerous instances in the story made me stratch my head. Tony is fluent in Japanese so it makes sense that he’s been living in the country for a while yet you’d think he’d understand Japanese humour or their culture but he’s clueless about some things. Also why would anybody take a date to a party full of foreigners and then ignore her – what an idiot! His friends are also shown to be shallow and enjoy taking pot-shots at Japanese women. I’m taking that it’s supposed to be funny in showing stereotypical foreigners. There are other examples as well of poor execution in this movie. As for the acting, I’m afraid this isn’t one of Mao Inoue’s best performances which is a shame as I really liked her in Hana Yori Dango. The only good thing she does is look cute. Jonathan Sherr as Tony is so bland – the guy can’t act to save his life.  I just can’t feel the chemistry between Saori and Tony at all. Overall this movie was a big disappointment for me.

Sadako’s Rating: 2 out of 5

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Sukeban Deka: Counter Attack From The Kazama Sisters (1988)

Yui (aka Sukeban Deka III) is working for the Juvenile Security Bureau, a sort of a youth police outfit whose task is to bring delinquents to justice. However, their heavy handed tactics where they seem to enjoy punishing the kids disappoints Yui and she quits. She heads for Kyushu hoping to have a quiet life with her relatives but it isn’t long before 2 of her old Sukeban Deka colleagues Yuki and Yama call on her for help. The leader of the Juvenile Security Bureau is trying to take over the system and kills one of Yui’s ex-colleague and imprisons her old boss. Even Yuki and Yama are captured. Yui teams up with a gang of young outcasts to destroy the JSB who intend to detonate a bomb at a music concert.

A fun and campy feature and still just as OTT as the first movie. The budget has been ramped up for the movie with more explosions but less hand to hand combat which is disappointing. The plot is more or less recycled from the previous flick. I do like the lead character – she’s quite cute and brings plenty of energy to the role. In the first movie we saw a helicopter downed by a yo-yo, in this one a small light aircraft is bought down by our heroine!! If the idea of seeing a tough schoolgirl taking on a bunch of teenage baddies and saving the day is your idea of fun, there’s plenty to enjoy in this movie. You might need to brush up on the TV series for more backstory and background to the Sukeban Deka characters. I found it enjoyable despite the ridiculousness of the story.

I can’t find a trailer for the movie but here’s one for the first movie

Sadako’s Rating: 3 out of 5

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The Young Master (1980)

Jackie Chan plays orphan Ah Lung, a student in a martial arts school, along with his brother.  Trouble ensues when the brother is bribed by a rival school to fake an injury and join their team in their lion dance competition, leaving Lung to take his place, and subsequently lose.  The brother is released from the school, and Lung must try to find him, but a series of mishaps, the worst of which includes Lung being mistaken for a criminal, prevents the reunion.

This is the first movie that Jackie wrote and directed. This movie has it’s fans but for me I just found it well……boring! There is just a dull feeling throughout that has nothing to do with the comedy or anything. The plot isn’t that great and it drags a bit in the middle and there isn’t the usual quota of physical comedy and crazy stunts you’d expect from a Jackie Chan movie. Even the lengthy fight at the end didn’t do anything for me. The fan fight plus the one with the benches were entertaining though. Jackie was still learning his trade in the movie business at this time and it shows. There are other great movies that Jackie did pre-Police Story like the Drunken Master double bill which I think fans will enjoy better than this hokum. Overall it’s only average.

Sadako’s Rating: 2.5 out of 5

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Creepy Hide And Seek (2009)

Teenagers are going missing after playing a sinister online game of hide and seek. Each participant plays the game alone in their homes or apartments, but communicate with each other via computer and/or cell phone text messaging. Each character performs a pre-game ritual to call forth a ghost, then hides from it to experience the thrill of having a ghost rummage through their residence. If the ritual is not performed in a very precise manner, the person is murdered when the ghost finds them. A school teacher whose colleague and pupils have disappeared after playing the game starts investigating and unwillingly becomes involved in the game which is somehow inexplicably linked to an incident from her childhood.

A very well made and suitably atmospheric ghost movie. It’s got a good deliberate pace about it with an ominous mood throughout. Some really good jump scares  such as showing a ghostly girl figure in the background. It’s proof how good this movie is that the Japanese ghost genre is far from dead. Sure, it’s lifted some ideas from other J-horror movies but don’t let that put you off. Those with a short attention span will find the slow pace at times to be boring but if you have the patience for a good storyline that takes it’s time to unfold you’re sure to enjoy it. The ending has a nice twist to it. There’s no resolution to the mystery at the climax – the game simply moves on to more victims.

Sadako’s Rating: 3.5 out of 5

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Amalfi:Rewards Of The Goddess (2009)

A G-8 summit is set for Rome the day after Christmas; the Italian and Japanese governments will announce an aid package for the Balkans. Kondura arrives from Tokyo to improve security at the embassy, making waves with his direct manner. A Japanese tourist who’s a single mother reports that her young daughter has been kidnapped. Posing as the woman’s husband, Kondura takes the lead with the kidnappers, who want money and no cops. However, the law requires that Kondura notify local authorities, who blunder a bit. Various exchanges go awry; then the kidnappers send the mother and Kondura to the Amalfi coast on what appears to be a wild goose chase. Why the delay? What’s going on?

A great political thriller, however this movie concerned itself more in showing beautiful shots of Italy and highlighting the dangers of pickpocketing in Rome rather than focusing on the plot at times! The first half was pretty good with the kidnapping scenario but then it switched gear in the 2nd half to be about a bunch of terrorists who want to tell the world the truth about an incident in a small republic which killed their families. The things that happen during the 2nd half are pretty far fetched and shows the Italian police and intelligence agencies as idiots. That said I did find it a bit exciting. Yuda Oji is OK as the Japanese security expert Kondura but I was disappointed in Erika Toda’s role. She wasn’t as involved as I wanted her to be considering she’s one of my favorite Japanese TV idols. There’s even an appearance by Sarah Brightman who sings Time To Say Goodbye.  As this was a movie by Fuji TV to celebrate their 50th anniversary, no expense has been spared in the production values – looks like they spent a lot of money getting everybody to Italy and employing Sarah Brightman too. On the whole it’s a relatively entertaining investigative thriller running around Rome much like what Angels and Demons did.

Sadako’s Rating: 3 out of 5

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Mutant Girls Squad (2010)

Rin is a normal high school girl, but on her super sweet sixteen her body starts changing and the special forces (armed with nose-mounted machine guns) bust up her birthday party and kill her parents in front of her eyes. It turns out that Rin is one of the reviled mutants, known as Hiruko’s, who are the latest inferior race slated for extinction. But Rin runs, and discovers a resistance movement made up of other mutants. Not only are they dangerous, but they’re also armed, only their arms stick out from the sides of their heads. Other weapons include swords which shoot out from nipples, a chainsaw that shoots from somebody’s arse, a deformed face growing on a belly and metal claws erupting from wrists. But these deformities are the weapons they’ll use to tear down straight society.

From the men that created Tokyo Gore Police, The Machine Girl and Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl comes this gore-soaked dark comedy. Those familiar with their work will know what to expect from this movie. I love these wacky movies and the more gore the better! The slicing and dicing is there to amuse you for anything else not to make you gag. I found this movie really funny with a lot of sexual innuendos, the girls are really cute especially Idoling!!! member Morita Suzuka as the nurse Yoshie, the storyline is very OTT  and blood is sprayed around like there’s no tomorrow! It’s just a lot of fun to watch and I really enjoyed it. Mutant Girls Squad is definitely not for the majority of people, but those of you in the right mind-set will love it.

Sadako’s Rating: 4 out of 5

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The Vanquisher (2009)

After completing a covert mission in southern Thailand, CIA agent Gunja finds herself forced to fight off operatives who’ve been ordered to take her out at all costs. She survives and after two years of laying low, re-emerges in Bangkok to face her old foes and foil a plot to detonate a bomb in the city.

One of the worst Thai action movies you’ll ever see. It’s full of awful acting and uninspiring action sequences. The villains are so crap they can’t even shoot somebody when they’re close to them. Sophita Sribanchean as the CIA agent Gunja is no action star (compared to Jeeja Yanin) and the rest of her co-stars fare even less better. Sure, the ladies on show are beautiful eye-candy but they just can’t act properly. I was expecting a lot more from this thanks to the movie poster and the trailer. Don’t waste your time watching it. Poor.

Sadako’s Rating: 1.5 out of 5

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The Profound Desires Of The Gods (1968)

A little known Japanese movie that wasn’t well received at the time of it’s release but has since become quite a legendary movie. The story is set on the fictional island of Kurage, a subtropical world whose inhabitants are engaged in a desperate struggle for survival, caught between faith in their traditional gods and the promises of modernity. Central to this drama are the Futori, the oldest and most primitive family on Kurage, with incestuous habits that have led to them being blamed for the drought strangling the island. They are digging a pit to appease the gods when an engineer arrives from Tokyo. His job is to build a well to get fresh water for a new sugar cane factory, but he is thwarted by the environment and the islanders’ superstitions.  He soon falls for the Futori daughter, Toriko, a sex-crazed half-wit, and briefly reverts to his animalistic true self before, inevitably, civilisation and capitalism win him back, and the island opens up to the forces of progress.

This is one long movie – coming up close to 3 hours long so watching this may be a drag to a lot of people.  I did get a sense that at times I was watching a Japanese version of The Wicker Man. The movie is filled with unique and delightful shots and also punctuated by close ups of wild animals and birds, also some macro shots of various insects – it all looks rather wonderful and beautiful but a bit distracting from the storyline itself.  Profound Desires of the Gods is a complex film, and if you can sit through filmmaking that focuses more on character study than all out action, you might find a lot to like here. Everybody else though, I would not recommend sitting through this wishing to like it since the viewer is at the mercy the director’s cinematic judgment. I quite liked it though.

Sadako’s Rating: 3 out of 5

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Guinea Pig 4:Mermaid In The Manhole (1988)

The 4th in the notorious Japanese shocker series is about an artist who is trying to cope with the recent death of his wife. One day while being in the sewers beneath the streets of Okinawa, he comes across a mermaid that he had met before when he was a kid, when the sewers used to be a big river. He sits down to paint her, but soon she starts crying in agony. That is when the painter notices that she has boils growing all over her body. She has been stuck in the sewers for a long time and she must have been infected by the environment down there. The artist takes her back to his house, and after a brief period of time, the mermaid develops lacerations and begins to bleed. The artist uses the blood and pus from the wounds to paint her portrait, but as he paints, her condition worsens. The boils and sores start to cover her entire body even her head. Soon the mermaid is coughing up writhing worms and maggots and they even start to come from her wounds. She begs him to finish the painting before she dies. Then things get even more extreme………

What a totally disgusting and gross out movie this is and one of the stronger entries in the “Guinea Pig” Series! Blood-drenched and nightmarishly bizarre, but with moments of dark, offbeat humor sprinkled throughout. The make-up effects made by Nobuaki Koga is incredibly revolting but extremely well done. If the thought of a boil-covered, bleeding woman lying in a bathtub filled with her own blood (and other fluids) while vomiting up blood and worms seems unpalatable to you, do NOT watch this film! If you have the stomach for it, and you can find it, this is an interesting little movie for fans of bizarre and/or grotesque cinema.

No trailer but a selection of scenes from the movie. Be warned though that it is disgusting!

Sadako’s Rating: 2.5 out of 5

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Who Am I? (1998)

Secret agent Jackie goes with a commando group to Africa to kidnap scientists who are working to unleash a powerful and lethal new energy source. However there is a betrayal amongst the group and the helicopter carrying them suddenly starts to fall out of the sky. Jackie falls out of the helicopter and gets knocked out having fallen heavily through some trees and landing on the jungle floor below with an almighty thud. Awakening in an African village in a desert with a broken leg, Jackie cannot remember who he is. As he starts having flashbacks to his past and does a heroic deed for a Japanese couple taking part in a rally, his former employers send their goons out to kill him but Jackie has no idea why they’re after him.

Not one of Jackie’s best but contains enough of his trademark humour/action to be entertaining. The movie fails to recreate the energy of his older flicks. Higher production values and a couple of impressive fight scenes cannot entirely overcome that the story is to weak to keep the two hour movie together which indicates the major problem: it’s far too long. It’s only when the story moves to Rotterdam that this movie finally spring into life. When Jackie finally comes to his best, the fights, he is still great, but between these fights there’s too little new, including the umpteenth car chase through a market street. This movie is by no means bad, it’s just not in the same league as earlier works.

Sadako’s Rating: 3 out of 5

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Ashes of Time Redux (1996)

A lone swordsman, living in the desert and acting as an agent to other swordsmen, recollects how his life turned out to be as it is. It started with that the woman he loved chose to marry his brother instead, causing him to leave his home town. One of the swordsmen is Huang who is himself in the middle of a complicated love story, where a woman wants to have him killed for having ran away from a promise to marry her younger sister. But the sister wants to hire a swordsman to have Huang protected, and everything is put to an edge when the woman and her sister is really the same person.

This movie is a good example of how to tell a simple story in a complex manner. The plot of “Ashes of Time” is fairly simple and comes down to two words: “love triangle”. Because of those “love triangles” crossing stories, jealousy, hate and love are the main dynamics displayed by the characters. Ou-yang Feng lives in the desert, where he acts as middleman to various swordsmen and becomes the tool of destiny through which vengeance is achieved. Unfortunately “Ashes of Time” fails in telling these simple stories of love and hate. The director seems to be driven by a desire to make each frame of the film look like a painting. The movie is also quite boring and the action scenes dull. The swordfights are all in slow motion or freeze frame, and this becomes tiresome; many of the scenes are cut awkwardly. I can’t fail the acting at all and the cinematography is gorgeous but it’s not enough to save this movie. To be honest I hardly understood any of this movie.

Sadako’s Rating: 2 out of 5

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Bandage (2010)

This is a story about the trials and tribulations of an indie rock band in the early 90’s called LANDS. The band is becoming popular but somehow the members don’t get on with each other at times. Into the fray comes a schoolgirl Asoko who manages to get a backstage pass and meet the group. She forms a friendship with the band’s leader and singer Natsu. In time she quickly becomes the co-manager of the band but apart from Natsu, the other members of the band view her as a hindrance and as much as they try to convince Natsu about this he continues to hang out with her. As LANDS finally hit the big time with a no.1 hit but fail with their follow-up single, tensions start to simmer between the members of the band once more which threaten to split the band up once and for all.

An interesting movie which is effective in portraying the life of an indie band in 1990′s Japan, when the rise and fall of these bands was commonplace due to TV talent shows. Jin Akanishi (formerly a member of Johnny’s band KAT-TUN but now a solo artist) brings his own personal experience of being in a group to his role as the talented but troubled singer Natsu. Kii Kitano who plays Asoko also does well in her role showing her vulnerability and girlish charm. The rest of the supporting characters are great especially the lovely Ayumi Ito who portrays the hard-nosed manager Yukari. The soundtrack for the movie is fantastic and has very catchy songs sung by Akanishi. The song which plays over the end credits Bandage went straight to no.1 in the Oricon charts during November 2009. Overall Bandage is an entertaining movie with a good storyline, excellent music and shows an insight into the Japanese music industry.

Sadako’s Rating: 3.5 out of 5

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