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Old 06-01-2010, 08:09 PM   #1
Talon87
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Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Lafayette, Indiana
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Japanese Cinema

In this thread, please share with the community your list(s) of highly-recommended Japanese films. Please limit these lists only to those films which you have personally seen!

My hope is that by sharing our lists with one another, we will empower each other to find new films to watch. Part of the problem with using Google to find new movies is, just like with America's film industry, Japan puts out a great deal of horseshit for every gem or two, and to complicate matters the lists one typically finds online of "best Japanese films" are 60% Kurosawa films and 40% other entries one finds on the Academy Awards Best Picture lists. While Best Picture films are always welcome, sometimes a guy is just looking for a film which is Japan's equivalent of Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, or Indiana Jones -- films which are great fun and well-loved by the majority of the populace but which don't tickle the Academy's fancy.

Please do not hold discussions here. I would prefer it if you would make a new thread for a particular film you wish to discuss. I would also prefer it if this thread could just be users' lists, like the Anime Member Status thread I created several years ago. That way, we will not have to dig through pages of outdated conversational posts to find the lists: instead, they'll be nice and orderly one after the other.

Please format your lists however you fancy. You may opt to use special fonts, images, or hyperlinks. You may write essays or you may write nothing more than each movie's title. Feel free to provide rankings if you are so inclined.
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Old 06-01-2010, 08:17 PM   #2
Talon87
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Talon87's Japanese Cinema Recommendations


ラジオの時間 (Rajio no Jikan, "Radio Time") (USA: "Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald")
Genre: Comedy
Premise: an amateur writer wins a local radio station's contest and sits in on the first live broadcast of her screenplay. Much to her horror, the primary voice actors are divas who demand changes be made to the script. These changes then require further changes to be made for the sake of maintaining continuity; and before long, the script becomes unrecognizable from the one she put her heart and soul into.
Recommended: Highly, A- to A+
Pros: cast of talented actors and actresses, plot is very well-crafted with no loose ends nor extraneous bits of information
Cons: slow opening, familiarity with some elements of Japanese culture a must
Trailer: link (the film is MUCH better-, newer-looking)


ウォーターボーイズ (Uootabooizu, "Waterboys") (USA: "Waterboys")
Genre: Comedy
Premise: The lone member of a Japanese high school swim team finds himself inundated with new teammates after the school hires a sexy young woman to be the new swim coach. However, all but four of the newcomers jump ship after discovering that she will be teaching them synchronized swimming, seen exclusively as a girl's sport both in Japan and in many other countries. The five boys on the team are: (1) the original member of the team, (2) his good friend and a former member of the boys' basketball team, (3) a shy gay boy who seems to have the hots for 1, (4) a scrawny kid who exercises at home to Western DVDs which promise to help him become macho, and finally (5) the school's nerd genius who joins the team to figure out buoyancy first-hand -- since he has never been able to float, much less swim. The five boys are ridiculed and harassed by their fellow classmates; but as the school, then the city, and finally the nation discover the hard work and determination of the so-called "Waterboys," the quintet find themselves determined to put on a show at the school festival the likes of which has never before been seen.
Recommended: kinda. It came highly recommended to me. I know at least one guy who thinks of it as the best Japanese film ever. Personally, I didn't care for it all that much. C+ to B-
Pros: funny, the swim coach is mega hot
Cons: I found it to be slow, kinda boring at times. It came really highly recommended to me, too. Finally, a spoiler:
Spoiler: show
The swim coach exits ~ten minutes into the film! She discovers she's eight months pregnant and didn't know it (........ ¬_¬) and so the boys, coachless, try to learn synchro by themselves for the first half of the film and then during the second half of the film head out to SeaWorld to learn from a SeaWorld employee they met previously.
Trailer: none available for the Japanese film, but here's a scene from around the one-third to one-half marker? So ... spoilerish, but the best I could do?


おくりびと (Okuribito, "Those Who Send You Off") (USA: "Departures")
Genre: Drama
Premise: a young cellist finds himself out of a job when his Tokyo orchestra is disbanded by its reluctant owner. Having nowhere else to turn, the young man sells his cello and moves back to his hometown in the country with his supportive wife. The young man finds an ad in the classifieds for a job which sees people off. Assuming it's some sort of travel agency, he is shocked to discover upon arrival that it is in fact an encoffinment business. Reluctant to accept the job, his boss hires him on the spot and insists he take home his first day's pay -- $5,000 -- and think it over. Okuribito is on the one hand a gentle drama about a young man who finds his unexpected calling in life but is on the other hand a poignant window into the world of the Japanese funeral industry. This is because, even in the 2000s, most Japanese still harbor a gross aversion of death and the men and women who come into direct contact with it (gravediggers, morticians, etc). See this article on the Burakumin for more details.
Recommended: good film, but probably wouldn't watch it very much or ever buy it. B- to B. Not a must-see, but if you have spare time and are interested then you should see it.
Pros: well-filmed, concise narrative and cast of characters, everything is believable
Cons: I kinda wish they would have gone for the more predictable ending as opposed to the one they did. ^^;
Spoiler: show
The ending they went with was that the final encoffinment shown was of Daigo's father, who abandoned Daigo and Daigo's mother when he was only 6 years old. While this was touching, I think it would have been much more touching and poignant had the final encoffinment been of Daigo's boss at the NK Agency. After all, it would have shed some light on why he was hiring besides the simple "I'm getting old" and it would have been a really touching passing-of-the-torch scene. Predictable, yes, but a lot more powerful. Oh well. No use in arguing for it now: the film's already finished. lol
Trailer: link (720p available, click onsite for it)

キサラギ (Kisaragi)
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Mystery
Premise: five grown men who are all self-proclaimed fans of Kisaragi Miki, a Junior Idol, meet to honor the memory of their mutually-beloved idol who died one year ago under unusual circumstances. But the original purpose of the meeting is soon set aside as the five fans conduct an impromptu investigation into the true cause of Miki's untimely demise. And things heat up when it becomes clear that Miki's murderer may very well be in their midst ...
Recommended: Highly, A- to A+.
Pros: some very funny moments, an AMAZINGLY well-written screenplay which reminds me strongly of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest in its tight-knit execution, very good acting, and an uncanny number of plot twists!!
Cons: like all great mysteries -- the better they are, the better you remember them; and the better you remember them, the less able they are to have an impact on you in subsequent viewings.
Trailer: link
Wiki: link


Films to come:
- Death Note 1 & 2 (A+)
- The Seven Samurai (haven't seen it since 2003, though, and only once)
- Ugetsu (haven't seen it since 2006, though, and only once)

Last edited by Talon87; 06-03-2010 at 01:15 AM.
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