What Asian Films Have You Been Watching Recently?

[47lab]

I checked out Satsuo Yamamoto's A TALE OF JAPANESE BURGLARS starring Rentaro Mikuni as an ex-convict burglar & quack dentist who during a lull in one of his burglary attempts of a storehouse, witnesses a group of men intentionally tampering with the railroad tracks to cause a train derailment. While in prison for one of his stints for burglary, he happens upon a group of prisoners (railway union members) who are wrongfully indicted for the train derailment and when he finds out they will be sentenced to death, he begins to have a moral conundrum whether he should testify what he saw that night. Unfortunately, that decision is made much more difficult due to constant pressure & harassment from a police detective played superbly by Yuunosuke Ito and the fact that he's finally found happiness with a loving wife and young son. The courtroom scene at the end with Mikuni's witty testimony and matter of fact narration of events had the entire courtroom in stitches and it was fantastic. Also, nice to see a young Sonny Chiba playing one of the defense lawyers for the wrongfully convicted. His role is brief but he sure makes an impact. This movie is based on real events and is Yamamoto's take on the Matsukawa incident. For a very interesting view into the string of post-war terror involving train derailments, murder, possible cover ups & intelligence agency involvement, please refer to this fascinating article. Recommended viewing!

[47lab]

I checked out Jun'ya Sato's big budget joint Soviet-Japanese co-production, THE DREAM OF RUSSIA starring Ken Ogata. It certainly was a lavish production for the times and was decent but nothing special. Plot revolves around Ogata as the Captain of a Japanese trading ship (Edo period pre-Commodore Perry) whose ship and crew ends up getting shipwrecked off the coast of Siberia during a storm. The rest of the story is about Ogata trying to get whatever is left of his crew back to Japan. It's a difficult undertaking as the common Russians are helpless & it involves a risky cross country trek from Siberia to St. Petersburg during the dead of winter to meet Catherine the Great in hopes of getting her approval to send them back to Japan. Along the way, the Japanese seamen are introduced to Western science and lifestyles and a few of the Japanese sailors decided to stay in Russia due to falling in love with the local women, religious conversion as Christianity was a death sentence in Japan, etc. I usually enjoy Ogata but he plays the stoic yet curious Captain role without any real emotion - there is one scene where he finally gets an audience with Catherine the Great & she requests he sing a song from his homeland. Ogata belts out a traditional song with tears in his eyes yearning for his return but instead of being poignant, it came off bordering on comedic. Don't know if that was Sato's intention but it seemed to really deflate the entire scene. The Russians are generally portrayed as sympathetic to the plight of the Japanese castaways and good natured people but it's too simplistic. Anyway, watch once and forget.

I'm more interested in checking out Fumihiko Kato's debut Roman porno, THE GIRL AND THE WOODEN HORSE TORTURE. There is a nice looking HD WEBRip with custom English subs! Thanks to the ARiN team and especially Kemushi who paid for the subs and timed them himself. Been blessed of late as Kemushi also provided the English subs for the BD Rip of Junichi Suzuki's KOICHIRO UNO'S WET AND RIDING too.

[47lab]

I watched Lee Min-jae's debut ODD FAMILY: ZOMBIE ON SALE. It's a mashup of TRAIN TO BUSAN, QUIET FAMILY & SHAUN OF THE DEAD among other films. As a whole it falls short of the greatness of those movies but still very entertaining especially for a debut director. A lot of my praise goes to the ensemble cast featuring some fantastic actors like Jung Jae-young, Uhm Ji-won and veteran character actor, Park In-hwan (who I also enjoyed immensely in the disaster flick, EXIT last year). There is the right mix of quirky physical comedy bordering on slapstick with some hilarious family bonding humor. This isn't a horror movie in the strictest sense and there is very little in the way of gore or bloody violence but rather, it's like an indie "zombie/romantic" comedy. The story centers on a dysfunctional multi-generational Korean family in the boonies who happen upon the first victim of a defective diabetes drug and the hilarity ensues. Recommended! Going to keep an eye out for director, Lee Min-jae's future projects. Perhaps, Korea will be known for revitalizing the Zombie genre instead of revenge and vengeance based thrillers.

[47lab]

I had this movie on "to watch queue" for the over a year & finally got around to it a couple days ago. It's the indie Korean flick, YOUNG-JU from debut director Cha Sung-duk, who also wrote the screenplay. The title comes from the name of the lead character played by rising young actress, Kim Hwang-gi. I remember her from A WEREWOLF BOY, THREAD OF LIES and the ALONG WITH THE GODS movies. She has a memorable baby faced appearance but man, did she ever take her acting to the next level here. She is literally in every scene and just puts on a clinic. It's one of the most impressive performances I can recall from a young actress since perhaps Kim Sae-ron. I felt the anguish, conflicting emotions of guilt and anger of her character but she got those emotions across to the viewer with nuance and subtlety. Credit to the screenwriter Cha Sung-duk for not letting this story lapse into straight tearjerker or overly sentimental melodrama territory. I'm going to seek out her latest film, INNOCENT WITNESS where Kim Hwang-gi plays an autistic girl who is a witness to a murder. I read it's received some strong reviews based on her acting in that one as well. Recommended!

[47lab]

I'm a big Choi Min-sik fan and pretty much try and catch every movie that he comes out in that's available. So I went to check out his latest flick, directed by Hur Jin-ho titled FORBIDDEN DREAM (Korean title ASTRONOMY). It's a saeguk (period) drama set during the Joseon dynasty & it's about the relationship between King Sejong and a lowly slave (Choi Min-sik as Jang Yeong-sil) who becomes the King's right hand man after impressing the King with his engineering prowess especially in astronomy. Beautiful film with impressive acting performances all around. Choi Min-sik is superb as usual in the title role but I'd be remiss if I failed to mention the great performance by Han Suk-kyu as King Sejong. Just to put the timeline in perspective, Jang Yeong-sil's scientific accomplishments occurred in the 15th century - a full century before Galileo was even born. Much like Galileo, Jang also came under scrutiny and was met with skepticism from King Sejong's court. Not due to any heresy based on scientific beliefs of the time but because Korea was a vassal state of China and King Sejong's court was worried that it might upset the Ming Empire as only Ming scientific/astrological dogma was allowed in Korea and any independent scientific discovery would be tantamount to treason. There is plenty of court intrigue and political machinations behind the scenes to keep the viewer guessing as to how the relationship between the two will eventually play out. Historical records are scarce as to what really happened to Jang Yeong-sil, so the viewer is left to imagine the outcome and that's fine. I'd rather leave the ending ambiguous than having the director fabricate some happy ending. It's been about two decades since I last saw Choi Min-sik and Han Suk-kyu in a flick together and that was SHIRI which was a major impetus for the Korean movie boom & its international aspirations into the 21st century. It was a long wait but well worth it. Recommended!

[47lab]

I'm way behind with these Chiba jidaigeki shows. I haven't even managed to watch Shadow Warriors though I own seasons 1 & 2 on DVD and have recorded the rest from Toei Channel.

The ones I have seen are New Seven Color Mask (the available first 14 episodes, the rest are lost), The Bodyguard, The Gorilla 7, Blazing Dragnet, Emergency Line, and about 60 episodes of Key Hunter.

I really suck at watching TV shows... too many movies to see and they always tend to take the priority.

It sucks that unless it's a jidaigeki TV series, the chances of it getting subbed are slim to none. I've been wanting to check out THE GORILLA 7, it looks pretty cool from the artwork and stills but I don't know anything about it. I know Toei released a remastered box set a couple years ago but it was crazy expensive. Chiba was a very busy man juggling all those gigs in the mid-70s.

As mentioned, I went to check out Lee Jae-hyun & Kim Byung seo's action/disaster film, ASHFALL. I had some high hopes going in since co-director, Lee Jae-hyun's CASTAWAY ON THE MOON is one of my top 5 Korean films of all time. I can for the most part that this did not disappoint and it snuck into my top 10 films of 2019 by a hair. The KO-REE-UNS (my best Samuel Jackson voice from JACKIE BROWN) can certainly make an entertaining disaster film as Lee Sang geun's EXIT is also in my top 10 but much higher. The two films actually share some similarities - everyday man hero, buddy film with some hilarious comedy bordering on slapstick, two famous female Kpop idols starring in secondary roles & very good VFX work (although the budget and scope is much higher in this flick & on par with anything coming out of Hollywood). It's not anything new in terms of storytelling in Korea films but there is a heavy emphasis on the way geopolitics is weaved into the plot and the fact that the Korean peninsula is a chessboard manipulated by two superpowers in the US & China controlling the South and North respectively. Some parts of the story are very political and in your face but I enjoyed the interplay between the two leads, Ha Jung-woo and Lee Byung hun the most when it is devoid of politics and just centers on two men from different backgrounds who begrudgingly come to see they have more in common than they think. I mentioned the "everyday" man hero in Ha Jung-woo and it's refreshing that even though he's an army veteran and munitions disposal expert, he's still green and his team are haphazardly thrown into a perilous situation by virtue of circumstance and the film squeezes out plenty of laughs reiterating the "greenhorn" aspect of Ha Jung-woo's character. Another refreshing aspect is that Ma Dong-seok goes against type here and instead of playing the big bruiser Special Forces soldier, he plays a bespectacled Korean-American Geology professor from Princeton who is struggling with his allegiance & loyalty to Korea after his theories about volcanic eruption have been ridiculed for years but now his advice and expertise is sought out by the Korean government. This is essentially a Hollywood blockbuster type disaster film with all the tropes and cliches that brings but it still manages to retain a distinctly Korean cultural influence and that is what enables it get a recommendation.

[Takuma]

Gambling Code and Feuds (仁義と抗争) (Japan, 1976) [TV] - 2.5/5
A bizarre Toei yakuza film that is fundamentally a semi-fairytale of a husband and wife willing to do a lot for each other... despite the husband being a bit of a jerk. Hiroki Matsukata does his usual energetic act as a lone wolf operator who bounces from one gang to another and kills people occasionally for living. His wife runs a restaurant but it's not long until she's helping out the husband by part-timing as geisha in yakuza meetings. It makes zero sense and has even less credibility, yet it's not entirely over-the-top either. Neither the characters nor the film seem to know where they are heading or what the film's tone should be. The strange, upbeat musical score just adds to the confusion. But it does have some entertainment value and pretty cool supporting turns by gang bosses Joe Shishido and Asao Koike (who looks great in gray hair and gray yukata, btw).

The Boss's Head (総長の首) (Japan, 1979) [DVD] - 1.5/5
A long, star studded yakuza drama; the epitome of the new era. It cuts down the violence and takes 40 minutes to set up what a mid-70s film would have done in 4. The remaining 95 don't go any faster. There are dozens of characters, most of them of little importance to the story, and many of them not even yakuza. Reiko Ike appears briefly as a reformed ex-sukeban. Neither the character's past nor the character otherwise matter.

Junya Sato x 3

Gambler - Counterattack (博徒斬り込み隊) (Japan, 1971) [DVD] - 3.5/5
Part 10 in the Gambler series (not to be confused with the Gambling Den series) which begun as ninkyo films, but got hijacked into the jitsuroku territory by Kinji Fukasaku and Junya Sato. This one is an impressively cold depiction of lone wolf Koji Tsuruta (in a more cynical role than usual) becoming a gangster clan's consultant. Director Sato focuses on the underworld politics and power struggle that involves the yakuza and a cold blooded, calculating police commander Tetsuro Tamba who would love to the clans slaughter each other off. It's a talkative film with some superb, atmospheric scenes, but not as intense as some of Sato's later movies, or as comprehensive as in Organized Crime 2 (1967), Sato's best gangster film.



Violent Gang Re-Arms (暴力団再æ¦è£…) (Japan, 1971) [DVD] - 4/5
Fundamentally honourable but occasionally ruthless yakuza (Koji Tsuruta with darker shades than usual) is set in charge of a port business by a syndicate who are complete arseholes in suits and to whom nothing but money matters (including extremely menacing Tetsuro Tamba). The port workers (lead by Asao Koike and Tomisaburo Wakayama, both wonderfully cast against type) retaliate with strikes and by establishing a union. The police (Fumio Watanabe as the head, another excellent piece of casting against type) are more beneficial to the yakuza than the common man. This is one of director Junya Sato's best pictures, a strong, political piece of filmmaking disguised as a yakuza film. There is a dynamic depiction the corruption in society and the socio-political network comprising of all kinds of people coming in touch with the yakuza, an area Sato did better in his films than Kinji Fukasaku.



Gang vs. Gang: The Red and Black Blues (ギャング対ギャング 赤と黒のブルース) (Japan, 1972) [VoD] - 3.5/5
Stylish, well written tale of a to-be Olympic sharpshooter (Koji Tsuruta in one of his best later day roles) who wastes a blackmailing chinpira scum, then has a gangster boss (Noboru Ando in a very good role) waiting for him at the prison gates four years later. The gang could use a man of such talent. There's the usual Junya Sato surplus of gangster brutality, as well as all players from cops to gangsters to civilians laid on the chess table, but also a romantic ninkyo breeze with Tsuruta a man of honour who falls in love with a suicidal woman (Hiroko Fuji, the weakest performance in the film) who witnessed him commit an assassination. One of the rare films that successfully merges bits of ninkyo romanticism with jitsuroku grit, producing a tough film with heart instead of a mediocre halfway-there effort that was the more common outcome of this formula.

[Takuma]

I've been binge watching the Yagyu Abaretabi TV series for Asahi in the early 80s. It's 52 episodes total spread out over 2 seasons. I'm still on the first season but I'm enjoying it. A bit of shame that Sonny Chiba as the iconic one eyed Yagyu Jubei plays second fiddle to Hiroshi Katsuno (who plays his brother) in a lot of the early episodes. Chiba certainly has the better action chops but also he's funnier and has the more dynamic screen presence as well. He cast some of his JAC proteges like a Hiroyuki Sanada and he does his usual nice job of displaying his spry acrobatics. Been enjoying it so far but Chiba's YAGYU CONSPIRACY that he did a year earlier for Kansai TV is the better series.

I'm way behind with these Chiba jidaigeki shows. I haven't even managed to watch Shadow Warriors though I own seasons 1 & 2 on DVD and have recorded the rest from Toei Channel.

The ones I have seen are New Seven Color Mask (the available first 14 episodes, the rest are lost), The Bodyguard, The Gorilla 7, Blazing Dragnet, Emergency Line, and about 60 episodes of Key Hunter.

I really suck at watching TV shows... too many movies to see and they always tend to take the priority.

[47lab]

I've been binge watching the Yagyu Abaretabi TV series for Asahi in the early 80s. It's 52 episodes total spread out over 2 seasons. I'm still on the first season but I'm enjoying it. A bit of shame that Sonny Chiba as the iconic one eyed Yagyu Jubei plays second fiddle to Hiroshi Katsuno (who plays his brother) in a lot of the early episodes. Chiba certainly has the better action chops but also he's funnier and has the more dynamic screen presence as well. He cast some of his JAC proteges like a Hiroyuki Sanada and he does his usual nice job of displaying his spry acrobatics. Been enjoying it so far but Chiba's YAGYU CONSPIRACY that he did a year earlier for Kansai TV is the better series.

[47lab]

Watched Oxide Pang's 2017 crime thriller, THE BIG CALL. Really enjoyed this and one of Oxide's best in years. The story centers around a multi-national phone scam ring based in Thailand led by a Bonnie and Clyde crime team composed of Taiwanese actors Gwei Lun-mei and Joseph Chang. Joseph is the brains behind the operation and Gwei is the computer/electronics expert who heads the boiler room in Bangkok with a small group of phone scammers. The Taiwanese and Thai police form a joint operation to infiltrate and bring down the crime ring using an undercover female recruit. It was very entertaining and well paced but the star was Gwei Lun-mei as the savvy and vindictive lover of Joseph Chang. She is really an under appreciated actress in the West that doesn't get the name recognition she richly deserves. She has such a wide range and can play such varied roles but I like when she plays the grittier roles like this one and in Dante Lam's THE STOOL PIGEON. Speaking of Dante Lam, the final 20 minutes or so wouldn't be out of place in one of his action movies as it brings the same visceral kinetic action as Mei and Chang take their chances shooting it out with the police to evade capture. I saw the longer Taiwanese version but did not see the shorter HK version, so I have no basis of comparison between the two. Recommended!

While on the topic of Gwei Lun-mei, her best role was in Dinan Yao's noirish crime thriller, BLACK COAL, THIN ICE. That was a superb film and I'm anxious to see Dinan Yao reunite with Gwei Lun-mei in another crime thriller set to released theatrically next year in the States titled THE WILD GOOSE LAKE. Looking forward to that one.

[47lab]

Recently re-watched Noribumi Suzuki's TRUCK YARO 5: TRUCKSTER OF GUTS since a nice blu ray rip is available. One of my faves from the TRUCK YARO series. Arrow or Criterion needs to put out the entire series and give it the treatment it deserves. I believe this is the only film in the series where Jonathan's wife and kids don't show with their usual running gag but there is a guest appearance by Sonny Chiba. He plays a roughneck leader of a gang of truckers called JAWS who are decked out in military fatigues and are very territorial about their CB radio band frequency. His love interest is a local truck stop prostitute played by very lovely Yoko Natsuki. I remember her from a couple of other Chiba flicks like KARATE FOR LIFE, SWORD OF VENGEANCE and she was also in one of the SASORI spin offs. Chiba and Sugawara have a great brawl scene where their top notch physical slapstick humor is on display. Also popular enka singer, Aki Yashiro plays a female trucker and one of her songs was a big hit among truckers. Thought that was some nice inspired casting. The Sado Island location shooting was nice too.

[47lab]

I'll usually check out a couple flicks on Christmas depending on the mood. I've already earmarked IP MAN 4 and ASHFALL as the two I'll definitely make time for next week.

[47lab]

As mentioned I went to check out BETTER DAYS and despite all the controversy regarding this film from the Chinese censorship issue to the accusations of plagiarism of Keigo Higashino's works, I thought it was an entertaining flick (think of it as a Chinese version of the early 80s coming of age flick, MY BODYGUARD but without the light hearted melodrama) but ultimately falls short of being a "must see." Asian cinema has tackled the issue of school bullying with greater nuance and effect in films like BLEAK NIGHT, HAN GONG-JU, PLUTO and ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU CHOU - those flicks are just off the top of my head. But what makes BETTER DAYS a worthwhile watch are the superb performances by the two leads, Zhou Dongyu and Jackson Yee. Yee in particular as I've only seen him in MR. SIX prior to this film but he really impressed me. His performance reminded me a bit of Yang Ik-jun in BREATHLESS - the same pent up rage & sense of hopelessness. Zhou Dongyu plays the bully victim as realistically as any I've ever witnessed onscreen. There are hints of a budding romance between the two but I'm glad Tsang doesn't force the issue, instead focusing on the bond that both share through the emotional and physical pain inflicted on them. The latter third turns into a police procedural and I think that's when the flick falls a bit flat. Of course, the "crime doesn't pay" epilogue and PSA about bullying mandated by the Chinese censors cheapens the ending as well but that's to be expected of these Mainland films. Well Go has the North American rights, so hopefully they can put out an uncensored director's cut of the film on physical media.

[47lab]

Mentioning that OST earlier made me want to hear it again but I forgot where I placed it. After a frantic search, I found it in a crate with a bunch of other CDs. The cover is cool but I forgot the inside of the digipak is a replica movie poster.




I'm off to see Derek Tsang's latest, BETTER DAYS as it has been causing some buzz lately.

[47lab]

I'll be catching this at the end of the month at Laputa Asagaya's Toho New Action series. I think Nishimura is one of the most under-appreciated, undiscovered filmmakers of the 70s. His debut film Too Young To Die (1969) is an absolute masterpiece, unfortunately not available on DVD. Hairpin Circus (1970) and the heroic bloodshed action thriller A Creature Called Man (1970) (with more similarities to 80s and 90s John Woo films than you can count) are very cool too.

I've been wanting to see THE CREATURE CALLED MAN for ages (ever since i read about it in Chris D.'s book) but never got a chance. I know the dvd has been out in Japan forever and one day I'll get around to ordering it. I actually listened to the soundtrack before even seeing the movie because I really dig the Masahiko Satoh score and bought the OST plus it had a cool looking cover.