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Movies: The Official "Movie of the Week" Club Thread III

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Tokyo Tribe
Sono (2014)
“My dick oughta be biggest of all!”

Tokyo of the future. The city is run by gangs, each with their own territory, to say nothing of sartorial style and rapping accumen. A narrator kindly raps the set up to us, each gang getting a few early moments to make an impression. The music video stylings never let up from there. A few key figures emerge -- the blonde and angry Mera, Kai of a peace-loving clan and Sunmi a stranger oddly determined to lose her virginity. Mera has a long-simmering hatred of Kai. Sunmi isn’t who she seems. Meanwhile a mysterious new gang element is rolling in and wiping out rivals. Over the course of one violent night and day, truths are reveled, alliances are formed and many, many words are rapped.

How familiar are you with Bill Hader’s Stefon character from Saturday Night Live? Because this felt like an embodiment of that bit. This had everything: virgin sacrifice, kung fu, rap music, human furniture, baseball bats, a tank, dominatrixes, Beethoven, a giant fan/gear that chops people up, dick jokes. Whooo boy when the source of Mera’s hatred is finally revealed, dear reader, I can assure you I HOWLED. It felt like a fitting comedic capper to all the chaos that had come before it. Why the hell not, right? The only bigger laugh that I got was when Sunmi’s dad crudely and shockingly described why exactly she was so valuable.

Tokyo Tribe is a feast of motion and sound and color. Undeniably overindulgent. Perhaps downright gluttonous to some. I left overstuffed, maybe a little shameful and disgusted with myself but regrets? I had none. It’s so gleefully over-the-top that even if it didn’t work for you, I imagine you have to reluctantly concede all the wild joy happening here. Yeah it's a little dumb and the performances are ... fine. The rapping is more amusing than quotable. But it's so so so ... much. Hard for me to not get swept up in it. If I had a complaint, it’s almost TOO overwhelming. It took a little time for me to get my bearings and thought it’s impressive that it sustains its pace, it’s almost exhausting. A trip I’m glad I took and one I’d do again, but I confess it wore me out.

Walter Hill’s The Warriors is a favorite of mine and there’s certainly echoes of that here with the distinct and stylized gangs (impressively distinguished here not just in dress but in style of rapping as well) and the “we gotta get across town” nature of the story. Also a sucker for a good “stuff happens in one night” movie.

My first Sono experience. Has me intrigued for more.
 
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Tokyo Tribe (2014) Sion Sono

The first wham-bam, ultra-vi, hip hop musical in verse and likely the last. Think of West Side Story (there are similarities) on acid. Think of what the polar opposite of The Sound of Music might be. You want violence? Man, we got violence. It reminded me of Jean Luc Godard's line about blood in movies, "It's just red." Tokyo Tribe is all about movement; all about choreography. It is a continuous swirl of energy and snarl of malice. In some ways, it is the perfect pop cult, Midnight Madness movie. See it, get off on it, forget it--another Godard thought: the disposable movie. Sono makes movies about Japanese pop culture and despite his age (58) he still seems to have his finger on its pulse. He has made any number of movies superior to this one, starting with Love Exposure (his masterpiece) and including Why Don't You Play in Hell, Cold Fish, Strange Circus and more recent The Forest of Love. He seems to have a new movie out every six months. I take his movies as self-expressions about Japanese pop culture and its interests, basically whatever is on his mind when he gets behind the camera with a new script. He's not really a message guy--more of a reflector of mood and style. The Land of Hope, about a couple forced from their home after an earthquake, is the closest thing to a traditional movie that I have seen by him. It had no energy at all. These days he seems most at home with a lot of red.

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Lost in America
Brooks (1985)
“Sometimes I wish we really were more irresponsible.”

David and Linda are your typical 1980s couple. Successful strivers, collectors of things, possessions, status. They’re the Jones that others want to keep up with as they themselves keep up with even other Joneses. But secretly, this is stifling, first to Linda who admits as much, then ultimately to David who decides to blow up their entire lives after missing out on a promotion he felt was a sure thing. Inspired by Easy Rider, the duo cash out and hit the road to find themselves and America ... which one could argue they do. It just isn’t what they expected.

This isn’t spoof or parody but it feels like a cousin to a much more overt Christopher Guest mockumentary — comedically clueless people diving into waters where they’ll soon be over their head. The difference here is Brooks’ characters know they’re drowning, while Guest’s never do. Awareness is a funny thing. That Brooks’ characters become self-aware oddly made them less sympathetic, more frustrating whereas the lack of self-awareness in something like what Guest does sometimes makes those characters more sympathetic. In real life I think I’d feel opposite. But here, I don’t. Not sure what that says about me.

So Lost in America was a bumpy ride for me in moments. I’ve never been a believer that I have to LIKE characters in a movie to be engaged with it. Always found that silly. They need to be compelling and interesting, but not necessarily likable. These two were, as the kids might say, a tough hang. Are we supposed to be rooting for them? I think not. And honestly it’s that post-script that gave me my biggest laugh and I think also gives the game away if one were on the fence about where Brooks stands. It might be a trying to journey to reach that joke though.

The constant Easy Rider references cracked me up. That’s one of those classics that I’ve just never really warmed to. I understand its historic importance but the actual product is just drugged-out nonsense to me. I suspect Brooks feels the same way. It’s a hollow inspiration for hollow people. David and Linda don’t really seem to stop and consider the full story of Easy Rider either. How did it end for Wyatt and Billy? On that level, this is certainly a success.

Brooks clearly has an understanding of his characters and there is a level of amusement watching him try (and fail) to repeatedly talk himself out of trouble, which again feels like part of the joke. But I don't know that I'd want to be friends with him and his wife.
 
Lost in America (1985) dir. Albert Brooks

David and Linda are a couple in their 30s are getting ready to move into their new house. A house none of them love, but they are going through the motions because they reckon that's what two succesful people should do in the part of life they are in right now. David is up for a big promotion at his job, which hopefully will be the one that will make him happy. Only it's not a promotion, it's a transfer to New York to work on the Ford account, and some smuck gets the promotion instead, because David's too good for an executive position. David loses it, quits his job after a lenghty berating of his boss. Then he convinces Linda to sell everything, buy a mobile home and drive around America, touching indians, and whatever else it was they did in Easy Rider. They make Las Vegas their first stop to renew their marriage. Instead of going to the chapel late at night, Linda manages to convince David that they should spend the night in a suite in a hotel. The "junior suite" is hardly more than a room, but there's room service and pay-per-view porno movies, so it's probably alright. During the night Linda sneaks down into the casino, and manages to lose all their money. So now they have a couple hundred dollars left for their adventure around America.

Albert Brooks as writer, director and lead actor here pulls no punches in this satire, as he goes hard after the yuppie culture of the 80s. Climbing the corporate ladder to get a nice title, preferably at least three words long with one being president, isn't all it's made up to be. Sitting in an office with no windows for years so you can pick out some ugly kitchen tiles perhaps isn't all that great either. Good thing Easy Rider came around a couple decades prior to tell us what to do reject corporate life and consumerism. Hit the road, leave your worldly possessions behind, live in the moment, touch indians, and whatever else happened in that movie. This worship of Easy Rider is also something Brooks takes under loving care. The Easy Rider fans in the film are as far from the characters in Easy Rider as possible. A police officer who's a fan of a couple guys who hate police and routinely break the law. And then there's David, and by extention Linda, who leave in a luxury mobile home with a couple hundred grand in their pockets and a plan for making them last long. Not quite like a couple guys on motorbikes heading to New Orleans with the objective to spend all their money there in a huge bender.

The script for Lost in America is filled with incredibly funny lines. Most of them go to Albert Brooks who's delivery is great. But Julie Hagerty gets her share as well, but they are often more subtle than Brooks', and often shes tasked with reacting to the Brooks' monologues, which she does very well and often heightens the comedic value of the scene without even saying anything. The pacing is a bit uneven, but why get hung up on that, when you can just enjoy the laughter? And laughter there's plenty of here.
 
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Lost in America (1985) Directed by Albert Brooks

I'm not an Albert Brooks fan, but I haven't seen one of his movies in so long, I sort of forgot about him and what about him I didn't like so much. The first overlong neurotic scene that opened Lost in America reminded me of everything that I had forgotten. Checked the watch. 14 minutes in. Checked the movie timer, about an hour, fifteen to go. Got an Irish whiskey. Settled in. No scene irked me as badly as the first scene. Started to look at the movie as a borscht-belt comedian, intelligent variety, doing a series of related sketches: "Take My Wife...please." Didn't laugh at the blow up in the office. Didn't laugh at the wife wasting the cash in Vegas. Didn't laugh at all at anything actually. But I did think a couple of scenes were funny; there were a couple of smiles--the bit with the casino owner and the scene at the employment office. Once they left Vegas, I stopped actively disliking the movie and started to just passively dislike it--a slight improvement, I suppose. So I'm mulling over the pros and cons about Brooks. Pros: he is obvious an intelligent guy; his humour is a cut above most comics. I liked how his character didn't get very mad at his wife when she blew the nest egg. The only scene in which he did get mad--at the Hoover dam--seemed lame to me, like he thought he had to throw something in. He's not thoroughly predictable, though, which is another plus. Now the negative. I guess it's a problem that I have with almost all comedians--they think what they find funny is what I am going to find funny. Usually that is a safe assumption. I know I only watch comedians who I know I will find funny in the first place--so they and I are on the same wave length. But when I watch a comedian not on my list of favoured comics, I get annoyed by what they find funny. Brooks seems to think he is so funny he can make a movie basically entirely from the point of view of his own character and not wear his welcome thin. I don't want to be around this guy that much. Is Brooks a satirical comedian? I think he wants to be, but the target of his satire (dropping out, the hereafter, I don't remember the other movies)...there's just not much of a point to it. Is he poking fun at middle-class business types who want to drop out? Who cares? In the end, they just drive back to New York and resume their lives, slightly wiser, maybe not, but hardly believable in the first place. So I grant that he is clever but my praise stops there. He can dream up these little situations, but really they are of no more weight than a Jim Gaffigan skit, just more sardonic (I'm not actually familiar with Jim Gaffigan except by second-hand reputation, but all the other comedians I could think of --Henny Youngman? Bob Newhart?--nobody would know who I'm talking about). I give Brooks some points for intelligence, but his persona just doesn't add up to anyone with whom I want to spend time.
 
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The Hidden Fortress (1958) Directed by Akira Kurosawa

A treasure hunter (Indiana Jones), a feisty princess (Star Wars), two comic relief sidekick peasants (Star Wars) find treasure (Indiana Jones) but have to get it and themselves safely out of a whole bunch of trouble (Indiana Jones; Star Wars) before they can return to safety. Along the way they face evil armies, make clever escapes, provide much good humour, engage in sword-play and spear-play, and get rescued by an old friend along the way (you know the drill by now). Eventually, of course, they triumph. As I was watching The Hidden Fortress, which I picked because it was a Kurosawa movie that I had never seen before, I almost immediately thought of Indiana Jones, and how if you fiddled the story just a little, this could be an excellent Indiana Jones movie. That was bouncing around in my head, but what to do with the two sidekicks and then the princess? And then I thought about the droids in Star Wars, the Princess, and the evil empire. That felt like a pretty close fit, too. The Hidden Fortress could possibly be the inspiration for two of the biggest adventure franchises in Hollywood history. Probably most people think of Kurosawa as an art house director, but he's really an entertainment director, first and foremost. The Hidden Fortress is a Saturday matinee movie that should be viewed in a theatre and be accompanied by lots of popcorn. It is fast-paced, has interesting characters, lots of humour and more than one person to root for. The Hidden Fortress is Kurosawa having a bit of a romp and taking his audience along with him for the ride. I wouldn't rate this in the first echelon of Kurosawa's works (which would be The Seven Samurai, Rashomon; Yojimbo, Throne of Blood; and Ran for me.. But I would rank it at the very top of the second tier. It's hard to believe that someone who likes adventure movies wouldn't do anything but love this one.

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Criterion Channel
 
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My next pick is Marcel Camus' Black Orpheus (Already figured out the one after that, too: The Last Wave by Peter Weir)
 
The Hidden Fortress (1958) dir. Akira Kurosawa

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away... Wait that's a different movie. A long time ago in Japan, Tahei and Matashichi are two peasants looking to join the Yamana clan's army. But they arrive too late and the battle is already over. The Yamana warriors mistake them for members of the defeated Akizuki clan. As prisoners they are forced to search for gold in Akizuki castle, which is said to hide a great treasure. The two escape during a prisoner uprising. In a riverbed they find gold marked with the Akizuki crescent hidden inside small sticks which were part of the castle construction. They gather as many sticks as they can, but are spotted by a mysterious stranger. They tell him of their plan to sneak into Yamana territory, and from there into the neutral Hayakawa, which Yamana warriors are blocking the border to from Akizuki. The stranger tells them he's legendary Akizuki general Rokuruta Makabe, but they don't believe, he however leads them to a hidden fortress in the mountains where Akizuki princess Yuki is hiding. Rokuruta plans to use the two peasants escape plan, and use them as pack animals for the hidden gold, but wants the loud mouted Yuki to travel as a mute so as not to attract attention to her. Tahei and Matashichi still oblivious to the real identities of their new acquaintences are eager to go along as long as they get a share of the gold.

The Hidden Fortress is unfortunately most well known for the being a big inspiration for George Lucas when writing Star Wars. By the final draft of Star Wars the resemblance to The Hidden Fortress is far from obvious. Only the most basic plot outlines are still the same. It's a shame that this is a big part of The Hidden Fortress's legacy nowadays, firstly because it can give the wrong impression about what kind of movie you are about to watch, and secondly because The Hidden Fortress is a damn fine movie in its own right, and deserves to be remembered for that. But perhaps it's hard to be remembered as a good movie, when you are directed by Akira Kurosawa, and perhaps just scrape into the top 10 of his movies. I'm not sure anyone has made as many good movies as Akira Kurosawa, so the movies that are just good but not great, gets lost in the crowd. But The Hidden Fortress still stands out among Kurosawa's other works. It's one of his most light hearted films, which is mainly driven by Tahei and Matashichi's antics driving smiles and laughter. This light heartedness is mixed well with the otherwise deadly serious narative of trying to sneak across enemy lines with the most wanted person in the country. The narrative is strong, and while it takes a while to get established, the movie never feels slow or drawn out. As always with Akira Kurosawa films the editing is really good, and there's not a wasted moment on screen.

The Hidden Fortress also has what is perhaps Kurosawa's best 1-on-1 fight scene between Rokurota and an opposing general. The choreography is great, the editing is great, the performances are great, and Kurosawa isn't afraid of using a wide angle shot and letting his actors move around in it and let the camera roll. It's not a balls to the wall adrenaline fest, it's more like a tactical boxing match where jabs are exchanged until someone makes a mistake and the other can go in for the big blow. A really fun scene that is also a great character moment for both characters.
 
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The Hidden Fortress
Kurosawa (1958)
“What you make of another’s kindness is up to you.”

A rag-tag group of strangers thrown together by happenstance band together to smuggle a princess and a load of gold through enemy territory. The Hidden Fortress lives up every bit to that rollicking and entertaining summation. I’ll dispense with the well-covered plot details.

Mifune just struts and swaggers all through this (much as he did a few years earlier in The Seven Samurai and much as he would a few years later in Yojimbo). That trio, but maybe especially this one show how a generation of movie stars swiped their confident-cool personas. A tad dick-ish too. But always likable. He is matched well and consistently by Uehara’s undeterred Princess Yuki. There’s a lot of joy to be had both overall, but especially with these two.

I can’t be quite as effusive about the duo of Matashichi and Tahei who famously inspired Threepeio and Artoo in Star Wars. I’ve always found them a bit grating. The humor never fully connects. I don’t know if it’s an issue of time or culture, but I find them to be a detail of interest, but not one of entertainment.

Kurosawa just has this masterful grasp of entertainment. He could certainly do serious and meaningful and, well, everything. He’s one of our most versatile directors ever. But through it all, he’s also always entertaining whether in a pure, uncut form like this or Yojimbo or movies like Throne of Blood, which is weightier but still fun. Spielberg is the clear modern equivalent. It’s all so effortless. It’s inherent. You never see the sweat, the seems. Nothing.

And here’s the thing ... I’d even label this as second tier Kurosawa (Mifune too, for what it’s worth). It’s the type of movie that might be a crowning achievement for so many others but despite its many positive attributes I don’t think it is among his best. There’s nothing “wrong” with it in any major sense, it’s just the breadth of Kurosawa’s work is so large, the bar is quite high to clear. At least in my mind.

Certainly it’s famed for the obvious influences on Star Wars, but it’s interesting to note the differences too which make The Hidden Fortress more than a point of interest on an advanced stations of the cross for nerd-dom. (I mean this lovingly). It’s a rousing adventure story with an absolutely killer sword fight sequence that’s among the best action bits Kurosawa ever directed.
 
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Most of the time I hold off on reading what anyone else writes until after I post. Going through everyone's thoughts now, this might be a record ... I think we all said pretty much the same thing about this movie.
 
KallioWeHardlyKnewYe said:
Most of the time I hold off on reading what anyone else writes until after I post. Going through everyone's thoughts now, this might be a record ... I think we all said pretty much the same thing about this movie.
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This will seem hard to believe but I never there was such a direct link between Lucas and The Hidden Fortress. I watch the damn things, but I don't read about them much.


 
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Pranzo Oltranzista said:
Should leave it there, it's terrible! :)
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"Interesting" would be the work that I would use, but I haven't seen it in a while, so we shall see. When it rolls around, though, join us, toss in a review. It would be good to get your thoughts on it.
 
kihei said:
"Interesting" would be the work that I would use, but I haven't seen it in a while, so we shall see. When it rolls around, though, join us, toss in a review. It would be good to get your thoughts on it.
Click to expand...

Haven't seen it in 20 years, I wouldn't dare write a line on it - and won't watch it again. I always want to join you guys, this is still the greatest thread on here. I'm just really lazy.
 
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Cria Cuervos (1976) dir. Carlos Saura

The young child Ana walks downstairs one night, she hears some commotion from her parents bedroom. A woman leaves the room and then the house. Inside the room is her father lying in bed, dead. Ana takes the half empty glass of milk on the night stand, goes to the kitchen and cleans it. She's met by her mother asking what she's doing up so late. Ana's mother was never in the kitchen, she died of cancer years earlier. But her father really did die that night. Ana and her two sisters are taken in by their aunt. Over the course of the summer reality and fantasy mix as we see the world through Ana's eyes, where she often recalls memories, particularly with her mother, and these memories blend with current events.

Filmed while Franco lay ill drawing his last breaths, and by extension also the last breaths of Spains fascist regime. This fact is no coincidence in terms of this film. Ana's father is not just some random man, he's an officer in the army. Ana blames her father for her mothers illness and death, and carries a lot of resentment against him. Ana's inner trauma from losing her mother and seeing how her parents interacted are mirrored by political trauma in Spain outside of the little family home, and in contemporary Spain.

Cria Cuervos is not just a political statement, it's just as much about the internal trauma that Ana feels and how she copes with it. It's a beautifully told story, and Saura as both director and writer handles the messy blending of past, present and future, memories and reality with a very delicate hand where it's never confusing to try and follow the story, at least not more confusing than is intended. The role of Ana has to be one of the most demanding roles put onto a child actor as far as I can remember. Ana Torrent has to show a lot of subtle emotion, and she does it really well, a great performance by her and great direction by Saura. With Torrent's performance here and in Spirit of the Beehive she has to be perhaps the greatest child actor ever.
 
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I don't know how much I can share here, but just found a little goldmine. Just hit me if you're interested in ...

Godard / Miéville
Amir Naderi
Age d'or de Bollywood
Carole Roussopoulos
Humberto Mauro
King Vidor
Luc Moullet
Masao Adachi
Roberto Rossellini
Nobuhiro Aihara
Nobuhiko Obayashi
Ogawa Pro
Manoel de Oliveira
Ricci & Gianikian
Ritwik Ghatak
Vittorio de Seta
 
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Cria Curevos
Saura (1976)
“There’s nothing. Nothing.”

Young Ana hears a noise. She creeps downstairs in the middle of the night. We hear sounds she doesn’t understand but we do — sex, then death behind closed doors. A woman in tears sneaks out but not before locking eyes with Ana. Ana checks out the scene the man, her father, is clearly dead. She doesn’t seem fazed. She calmly takes a dirty glass of milk to the kitchen to clean it. Her mother shows up to tell her to go to bed. The oddness of the scene becomes clearer as the movie progresses. The woman was her father’s lover. Ana believes she killed her dad with poison. And her mom, well, she died of cancer years earlier.

Now without parents, Ana and her two sisters live with their strict aunt, a jovial housekeeper and their mute, dying grandmother. There’s the normal fun of childhood — dancing, dressup (though the kid’s make-believe drama is decidedly, almost comically adult. But Ana’s dark inside, still wounded by the hard death of her mother and betrayals of her father. She thinks of jumping off a building. And she holds conversations with her future self (looks just like her mom).

The story takes place over the summer. The guinea pig dies. The backstory fills in. Ana offers to kill the ailing grandmother. She does try to kill the aunt (the poison, alas is baking powder). Summer closes and the girls return to school.

The comparisons to Spirit of the Beehive are unavoidable most obviously due to the casting of giant-cartoon-doll-eyed Ana Torrent. Also called Ana. Also haunted. Also dealing with the trauma’s of Franco’s Spain. The former was a period piece set during his rule, the latter was contemporary after his death. You see the influence most notably on some of the work of Guillermo del Toro too.

I’m not politically/historically savvy enough to connect the meanings between the happenings in Ana’s life to Franco’s Spain other than the fact that her officer father was an a-hole. But the haunted child who’s probably seen more real, hard life than one that age should certainly resonates.

By no means horror, there is an air of spookiness to the film. Saura plays with time and with reality and it takes some time to realize that’s what is going on. I appreciated the ambiguity. Torrent’s eyes, again, do a lot of that work. Geraldine Chaplin, in the dual role of mom and adult Ana, is memorable as well.

No way I can close without commenting on the repeated use of the poppy funky disco-sounding jam Porque Te Vas has made a big impression on me as well. A song about loss gussied up in pop trappings that somewhat mask the true meaning. A fitting choice though I concede I definitely had to look up the lyrics. My Spanish is super rusty. It’s equal parts haunting and toe-tapping. A fitting choice for such a layered film. It’s still stuck in my head about a week after watching the movie.
 
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Pranzo Oltranzista said:
I don't know how much I can share here, but just found a little goldmine. Just hit me if you're interested in ...

Godard / Miéville
Amir Naderi
Age d'or de Bollywood
Carole Roussopoulos
Humberto Mauro
King Vidor
Luc Moullet
Masao Adachi
Roberto Rossellini
Nobuhiro Aihara
Nobuhiko Obayashi
Ogawa Pro
Manoel de Oliveira
Ricci & Gianikian
Ritwik Ghatak
Vittorio de Seta
Click to expand...

I admit I'm not real familiar with most of these. Any recommendations?
 
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