Reviews

An enjoyable Japanese movie that is somewhat a suspense movie, plus tragic-drama with dashes of comedy. The concept reminded me a bit of the movie Amélie . In Kekkon the main character is trying to make people happy and make money at the same time. I felt various recurring degrees of sympathy for Kenji but my sympathy evaporated and turned to revulsion when he was swindling the other characters. The music really helps create mood throughout the movie. The locations are humdrum locations throughout the Tokyo area. Its not fast-paced just easy-paced, sufficient enough to get you to feel for all the characters.

This is a really good Ninja movie. It has everything a ninja movie needs: a handsome lead ninja, ninja stars, sinister-crazy villains and ninja fighting. I watched this without knowing about the background or story and found it surprisingly fun (judging by the cover picture I thought it was going to be lame but I was wrong). There are a lot of novel parts to the movie that I had never seen in Ninja movies before. The soundtrack helped me enjoy the movie, there were moments I thought (in a nice way) why is this type of music being used.

"Poison Berry in my Brain" is fun chirpy romantic comedy with a kernel of hard reality. The movie revolves around a single Japanese woman called Ichiko Sakurai who is turning 30 and has started out on a writing career. She starts relationships and with the help of five characters of conscience we see her steer her way through these relationships. At first it takes some time to get used to the five characters inside Ichiko's mind that debate with comedy and drama Ichiko's steps in her relationships but the humor they provide helps the movie along. The ending is quite good, not a soppy one but a hard positive one.

This is an interesting film. It is about a private eye trying to solve the murders of three sisters on an island near Hiroshima. The directing is superb, the acting is good, and there are a range of interesting characters (sensible straight guys, clownish cops, servants and so on). The music is typical 1970's Japanese movie music: lots of guitars along with strings and traditional Japanese instruments. The director filmed some lovely natural scenes with cliffs, rice fields as well as scenes with long steps and temples. The plot is somewhat complicated, it is hard to understand the relationships of the characters with each other. The director uses splices edited scenes to inform the viewer of things that happened, these scenes are nearly subliminal, they are very short and are inserted when two characters are having a serious chat. There is a fairly gross scene when the corpse of one of the sisters loses her head. A bit of a long movie but enjoyable.

This movie Nichiren is basically what you would expect it to be. A 1979 Japanese-made period movie (jidai-geki) about a monk who sets out to establish a purer Buddhist sect in Japans Kamakura period. The actor Yorozuya Kinnosuke gives a walloping performance, at times it feels overly dramatic. The story follows him from when he "graduates" from his local temple in Chiba. He studies in Kyoto but disagrees with mainstream teaching. He resolves to bring a simpler and purer version of Buddhism to the masses but keeps running into setbacks. He is banished several times and there are several attempts on his life. One scene, which is very dramatic, has Nichiren about to be executed but saved through supernatural intervention. The background music is grand and helps indicate the mood. What I liked best in this movie was the historic background: I learned about the Nichiren sect, I could see how the regent controlled the shogun, a Mongolian invasion is mentioned. A good movie for anyone interested in Kamakura period history.

A mild mannered period drama set in 1920's provincial Japan. This biopic revolves about a young woman, Misuzu Kaneko, who works in her family book store and writes poems that are mostly for children. We meet her at the start as a mildly eccentric or silly teenager who is very fond of her younger brother. She is urged to marry but unfortunately the man she marries turns out to be a "bad man". They have a child but end up separating. The ending is really an ending. The film is appropriately slow paced, sometimes with no background music and scattered through are readings of her poems. The interesting thing for me is the comparison of the lively Misuzu at the start compared to the sad Misuzu towards the finish. It is filmed in the area where the real Misuzu Kaneko lived.

A fun entertaining movie to watch. A cool samurai loses his estate, his older brother is murdered and his longtime girlfriend is coerced into marrying the bad guy. The cool samurai kills a renowned thief and takes on his name: Tajomaru. He then joins a group of bandits and after some time learns that the cause of all his troubles was his childhood friend. He goes and confronts his ex-friend and ends up in a dungeon. Luckily a military lord, acting as judge, investigates what really happened. We learn from some testimonies what intrigue had really happened. The shogun comes and takes sides with the bad guy but the cool samurai is rescued by his bandit friends. He seeks out the girlfriend, and returns to have a sword battle the bad guy. There is kind of rock music soundtrack to this movie which makes it interesting. It makes the film feel modern rather than stuffy and old. The plot twists really are like the novel Rashomon by Ryunosuke Akutagawa.

Eight Rangers was a fun movie to watch. It is something of a parody of Power Rangers and super heroes in general. The director and scriptwriter did a good job of balancing humour with a serious quest to stop the bad guys doing bad things to the kids of Japan. The seven actors who portray the various coloured heroes are a famous boy band that give a standard performance throughout the movie. They start out as a group of losers that come together with time. I felt the use of humdrum places like an old gym or a cluttered police office to be quite funny. The effects were humorous, for example the rockets on their suits or the flashes that happened when they punch some bad guys.An enjoyable movie to watch and not to take seriously. I can imagine the 1960's group the Monkees in a movie like this.