My goal:  to see 100 movies in 2006

 

(Last year, I saw 97 films; the list is available here.  The list of the115 films I saw in 2004 is here.  The list of the 86 movies I saw in 2003 is here.)

 

 

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95) Casino Royale (2006: dir. Martin Campbell).  On the last day of 2006, my son and I checked out the new 007.  It was interesting to see how the whole movie was a set-up for the last lines, in which Daniel Craig finally becomes James Bond:  they even hold off on using the familiar Bond theme music until that ultimate scene.  The rest of the film is, oddly enough, a real movie:  in other words, they don’t rely on the repertoire of gimmicks built up in the series over the years.  It will be interesting to see what they do next, now that Craig has assumed the role.  My son, a big fan of the series, approves.  (12/31/06 at the Baus Theater, Kichijôji, Tokyo).

 

94)  Jazz musume kanpai! (Cheers to the jazz girls; 1955; dir. Inoue Umetsugu).  A “sannin musume” film made before the Hibari-Chiemi-Izumi trio formed (see #93 below), though both Izumi and Chiemi appear—though Chiemi takes a fairly minor role.  Another glossy musical, albeit shot in black-and-white, this was made with the help of the Takarazuka theatrical company.  The three daughters of a vaudeville performer overcome their father’s objections to their becoming jazz singers and end up movie stars.  Here again, the notion of voice-over dubbing takes on especial importance—which is odd, in part because the lip-synching on the musical numbers is pretty bad, particularly in the first half.  And then there’s this remarkable song performed in black face…. (12/23/06 on Nihon Eiga Senmon Channel)

 

93).  Hibari Chiemi Izumi sannin yoreba (Hibari, Chiemi & Izumi:  if the three of us stick together; 1964, dir. Sugie Toshio).  The last of the “Sannin musume” (Three girls) films with Misora Hibari, Eri Chiemi, and Yukimura Izumi, like all the others in the series a big MGM-style musical, shot in widescreen and full color.  In fact, one sequence is clearly modeled on Judy Garland’s “We’re a Couple of Swells” performance as a hobo in Easter Parade (with a nice parody of Madame Butterfly thrown in here).  The three girls are all on the look out for husbands; it takes some doing, of course, but all find their dream match by the end.  The musical numbers are, as usual, quite good.  (12/23/06 on Nihon Eiga Senmon Channel). 

 

92)  Hibari no komori uta (Hibari’s lullaby; 1951; dir. Shima Kôji).  Here, Hibari plays two roles – Hibari, the daughter of a wealthy musical arranger/composer who lives in suburban Tokyo in a Western-style house; and Sumire, the daughter of a female Japanese dance instructor who lives in lowertown Tokyo in a Japanese-style house.  In fact, Hibari and Sumire are twin sisters separated at birth because their parents divorced; they meet at summer camp and, upon realizing their relationship, plot to get their parents back together.  As seems obligatory in films with this sort of story line, the two girls switch places as part of their scheming.  The two sides of Hibari’s music – American swing (here, the song “My Boyfriend”) and Japanese kayôkyoku (“Chichi koishi”) – are projected onto the two different characters, who naturally wear Western-style clothes and kimono, respectively.  But in the end, they are all brought back together as the family is restored.  The movie also has a weird thing going on with the notion of voice-overs:  it depicts several instances of voice-overs (including the dubbing of a film in a scene shot at a studio), and it repeatedly uses voice-overs by Hibari and Sumire as a technique for moving the plot forward. (12/23/06 on Nihon Eiga Senmon Channel).   

 

91Innocence (2004; dir. Oshii Mamoru).  The sequel to Oshii’s Ghost in Shell – and, I think, even more mind-blowing than the original.  The film walks you right into a completely credible world of surrealism, where you see impossible images that none the less seem perfectly apt.  The story is once again about technology, humanity, and the soul, and it keeps you thinking, but it is the visual imaginary that carries this work along.  This is one I wish I’d seen on a big screen…. (12/22/06 on DVD)

 

90).  Atlantis:  The Lost Empire (2001; dir. Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise).  Better than I had expected, and interesting in a sociological way, too.  Japanese sci-fi anime has spent the last forty years recycling the stories, images, and characters of late-nineteenth, early-twentieth century Western sci-fi (Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, etc.), thereby eliciting nostalgia for a now-vanished fantasy of what the future would look like. Here, Disney turns tables and appropriates anime:  the quirky personalities defined by various obsessions, the sexy character designs, and the big set-piece battle scenes are all clearly influences by the work of Ishii, Kon, and others.  (12/16/06 on VHS).

 

89).  Elvis:  That’s The Way It Is (1970: dir. Denis Sanders).  A documentary tracing Elvis’ 1970 appearance at the International Hotel in Las Vegas.  The first half shows the backstage preparations for opening night, interviews with excited fans, and Elvis’ rehearsals with his band.  Though it’s little more than a year into the great comeback, Elvis here looks like he’s already starting to get bored with being Elvis again.  The second half, though, is the opening night live show, and it’s terrific:  remarkable performances of “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “Polk Salad Annie,” “Suspicious Minds” and others.  (12/15/06 on VHS)

 

88).  The Polar Express (2004; dir. Robert Zemeckis).  It is charming, of course, and it was nice to see people make a family film without feeling the need to slip in some wink-wink-nod-nod double entendres for the adults.  But Tom Hanks is no character actor, and the animation (especially in the quasi-rollercoaster sequences) made me feel like I was playing a computer video game.  (12/10/06 on DVD).

 

87).  Walk the Line (2005; dir. James Mangold).  What struck me first is the astonishing similarity of this film in terms of style, story, and mood to the Ray Charles bio-pic of a year or two earlier.  Joaquin Rivera does a reasonable job as Johnny Cash, but it Reese Witherspoon as June Carter was a revelation:  man, oh, man.  As a kid, I always liked the old Hollywood biography films from the 1940s and 50s, and it’s nice to see the genre rediscovered.  (12/9/06 on DVD).

 

86).  ALWAYS 3-chôme no yûhi (Always sunset on third street; 2005: dir. Yamazaki Takashi).  One of the biggest film hits in Japan last year.  It’s a very slick, commercial movie looking back at the late 1950s.  As everyone noted at the time of its initial release, the film uses extensive computer graphics to reproduce the landscape of Tokyo back in the day – including the construction of Tokyo Tower.  What caught my eye, though, was the editing – the use of sudden fade outs and even the occasional wipe to bridge the gap from one scene to another.  The story is, not surprisingly, sentimental, and the soundtrack played by orchestra with full string section cues us into the emotions we’re supposed to be feeling, in case we forget to feel them.  But all in all, a charming film, one eminently deserving of the overseas release it will never get it.  #2 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 2005. (12/8/06 on DVD).    

 

85).  Sayônara CP (Goodbye CP; 1972; dir. Hara Kazuo).  The debut work by Hara, perhaps Japan’s greatest documentary filmmaker.  It’s a frank, in-your-face portrayal of a group of activist cerebral palsy patients that shocked audiences on its initial release. The film’s subjects speak about their sexual desires, they get drunk, and they serve as the film’s narrators, speaking in their own, sometimes hard-to-understand voices.  The movie includes a number of especially riveting scenes:  confronting “ordinary” Japanese on the street, the wife of one of the main characters slamming a door on the camera, etc.  Hara makes particularly effective use of the technique of dissociation between visual and audio:  throughout the majority of the film, we’re watching one scene but hearing another.  (12/3/06 on VHS). 

 

84).  Beethoven (1992; dir. Brian Levant).  I’d never seen this “family comedy” before.  It’s loaded down with Reagan/Bush-era ideological messages:  working mothers bad, stay-at-home mothers good, etc.  Some of the physical gags are well done, though, and Charles Grodin gives, well, a Charles Grodin performance:  am I wrong to feel nostalgia when I see his face nowadays?  The soundtrack by Randy Edelman isn’t half bad.  (11/24/06 on the NTV network).

 

83). Ringoen no shôjo (Maid of the apple orchard; 1952; dir. Shima Kôji).  Yet another early Misora Hibari flick, this based on a hit radio serial drama in which she had previously starred.  It was the first film produced and released by her own Shingei Production company, and although it was apparently shot both on location in Tsugaru and on the Shôchiku Ofuna studio lot, using a veteran production staff, it looks more amateurish than her earlier films.  The editing in particular is clumsy – there is a remarkably bad sequence showing Hibari out enjoying a motorboat on a lake.  Lots of local color, and Hibari and everyone do their best to speak with Tôhoku accents.  The story, as is standard for her early films, revolves around a family torn apart by both the war and personal conflict, and as always it is Hibari’s singing voice that heals the wounds and reunites kin with kin.  Her musical performances are top-notch.  (11/19/06 on VHS).   

 

82).  Otoko wa tsurai yo:  Torajirô monogatari (It’s tough being a man:  Torajirô’s tale; 1987; dir. Yamada Yôji).  #39 in the Tora-san series, and as always quite enjoyable.  Here, Tora-san tries to reunite an abandoned boy with his mother—reminiscent, as the NHK commentators noted, of Chaplin’s The Kid, but also of Beat Takeshi’s Kikujirô no natsu.  Others have pointed this out before, but what really caught my eye was the loving care with which the material culture of lower-working-class life in Japan is reproduced.  The kitchens, living rooms, flea-bitten hotel rooms, etc., are all letter-perfect, down to the coffee cups and towel-drying racks.  (11/18/06 on NHK BS-2).

 

81). Chichi koishi (I miss my dad; 1951; dir. Mizuho Shunkai).  Another early Misora Hibari film.  Here, she plays the daughter of a woman whose father forbid her from marrying the man she loved – only to learn out that she was already pregnant.  The pair spend many years apart before reuniting. As in Kanashiki kuchibue, the key to the reconciliation is a song composed by the father that Hibari sings – here, the number in question is “Watashi wa machi no ko,” one of her big hits.  Just when the movie seems determined to reach a tragic ending, from out of the blue it pulls off an almost Brechtian fake ending.  (11/9/06 on VHS).

 

80) Futari no hitomi (Two pairs of eyes; 1952: dir. Nakaki Shigeo).  This is the film where they imported child-star Margaret O’Brien from Hollywood to appear opposite 14-year-old Misora Hibari.  Hibari for the umpteenth time plays a Japanese street orphan; here she is befriended by the saintly O’Brien, daughter of an equally beatific American Occupation official.  The film is loaded with ideological messages – overloaded, really.  It carries a strong Christian bent as well – Hibari’s character is named Abe Marie, which quickly transforms to Ave Maria, the tune that Hibari sings at one point.  The movie ends with Hibari in tears, kneeling worshipfully on an airport runway, looking up in the sky at the plane that carries her savior, O’Brien, back to America.  Wow.  (11/8/06 on VHS).

 

79).  Linda Linda Linda (2005; dir. Yamashita Nobuhiro).  I watched this terrific film when it first came out last year and only intended to catch a few minutes when I turned on the television last night.  I got hooked again, of course, and stayed up well past my bedtime to watch all the way through.  A very small story – four high school girls form a rock band to perform a couple of songs at their annual school festival – told extraordinarily well.  What struck me this time is how precisely the film captures the boredom of teen age life:  the dead time spent waiting for the bus, sitting around with friends hoping something might happen, staring at your bedroom wall at home, etc.  The film somehow manages to make boredom into something quite entertaining.  #6 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 2005. (11/1/06 on the Nihon Eiga Senmon channel)

 

78).  Odoru daisôsasen (Bayside shakedown; 1998; dir. Motohiro Katsuyuki).  A slick comedy/police-thriller, one of the biggest hits in Japanese film history (its popularity arising, in part, because it was based on a successful television series).  Low-ranking cops solve a kidnapping, a murder, and a string of petty thefts in their own police station—and try to cope with tightening budgets and the political ambitions of their superiors.  Lots of sly references to Kurosawa, especially Tengoku to jigoku (High and Low, 1963).  The former signing idol Koizumi Kyôko plays a very creepy Internet vampire. (10/12/06 on VHS)

 

77).  The Magic Christian (1969; dir. Joseph McGraith).  An absurdist comedy, starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr and featuring a wonderful soundtrack by Badfinger (including the classic single, “Come and Get It” that Paul McCartney wrote for the band).  Sellers plays an eccentric millionaire who, with his adopted son Ringo, spends his days finding out precisely how far greed will take people.  The social criticism is blunt, and the humor not especially funny:  this is the sort of film that Lindsay Anderson could do much more effectively.  But it also provides a foreshadowing of greater things to come:  John Cleese and Graham Chapman are credited as contributing to the screenplay, and both take on small cameo roles to great effect.  (10/10/06 on VHS).

 

76).  Chirusoku no natsu (When stars converge; 2003; dir. Sasabe Kiyoshi)  The title literally translated would be “The summer of Tanabata” (Tanabata:  July 7, the night when according to East Asian legend two stars that are in love enjoy their once-a-year encounter).  The movie tells the tale of a forbidden love between two high school students, one a girl from Shimonoseki in Japan, the other a boy from Pusan, South Korea.  They meet at an annual international high school track-and-field meet in 1977, and promise to meet again the following year, despite prejudice and family opposition on both sides.  The film does a good job of recreating the emotions and energy of high school.  It’s take on discrimination is less satisfying, sticking to a fairly simplistic version of why Koreans and Japanese dislike one another.  The film feels like a very good “After School Special,” except when the director goes out of his way (repeatedly) to show his female leads walking around in bras.  Hmmm… The legendary folk singer Iruka is the main source of the soundtrack, which also features a number of late 1970s Japanese pop songs.  #9 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 2004. (10/6/06 on DVD).

 

75).  X-Men (2000; dir. Bryan Singer).  I’d always been curious about the emotional hold this series seems to have on young ‘uns these days.  Having grown up as part of the Indy Jones/Star Wars/Christopher Reeves=Superman generation, I understood the powerful sense of attachment indirectly, and having watched this now I sort of “get it.”  It’s all quite well done, and the political message is anti-fascist—a nice change of pace these days.  Now I guess I have to go see the rest of the series….. (9/30/06 on VHS). 

 

74).  Three Kings (1999: dir. David O. Russell).  This one had stuck in my mind ever since I read rave reviews for it when it first opened, and now (with the current awful mess in Iraq) seemed a good time to finally watch this horrific yet funny take on the first Iraq war.  Russell gets wonderful performances out of his cast – George Clooney, Ice Cube, Mark Wahlberg – and the film is often visually stunning.  Russell isn’t afraid to upend the conventions of Hollywood realism in service of his goal:  presenting sheer hysteria on the screen.  It’s a powerful statement on war, greed, and that particularly cynical strain of idealism that the U.S. seems bound to produce.  (9/27/06 on VHS).

 

73).  The Yûchôten Hotel (The Ecstatic Hotel; 2006: dir. Mitani Kôki).  A terrific farce that was a big hit here earlier this year.  It boasts a genuinely amazing cast—pretty much every actor and actress worth watching in Japan today has a role—Yakusho Kôji, Odagiri Joe, etc., etc.  It’s all based on the great old MGM classic, Grand Hotel (see #42 below), which is even referenced directly a couple of times—the suite rooms in the hotel here, for example, are named after the cast members of that film.  It’s all very slick and silly, as usual with Mitani, and I find myself again wondering why this sort of film never gets imported to the U.S.Shall We Dance being the notable exception.  Even if some of the humor got lost in translation (there are, for example, a large number of gags built around calligraphy for Chinese characters), enough would survive to delight an American audience.  (9/22/06 on DVD). 

 

72).  Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961; dir. Blake Edwards).  This film was made the year I was born, but somehow I’d managed to reach middle age without seeing it – until now.  It is of course charming (and of course offensive:  can’t they just edit out Mickey Rooney?). Audrey Hepburn starts out as light and airy as a silk scarf, but just as that act starts to get tiresome, she begins to add depth and subtlety, until she finally emerges as a character simultaneously light and heavy.  The score by Henry Mancini is justly famous – there is a particularly wonderful section near the end of the film where the “Moon River” theme appears in an atonal, cacophonous variation:  I found myself thinking it might make a fine concert piece on its own.  (9/21/06 on VHS).

 

71).  Sweet and Lowdown (1999; dir. Woody Allen).  Very enjoyable Woody film, in which he resumes his exploration of the ambiguities of documentary filmmaking as an avenue to discovering historical truth (cf.  Zelig).  Sean Penn gives a wonderful performance as the genuine creep who also happens to be the world’s second greatest jazz guitarist (damn that Django Reinhardt).  Samantha Morton is also strong as Hattie, though the rest of the cast seems a bit wooden at times.  The best thing about the movie:  unlike many Hollywood films that supposedly celebrate culture, this one isn’t afraid of actually placing the art in question (jazz music) in front of its viewers for extended periods of time.  (9/16/06 on VHS).

 

70).  Shina no yoru (China nights; 1940; dir. Fushimizu Shû; some sources cite name as Fushimizu Osamu).  In preparation for using this in class, I watched it for the first time in more than a decade.  It’s a notorious film proselytizing for Japan’s civilizing mission in China.  The faux Chinese actress Li Ko Ran (who was actually a Japanese woman named Yamaguchi Yoshiko) plays an anti-Japanese Chinese woman in Shanghai who learns to love the Japanese due to their kindness and generosity (and their ability to slap her to her senses when she throws a temper tantrum).  This time around, I paid close attention to the soundtrack—the film’s musical director was the great Hattori Ryôichi, whose activities in Asia during the 1930s and 40s have been a topic of my research lately.  (9/14/06 on VHS). 

 

69).  119 (1994; dir. Takenaka Naoto).  A romantic comedy that (like Takenaka’s Munô no hito) alludes to Ozu—and that is constructed as something like the mirror image of a Tora-san movie.  Here it is the beautiful young woman that travels to a picturesque town in the Japanese countryside, where she becomes the object of affection for a group of bored, love-starved firemen (the title is the Japanese emergency telephone number, the equivalent of America’s 911).  The film does a great job of creating a large number of very distinct, memorable characters, and the soundtrack by the great Imawano Kiyoshiro is worth the price of admission on its own.  #6 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 1994. (9/13/06 on VHS).

 

68).  Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London (1967; dir. Peter Whitehead).  A groovy documentary that tries to capture what it was like to be young, beautiful and talented in the Swinging London scene of the mid 1960s.  It features the music of Pink Floyd, Eric Burdon and the Animals, and the Rolling Stones, and interviews with such luminaries as Julie Christie, Michael Caine, and David Hockney (who does his best to puncture the balloon of London as an exciting place).  I dunno, I kept flashing forward to Absolutely Fabulous in my mind as I watched…. (9/8/06 on VHS)

 

67).  Maison de Himiko (2005; dir. Inudo Isshin).  A fine movie about families, sexuality, and dying.  The estranged daughter of an aging gay man is lured into working at a retirement home for aging gay men and finds herself involuntarily overcoming her anger.  Terrific performances throughout, as the actors walk a fine line between bathos and pathos.  It’s also one of the few films I’ve seen to take up the topic of homophobia in Japan.  The very subtle soundtrack is by Hosono Haruomi.  #4 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 2005.  (9/5/06 on DVD)

 

66).  RV (2006; dir. Barry Sonnenfield).  This was the third in-flight movie on a long Minneapolis-Tokyo trip, and in my jetlagged stupor, I managed to watch the entire thing without the aid of headphones.  And you know what?  I don’t think it made much difference – which is only partially a criticism of the film.  The silliness and physical humor of Robin Williams shone through, and the story was quite easy to follow even without the dialogue.  I wonder if the soundtrack was any good…. (8/26/06 as in-flight movie). 

 

65).  Ice Age:  The Meltdown (2006; dir. Carlos Saldanha).  The sequel to the animated hit from a few years back, this one comes with a plot built around the dangers of climate change.  There are a few clever musical gags built in, and luckily the filmmakers understand the crown jewel of their franchise:  a squirrel who is consumed with desire for an acorn and who reappears here frequently here in a series of slapstick sequences.  (8/26/06 as in-flight movie).

 

64).  The Pink Panther (2006; dir. Shawn Levy).  The reviews I’d read for this were so unenthusiastic that I went in with very low expectations – and then was pleasantly surprised.  It’s not great, but it is quite fun.  And it set me to thinking….Why do we find the notion of remakes in film so troublesome?  In theater, for example, we want to see every male actor worth his salt take on the major roles – Hamlet, Willy Loman, Stanley Kowalski, etc.  So why does it upset us to see a film actor take on a part that is strongly identified with another actor?  Why shouldn’t we want to see, for example, all of the great comic actors of our day take their turn at playing Clouseau?  Hmmmm.  (8/15/06 as in-flight movie).

 

63).  She’s the Man (2006; dir. Andy Fickman).  A light, airy teen movie variation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, entertaining and sweet.  And who knows, maybe it will make the kids want to take their vitamins and read the original? (8/15/06 as in-flight movie).

 

62).  Munô no hito (Nowhere man; 1991; dir. Takenaka Naoto).  A dry, melancholic tale of midlife crisis and depression, with equal parts sadness and laughter.  Takenaka plays a manga artist who abandons his profession (or perhaps his audience abandons him) for a series of unrealistic schemes, all of which end in bizarre failures.  His wife and young son look on, mostly in anger and disgust -- yet they stand by him to the very end.  Many Ozu-like touches in the film, including the shot construction and editing.   #4 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 1991.  (8/13/06 on VHS).

 

61).  Nabii no koi (Nabbie's love; 1999; dir. Nakae Yuji). A light and enjoyable romantic comedy that also functions as a remarkable melodrama:  it gives us both melody (lots of Okinawan songs, which here are presented alongside Italian opera, Irish jigs, the "Star Spangled Banner" and other tunes--in other words, as World Music) and drama.  The latter, in classical melodramatic fashion, transforms implacable social contradictions and historical trauma into a narrative of love between a man and a woman.   Here, we have young Okinawan lovers who were separated by fiat in 1940 being reunited a half century later.  The historical trauma is finally healed, and yet the movie makes no mention of either World War Two or the American Occupation, as if nothing worth mentioning had happened on Okinawa between 1940 and 1999.   #2 on the Kinema Junpō Best Ten list for 2000.  (8/12/06 on VHS).

 

60). Over the Hedge (2006: dir. Karey Kirkpatrick and Tim Johnson).  An enjoyable piece of animated fluff.  The parodies of  contemporary American life are knife sharp -- though there is something oddly ideological about this cinematic equivalent of junk food taking on junk food as its target....We saw the subtitled version with the original English soundtrack, but the dubbed Japanese version has almost as much star power.  The voiceover cast includes Yakusho Kôji and Takeda Tetsuya, among others. (8/6/06 at Kichijôji Bauhaus Theater, Tokyo).

 

59). The Neverending Story (West Germany; 1984; dir. Wolfgang Petersen).  The last time I saw this was during its initial release here in Japan, back in 1985 at one of the decrepit movie palaces in downtown Sendai (all of which have since shut down).  It didn't make much a splash in the U.S., but the film was a huge hit in Japan.   As a work of cinema, it provides little cause for excitement:  the direction and editing recall nothing so much as 1970s American television.  But the production design -- the puppets, the sets, the costumes -- remain quite impressive, and I think they explain why this film translated so well for the Japanese audience back in the day.   And hearing the Giorgio Moroder soundtrack after all these years couldn't help but bring a nostalgic smile to my face.... My ten-year-old, on the other hand, complains that they left out too much of the book. (8/5/06 on VHS).

 

58).  Hauru no ugoku shiro (Howl's Moving Castle; 2004; dir. Miyazaki Hayao). The animation is stunning, of course:  it's very much a film for the eyes.  The plot makes almost no sensebut since the film takes place in a world in which both space and time are fully malleable, what right do we have to expect stable lines of causality in the story?  At bedtime lately I've been reading Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea quartet with my nine-year-old, and in watching this it seemed to me that many of Miyazaki's notions about how magic works are drawn from Le Guin's work.  And I wasn't much surprised to learn that the next film to be released by Studio Gibli (due out in Japan this August) is an anime version of book three from that series.  (7/27/06 on DVD).

 

57). The Gold Rush (1925; dir. Charles Chaplin).  They aired the 1942 version, with Chaplin's voiceover, on NHK.  In fact, the narration works nicely:  there is a sweetness and decency to Chaplin's voice that matches nicely the film's story and style.   What I'd really like to see, though, is a screening of this with a soundtrack from a good benshi (the live performers who provided running commentary to films in Japanese theaters during the silent era).   Chaplin was, after all, enormously popular in Japan during the 1920s and 30s.  What did Japanese audiences make of the shoe-for-Thanksgiving-dinner sequence, or the dancing dinner rolls? (7/24/06 on NHK-BS1). 

 

56).  The Great Dictator (1940: dir. Charles Chaplin).  What struck me watching this for the umpteenth time now were the ways Chaplin worked references to American racism into his critique of Hitler.  The aborted lynching scene that comes early on, and then the clear reference to racial hatred in the final speech sequence, all draw connections between European fascism and American racism in a way that strikes me as quite courageous for its day.   And the globe-as-a-balloon sequence retains all of its charm.  (7/22/06 on DVD)

 

55).  1999-nen no natsuyasumi ((Summer vacation 1999; 1988; dir. Kaneko Shûsuke).  Shot almost entirely in languid soft focus, this is the tale of four boys (or perhaps five or even six -- that point remains ambiguous), boarding school students left alone on campus over summer vacation.  The whole movie has a powerful manga feel to it, especially in its powdery depiction of romance and sexual desire:  the boys, for starters, are all played by girls.  The real stars here are the art direction staff, who came up with remarkable sets, locations, costumes, and props.  The depicted world is simultaneously antique and futuristic:  the characters work, for example, on machines that are a cross between PCs and crystal-set radio kits.  (7/22/06 on VHS).

 

54).  Patchigi! (We Shall Overcome Someday!) (2005; dir. Izutsu Kazuyuki).  The latest in a string of films about the zai-Nichi (ethnic Korean) experience in Japan, I didn’t like it as much as the reviews had led me to expect.  It does a fine job of capturing the moment on 1968-9, with student protests, folk music, and the first stirrings of hippiedom in Japan.  It also makes an earnest attempt to capture the complexities of zai-Nichi life (North vs. South tensions, relations with the “Fatherland,” etc.), though this often involves characters making lengthy expository speeches.  And it made a particularly effective appeal to me by opening with a recreation of a concert by Ox, the legendary Group Sounds band from Kansai, and by constructing an important subplot around the legendary banned single “Imjin River” by the Folk Crusaders.  But as a film it struck me as remarkably unadventurous (the explicit portrayal of violence is hardly a breakthrough in Japanese cinema these days), and its central Romeo-and-Juliet plot of romance between a Japanese boy and a zai-Nichi girl was sweet, but nothing particularly gripping.  A solid film, but did it deserve to be #1 on Kinema Junpô’s Best Ten list for 2005?  (7/16/06 on DVD)

 

53).  Shiko funjatta (Sumo Do, Sumo Don’t; 1992; dir. Suo Masayuki).  Utterly conventional comedy about an unconventional topic:  attempts to resuscitate the moribund sumo club at a fictional Japanese university.  Pleasant enough, and you learn a little bit about sumo, but all in all another piece of evidence for explaining why the Japanese studio system died.  The best thing in it is Takenaka Naoto’s physical humor, contorting his body in hysterical fashion as he plays a wrestler whose nerves always give him diarrhea right before his matches.  #1 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 1992. (7/13/06 on VHS). 

 

52).  Hana to Arisu (Hana & Alice; 2004; dir. Iwai Shunji).  A nice little film by Iwai that seems to me to capture perfectly – with an acceptable degree of exaggeration – what it is like to be fifteen years old:   the stupid games you play with your friends, the way your friends turn the tables on you in those games, and the way all of this functions as a substitute form of self-expression and communication.  Two teen-age girls fall for the same boy here, and convince him (perhaps:  again, there are wheels spinning within wheels in the games played here) that he is suffering from amnesia.  As usual with Iwai, the pace is measured and the actors all seem to be on Prozac, but the film never drags.  There’s a nice string-quartet score composed by Iwai himself.  I’ve decided that Iwai is the Murakami Haruki of contemporary Japanese film-makers.  Surely I’m not the first to make this discovery.  (7/12/06 on DVD).

 

51).  Kiraware Matsuko no isshô (Memories of Matsuko; 2006; dir. Nakashima Tetsuya).  From the director of the delightful Shimotsuma monogatari (Kamikaze girls), this is a surrealistic musical, in the vein of Dancer in the Dark or Chicago.  The first half is a mess (it didn't help that I was woozy from lack of sleep after getting up in the middle of the night to watch the World Cup final), but the last 45 minutes or so pack a powerful humanistic punch.  Centering on the ultimate hard-luck life of the title character (played well by Nakatani Miki), the film insists with great skill that unselfish love is the only thing that makes human life worth living -- even as it traces how Japanese society over the last fifty years has made such love almost (but not entirely) impossible. #6 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 2006. (7/10/06 at Shinjuku Joy Cinema 3 Theater).

 

50) Grand Show 1946-nen (Grand Show 1946; 1946; dir. Makino Masahiro).  The Shochiku studio's musical extravaganza for New Year's, 1946, filmed just a few months after Japan's surrender in WWII.  The message of the film becomes crystal clear early on, when two of the featured singers face the camera and declare:  "Come on, everybody, liven up!  Forget the dark past and get happy!"  There is something like a story here -- the popular singer Takamine Mieko plays a waitress whose boyfriend, a cook, can't get up the courage to tell her that he loves her -- except when he's drunk, and she hates drunks.  Mostly it's a string of nightclub-spectacular music-and-dance sequences, ala Busby Berkeley, though clearly done on a limited budget.  (7/8/06 on VHS taped from Neco Channel)

 

49) The Kids Are Alright (1979; dir. Jeff Stein).  I watched this for the umpteenth time, because every once in a while I just need to see Keith Moon smash a drum kit and Pete Townshend do that windmill thing.  Nothing better for the release of pent-up stress.  (7/706 on VHS).

48). The Chronicles of Narnia:  The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005; dir. Andrew Adamson).  Why are all the great fantasy movies, with no connection to human reality, all shot in New Zealand these days?  There’s this one, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and of course The Last Samurai.  Anyhow, this is a fine adaptation of the book, well written, wonderfully acted (especially by the children, who anchor the whole film), and just the right blend of spectacle and special effects.  My nine-year-old swears by it, and for once I have to concur with her taste.  Just one sour note:  why, for Chrissakes (and I mean that almost literally in this instance), use Liam Neeson for the voice of Aslan?  (7/3/06 on DVD)

47).  Peep TV Show (2003; dir. Tsuchiya Yutaka).  A remarkable work that walks the borderline between documentary and feature film, this explores on multiple levels the diminishing sense of the real in our media-spectacle world.  Using as its starting point the televised images of 9/11, it walks us through a series of related problems:  security cameras, invasive peeping tom cameras, Internet “reality” livecam websites, etc.  We follow two main characters as they proceed through a series of increasingly violent sequences acted out for Internet audiences, all in attempts to touch something real.  This is all filmed in documentary style, with “real” footage spliced together with staged sequences, all of it leading up to the first anniversary of the 9/11 events and a realization that in a sense, we all live at “Ground Zero” of media culture.   (7/2/06 at Cinema ArtOne Shimokitazawa, Tokyo).

46).  Nihon no akuryô (Evil spirits of Japan; 1970; dir. Kuroki Kazuo)  A classic example of 1970s Art Theater Guilt (ATG) cinema, this is an avant garde yakuza film that explores questions of identity, politics, and pretty much everything else.  It uses all sorts of experimental techniques, most prominently the disassociation of soundtrack from visual image:  we're constantly watching one scene but hearing another.  One of the big attractions for me was the soundtrack by two leading figures from the 1960s underground folk music scene:  Hayakawa Yoshio (of The Jacks) and Okabayashi NobuyasuOkabayashi makes several appearances in the film, singing his compositions while parodying the whole notion of interjecting musical numbers into films.    (6/25/06 on VHS taped from Nihon Eiga Senmon Channel)

45).  Dodgeball (2004; dir. Rawson Marshall Thurber).   Well, it was Friday night and I wanted to watch a stupid movie....If you do see this, make sure to stick around through the end credits for the finale sequence, one of the more striking statements of Hollywood's self-loathing you'll encounter anywhere.  Sure, it's intended as tongue-in-cheek, and yet it's the only place in the film where you see actual emotion:  pure self-hatred.  (6/23/06 on DVD)

 

44).  Tony Takatani (2005; dir. Ichikawa Jun).  Writers are frequently encouraged to show, not tell.  This movie risks taking the other tack.  From the opening frames, we are in the hands of an off-screen narrator, who tells us what the characters are doing and thinking.  The characters themselves have little spoken dialogue, and much of that consists of lines that really should belong to the narrator.  Based on a short story by Murakami Haruki, this melancholic tale follows the title character through a series of losses.  Miyazawa Rie plays two characters:  Tony’s wife, who tries to fill her life by obsessively buying expensive clothing, and the young woman Tony briefly hires after his wife’s death, the only job qualification being that she has the same sizes as his deceased spouse so that the assistant can wear her clothes as she works.  The sparse piano soundtrack is by Sakamoto Ryûichi.  (6/15/06 on Nihon Eiga Senmon Channel)

 

43).  Racing Stripes (2005; dir. Frederick Du Chau).  A dud of a movie.  The characters are boring, the moral conflicts absurdly uninteresting, and you spot every joke punch-line coming from a mile off.  Every time the film has a chance to stir up some magic (e.g., the first time the animals speak), it just sloughs it off with a shrug.  It doesn’t even bother to give us much horse/zebra racing footage and, somehow, making horses into villains just doesn’t work.   I’m ashamed to admit that I kinda like talking animal movies, but this one is plain dull.   (6/8/06 on DVD).

 

42).  Grand Hotel (1932; dir. Edmund Goulding).  Early MGM star vehicle, with John and Lionel Barrymore, Greta Garbo (who wants to be alone), Joan Crawford and others, all at their radiant star-power brightest.  The full facial close-up is the favorite device, of course.  What strikes me watching it now is the relatively adventuresome quality of Pre-Code studio film-making – there’s cynicism, sexiness, and lots of flippant anti-capitalist remarks all over the place.  Not to mention the inherent fascination of watching a depiction of Berlin in 1932, just at the tipping point from decadence to horror.  (6/4/06 on VHS). 

 

41).  In za pûru (In the pool; 2005; dir. Miki Satoshi).  Another very commercial comedy.  Quite funny, though as often happens with farces like this, it loses energy near the end when its attention turns to wrapping up the various plot threads.  It’s the story of a mental health clinic, its chief doctor (Matsuo Suzuki) who is clearly bonkers, his very sexy nurse (MAIKO), and three patients who struggle with various obsessions.  Very strong performances throughout, including Odagiri Joe as a man burdened with a constant erection and Ichikawa Miwako as a journalist suffering from obsessive compulsion disorder.  Watching, I was vaguely reminded of Wong Kar-Wai’s work:  the style, purpose and ambition here are completely different, and yet there is a similar attempt to capture the alienation of contemporary urban life in East Asia.  (6/3/06 on DVD). 

 

40).  TRICK (2002; dir. Tsutsumi Yukihiko).  The K in the title should be flipped around backwards, as in the title of the popular television series on which this is based.  A very commercial movie, highly entertaining—precisely the sort of Japanese film that never gets released abroad, because it has no artistic pretensions whatsoever.  Nakama Yukie plays Yamada, a hapless female magician who, as in the series, gets tangled up with conmen who fake supernatural powers.  As always, she is aided/frustrated by her friend Ueda (Abe Hiroshi), a scientist-author who also specializes in exploring the metaphysical realm.   Part of the charm of the film and series comes from the love-hate relationship between those two:  they are always too busy quarrelling to notice that they are on the brink of failing in love.  The script consists of an infinitely expandable string of silly puns (especially those involving Chinese characters), sillier jokes, and unexpected plot twists that usually turn on brain teasers.  (5/26/06 on VHS). 

 

39).  Densha otoko (Train man; 2005; dir. Murakami Masanori).  Another huge hit from last year, a very charming movie.  Like much of the best recent mainstream film from Japan, it works by giving a human face to an otherwise ostracized subculture, here the otaku phenomenon.  A love story between a shy otaku recluse and a beautiful woman he inadvertently rescues on a train, it calls to mind the old tv drama, The 101st Proposal. The heroine here (played by Nakatani Miki) even looks a bit like Asano Atsuko, the female lead from that series.  Murakami and his crew have a very strong visual sense:  the film is loaded with strikingly composed shots.  The soundtrack uses electronic music behind scenes in which characters’ relations are mediated by the Internet, and acoustic music behind scenes in which humans meet face to face.  Utterly predictable, of course, but the ride is still great fun.   (5/18/06 on Nihon Eiga Senmon Channel).

 

38).  Akasen chitai (Street of shame; 1956; dir. Mizoguchi Kenzô).  Mizoguchi’s last film, and one of his best.  A powerful melodrama about women in Yoshiwara, the Tokyo red-light district, in the years immediately before prostitution was finally outlawed here in the late 1950s—in fact, the debates over the new law form one of the subplots here.  Watching it, you think you know who the “good” and “bad” characters are, but then Mizoguchi turns the tables on you and shows why the various women have come to act the way that they do.  Terrific performances throughout, and a remarkable soundtrack featuring modernistic music and even the weird, science-fiction-like stylings of a Theremin.  The camerawork is unusually restrained for Mizoguchi, but still effective.  (5/9/06 on VHS taped from Nihon Eiga Senmon Channel). 

 

37).  Chicken Little (2005; dir. Mark Dindal).  I came to this with very low expectations, having read the mostly unenthusiastic reviews that greeted its initial release last year back in the States.  As a result of that, perhaps, I liked it more than I expected.  It does have problems:  it reminded me of Napoleon Dynamite on the sense that though it purports to take the side of the misfit underdogs, it also expects us to enjoy shots of them being tormented by bullies—e.g., the dodgeball sequence here, when we are supposed to find humor in the fat pig being hammered repeatedly and viciously by the popular kids in class.   This is a classic instance of disavowal, whereby we get to enjoy being cruel to those weaker than us but simultaneously get to deny our complicity in that cruelty.  Setting that aside, though, it’s mostly a fun children’s picture with lots of allusions to other films throughout.  It’s far from a masterpiece, but it isn’t awful, either.  My nine-year-old loved it, I should note.  (5/7/06 on DVD).

 

36).  NANA (2005; dir Ôtani Kentarô).  One of the biggest hits in Japan last year, it’s a very commercial story about the bond between two 20-ish young women who share not only an apartment, but also the same name (hence, the title).  One of them is a rock singer, the other a frills-and-smiles girlish girl.  The film’s popularity was due, in part, to its being based on a best-selling manga, which provided the twists and turns in the plot, as well as a few surrealistic touches that the movie reproduces, mainly in the look of the characters and the sets.  The story revolves around romances and friendships—failed, potential, and achieved.  For a rock-and-roll movie, this one has an odd musical editing style:  key emotional moments are always backed up with conventional soundtrack music played on strings or keyboards (until the very end, when the strings and keyboards are melded together into a single composition), even if that means cutting away from the powerful rock song that’s being played in the diegesis.  (5/6/06 on DVD). 

 

35).  Sono ato no hachi no su no kodomotachi (The later children of the beehive; 1951; dir. Shimizu Hiroshi).  The sequel to #31 below.  The pretext here is that the original film was a documentary and that the children in it have become famous because of it.  With their adult mentor, they have formed a kind of soviet commune in the mountains of Shizuoka, where they are constantly pestered by journalists and others who want to join them but who don’t really understand the egalitarian principles by which they live.  It’s another episodic, optimistic film, shot all on location.  The cinematography is again quite lovely—never magisterial, but always democratic in tone and stance.   There is even a strange, albeit charming, animated sequence thrown in to illustrate a science lesson that the children receive.  (5/2/06 on VHS taped from Nihon Eiga Senmon Channel).

 

34).  Monterey Pop (1968; dir. D.A. Pennebaker).  Of all the big rock festival documentaries from the late 1960s and early 1970s, this is my favorite.  The quality of the musical performances is extraordinary, for starters, but more to the point, this one isn’t marred by the bloated self-importance that infects Woodstock and all others, in which everyone is determined to show us how they are making a world historical statement about the state of mankind.  Even the producers here are remarkably pragmatic:  the whole point is to put on a good musical show, and that’s what they do—and that’s enough.  My favorite moment:  the shot of Mickey Dolenz from the Monkees in the audience, erupting into applause at the end of Ravi Shankar’s set.  (4/29/06 on VHS)

 

33).  Wayne’s World (1992; dir. Penelope Spheeris).  When I saw this o n its first release, I laughed so hard that tears literally streamed down my face.  Watching it again now, I still laugh, but not nearly as hard.  In part, it’s because I of course remember the punch lines in advance, and also because so many of the once-fresh bits in the film became so popular that they subsequently became clichés and lost their edge.  But it’s also because the humor in the film is so topical that it’s quite dated now:  I spent much time explaining now-obscure pop culture allusions (Grey Poupon mustard commercials, the Laverne & Shirley show, etc.) to my 14-year-old.  It’s still a lot of fun, though, and Tia Carrera’s performance in it sits alongside that of P.J. Soles in Rock and Roll High School on my all-time list of crushes on actresses.  (4/29/06 on VHS).

 

32).  Jozee to tora to sakanatachi (Josee, the tiger and the fish; 2003; dir. Inudo Isshin).  A terrific off-beat romantic comedy about an aimless college student and the paraplegic woman he literally runs into in the street—whereupon she tries to knife him.  Their’s is a bumpy relationship, needless to say.  The improbably story is nonetheless quite convincing, in large part due to the terrific performances throughout, not to mention the very intelligent script.  The film ends on what struck me as a surprising note—at least I didn’t see it coming.  Funny, sexy, unpredictable:  a fine little movie.  It has a tidy soundtrack, too, and lots of oddball peripheral characters to keep things interesting.  #4 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 2003.  (4/25/06 on DVD)

 

31).  Hachi no su no kodomotachi (Children of the beehive; 1948; dir. Shimizu Hiroshi).  A fine example of postwar Japanese humanism.  Shimizu takes an anonymous social problem—the thousands of war-orphaned street urchins who swarmed city streets in the years after 1945, stealing, pimping, cursing, and generally menacing “decent” society—and gives it a human face.  We follow a group of boys who find themselves informally adopted by an equally homeless returned soldier.  He tries, with more or less success, to teach them how to live right.  The film is funny, sad, beautiful—and quite optimistic.  It’s shot on location, ranging all over the southern half of Japan, and the camerawork conveys the message of the film—the camera is always right there alongside the boys, whether they’re climbing a mountain, sitting by a street, or on a boat.  #4 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 1948. (4/21/06 on Nihon Eiga Senmon Channel)

 

30).  Swallowtail (Swallowtail butterly; 1996; dir. Iwai Shunji).  I’d been wanting to see this controversial work for years—controversial because of the way it portrays foreign immigrants in future Japan as slum-dwelling gangsters and prostitutes, even as the stance of the film is basically sympathetic to them.  The story is an odd mixture of science fiction, action, and story-of-the-rock-band, kind of like Road Warrior crossed with Flashdance.  The movie is polyglot and messy—probably on purpose—but there’s also an undeniable energy that drives the whole thing along to its improbable climax.  And it includes some wickedly funny parodies of how Japanese behave around foreigners.   (4/3/06 on VHS). 

 

29).  Touch (2005; dir. Inudô Isshin).  Based on a popular manga and anime series, this is the story of two baseball-loving twin brothers and the neighbor girl they grow up with.  The question is, of course, which brother the girl will fall for.  The decision should be somewhat easier after one of the brothers dies, but the course of young love is never smooth, at least not in melodramas.  Filmed with all the soft lighting, soft focus, and soft music of a coffee commercial—but with none of the emotional depth.  I love baseball and baseball movies, but this one whiffs.  (3/18/06 as in-flight movie).    

 

28).  Gimme Shelter (1970; dir. Albert and David Maysles).  I continue to work my way through the rock music section of our neighborhood video rental shop.  Watching this for the first time in about twenty years, I am struck by the remarkably high quality of the visuals.  It’s amazing how often the Maysles’ crew manage to capture fleeting yet definitive images, zooming in on a particular face in a crowd, for example, just in time to see it erupt with emotion.  The end credits list something like twenty different cameramen, much more than work on a typical documentary, I think.  I’m not sure how many of those were present filming at the climactic Altamont Speedway concert, but they do an amazing job of cataloging the sights and sounds of both the performers and the audience on that violent, tragic day.  (3/11/06 on VHS). 

 

27).  Minna no ie (Everybody’s house; 2001; dir. Mitani Kôki).  A pleasant comedy from Mitani, albeit not quite as funny or as sharp as Rajio no jikan or Warai no daigaku.  You’ve seen a dozen different versions of this plot:  a naïve young couple wanting to build their dream house get caught up between a demanding, stubborn designer with avant garde pretensions and an equally stubborn traditionalist builder who, to complicates matters, is the wife’s father, determined to build her the house he thinks she should have.  In the end, of course, everyone turns out to have a heart of gold and they build a lovely new home.  Good performances from a talented cast, as always in Mitani’s work, but nothing more than a pleasant trifle.  Of course, there are worse things than pleasant trifles.  (3/11/06 on VHS)

 

26).  The Sting (1973; dir. George Roy Hill).  Like Tommy (see #23 below), I saw this with my middle-school buddies when it first came out.  In fact, for a good while it was virtually the only movie we could see, since it played at our neighborhood movie palace, the Grandview Theater (in continuous operation since 1926), for more than a year.  I think we ended up seeing it five times during that first run.  Watching it now, I’m struck not so much by all the lovely old-fashioned techniques it uses (wipes and keyhole dissolves, ragtime music, title cards) as by how 1970s it all looks and feels:  the artfully constructed shots that remind me of an era when Hollywood wasn’t afraid to give even its mainstream directors a wee bit of slack in their leashes.  Great fun, of course.  (3/10/06 on VHS).

 

25).  Rajio no jikan (Radio Time; also known as Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald; 1997; dir. Mitani Kôki).  Terrific backstage farce about a live broadcast of a radio drama—the harried producer who just wants to keep everyone happy enough to finish the program, the amateur contest-winning scriptwriter who watches in despair as her script is mangled, the actors and actresses who vie with one another to see who can be the most self-centered and vain, etc., etc.  A terrific cast (including some very big names in very small roles) and script kept me in stitches all the way through.  Mitani in both his writing style and his position in the film industry reminds me of Neil Simon at his peak, back in the 1970s.  #3 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 1997. (3/5/06 on VHS).

 

24).  Gigi (1958; dir. Vincent Minnelli).  Winner of 13 Academy Awards, if I’m counting correctly.  It’s charming, of course, though the female contingent in the family weren’t as enthusiastic about it.  I was struck by how tuneless the whole thing is:  the lyrics to the songs are quite memorable (“Thank Heaven For Little Girls,” “I Remember It Well,” etc.), of course, but I challenge you to try humming any of them.  (3/4/06 on NHK BS2).

 

23).  Tommy (1975; dir. Ken Russell).  I saw this when it first came out; I was thirteen years old.  My buddies and I went to the Skyway multiplex in downtown Minneapolis to see it—we were shooed away by ushers when we inadvertently walked into the wrong screening room, the one that was showing the adults-only Emanuelle.  At any rate, we found the right theater and watched the movie.  We mostly liked it, but were mystified by Tina Turner as the Acid Queen and by the baked beans coming out of the tv.  Watching it three decades later, I have a better, uhm, appreciation for what Tina Turner is up to—but the baked beans still throw me for a loop.  I was struck by how much this looks like a silent movie—not surprisingly, perhaps, since it has no spoken dialogue. (3/3/06 on rental VHS). 

 

22).  Kanashiki kuchibue (Sad whistle; 1949; dir. Ieki Miyoji).  Misora Hibari’s first starring role, made when she was just twelve years old.  She plays a ragamuffin street urchin who is adopted into the family of a down-and-out concert violinist and his beautiful daughter (no mothers in sight, which seems a common thread running through Hibari’s films).  The ruins of early postwar Japan are evident everywhere in the film, and one subplot involves the battle between classical music and jazz that is so common to films from this era.  In the end, everyone ends up happy:  Hibari is reunited with her long-lost brother, the brother marries the violinist’s beautiful daughter, the violinist successfully melds classical and jazz, the bad guys go to jail, and the lumpen proletariat kiss and make up with the bourgeoisie.  A hell of a lot of ideology for Hibari to carry on her little cross-dressing shoulders, but as usual she pulls it off with verve.  (3/1/06 on VHS). 

 

21).  Dare mo shiranai (Nobody knows; 2004; dir. Koreeda Hirokazu).  I missed this when it came through the U.S. a year or so ago.  It’s a powerful film, the story (based loosely on an actual incident) of a family of four children abandoned by their mother—their increasingly overwhelming struggles to hold together something like a normal life in the absence of any adult help.  They took a year in filming this, meaning you literally watch the kids grow up and that Koreeda was able to get remarkable performances out of his young cast, because he had the time to allow them simply to be kids.  The soundtrack is simple and effective, for the most part:  mandolins strummed and plucked through most of the movie, then a piano-accompanied song (a bit too much, if you ask me) near the end, then over the final credits the mandolins again, this time joined by violins.  Most of all, the movie is striking for the inevitable sense of impending tragedy that builds up masterfully interwoven with each scene.  #1 on Kinema Junpô’s Best Ten list for 2004.  (2/25/06 on rental DVD).

 

20).  Chi to hone (Blood and bones; 2004; dir. Sai Yôichi).  Something like Once Upon A Time in America, but set in the Zai-Nichi slums of Osaka, a tough film that centers on the brutal family life of a Korean immigrant, played by Beat Takeshi (better known in the West as Kitano Takeshi).  The film does a reasonably good job of introducing the specific issues of Korean life in Japan (the problem of collaboration with Japan during the war, the attraction to North Korea, the isolation from ‘ordinary’ Japanese people, etc.), but it’s a hard film to watch:  every conflict is resolved through violence.   Takeshi’s performance won widespread acclaim, but I didn’t feel any attachment for him throughout the film, the way you do with a really good movie villain (then again, he’s a unique sort of villain here).  At the end, as he grows old and his physical powers wane, he grows more interesting as a character, but as a spectator you still keep your distance from him—as you do from even the more sympathetic characters in the film.  Won a slew of Kinema Junpô awards, including Best Actor (Takeshi), Best Supporting Actor (Odagiri Joe), Best Director, and Best Screenplay; #2 on that magazine’s Best Ten list for 2004.  (2/21/06 on rental DVD).

 

19).  The Miracle Worker (1962; dir. Arthur Penn).  A filmed version of a stage play that, unlike Warai no daigaku, doesn’t feel like that at all (of course, the stagy feel in Warai no daigaku might be intentional, since the whole film is about the theater).  This is also one an example of a genre that fascinates me:  the 1950s Hollywood liberal humanist epic—I have a great affection for the genre, actually.  There are some defining features, too:  always shoot in black-and-white, feature close-ups of women’s faces distorted in painful emotion, austere soundtracks, etc.  All that’s missing from this one is Gregory Peck; Anne Bancroft gets to take his role.  Patty Duke is of course fabulous here.  (2/18/06 on NHK-BS2)

 

18).  Warai no daigaku (College of Laughter; 2004; dir. Hoshi Mamoru).  With a script by the talented Mitani Kôki, this is a fine comedy about….well, about comedy.  The title is the name of a comic theater in 1940 Tokyo. But almost the entire film takes place in a police censor’s office, as the theater’s resident playwright (Inagaki Gorô) tries to get his latest script approved.  The censor, played brilliantly by Yakusho Kôji, is not only a stickler in enforcing requirements that all plays contribute to national spirit, he also utterly fails to understand comedy.  But he finds himself demanding changes in the script that have nothing to do with patriotism, but everything to do with comedy—and gradually he awakens to an understanding of the comic spirit.  Yakusho turns in his usual amazing performance, suggesting great passions and depths in a man who at first glance seems shallow and heartless.  The only flaw in Yakusho’s performance comes, oddly enough, when it is finally time for him to laugh.  Visually, the film shows signs of talent in its camerawork and editing; the soundtrack, on the other hand, is inserted here and there with a painful clumsiness.  (2/17/06 on rental DVD)

 

17).  2046 (Hong Kong; 2004; dir. Wong Kar-Wai).  I finally manage to see this one.  It’s not Wong’s best work, but even his minor pieces are better than most directors’ best films.  The theme here, as always, is love:  how fleeting it is, how once we manage to come within its range we end up kicking it away, and how we spend the rest of our lives regretting this and wishing we could recapture it.  2046 is both a year and a room number—that is, it is both time and space, and the point seems to be that we travel through space constantly in an attempt to make up for our inability to travel through time.  As usual, the cinematography and soundtrack are dazzling—the preferred trick here is to block the view in half the screen, intensifying the sense of loneliness in the characters:  they’re all missing their other halves.  Wong, as always, is particularly skillful at getting extraordinary performances from his actresses.  We get to see more of Zhang Ziyi here than usual (not that I’d mind seeing even more…..man, she’s hot stuff), and Tony Leung is his usual self, which is just fine.  Kimura Takuya, on the other hand, is also his usual self, which is not fine.  Anyhow, I’ll have to watch the thing five more times before I get my mind around it—as usual for Wong’s movies.  (2/16/06 on rental DVD)

 

16).  Operetta Tanuki Goten (Operetta Princess Racoon; 2005; dir. Suzuki Seijun).  A fluffy piece of nonsense, a colorful fairytale with music of all sorts—chanson, calypso, kabuki, rap, enka, etc., etc.  It’s fun to see Zhang Ziyi as a full-blown Heian-era princess, and the late Misora Hibari even manages to make an appearance.  In terms of Japanese film, it recalls the Van Gogh sequence from Kurosawa’s Dreams—and of course Suzuki’s own lunatic-genius films from the 1960s, especially the final shout-out sequence in Tokyo Drifter.  Beyond Japan, with its firmly tongue-in-cheek stance, it reminds a bit of Rocky Horror Picture Show, except it lacks a Tim Curry or songs as catchy as “Sweet Transvestite from Transylvania.”  But perhaps this will enjoy an afterlife as a midnight movie.  (2/15/06 on rental DVD)

 

15).  Tsuruhachi Tsurujirô (Tsuruhachi and Tsurujirô; 1938; dir. Naruse Mikio).  One of Naruse’s early talkies—and he really takes advantage of having sound.  It’s the story of a male singer and his female shamisen player, superstars on the yose (Japanese-style vaudeville) circuit.  They’ve been raised almost as brother and sister, and their devotion to their art leads them to bicker constantly—yet they also clearly love one another.  They come close to marrying, but repeatedly break up.  Naruse shows great affection for the world of yose, allowing various acts lots of screen time.  There are, of course, many nagauta songs performed by the main duo, while the soundtrack is basically Western classical—except it uses heavy orientalist stylings whenever we draw back to the world of the yose theater.  The film is on the whole conventional, but there’s one particularly remarkable (and dialogue-free) sequence:  Tsurujirô, the male half of the duo, is on his own for two years as a performer and slowly declines until he’s playing fourth-rate theaters in the provinces.  Walking outside the rustic theater one day, he sees local boys tear down the poster for his act and fold it into a paper boat, which then floats away down a little creek – the camera following it for a good long while. (2/12/06 on VHS taped from NHK-BS2).

 

14). Janis:  A Film (1974; dir. Howard Alk and Seaton Findlay).  For some reason or other, I’ve been into Janis Joplin lately—it’s been nearly thirty years since I last paid much attention to her.  At any rate, this is a nice documentary, lots of interview and concert stuff, plus great footage of Janis at her tenth high school reunion back in Port Arthur, Texas, taking great joy at rubbing it into the faces of all the kids who shunned her when she was their classmate.  (2/10/06 on rental VHS).

 

13).  Namida o, shishi no tategami ni (Tears on the lion’s mane; 1962; dir. Shinoda Masahiro).  Yet another piece from the early 1960s’ New Wave, this one tells a story of corruption on the dockyards and of a decent young man who finds himself transformed into a thug by a crooked company.  It’s creative and stylish (check out, for example, the opening credit sequence), though it ends up veering into blatant melodrama by the end—which in this case is a bad thing.  Memories of the war pop up throughout in interesting ways, including false memories, and the film is also studded with what seemed to me allusions to Kurosawa:  stray dogs, violent rain storms, the sound of water dripping against a scene of sexual tension, etc.  The soundtrack by Takemitsu Tôru is quite elegant, consisting mainly of classical string quartet music—but punctuated with diegetic pop songs, including a very striking rockabilly number sung acapella by the hero.  Terayama Shûji, by the way, is one of the credited screenwriters.  (2/8/06 on VHS recorded from NHK-BS2).     

 

12).  Roku de nashi (Good-for-nothing; 1960; dir. Yoshida Yoshishige).  An early instance of Japanese New Wave cinema, a sharp little film that crackles with energy.  The story revolves around the tough-as-nails female secretary of an utterly amoral company president, and the gang of “good-for-nothing,” thrill-seeking youths that the company president’s son hangs out with.  The secretary and one of the youths fall in love, though neither can admit it—and it leads to a tragic (and striking) end.  The camera work and editing are first-rate, with creative use of hand-held shots, strange angles, jump cuts:  visually, the film is simply alive from the first frame of the opening credits.  The soundtrack is quite nice, too:  urban jazz that isn’t caricatured.  The script is full of these wonderful little snippets of conversation that characters have about life, philosophy, society, etc.  Those moments provide some of the film’s social commentary, as do the shots of anti-AMPO street protests cut in midway through, and likewise the subplot about the secretary’s brother and his wife’s quarrels over their purchases of the latest consumer goods—a refrigerator and television.  (2/7/06 on VHS recorded from NHK-BS2).

 

11).  Tôkyô kôshinkyoku (Tokyo march; 1929; dir. Mizoguchi Kenji).  This is the fiftieth anniversary of Mizoguchi’s death, so we will be seeing various retrospectives throughout the year.  This silent film was based on a hit jazz song, it provides an instance of the early crossover sophistication of the Japanese film and music industries.  Even in the silent era, the studios knew how to exploit a hit song!  Only 25 minutes survive out of what was once a full-length feature (100+ minutes), but the story is still legible:  a poor, beautiful young factory worker is sold as a geisha by her family; an honest, dedicated wealthy young man who normally doesn’t mingle with geisha falls in love with her—but turns out to be her half-brother.  She marries the young man’s rival/friend, who has also fallen in love with her, and in the final shot embarks on an ocean voyage to America with her new husband.  The camerawork doesn’t much recall the elaborate, architectural shots that would characterize Mizoguchi’s later work, but the film features numerous montage-like sequences celebrating the vitality of the modern city of Tokyo.   (2/4/06 on Nihon Eiga Senmon Channel).

 

10).  Kaze no Tani no Naushika (Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind; 1984; dir. Miyazaki Hayao).  Miyazaki’s second feature-length work, and all of his usual elements are in place:  a young female heroine, a strong ecological message, and grotesque yet lovable monsters—here, the huge insects that are easily angered when humans act violently, but which the heroine is able to placate with her good will.  Quite beautiful and wonderfully animated, of course.  What struck me in watching all of this is how very British Miyazaki’s sensibility seems:  essentially, the whole film is a lament for the village commons and the untrammeled “green pleasant fields of Jerusalem” that kept William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Ray Davies (among many others) singing.  And the clouds here are straight out of John Ruskin.  #7 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 1984. (2/3/06 on the NTV network).

 

9).  Iden & Tity (2003; dir. Taguchi Tomorowo).  I’d been wanting to see this one since it first came out.  A charming story-of-the-band flick, about a club-circuit rock group’s struggles to keep it real in music and life—their songwriter-guitarist wants to somehow hold his “iden” and his “tity” together.  Bob Dylan (played by an actor, but apparently with the Great One’s blessings) keeps showing up, the way Humphrey Bogart haunts Woody Allen in Play It Again, Sam, and there’s a wonderful musical joke involving Dylan right at the end.  The music is good and convincing:  the songs sound like those of a band right on the cusp of breaking through.  The film gets a bit preachy and talky toward the end, but overall a nice, solid rock movie.  (2/1/06 on rental DVD)

 

8).  Ai to kibô no machi (Town of love and hope; 1959; dir. Ôshima Nagisa).  I always have mixed feelings about Ôshima’s films.  Intellectually, they can be absolutely stunning, but as films they are too often, uhm, boring.  They call to mind Mark Twain’s famous put-down:  “They tell me Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.”  To wit, Ôshima is sometimes better to read about than to watch.  But this, his first feature film, was a pleasant surprise.  The characters are still humorless and a tad too earnest, but there are real passions at stake, a strong narrative arc, and the work still manages to make a stinging social commentary about class relations in Japan at the dawn of the era of rapid economic growth.  The story revolves around the children of two families, one dirt poor, the other bored-out-of-their-minds wealthy.  A dedicated school teacher and set of carrier pigeons become crucial links between the households, as personal bonds start to form between the various characters—and then fall apart when they collide with the rocks of class difference.  Terrific camerawork and editing, a fine soundtrack, and it’s all mercifully short – little more than an hour in length.  (1/31/06 on NHK-BS2). 

 

7).  Help!  (1965; dir. Richard Lester).  I hadn’t seen this one in many years.  Not quite up to the standard of A Hard Day’s Night, the masterpiece Lester made with The Beatles the year before and which combines zany humor with a Neo-Realist sensibility, this one is still quite interesting and fun.  The budget was much higher on it, allowing Lester to shoot on location in the Alps and Bermuda—as well as allowing him to work in color.   The visual sense is quite striking throughout:  interesting shot angles, energetic (albeit not overtly experimental) editing, and sharp art direction.  And Ringo gets to be the star…. (1/28/06 on rental VHS)

 

6).  Tôkyô nagaremono (Tokyo drifter; 1966; dir. Suzuki Seijun).  Watched this for the umpteenth time with my class in postwar Japanese popular culture.  What struck me this time were the brief snippet of The Spiders’ great debut single, “Furi Furi,” used briefly in the background of the discotheque scene, and how bad the English subtitles are:  as if the film weren’t confusing enough on its own, they make an even greater muddle of things.  (1/27/06 on VHS).

 

5).  Shûu (Sudden rain; 1956; dir. Naruse Mikio).  The centennial retrospectives for Naruse continue, with another week of his movies on NHK-BS2.  This is an absolutely charming work, one of Naruse’s best, I think.  Once again, the topic is an unhappy marriage, and the film brilliantly picks up the ways the smallest details of daily life (reading the newspaper, pouring a cup of tea, a chat about the weather) all become weapons in a never-ending battle.  Here the battle spreads beyond the central couple to engulf their neighbors and then the whole neighborhood:  everyone is getting one everyone’s nerves.  The film is both touching and funny; it ends with a brilliant sequence in which the husband and wife bat a child’s paper balloon back and forth, a playful game that is simultaneously a desperate battle.  Throughout, we hear solo piano on the soundtrack—someone is constantly practicing piano in the neighborhood, and luckily for us, they consistently choose to work on pieces that match the tone of the scene.  And of course the piano player too becomes a target for complaints from the neighbors…. (1/26/06 on VHS taped from NHK-BS2).

 

4).  Sho o suteyô machi ni deyô (Throw away your books and head for the streets; 1971; dir. Terayama Shûji).   Absurdist, surreal film from the great theater director and provocateur Terayama.  The hero is a young man who lives with his family on the fringes of Tokyo, who tries to join the school soccer team and tries somehow survive despite it all:  the materialism, brutality, and mindlessness of contemporary life.  The film is energetic, full of sex and violence, and abounds with Brechtian moments of alienation when the characters face the camera and complain about the limitations of film as a political medium.  Everything in it is an allegory for everything else, it seems, and there is a groovy psychedelic rock soundtrack that carries you forward just fine.  Like Terayama’s other films, it feels simultaneously dated and up-to-date…. #9 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 1971. (1/21/06 on VHS)

 

3).  Gojira (Godzilla; 1954; dir. Honda Ishirô ).  Another one I  viewed for the first time in many years in preparation for teaching it.  Though this includes one of Shimura Takashi’s worst performances as an actor (he’s the naïve, dedicated scientist who wants to preserve Godzilla as a scientific specimen), it’s still strikingly good.  Ifukube Akira’s musical score is justly famous, for starters, especially in the mournful passages backing shots of the devastated Tokyo landscape.  I am probably the last American scholar of Japan Studies who hasn’t yet written an article on Godzilla, and I have no plans to do so—but….If I did, I’d focus on a) the omnipresence of television as a new social force throughout the film, b). the repeated portrayals of what I’ll call, with apologies to Adorno and Horkheimer, “instrumental reason,” that is shots of men sitting at instrumental panels, and c). the way minzokugaku (folklore studies) are used in the film.  (1/18/06 on DVD).

 

2).  Taiyô no kisetsu (Season of the sun; 1956, dir. Furukawa Takumi).  This one’s better than I remembered it being – the beginning of the “sun tribe” phenomenon in Japanese film, and  Ishihara Yûjirô’s first film (though he only has a small part in it).  Another story of teen-age rebellion-without-a-cause, set on the beaches and in the nightclubs where the children of Tokyo’s elite spun their wheels in the mid-1950s.  Plus lots of shots of adolescents slugging it out, both in and out of the boxing ring.  The soundtrack features lots of Spanish guitar.  It’s still not quite as stylish or as striking as Kurutta kajitsu (see below), but it’s a competently made film, with even a touch of style about it.  (1/16/06 on VHS).

 

1).  Kurutta kajitsu (Crazed fruit; 1956; dir. Nakahira Ko).  One of Ishihara Yûjirô’s first starring roles, I watched this for the first time in a decade in preparation for teaching it in a class on postwar Japanese popular culture.  It’s really a striking film, a tale of teen-age ennui among the elite classes in mid-1950s Tokyo.  The film traces a sexual triangle between two brothers and a beautiful young woman (actually, a parallelogram, since the woman is also married to an older American man).  It all leads up to a stunning climax using what has to be one of the earliest helicopter shots in Japanese cinema.  The music veers between a hazy Hawaiian sound and really sleazy sounding jazz, all contributing to the atmosphere of languid tension, if such a thing can exit.  (1/15/06 on VHS).

 

 

(Last year, I saw 97 films; the list is available here.  The list of the115 films I saw in 2004 is here.  The list of the 86 movies I saw in 2003 is here.)

 

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