Another Decade with Takashi Miike is a series of essays on the 2010 films of the Japanese maverick, following Notebook's earlier survey of Miike's first decade of the 21st century.At once propulsive and ruminative, First Love finds Takashi Miike looking back on his career while generating a steadily escalating sense of suspense. The film’s streamlined quality confirms what a focused filmmaker Miike has become over the 2010s: though it contains about a dozen major characters and several important conflicts, the director moves between them fluidly. He also exudes such intense energy while doing so that First Love generally recalls the freewheeling films Miike made in his late 90s/early 00s heyday. The director underscores this link with the past with plenty of gleefully outré content, such as multiple beheadings (all of them presented comically) and a progression of events that culminates with a harried sex worker frenziedly snorting heroin off a Yakuza’s crotch.
- 8/31/2020
- MUBI
Existential Prison Sweats
Of all Takashi Miike’s large body of work, “Big Bang Love, Juvenile A” is perhaps his most metaphorical film. Many of his films can be wild, crazed and surreal, but with “Big Bang Love, Juvenile A” the director walks upon an experimental path, poetic in execution. There is nothing real about this film, but truth of the human condition crawls and scratches to the surface, in this claustrophobic fever dream. Symbols bombard the viewer, metaphors bounce! Incredible lighting and striking visual design that are both theatrical and abstract. There is the occasional cinematic bravura moment, as the protagonists walk through strange corridors and chalk lined prison cells. Sweat permeates the atmosphere, as desire, anxiety and violence intoxicate. This is strange expressive cinema that is visceral and earthy, as well as abstract to the point of the confusion. There is an inherent music that weaves throughout this meditative film,...
Of all Takashi Miike’s large body of work, “Big Bang Love, Juvenile A” is perhaps his most metaphorical film. Many of his films can be wild, crazed and surreal, but with “Big Bang Love, Juvenile A” the director walks upon an experimental path, poetic in execution. There is nothing real about this film, but truth of the human condition crawls and scratches to the surface, in this claustrophobic fever dream. Symbols bombard the viewer, metaphors bounce! Incredible lighting and striking visual design that are both theatrical and abstract. There is the occasional cinematic bravura moment, as the protagonists walk through strange corridors and chalk lined prison cells. Sweat permeates the atmosphere, as desire, anxiety and violence intoxicate. This is strange expressive cinema that is visceral and earthy, as well as abstract to the point of the confusion. There is an inherent music that weaves throughout this meditative film,...
- 1/21/2020
- by Jonathan Wilson
- AsianMoviePulse
With “God’s Puzzle” we may have one of the most commercial and perhaps one the most unclassifiable films of Takashi Miike’s filmography at the same time. Adorned with a personal touch and technical care more than notorious, the film tells us all about the origin of the universe and about its destruction.
The plot revolves around two students who get to know each other due to the crazy idea about creating a new universe from scratch. Kiichi Watanuki and Motokazu Watanuki are two twins who live together. One day, Kiichi prepares to go on a trip to India, leaving Motokazu alone. Motokazu then goes to his normal classes and signs up for a physics course, where he has to do a thesis about a subject. His chosen topic is the creation of an universe, which attracts the attention of the young genius Saraka, who has invented the Murgen,...
The plot revolves around two students who get to know each other due to the crazy idea about creating a new universe from scratch. Kiichi Watanuki and Motokazu Watanuki are two twins who live together. One day, Kiichi prepares to go on a trip to India, leaving Motokazu alone. Motokazu then goes to his normal classes and signs up for a physics course, where he has to do a thesis about a subject. His chosen topic is the creation of an universe, which attracts the attention of the young genius Saraka, who has invented the Murgen,...
- 8/13/2019
- by Pedro Morata
- AsianMoviePulse
It’s sometime in the 90’s (according to Miike – year 199X), and the Osaka’s shabby neighborhood is impatiently waiting for the live transmission of the match of the year from the Tokyo dome – a mixed martial vent featuring the Bantam-weight boxing champion Kazuyoshi Tamai (Kyosuke Yabe) and the wrestling champion Takeshi Hamada. It is announced that it will be a dirty game with no rules, with all tricks allowed, a reason more for the crowd to get frantic about it. As men start placing bets on the winner, the fighters are preparing for their first clash ever, making sure their hidden trumps will cause the painful damage to the opponent.
Based on Seijun Ninomiya’s novel of the same name (adapted by Masa Nakamura) which was inspired by the true Japanese fighting legends Hidekazu Akai and Akira Maeda, Miike Takashi’s “The Way to Fight” is...
Based on Seijun Ninomiya’s novel of the same name (adapted by Masa Nakamura) which was inspired by the true Japanese fighting legends Hidekazu Akai and Akira Maeda, Miike Takashi’s “The Way to Fight” is...
- 8/9/2019
- by Marina D. Richter
- AsianMoviePulse
A boxer with a brain tumor, a crooked cop with terrible luck, a screw-up yakuza who’s seen too many movies, a dismembered Chinese gangster who wields a pump-action shotgun with his one remaining arm, a terrified prostitute who’s stalked by a ghost in tighty whities, an unkillable femme fatale who will kick a man to death just for being in her way, and the world’s most wonderful heroin. Those are just some of the many different ingredients that prolific Japanese auteur Takashi Miike swirls into his frequently sublime new gangster film, a piece of work so feral and full of life that you’d never guess it was (at least) the 90th feature its director has made in the last 30 years. Even now, after making everything from scarring horror masterpieces (“Audition”) to unwatchable family comedies (“Ninja Kids!!!”), Miike hasn’t lost any of his lust for life,...
- 5/17/2019
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
“Wherever we go…however far we walk…everything will stay the same.”
If we take a body of work as diverse as Takashi Miike, quite naturally one asks the question whether the director has a favorite. As Miike has repeatedly stated in the past, this particular honor goes to his 1998 film “Young Thugs: Nostalgia”, a prequel to “Young Thugs: Innocent Blood” released the year before and also based on the autobiographical novel by Riichi Nakabana. Considering films like “Blues Harp, “Ley Lines” and the “Dead or Alive”-series explored themes like origin, identity and growing up, the choice of this project, along with the finished product being Miike’s favorite film should not come as a surprise.
In general, both films, “Innocent Blood” and “Nostalgia”, define what has become the side of Miike, which is at times forgotten among the wildness of his other films, a tendency...
If we take a body of work as diverse as Takashi Miike, quite naturally one asks the question whether the director has a favorite. As Miike has repeatedly stated in the past, this particular honor goes to his 1998 film “Young Thugs: Nostalgia”, a prequel to “Young Thugs: Innocent Blood” released the year before and also based on the autobiographical novel by Riichi Nakabana. Considering films like “Blues Harp, “Ley Lines” and the “Dead or Alive”-series explored themes like origin, identity and growing up, the choice of this project, along with the finished product being Miike’s favorite film should not come as a surprise.
In general, both films, “Innocent Blood” and “Nostalgia”, define what has become the side of Miike, which is at times forgotten among the wildness of his other films, a tendency...
- 10/20/2018
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
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