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Reviews
Silence (2016)
Totally missed the main theme of the original movie/novel
Scorsese's movie is a remake of a much greater Japanese classical film and it is based on a Japanese novel. As in "The Departed", Scorsese makes a remake of an Asian movie without being true to the main theme of the original one.
It is incredible how you create an adaption of "Chinmoku" with a happy ending. The movie is not about that. The entire story is a philosophical question about whether Jesus himself would have apostatized in that situation. The main idea is not to answer the question but to make the audience think about it. Scorsese answer the question himself and completely destroyed the main idea behind the movie.
Kaidan (2007)
Not a good Japanese horror movie
The best Japanese horror movies are good because of the atmosphere they create. I would say that they are good not because they are frightening, but because of the psychological impact they cause. However, this one was not good in this aspect. The film fails to show the true horror that the main character were passing through. It was quite an ordinary horror film, trying to scare the audience with sudden appearances of spirits and strange creatures. Speaking of which, the visual effects are not very good, which should not be a problem for a true horror movie, since you can create a true atmosphere of horror without using so many visual effects. Just think about great horror Japanese movies such as Onibaba. Also, the characters were not well developed and their interaction was far too simple. The movie tries to focus on both horror and romance, but there is no attempt to make a deeper analysis on the relationship between men and women. However, it is important to highlight that it was successful, as almost all Japanese horror movies, in avoiding the manifest approach of horror used in Hollywood. None of the characters are particularly good or bad. And there is no attempt to moralize, which is common in many Hollywood movies, when there is a clear message that bad things only happen to bad people, so be a good boy and you will have a great life.
Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
An awful story, and a nonsensical portrait of Japanese culture
The most incredible thing about this movie is that it is actually more about North American culture than Japanese one. In fact, if you change the way people are dressed, the way they look like, and the architecture, it could become a European, American or even Brazilian love story. In other words, this story has as much to do with Japan as Casablanca has to do with Cambodia. In its attempt to speak a "universal" language, Hollywood has forgotten that, to make a movie about a different culture, one has to actually know something about this culture. And to understand a culture, is not only to observe the way people dress and talk. This movie created the most absurd portrait of Japanese society. It is actually a story even more incompatible to Japan than James Clavell's Shogun.