thewakinghour Reviews

Cosmopolis (2012)

How sweet the down votes here are!

[8/10 · 4 May 2014]

I can't recall a film that so tweaked people. who may be nice enough most of the time but are utter drips and drabs when their emotions and presumptions (and EVERY thought in the craniums of the one-star reviews and the deliciously negative "comments" section is one presumed) are so nakedly un-catered to, off.

There are others who grok what I'm saying. Help put a pack of metaphorical matches in between the toes of these eyes-open-but-asleep bores and light it so that they may "bicycle" to the sky of a novel thought and an experienced emotion.

As artificial, unrealistic and absurd as the novel it closely follows - I liked this very much.

Tombstone of the Fireflies (2008)

A different, and also very good, interpretation

[8/10 · 23 January 2010]

Given the unfair, and to my mind rather stupid, review that people now see about this film, I offer my own review.

The live-action version is almost as touching, and fury-inducing, as the animated masterpiece (which I urge everyone to watch, despite the fact I feel an odd sense of dread when I choose to watch it again!) The acting is very fine. It is well-directed and beautifully shot, with a slightly washed-out, almost sepia-like look that adds to but does not distract from the story.

This version of the book has a slightly wider focus, unlike the anime's very tight focus on the brother and sister. It shows how other characters besides the children face the war. The aunt, shown in the anime to be just another simply callous, neglectful character (e.g. the doctor who quickly dismisses Sayaka's dying of malnutrition), is here more than simply neglectful: she is willing to lie and steal from her own niece & nephew, partly out of concern for her own children but largely out of greed.

Two other story lines show other takes on the effects and reactions to the war. One involves a kind and honest schoolmaster and his family, who befriend the orphans. The schoolmaster's honesty goes for naught as he is forced to kill his wife, daughters, and himself for the sake of his "duty to the Emperor." The other follows a cynical young man evading war duties because of asthma, advising the boy to do the same.

I'm afraid the movie is just as bleak, but also beautiful. It also ends on a note both bleaker and stronger than the anime. It is far less sentimental* and just as clear an indictment of the mindset that war produces.

I rather wish it had been a three- or four- part TV mini-series, since many of its episodes go by too quickly for me, but it is definitely worth watching.

*Sentimental, in the case of the animated "Hotaru no Haka" is very great praise.

Yamato (2005)

An honest effort, worthwhile viewing but without any real greatness

[7/10 · 1 October 2006]

I was prepared to watch, and be annoyed at, a typical sentimentally self-justifying movie about the brave and suffering Japanese, unfortunate victims in a war foisted upon them, ala nearly every TV drama I have ever seen touching on the war here in Japan. And, to some degree, this is such a movie.

That criticism noted, the film does not shirk much, certainly no more than some Hollywood Spielberg vehicle, from touching on some of the realities of the Yamato's story: the brutality of the discipline, the bitterness of the divide between the men who justifiably resented being sent on a useless suicide mission and those willing to fight to maintain the pretense it was anything else, and the unpleasant horror of the battle itself, which moved me deeply in that, whatever bravery was being shown, it had no even symbolic value.

The acting is good, the special effects passable (yet strangely effective because they were clearly effects), and the direction decent.

In its way I found it far, far moving effective in portraying war than the "we can be heroes" efforts of better Hollywood. No one would willingly support a war such as this.

Off topic? To speak up in this, hopefully very atypical, case, the voting on this movie, at this point, is a disgrace, with nearly all 1s and 10s. Why bother to grind the stupid Yamatodashii!/anti-Japan axes in such a pointless, if revealing fashion. 90% of the "reviewers" outta be ashamed of themselves.

The Shaft (2001)

The elevator isn't the only thing wrong here!

[1/10 · 2 March 2006]

Now, a personal note, I will not write truly negative reviews, no matter how bad the film. I really am astounded at the people who take the time to write about why they think "Citizen Kane" or "Ikiru" or whatever isn't simply "over-rated" but "awful" or "stupid" enough that they have to warn other people NOT to watch them.

Actually, I don't even understand people bother to rate a movie under a "5," even if they don't write a comment.

That said, any "1" from me is meant to reflect an odd sort of applause!

This is a really, really, really bad movie. In the best sense!

The premise, of a bio-engineered elevator system designed by an obsessive ex-military weapons program mad scientist, is, well, pretty lame, however laudably weird, and the script and the acting manage to press every possible drop of the lameness by pretty much every bad-movie device possible: over-acting; poorly-conceived characters with insufficient motivation; ridiculous, yet lame, stereotyping; dull use of excessive profanity; ridiculous direction and cinematography.

In other words: you name it; it's bad.

The final perfection of the lameness here (and, no, I rarely use that particular word in general conversation) is that the monster - some sort of bio-engineered living humanoid braincell larva - is killed at what is supposed to be the climax of the film, before revealing whatever-the-hell form it was about to metamorphose into!

You don't even get to see the monster!?!?!!!

If you have time that's really in need of killing, and this happens to be on TV, watch it. At least until you find something better to do!

Head Office (1985)

Different from, well, any other film, kind of.

[7/10 · 26 February 2006]

A very odd movie, this.

By no means a great, or more than mildly entertaining, movie In other words a Judd H. trademark flick. HOWEVER, many of the scenes have haunted me since first seeing it upon its debut, never to see it again since.

Certain scenes and lines are incredible funny, or perverse: especially Eddie Albert's president. The board meetings are all incredible funny. Albert's reaction at a board meeting to a anti-government bombing of "Mr. Chicken" franchises results in a speech that is completely absurd, and yet it differs very little from the speeches given by real business leaders and politicians who link what is now called "globalization" with the exercise of human rights.

Devito IS also good, but in a side story. And Don King spouts wonderful nonsense, ignored by everyone, in a cameo made during the brief period he, and his hairstyle, were seen as charmingly wacky.

It is worth seeing, should you run across it and do not expect too much.