Family Romance, LLC (Japan/USA, 2019)

Love is a business at Family Romance: a company that offers the substitute rental service. Founder Yuichi Ishii helps fulfill the dreams of his clients. Mahiro's mother will hire Ishii to impersonate her missing father. And reality will begin to blur.

Directed by German film-maker/actor Werner Herzog, Family Romance LLC captures a bizarre type of business which to my great surprise is actually available in Japan. Imagine having lost someone close to you, but for a reasonable price can replace that hole in in your life with a hired actor? The characters in the film are mostly played by non-professionals and the company's founder Yuichi Ishii lends his talent by playing himself. It works well, too, and I guess that's because he actually does this for a living on a daily basis. 

It's a strange and fascinating story of what means people will go to just to keep up appearances at a party or perhaps fool their parents with a dashing new husband. Herzog calls it one his "essential films" and I certainly can see how it addresses a relatively new phenomenon with respect, while also delivering a believable performance which aims to ask hard questions about what makes a family.

Genre: Drama

Hiroshima (Japan, 1953)

The film shows the bombing of Hiroshima and the horrific aftermath following the detonation of an atomic bomb on humans for the first time in history.

While not being a huge surprise, Hiroshima is one of the saddest films ever made and leaves you absolutely gutted afterwards. It apparently makes use of over 90.000 extras (!), and is based on several testimonies told from actors who actually experienced the horrible event only eight years earlier. There's some incredible sets in the film, and the many, many actors had to stumble around barefoot on piles of rubble surrounded by flames and thousands of screaming people. Talk about a tough shoot.

The harrowing and sorrowful music melts into the scenes and gives them that extra little push to being so miserably that people who'd been present when the bomb fell said that the film captured the disaster with scary accuracy. Not that it makes the film any easier to watch but, Hiroshima makes one hell of an effort to portray that day when history took another turn for the worse and with nothing omitted shows the tragedy from the perspective of those who had to live in it. 

Genre: Drama/War

Killing (Japan, 2018)

Set during the tumultuous mid-19th century Edo period of Japan, Killing is the story of a masterless samurai or ronin named Ikematsu Sosuke. As the prevalent peace and tranquility are sure to be replaced by war and conflict across the land the swordsman feels restlessness creep upon him.

When you hear such promising words like "Shinya Tsukamoto's first samurai film", it's hard not to get a little misty-eyed. I've gushed enough over the director of Tetsuo: The Iron Man in the past so let's just say I was ecstatic when I heard he was working on a jidaigeki film. Apparently it was something he always had wanted to do so it could be seen as somewhat of a dream project of his. It's a fairly short affair, clocking in at barely 1 hour and 20 minutes, but Tsukamoto takes his time portraying every aspect of his samurai story with two warrior's clashing morals, the unstoppable need for revenge and sacrificing one's personal code of justice in the name of someone else's bloodlust. 

Tsukamoto has spoken about how he wanted the small cuts from the sword to feel very real and not just be beautiful slashes like you would see in the classics, and early on I personally thought he achieved that when a characters hand gets cut open and it looks realistic and painful as hell. Killing (a.k.a. Zan) proves to be an interesting, slightly gory new way for Tsukamoto to express his wonderfully insane self.

Genre: Action/Drama

Hanagatami (Japan, 2017)

In the spring of 1941, sixteen-year-old Toshihiko leaves Amsterdam to attend school in Karatsu, a small town on the western coast of Japan, where his aunt Keiko cares for his ailing cousin Mina. Immersed in the seaside's nature and culture, Toshihiko soon befriends the town's other extraordinary adolescents as they all contend with the war's inescapable gravitational pull. With his memories as a survivor of World War II echoing in the uncertainty of world events unfolding today, director Obayashi returns us to 1941, a pivotal time for Japan.

Director Nobuhiko Obayashi wrote himself into cinema history after his total out-of-body experience House (1977) which to this day is one of the craziest film ever made, and can you believe that he somehow manages to catch the lightning again? Hanagatami incorporates every little trick in Obayashi's sleeve, the amount of film-techniques and little quirky effects mounts up to one hell of a bizarre and exhilarating three hour ride. It looks both hilariously cheap and amazingly well-put together at the same time, the editing is like a roller-coaster of its own. Obayashi was diagnosed with lung cancer just before the production of the movie and was given three months, and during that time I reckon he did everything he could to give the world a film they wouldn't soon forget.

Genre: Drama/War

Cruel Story of Youth (Japan, 1960)

A harsh young man seduces a freeloading young woman and eventually takes advantage of her knack for hitch-hiking to rob middle-class men.

When Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence) was only 28 years old he made a film which must have been a shocking release in Japan's early 60's, dealing with unabashed violence toward women and a grim view on how crime got a firm grip on Japan's society. With stellar cinematography we're fed Oshima's powerful and heavy film which also boasts some truly beautiful colors worthy of Alfred Hitchcock, making the hypnotizingly gorgeous actress Miyki Kuwano (Equinox Flower) almost seem to walk right out of the screen. Not the cheeriest subject matter of them all but an important film in Japan's cinema history considering how it ranks just as high as the all-time greats screenplay-wise. 

 

Genre: Crime/Drama

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010, Thailand)

Suffering from acute kidney failure, Uncle Boonmee, who lives in a house on a farm with his sister-in-law Jen and his nephew Tong has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Surprisingly Huay, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and his long lost son returns home in a non-human form. Contemplating the reasons for his illness, he treks through the jungle with his family to a mysterious hilltop cave - the birthplace of his first life.

Uncle Boonmee can be a very difficult film to get into, and if you're not invested from the start it's going to be a tough watch. The reason I say that is because the pace is really slow and scenes come and go very much like a slow, meditative walk through a thick forest. I'm not even sure I grasped it all on a first viewing so it's definitely one of those films you need to watch again to get the whole picture. It's a story about life and death, it's about rebirth and facing one's mortality. 

At the Cannes film festival people reportedly walked out after only six minutes, but it still won the most prestigious award of them all, the Palme d'Or.  

Genre: Drama/Fantasy

The Mad Fox (Japan, 1962)

Amidst a mythically-depicted medieval Japan, a court astrologer foretells a great disturbance that threatens to split the realm in two. His bitter and treacherous wife conspires to have the astrologer killed, as well as their adopted daughter, Sakaki. The astrologer's master apprentice, Yasuna, who was in love with Sakaki, is driven mad with grief and escapes to the countryside. There, he encounters Sakaki's long-lost twin, Kuzunoha, and the pair meet a pack of ancient fox spirits in the woods, whose presence may be the key to restoring Yasuna s sanity, and in turn bringing peace to the fracturing nation.

Wow, what a magical film. At first glance The Mad Fox (a.k.a. Love, Thy Name Be Sorrow) seems to be your typical costume drama although with a much more fierce storyline involving a red sky that supposedly spells doom for man, but it's clear early on that director Tomu Uchida wanted to explore the folklore involving the kitsune, a.k.a. fox. With stunning backdrops and gorgeous sets we're transported back to a time of legends, swaying susuki grass and where shape-shifting beings roam the land. A film rooted in tradition and history, and obviously not a choice for those seeking tons of action but a gold mine for lovers of ancient Japan.

Genre: Drama/Fantasy

Barking Dogs Never Bite (South Korea, 2000)

Ko Yun-ju, an out-of-work college professor, is irritated by the sound of barking dogs in his apartment building and eventually resorts to abusing, kidnapping and killing them. Meanwhile, a young woman (played by Bae Doona) working at the apartment complex decides to investigate the matter after she starts receiving notices from the tenants about the missing dogs.

Barking Dogs Never Bite is now world-renowned director Bong Joon-ho's debut film, so it's very interesting going back to his roots after his latest years of success with films such as Parasite (2019) and Okja (2017). Even at this stage, it's unmistakably Joon-ho behind the camera and you can easily see his personal filming style. The movie flopped at the box office, perhaps because of its odd storyline involving a dog murderer, but even though it's not one of Joon-ho's better films there's still much to appreciate here and every fan of his should definitely watch it. 

Genre: Dark comedy

The Burning Buddha Man (Japan, 2013)

There is a series of Buddha statue thefts in Kyoto. Beniko, a high school girl, gets the Buddha statue at her family's temple stolen and has her parents killed at the same time. Beniko hears from Enju, her parents friend, that a robbery group called SEADDATTHA are the one who killed her parents, and feels the strong urge for vengeance. 

The Burning Buddha Man has got to be one of the trippiest films ever made, that's for sure. It uses a technique called "gekimation", and it involves placing figures in the foreground and background, focusing them appropriately to add depth and scope and shaking them about to imitate body movement and such. It's kind of a primitive film-style but when it's this well made you're enjoying every second of it. 

The artwork on the flat figures are fantastic and gross, the surreal and grotesque nature of the story fits perfectly with the chosen film technique and I'm more invested in this story, played out by tiny pieces of colored paper-craft, than I've been in many big-budget productions. Imagine that. A really interesting and disgusting experience, it gives you something original and wraps it in blood-soaked Buddhistic themes of ultra-enlightenment, levels of Zen that turns us into something beyond human. Something much more slimy. 

Genre: Animation/Fantasy/Horror

The Warped Ones (Japan, 1960)

A juvenile delinquent gets out of the pen and causes reckless mayhem, mostly directed at the girlfriend of the journalist who helped send him up.

The Warped Ones feels like it could have been directed by Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo: The Iron Man) if he would have been active in the 60's. The hyperactive and frantic camera style perfectly imitates the morally despicable protagonists of the film. Director Koreyoshi Kurahara spotlights the so-called Sun Tribe subcultures that emerged in the early post-war decades, which gave rise to a  reckless generation of youths who lived carefree lives and survived on jazz, beach life and mayhem. Someone said of the film, that even though it feels like a wild, violent and spontaneous ride it still must have needed a huge amount of preparation beforehand, making it much more complex than you'd first would have thought. 

Genre: Crime/Drama

The Shadow Within (Japan, 1970)

Hamajima is a quiet, hard-working man, whose life changes drastically when he reunites with a lovely childhood friend and her strange little boy.

The Evil Within is a strangely captivating piece of dark family drama, and the titular evil referring to a small boy. Director Yoshitaro Nomura puts a lot of emphasis on personal struggles one can experience in a relationship that's going nowhere, and the complications of when another life is more tempting than the one you have right now. With lovely 70's color cinematography and a subtle palette Nomura frames a troubled love story that's destinied for disaster when Hamajima, who's smitten with the beautiful Teiko, encounters a huge stumbling block in the form of a malevolent child. 

Genre: Drama