I guess I’ve been in a movie-watching mood recently!
SADA〜戯作・阿部定の生涯 (Sada)
I saw on the Criterion Channel that there was a Nobuhiko Obayashi directed movie about Sada Abe and thought immediately “well that will be… normal. Clearly I should watch that.”
I really didn’t know what to expect going in because it seems like there’s an inherent clash between the uh, way Obayashi’s movies are and the, uh, details of Sada Abe’s biography. All of his movies that I’ve seen have (to one degree or another) a very particular sort of campy/storybook style to them and I guess I thought maybe to do this story you would need to integrate more outright darkness into that… but no, right from the get-go it’s pretty much a very Obayashi-style movie that just happens to be about Sada Abe.
I don’t really know what to make of it! I’m no Sada Abe discourse buff, so I have no idea how it compares with other treatments of her life, and it’s one of those works where I feel like I would have to watch again and puzzle over for a while if I were going to say, write an essay about what I thought it was saying. My impression from memory is that it’s sort of saying like… “humans have rare and interesting lives, and this is one of them”, like, treating Abe as almost like a rare endangered animal operating on unusual and remarkable instinct, rather than like, a critical actor with motives herself. But perhaps I misread it.
An aspect of that I definitely enjoyed was the lovely, decadent and exaggerated period piece aesthetics. As it moves through Abe’s life, different sections are given different looks and packed full of signifiers for the time that are well familiar from other (e.g. I’m thinking of the scenes in Taisho-era Asakusa with of course a lush backdrop of 凌雲閣, that kind of thing). There’s a lot of fun playful elements along those lines and others that make it an enjoyable and interesting work regardless.
I’m just again - not entirely sure what to make it altogether.
I watched this with English subtitles and I think I used them pretty frequently.
天空の城ラピュタ (Castle in the Sky)
This was a total delight!
For whatever reason, The Studio Ghibli I tended to come into contact with early on were the later ones, like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, only more recently starting to dig into the early classics, but my impression is it certainly doesn’t get more “early classic Studio Ghibli” than this!
It’s a straightforward adventure story, but it’s bursting with life and fun, and I was especially impressed at how all the designs felt at once both extremely obviously influential (the whole movie and soundtrack had an “SNES vibe” to me and I can’t imagine that’s a coincidence) while also feeling unique and special to the movie (like for example, the bug ships! Super cool!). I also really loved the pirates in this. It would have been totally easy for them to just be another threat to the protagonists, but they end up much more complicated and interesting than that.
If I had a complaint, it’s that the main boy and girl are… a bit bland in the sense that their personality is essentially just “boy and girl protagonist” but hey, it works in the story! And contributes to that “classic adventure” vibe.
I was unable to turn off English subtitles for this, but I recall doing a good job avoiding looking at them.
GHOST IN THE SHELL / 攻殻機動隊 (Ghost in the Shell)
This is one of those movies where like, I know for a fact by watching it for the first time now without any real context, I’m missing out on like, decades of discourse and influence and whatnot, and so any thoughts I give like “it was pretty cool!” will be a drop in the ocean of more informed and thoughtful opinions and I might accidentally find myself on one side of some impenetrable fandom debate or something.
But anyway, it was pretty cool! The impression I described above can always be pretty distracting… and while I read the original manga in English at some point, I don’t remember anything about it (other than that it had more lighter toned moments?), so I don’t have prior attachment to Ghost in the Shell.
I liked the 90s CG and computer tech elements a lot, and bits like the fist fight in the… reflective pond place definitely look neat. But I didn’t click very much with the movie’s handling of Motoko. I’m 100% certain there’s scholarly papers out there about the exact dynamics at play here in how the film handles womens’ bodies in particular, but I think for me the main sticking point from an uninformed first viewing is it just felt very wrapped up in allegory and themes and whatnot but I’m not all that into the baseline action gunplay aesthetic and so wasn’t champing at the bit to engage with them. (To be fair I think I was quite tired at the time as well). Clearly there’s something there interesting to pick at though.
I watched this without any subtitles and made the conscious decision to just go with the flow and not worry about making sure I understood everything, avoiding rewinding and things like that. I think it was the right choice! I definitely was fuzzy on a lot of details, but I got the main things that were happening and any details I looked up after the fact were like “oh yeah, that tracks.”
It felt kind of like speedrunning directly to “having watched the movie a long time ago but forgotten most of the details except the main arc of the plot.”
ガメラ対大魔獣ジャイガー (Gamera vs. Jiger)
Initially this seemed like a fun but somewhat uninteresting Gamera movie, with the hook being that it’s set around the 1970 日本万国博覧会, and so they get to show some of the sights of the expo (but alas, not blow any of it up), which is pleasant enough but a bit of a step down in cheesy zaniness compared to the space adventures of the last couple of Gamera movies.
But they really bury the lede in this one! Because midway through they do “Fantastic Voyage, but with Gamera”! I truly admire the decision to make a movie where two kids travel in a submarine inside Gamera in order to fight a monster parasitizing him, and the restraint to not make that the main focus of the movie and its advertising. Noriaki Yuasa successfully keeping Gamera surprisingly fun.
I watched this without any subtitles and did not miss them. (it’s mainly characters yelling things at Gamera like “がんばれ！” and “死なないで!” as though they are contributing something)
呪いの館 血を吸う眼 (Lake of Dracula)
This is the second of the “Bloodthirsty trilogy” of 70s gothic Toho vampire movies and although I was a bit disappointed it did not feature a literal 眼 吸う’ing 血 somehow (the vampire just has striking eyes, I guess), I had a lot of fun watching it! It’s a vampire-ass vampire story, if that makes sense, and was a good delivery mechanism for capes and fangs and pale stares in October. And Shin Kishida, who I am always a fan of, plays the vampire!
I watched this with Japanese subtitles. I noticed I was less dependent on them than I used to be too, with my attention drifting away from them without my noticing.
怪猫トルコ風呂 (A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse)
This whole thing has made me a real sucker for cool limited edition blu-rays of obscure Japanese movies, and anyway - that’s how I watched this.
It’s an exploitation movie that crosses “pinky violence” with ghost cat movies to make an horror/sexploitation “ホラーとポルノをドッキングさせた奇怪作” (as Wikipedia describes it) made by Toei to compete with Nikkatsu.
I thought it was a hoot! I’m not that a huge exploitation movie buff, and this definitely has the kinds of things that I associate negatively with exploitation movies, but the novelty of the genre mix kept it overall feeling fun to me. I watched it right after 血を吸う眼 and it made a really solid halloweeny double feature of a straight-laced horror movie followed by a buck wild one.
The commentary alluded to this as well, but I think pink movies like this being like, real full-on studio movies is always a bit of a pleasant surprise to me. It’s the kind of subject material I would associate elsewhere with low-budget shlock, but this feels competently put together with ample resources.
It even comments a little satirically on history, depicting the shift from legal brothels to “トルコ” with the women and johns singing auld lang syne the day in 1958 before the 売春防止法 goes into effect.
Anyway, definitely one that won’t win any converts from anyone not intrigued to see what the hell it is from the concept, but from the perspective of deciding to watch it and half expecting it to be trashy and crap, I thought it delivered surprisingly well!
I watched this without any subtitles and did not miss them.
着信アリ (One Missed Call)
This is one where it seems like comparing it negatively to Ring is 100% unavoidable.
It’s fine, and competent, and Miike’s track record of directing movies that at least has interesting things in them is maintained, I think.
… But it’s no Ring. And very clearly came out after it.
I think the biggest problem to me from an effective horror standpoint is… So like, the fear you can empathize with in Ring is the dread that you’re doomed, that something bad is imminently going to happen because you watched a video tape (or in this case, got a phone call) and the uncertainty about what form it will take. And Ring lingers and luxuriates in that feeling effectively, leaving the mechanics of deaths that happen mysterious until the very end.
In this movie… The death scenes don’t work for me in that way, since they’re shown directly to be caused by supernatural influence, and said influence doesn’t look very impressive. So it’s neither a dread unknown, nor a cool fun ghost.
I guess it’s the difference between “if you watch this video tape… you’ll die” and “if you get this phone call… a ghost’ll kill ya.” The latter just seems sillier even if in the former you’re getting killed by a ghost anyway.
The other thing I think it does markedly worse than Ring is the dynamic between the two main characters who investigate the mystery. I just don’t think they have chemisty, and their characters don’t really have a strong connection at all (If I remember right he was just a cop involved in the case?) whereas the quiet, sad, stilted relationship between the divorced couple in Ring quietly anchors that movie.
Oh! I just remembered though as I was writing all that – the setpiece in the middle of this movie with the show that’s exploiting the girl who’s next to die to the phone ghost, and things go to total hell while they’re on the air? I love that! That’s a great scene! It doesn’t really… go anywhere? (what did people watching it on TV see? Wouldn’t it be being a big public deal change the rest of the movie’s plot more than it did?). But it’s a neat scene!
I watched this without any subtitles and did not miss them.
ももへの手紙 (A Letter to Momo)
I had neutral to mildly negative expectations going into this from having heard someone I didn’t actually know well at all say something negative about it once, and not hearing anyone else talk about it and so not having any reason to disbelieve said stranger… but I loved this movie!
The mundane elements here I think are really really strong, and the yokai elements are pretty enjoyable too! And although the circumstances are totally different, the story ultimately being about a teenager and a newly single mom moving together to a new place and having a lot of friction between each other because of the individual intense stresses they’re going through surrounding the situation resonates with me like a lot. I was tempted to be like “geez Momo! You couldn’t figure out your mom was sad? Be nicer to her!” but I mean… I 1000% made the same mistake when I was Momo’s age in a similar situation and still regret it even though it’s long forgotten and forgiven, so it’s not like I can begrudge her for it!
I watched this without any subtitles and did not miss them.
ある脅迫 (Intimidation)
This is another Criterion Channel noir. It’s very short at just 65 minutes, and not intensely bombastic or memorable, but it’s pretty cool! The best part is definitely the dynamic between the two main characters - one, a corrupt important bank manager now being blackmailed, the other his loser subordinate and ostensible childhood friend (but who he’s really always looked down on), with the best scene involving the former robbing his own bank while the latter is on duty…
The obvious thing to expect from that set-up is, of course, the subordinate isn’t as much of a toady as he seems, and is involved in some way with the blackmail plot. It doesn’t go exactly fully straightforward with that, but it does go in that direction, and I think just ends before they quite find the winning angle to play out from all this. Ah well, what’s there’s pretty cool anyhow.
I watched this with unavoidable English subtitles but I think I did a pretty good job not looking at them.
13号待避線より その護送車を狙え (Take Aim at the Police Van)
Another Criterion Channel noir, This one directed by Seijun Suzuki!
I remember this one being the most traditionally “noir” out of any of these I’ve watched under that umbrella. The hero is an off-duty cop/prison convoy guard played by who I would call a “Jimmy Stewart type” as he goes about unraveling a mystery of who uh, Took Aim at the Police Van. There’s a femme fatale and plenty of intrigue and I swear something about the locations they shot on even makes them look like California. It’s well put together and - if I’m remembering the right movie - has a kind of fun action climax involving some gasoline and a truck, but I feel like this one’s disappeared more quickly into noir fog in my memory moreso than others like Intimidation that might not be as good per se but have something more specific going on.
I watched this with unavoidable English subtitles but I think did a decent job not looking at them.
地獄の血みどろマッスルビルダー (Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell)
I watched Evil Dead for the first time since middle school recently, and appreciated it a whole lot more than back then. There’s definitely something to be said for low-budget horror ingenuity!
And anyway, this is billed as “the Japanese Evil Dead,” but it’s not because of having a similar success and legacy in Japan as the Evil Dead ended up having here, it’s just really really really obviously inspired by Evil Dead.
I still really liked it a lot though! It does enough differently to not be a total ripoff, and I like that that gives it a genuine feeling of like, J-horror X The Evil Dead, in the sense that instead of a group of teens going to a cabin in the woods, here we’ve got a group of paranormal investigators invluding an estranged couple and a psychic investigating a boarded up 和風 house in the middle of the city because of its presence in spirit photagraphy. Which feels just as quientessentially J-horror to me as Evil Dead’s setup feels American.
And I mean, all the low-budget gore and whatnot is a lot of fun too. I particularly liked dismembered zombie re-assembles itself incorrectly, so a head is running around on top of a hand. It’s definitely not the same quality of capital-M Movie as the Evil Dead, feeling even moreso like a hardscrabble project between friends. But it’s a good time! If I had a complaint is it goes to the “this is just the thing from Evil Dead” well a little too much (he says “Groovy” like, multiple times).
It seems like the guy who wrote directed and starred in it runs a horror movie blog, which absolutely tracks.
I watched this without any subtitles and did not miss them.
湯殿山麓呪い村
this is one I have just because it’s in the Kadokawa blu-ray line which are pretty easy to come by, and the cover looked interesting.
It doesn’t come with subtitles though, and with no prior expectations or buy-in (and in the middle of a Halloween weekend where honestly I got the movie-watching enthusiasm out of my system early-on), I had trouble maintaining attention or keeping up with the plot.
I’d say it’s a mystery/thriller of the “a family of unlikeable characters destroy each other in intricate ways” type, based on a book, with Buddhist mummies as a side element. The mummies and the snow in the movie definitely have a mystique, but I didn’t really get a grounding on other elements to care about, unfortunately.
So a little bit of a swing and a miss, but I don’t regret giving it a shot! Maybe I’ll read the book someday and revisit it…
透明人間と蝿男 (The Invisible Man Vs. The Human Fly)
This is the later follow-up to The Invisible Man Appears which I watched recently, and it’s neat! This one definitely has a lot more of its own thing going on than that movie, and what that thing is is… kinda like… a straightforward noir taken pretty seriously, but with detective side using invisibility and the criminal side using Pym particles, basically.
I think it’s a cool movie! I didn’t follow 100% the machinations of the plot (I think the bad guy was covering up war crimes but otherwise I’m a bit vague and going with the flow), but anytime there’s a little tiny guy running or flying around on screen it’s delightful. I’m very impressed that they managed to make the invisibility machine and such feel a little bit serious and ominous given the inherent silliness of invisibility special effects, and tiny guy buzzing around like a fly special effects.
I watched this without any subtitles and did not miss them.
I also watched an OVA series!
機動戦士ガンダム0080 ポケットの中の戦争 (Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket)
My Gundam-watching drive kinda cooled off for a while after Char’s Counterattack felt like a bit of a regression ignoring Zeta and ZZ and I got into Ultraman instead. But recently I was feeling a bit unenthusiastic about my tokusatsu exercising time, and watched War in the Pocket while exercising instead, and I think it was a good choice since I enjoyed it a lot!
As much as the stories are always about how miserable and traumatizing it is to be in these wartorn locations, there really is a powerfully… evocative? Attractive? element to the sci-fi settings in Gundam. Like, I was playing a PS1 Gundam game recently and was shocked at how just moving around in a level made to look like the revolving Side colonies in the show impressed me and slightly tugged at my emotions. And anyway, War in the Pocket in being the first of these I’ve seen to turn away from an ongoing war adventure show format, captures that mixed awe/horror element of “being there” as this stuff is going on the best out of any of them so far. Seeing towering metal forms fight right in front of you would be both cool and scary, you know?
And the series very much digs directly into the traumatization and loss of innocence that have always been present in Gundam. Even just the credits sequences with shots of the different ways local kids interact with the war wreckage of mechas is haunting once the story does its thing.
I think it suffers slightly from like… feeling more memorable as a very good execution of The Thing Gundam is Generally All About, rather than as something specific or multi-faceted on its own. But it’s hard to complain about that.
I don’t know if that will have revived my Gundam verve but it definitely stands a shot!
If you’re at all on Natively, brandon over there is working on an audiovisual addition to the site, and is 
)
but I thought I’d just give a brief end-of-year update:
so any outcome is good.
