From memory, the two “main leads” don’t even share a scene at any point. 
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Hey there. Missed 2 days because my other japanese study and work took too much time to fit a 2 hour movie into my day 
. Finally had time today again and watched Summer Film. I feel it was mediocre. I liked it a bit better than Ozland since it had some charm. Overall the story is nothing to write home about though. If I keep with my rating probably around a 6.5/10.
The acting overall was pretty good and most of the characters likable. It wasn’t overly relatable to me but I’m sure I’m outside the target demographic for this film. The only thing that made me giggle everytime was the guy on his “ligthting bike”. Seriously … and I liked the cameo of 時をかける少女.
Regarding language: It was the hardest movie for me. Probably because the language is super casual and heat of the moment. I could follow the overall plot but maybe I rated the movie worse than it deserves because I lost nuance. (Maybe I also had more trouble because I’m pretty exhausted today)
After the recommendations from you all it seems my next challenge will probably be Awake. Even though Summer Film also enticed me to watch Rashomon next.
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Late start, but I watched Masked Ward thanks to what @omk3 said about finding it understandable. In the end I’m still bad at listening though, haha. I mean I caught a small chunk of the sentences I guess, but it seems like the level that something is understandable scales a little with how important it is, heh. I might catch incidental bits of conversation, especially when people are in the midst of doing things, but when it comes time to actually explain what’s going on, it’s too dense. Going without subtitles is so rough. I want to say it was a fairly middling thriller, but I don’t think I understood enough to be passing judgment.
All the same, good practice I suppose.
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I understood most of it (90%?) and it was a middling thriller and I enjoyed it thoroughly for that. 
While I like deep, thoughtful films I also have a soft spot for mindless junk in the mystery/crime genre.
But, in case you missed the major highlights:
- Harvesting organs from ‘useless’ people to transplant into wealthy people for $$$
- The girl who was shot, ひとみ was patient 川崎 13. 13 = ひとつ＋みっつ＝ひとみ
- Her sister’s organs were harvested, after she was hit by a car I think? If I followed correctly she had a mental breakdown and was hospitalized herself, they were all “let’s sell her organs!” and then she recruited the staff member to help her. Also her parents died when she was young so her sister was her only family.
- Dude who helped her - his grandma’s organs were harvested
- I think the politician she was gonna shoot was the recipient of her sister’s organs (or her own??) but was a lil shaky on that piece
- The police were basically sweeping things under the rug (organ selling) so doctor went to the press about it and that’s what she was watching on television
FWIW I think if you’d had access to JP subs you would have been able to follow a lot - chances are the majority of non-medical words you’d already know from the VNs you play. Just a matter of getting your ears caught up to your eyes 
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Haha, that’s fair! I think if I had not been getting a little frustrated at conversations going over my head, I would’ve considered it a decent timekiller. I think I prefer my mindless junk in other mediums though. I got really into movies a while back and I think I’ve developed a bit of pickiness about style there.
Thank you so much for the summary though! I couldn’t find anything like that written online. Parts of that I sort of guessed at through visuals, but I couldn’t in any way be sure, and stuff like why they were doing it and the involvement of the politician completely passed me by. I at least could follow a lot of their talk about her sister being her only family and taking care of her earlier, but it’s like the more it got into reveals the more my brain my gave up.
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I still have conversations going over my head, as evidenced by some of my statements being “I think…” but it’s at a threshold that’s tolerable.
Maybe it’s me and my tastes (entirely possible) but if I were to pick some of the best Japanese films to show around the world, several of these wouldn’t be on the list…
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To be fair, I never said I watched without subtitles! I’m sure your listening comprehension is far better than mine. Mine is bad even in my own language (I think I tend to tune out), so I use subtitles with everything. And I had English subtitles on, because while I do read a lot in Japanese, I still need to take my time to read properly (reading and comprehending at a glance is what I aim for, but I’m not there yet). My main aim was to enjoy what I was watching, and listening was incidental. I was happy to catch whole sentences instead of random words (which is what usually happens), that’s all. 
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I watched Mask Ward and personally didn’t really like it. I don’t know, I feel I saw similar stories already and I felt it was kinda cliché, especially the characters. The acting isn’t bad though so it still made me want to watch it all and I was eager to see the end. I guess this type of movie isn’t just my thing and I muuuuuch preferred Ito (number one for now, but I haven’t watched many movies for now).
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I think a film festival can’t always just show the best films, because then every festival would have the same films. Also, usually they’re trying to feature recent films (a lot here are 2020+) to give their makers exposure, though in this festival they’re adding a few older ones. You also have to think about licensing costs. “Oscar winning” movies are probably expensive ^^
I’ll probably watch Ito or Awake next. As a responsible Japan enthusiast I should probably watch Rashomon. Ashamed to say I haven’t watched any of the classics and Kurosawa (samurai) films yet, though I’ve heard so much praise for them, the samurai theme alone just doesn’t draw me enough. But that probably needs correction.
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I watched Floating Castle just now. It was… okay. I was kinda expecting the good guys to win by the use of clever tactics, but they mainly just won because they had better hero characters than the other side. I mean, I guess it’s based on an actual historical battle, but it felt like they didn’t really dramatise it up much….
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Yeah, it was surprising but I really appreciated that. 
Just finished The god of ramen and it was so so so good. Yamagishi seemed like such a good guy and his shop was so lively. It seems some people here found it sad, but I would rather said it was emotional. I never felt sad because Yamagishi just makes everyone feels in a good mood and I think that’s why people would line up for hours to eat in his shop. It’s my favourite, a must see for me.
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Trying to power through these.
So far:
- Her Love Boils Bathwater
- Ito
- Aristocrats
- Masked Ward
I made the mistake of starting AWAKE at like 2 am today, so…I fell ASLEEP during AWAKE. I’ll need to rewatch like 75% of it.
Since some people seem to be using these to test listening comprehension, I’d order them like this (easiest first):
- Aristocrats
- Masked Ward
- Her Love Boils Bathwater
- Ito
I would compare the speaking speed and clarity in Aristocrats to N4 level listening questions. There are also a few instances in the movie where text messages are shown if you want to test reading within a short time span. Unlike many movies where a novel of a text message is shown for a split second and you’re expected to read it, these texts are quite short and shown for several seconds. Almost seems like they deliberately tried to make the movie very accessible which I think makes it good for testing basic listening.
My favorites so far are Her Love Boils Bathwater (“HLBB” because I’m lazy) and Ito. HLBB made me cry a few times, and I guess I would call Ito a nice story about courage. Not like monumental, save-the-world courage, but the everyday courage we often find ourselves needing to build up to make changes in our lives.
The acting in Masked Ward is sometimes quite bad, especially physical confrontations, but I thought the story was compelling. Granted, I’m pretty bad at solving mysteries along the way in the movies, so maybe everything was super obvious. I had some suspicions when watching, but ultimately these kinds of movies always leave me like 
when everything is solved.
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Oh, I gotcha! My mistake on the assumption. Congrats on the achievement nonetheless! We’ve just got to get our ears trained better… I know that feeling of watching with English and recognizing just how much I actually know when I have a guide. It’s progress 
You are definitely setting me up to get dispirited later today; shame on you 
All the same, I’m gonna keep my expectations tempered and do my best to find time to watch this one soon, heh. Thank you very much for trying to evaluate the listening difficulty of what you’ve seen!
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To be clear, while I would compare the listening ease to N4, the vocabulary and grammar of course vary quite widely. Just the characters seem to speak quite deliberately. That said, there’s also quite a bit of grammar people studying N5/N4 should be able to catch even if the sentence is not fully understood.
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Yeah I know the manga. It was one of the first manga I read but only the first two volumes.
I liked the Ito movie such gorgeous scenery.
I don’t have much time to watch movies because of that I will probably just watch ReLife.
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Watched Ito just now. Liked it quite a bit. Would probably give it an 8/10.
It was a little too long for my taste (maybe 20-25min shorter would be perfect) and I’m not sure everything was necessary for the purpose of the story. On the other hand I quite liked the mood of the film. It is very calming and captures the “country flare” quite nicely, the scenery is nice as well. The performances of all cast members were solid. On top of that it is also about Shamisen and a mention of Ningen Isu happens as well. So that are plus points in my book
Regarding the language. This one is impossible without subs. I think it’s even a hard movie for Japanese people to understand because of the havy use of dialects. Even some parts with the English subs were not that easy to be honest.
Would recommend to watch it if you are not too tired (potential to fall asleep ^^) and want something soothing/calming to watch without too heavy subject matter.
EDIT: btw TIL the Kanjis for coffee from this movie.
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Watched Aristocrats, and really liked it. Understated peek into Japanese sexism, which is a subject that fascinates me.
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How does one use a VPN asks a noob.
And while I’m at it, how does one make text in these forums super small??
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<small> tags can be stacked as many times as you like.
Though <big> only works once, for obvious reasons.
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