Omg it sounds like you’re serious too 
love the crazy project idea!
If you do it I think it’s obvious that you need to make a spreadsheet and compare them, rate each of them for monster goofiness and other categories 
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This is very serious business. [knocks over a miniature model of a building with my rubber lizard tail]
Wow, I didn’t even think of that 
Excellent point, I will take it into consideration
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I kinda like the late 80s early 90s stuff where there is a lot of goofy camp while at the same time there are societal messages and allusions you would never expect to see in a movie about a giant rubber suit monster.
Like the 91 VS King Ghidorah movie where Japan gets major advice from time traveling Americans to help them stop Godzilla once and for all.
Spoilers, but it’s the entire reason I love this movie:
This turns out to be a scheme to stop Japan from prospering and becoming a true world superpower in the future. Godzilla protected Japan from all harm in the future, stopping America from messing with them. So with the erasure of Godzilla, Japan’s strong economic future was destroyed. Either during production or shortly after release, Japan’s bubble economy burst, starting off the lost decade. A lot of Americans hate the movie, not even because of the jabs at America doing what they could to help sabotage Japan’s economy, but because a few American soldiers died on screen, and that’s a no-go. Really. But it was peak Japan Bashing era America, so it’s to be expected.
Also the movie 1:1 ripped off entire scenes from Terminator 2 extremely blatantly. That movie had to still have been in theaters while filming, it’s incredible.
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Can’t wait!
Number 18… I’ll be back to click on your spoilers after 16 more movies 
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Yesterday marked one year since my ‘proper’ introduction to Hirokazu Kore-eda, so I went with another of his films: 誰も知らない / Nobody Knows.
All I can say is:
Gentle and compassionate and beautiful, yet utterly devastating.
This is hands-down the best film I’ll never work up the courage to watch again 
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Oh yeah I love this one.
Much better than other more popular misery movies like Shoplifters in my opinion. Also almost single-handedly responsible for making me remember the “dare/nani mo + nai verb” grammar point.
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Great one! I really like movies from this director. If you want to dive more into his filmography, I do recommend Shoplifters (万引き家族) as his next movie to watch 
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Erm… I don’t know that I’d qualify it as “much” better, or even plain “better”
I mean, there’s a reason Shoplifters received just shy of 50 awards, including the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
But it’s okay to have preferences! In my case, neither of the two is among the top 3 for Kore-eda films 
Nice! 
Heh, I’m now quite familiar with his work 
but thank you nonetheless!
13 films watched, with only 2 left on the watchlist; plus that TV show he did, at some point. And then maaaybe the documentaries, although those in general aren’t my cup of tea.
And Our Little Sister (although objectively not his best perhaps) has become my all-time-favourite, and I’ve well over 3k watched
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Eh, I don’t subscribe to the “more awards = better” theory. I think a lot of awards has to do with asian cinema also becoming way more popular since Nobody Knows (2004).
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In general, yes I’d agree with you. Especially when it comes to the Oscars… that particular s*&tshow is just to have something to swear at
But Nobody Knows also had a nomination for Palme d’Or and even won the “Best Actor” award that year at Cannes, so it’s not like it didn’t have international recognition…
Anyways, they’re both (very) good films and worth watching at least once… as are most of his.
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Over at Letterboxd there’s an ongoing “challange”: Japanuary 2025 - looks like they’ve been doing this regularly for a few years now, I’m new there so only just now joining in.
Someone’s put together a list of films that can be streamed for free, maybe this will be useful to some:
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I hope people go as blind as they can into Audition to get the full life-time trauma effect that movie can give.
I’d vote against Battle Royale 2 though. That movie is as bad as the first is good. And the first is a must-watch in my opinion. But otherwise, as over the place that list is, there’s really good stuff in there. 13 Assassins, First Love, Boiling Point, Rashomon.
Violent Cop is mostly interesting if you look into the production history and know where Kitano would head as a filmmaker after. It’s okayish as a movie, but it’s far more interesting when you know this comedian hijacked the production of a vehicle movie after the director quit to make this weirdly angry thriller instead. And was the first domino on the path to movies like Hanabi and Sonatine.
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That list only has what’s available for free, so the “all over the place”-ness of it is understandable.
Most of the recent ones I wouldn’t go anywhere near but it’s a matter of tastes and variety is good.
I was happy to see some classics being easy to get to, though 
Agree on going in blind to Audition - that said, I liked it a lot more when I was young than I did last year on a rewatch 20+ years later
On the other hand, Pulse which I rewatched yesterday was much more enjoyable the second time around - in part because of familiarity with its weirdness, in part because the presentation in 4k UHD was far better than the old Blu-ray, and in part - last but certainly not least - because now I understood a lot of the dialogue (helped by having English subs to fall back on, but still…)
It’s pretty good for listening practice: not a lot of talking, not too complex, most of it delivered slowly and with sufficient breaks so it doesn’t become overwhelming.
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That’s a very long list, am I understanding correctly that the challenge is to watch them all in January 2025? 
Noted for going into Audition blind, will see if I can find it!
Soo… I linked two lists - the first one is for the main challenge, it has 350 film entries but those are just to give people ideas.
The idea is to watch at least 10 films from 10 different directors - 31 are listed (each has links to lists with all their movies), plus some additional categories if one doesn’t like the suggested directors (again with links to lists).
Above all, the goal is to enjoy whatever one decides to watch, rather than adhering to the (lax) rules.
From what I gather, most people plan to go well above that minimum of 10… I think I’ll do that too, although I won’t cover all 31 names, not even close.
Regarding Audition: you’ve probably figured it out already, but it’s definitely not one to watch with your daughters 
If you have access to a US VPN server, it’s free on Tubi, probably on other services too.
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Thanks for the tip!
No worries, wasn’t going to attempt to watch it with them haha. Made a first attempt at a movie with Totoro a few months ago and they gave up after 30 minutes. They are still quite young, not yet the age where their attention span allow them to watch any movie at all!
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I watched Audition
and I didn’t like it.
I mean the first part was OK, but the second part, just why sorry I don’t enjoy watching people being tortured
Also hard to go in blind, the poster completely spoils the movie.
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Yeah, can’t say I’m surprised
It was cool at 18-20 (for its shock value), not so much some time later… actually that goes for Takashi Miike’s work in general, not just horror: too showy, too violent, lots of style but not quite balanced with sufficient substance.
The good news is there’s still plenty of other horror out there, enough to suit all tastes
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The only thing that I thought was funny about the movie, (I don’t think it’s a spoiler because it happens very early but just in case) was at the beginning the character deciding that they want to get remarried, and THEN looking for someone to marry. I have just seen a female character do that in another Japanese movie (even better, she announced to her colleagues that she will be marrying, and at which date, to which they ask, “who’s the lucky man?”, “yes, I will be looking for him now”). So now I am starting to believe that this is normal in Japan
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Coming from all those older films where people are found suitors by the family, wether they want to marry or not… even though that practice may have stopped, there’s a fair chance they’re still conditioned into “I shall marry/remarry! (because that’s expected of me as a good Japanese person) How I’m gonna go about doing that… well, we’ll iron out the details later.”
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