Tag Archives: Sion Sono

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: STRANGE CIRCUS (2005)

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Kimyô na sâkasu

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DIRECTED BY: Sion Sono

FEATURING: , Issei Ishida, Rie Kuwana, Hiroshi Oguchi

Still from Strange Circus (2005)

PLOT: At a surreal cabaret show, 12-year-old Mitsuko tells her story of parental abuse culminating in the accidental killing of her mother and her own attempted suicide; suspecting her story is made up, publishers hire editor Yuji is enlisted to ferret out the truth.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Sion Sono has a lifetime pass to immediate consideration for our list, and this blend of truly disturbing scenarios, intriguing imagery, and repeated misdirection is exactly the kind of thing to catch our eye. He begins with subject matter so taboo and depraved that he seems unlikely to emerge with any kind of a reputation, but he then tucks it inside such a labyrinthine puzzle that qualms about the material are subsumed by wonder at how he’s going to pull it all off.

COMMENTS: The three-act structure of Strange Circus is almost too simple: Act I is the horrifying tale of an abused girl, Act II is the mystery over whether the girl’s story was made up by a popular novelist or recounts her own terrible upbringing, and Act III is the solution to that mystery. Couldn’t be more basic.

The movie as executed is anything but simple. Sion Sono knows the difference between shock and surprise, and he deploys both in their turn, choosing just the appropriate jaw-dropping image to fit the moment. It’s not merely that he can keep you off balance. It’s that he knows just the right way to do it.

Consider the first third of the film, which is a straight-out horror show. The scenario is utterly appalling: Mitsuko’s father forces her to watch his rough copulations with her mother and then eventually forces her into direct participation. In sync with this moment, Mitsuko’s world becomes visibly grotesque, with blood-red walls and a repeated transference with her mother. The girl’s suppressed turmoil is given form in the staging that makes her school look like an abattoir and her home resemble a crumbling mansion.

The middle section offers up something quite different. We meet Taeko, a mysterious novelist whose idiosyncrasies and domineering behavior are shocking in their own way, but no longer metaphorical. The strange carvings on her wall? The disguises that she uses to masquerade in public? Her habit of writing while wearing a negligee, sitting atop a cello case, and stuffing spaghetti in her mouth? There’s no filter for this strange behavior. What you see is what you get. In fact, only a couple stray trips into the fantasy world are found here, and pay attention to them when they come, because they’re a clue as to what awaits us…

…in the final act, when the true source of the awful tale of Mitsuko is revealed. This is pure Grand Guignol, and while the revelations are completely over-the-top and deliberately outrageous, a look back suggests that Sono has played fair with us all along. Alone, it might threaten to tip over into absurdity, echoing the wild finales of films like Performance or Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. But as crazy as it gets, it’s unquestionably earned.

Masumi Miyazaki is doing tour de force work here, essentially playing multiple roles and earning the audience’s affections even when her behavior borders on reprehensible. Strange Circus, it turns out, doesn’t just have an unreliable narrator, but is about the making of an unreliable narrator, and her performance taps into mystery, empathy, and beauty to sell you on characters you might have abandoned as irredeemable. A special mention also goes out to Rie Kuwana, who is heartbreaking as young Mitsuko, still radiating innocence even in the face of the indignities heaped upon her. (I made sure to watch the behind-the-scenes documentary for assurance that the actor wasn’t enduring the miseries of her character.)

Strange Circus is not easy to watch, especially in its opening scenes of household terror. But it is utterly audacious, and doesn’t waste its ambitions by coming up short with its revelations. Strange Circus is strange indeed.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“No matter how weird things get it’s always coherent and we always know that we’re being shown something that is “really” happening, albeit shaded behind denial and mental illness and wishful thinking. Sono’s playing by his own rules perhaps, but he’s still playing fair. When the ending comes, it doesn’t elicit ‘WTF?’ but ‘Oh! I get it!’”–Jeremy Knox, Film Threat

(This movie was nominated for review by ginanoelma. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND (2021)

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DIRECTED BY: Sion Sono

FEATURING: Nicolas Cage, Sofia Boutella, Bill Mosley, Nick Cassavetes

PLOT: By order of “the Governor”, a nabbed robber must infiltrate the Ghostland to rescue the Governor’s grand-daughter.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA LIST: Directed by Sion Sono, featuring Nicolas Cage.

COMMENTS: “They helped me because I am radioactive.”

This epic line is delivered, epically, by Nicolas Cage, standing atop a grand stairway beneath a massive clock, his right arm shattered, his left testicle likewise. He stands before a crowd of downtrodden souls. Amongst them is the bookish Enoch, volume of Wuthering Heights in hand, as well as the gaunt undertaker who collects souls. Watching from the periphery is Ratman and his Ratmen, a crew of thieving mechanics. Bernice, chalk-limbed and with obsidian-black eyebrows, begins a chant of rebellion. And so, the prisoners of the Ghostland rally, before marching on Samurai Town to depose the evil Governor.

Forgive me if I am telephoning in this review, but I was up until almost two o’clock this morning and arose shortly after six. Though rendering me useless for almost anything else, this primed me perfectly for Sion Sono’s latest, Prisoners of the Ghostland. Having snaked its way through the festival circuit all this past year (thank you very much, Covid, for keeping me from covering this at Fantasia…), this oddity has finally hit a handful of screens as well as pay-to-stream services. Under-slept and over-caffeinated, I watched, intermittently overcome with awe, perplexion, and hearty guffaws.

“They helped me because I am radioactive.” Even within the confines of this film, the line makes no sense. There is a permeating sense that something deeper is going on here: the growing flashbacks of a robbery gone wrong, the strange drawl-stilted speechifying by the white-suited baddie the Governor, the analogue slide show—narrated by a Greek chorus of the dregs of humanity—recounting the horrific crash between a truck full of convicts and a truck full of nuclear waste. There are moments of surreal whimsy, as when a hail of bullets cracks open a gumball dispenser, its candy-coated contents clattering in slow-motion throughout the carnage; or when Nicolas Cage’s “Hero” catches a burnt-out football helmet and busts out his gravedigger audition for Hamlet. Yes, the minds behind this story aimed for a much-too-muchness, half hitting the mark, half sputtering into the fizzly “What the?” of miscalibration.

I should be slapping the “Recommended” tag on this; I should have had my “Must See!” entreaty swatted aside by more reasonably-minded site administrators. However, as much as I enjoyed watching Prisoners of the Ghostland, it suffers from one or more of the following: too much incoherency, not enough incoherency, too much crazy, and not enough crazy. Nicolas Cage, as always, delivers; but his too much is only mostly enough. Its Sergeo Leoneciousness borders on Jodorowskity, but never quite makes the final leap. As a movie, Prisoners falls short, constituting merely a wacky, weird exercise in eccentricity and nuclear-samurai-symbolism; but in memory, I have little doubt it shall blossom into a strange patchwork of giddily campy memories of a Hero, played by Nicolas Cage, whose force of will makes me believe that he is, indeed, radioactive.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“No movie with Nicolas Cage, directed by the wonderfully weird Japanese director Sion Sono, should be this taxing, drawn out, and plainly boring…  Cage and Sono are truly kindred nutcases: they are artists who do not question themselves, and while they have a sense of humor stranger than we can comprehend, they are too sincere for irony. But ‘Prisoners of the Ghostland’ is truly just a beginning; a false start to what should, and still could be one of the greatest cinematic collaborations since sound met motion.”–Nick Allen, RogerEbert.com (contemporaneous)

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NORTH BEND FILM FESTIVAL 2021, FEATURES PART 1: FIVE FILMS FOR YOU

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The North Bend Film Festival opens today and runs through July 18. Online ticketing is available, but is geo-locked to residents of Washington, Oregon or Idaho. In the future, these movies may be available through alternate venues—stay tuned to this website for updates.

Swan Song (dir. Todd Stephens)— Opening night feature Swan Song is the most shamelessly sentimental and fabulous biopic I’ve had the pleasure of watching. My greatest complaint is the by-the-books competence of its actual crafting, but that quiet framework allows Udo Kier to re-enact the heartwarming final days of Pat Pitsenberger, hair stylist for the well-heeled and well-connected country-club set of 1980s Ohio.

Pat’s unabashedly gay mien makes up for Swan Song‘s rote style. We first meet him suffering the tedious indignities of nursing home life. Pat’s daily routine of unfolding and refolding the facility’s paper napkins is interrupted by a lawyer summoning him to ‘do one last favor for an old client: style her hair for her funeral. His journey from living death on Sandusky’s outskirts into the remnants of its underground gay havens is bittersweet, but heavily dosed with witty flamboyance (Pat is surprised when a store clerk recognizes him; she exclaims, “Who could forget ‘the Liberace of Sandusky’?” Pat’s response: “Was I that butch?”).

Swan Song also explores the gay community’s dramatic culture change from forty years ago to the relative openness of today. Watching two dads playing with their kids in the park, Pat observes “I wouldn’t even know how to be gay any more.” Sentimental, perhaps, but proud as well. Much like the glorious queens and queers of days gone by.

Luchadoras (dir. Paola Calvo, Patrick Jasim)—Life in Cuidad Juarez is hard, and even harder for women. The city is home of countless unsolved murders, and a masculine attitude with a mean streak. Luchadoras explores these phenomena through the lens of three “women fighters,” as the title’s translation makes clear. I initially felt this clarification was superfluous. It was only after watching the whole documentary that I realized its necessity. These women fight for everything: their livelihood, family, and self-esteem. That’s what attracts them to the world of luchadora combat: at least on the ring, they fight on their own terms, with their own kind, and for their own satisfaction.

One fighter, Lady Candy, is trying to attain partial custody of her children after they were kidnapped by their abusive father and brought to live in El Paso. Baby Starlight is aging, so her chances of Continue reading NORTH BEND FILM FESTIVAL 2021, FEATURES PART 1: FIVE FILMS FOR YOU →

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FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL 2020 CAPSULE: CRAZY SAMURAI MUSASHI (2020)

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[AKA Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1]

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DIRECTED BY: Yûji Shimomura

FEATURING:

PLOT: The titular character kills 588 samurai and mercenaries because he’s Crazy Samurai Musashi.

COMMENTS: Yûji Shimomura’s third feature film, Crazy Samurai Musashi, is basically a master’s thesis in fight choreography. It isn’t weird, unless you consider a seventy-seven-minute, uninterrupted cut of a swordsman uninterruptedly cutting up his foes to be weird. And it could be argued it isn’t really even a movie, because no semblance of “story arc” exists, as highlighted by the epilogue in which the older (and still crazy) samurai Musashi slashes his way through a fresh batch of goons because That’s Just What He Does. So what is this thing?

This thing begins with a fairly traditional prologue involving novel cinematic practices like “zooms”, “cuts”, “editing”, and dialogue. A clan of samurai want vengeance against Musashi for killing two of their leaders. They’ve gathered the whole gang together, as well as three-hundred mercenaries, so as to make sure that the job gets done. As the men gather their courage, a small boy, the scion of the clan’s elder, is distracted by a butterfly. Musashi’s arrival is advertised by his daring leap from a nearby tree–during which he slices the butterfly in twain and kills the young boy. The long take starts right after Musashi commands, “Let’s get this started!”

Having read up a little on Yûji Shimomura, I am not surprised by the fighting: his main contribution to cinema has been stunt and fight coordination. What caught my eye is that Sion Sono was involved (he wrote this thing). Sono is an oddball among oddballs, with an eye for excess and strange humor.

The excess is covered by Shimomura—nearly six hundred deaths occur on screen. The humor crops up in the occasional interludes between sword fights. Musashi always finds water canteens during lulls in the combat, almost like video game power-ups. He has an amusingly civil exchange with a young woman in a wood shed, and is miffed when she breaks her promise to keep quiet as he’s catching his breath. He shows obvious confusion when he tries tallying his kills halfway through the massacre. And then there’s my favorite: Musashi increasingly busts out the “Bring it!” gesture at the remaining fighters as the body count rises.

Watching Tak Sakaguchi exhaust himself was itself an exhausting experience. He’s a credit to combat actors: even as he grows more and more breathless, he maintains a steely look and a flair for body language. Crazy Samurai Musashi doesn’t quite work as a movie, but it’s a must-see for anyone making a combat film. Too often fight scenes, large and small, are impossible to follow. If one director can do it for seventy-seven minutes straight, others with more editing leeway and bigger budgets have zero excuse.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…an impressive feat of fight choreography and of physical stamina on both sides of the camera, not least from its indefatigable star Tak Sakaguchi.”–Allan Hunter, Screen Daily (festival screening)

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CAPSULE: TOKYO TRIBE (2014)

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DIRECTED BY: Sion Sono

FEATURING: Kunihiko Kawakami, Young Dais, Nana Seino, Ryôhei Suzuki,

PLOT: When crazy Buppa releases the Waru gang onto the streets of Tokyo, the tribes unite and fight for survival to the sick beats of gangster rap.

Still from Tokyo Tribe (2014)

COMMENTS: If Tokyo Tribe came from any other director, I’d probably say he was trying too hard. However, having seen a few Sion Sono films now, I can see that this is just how the man operates: on a plane with far more mania and extravagance than we mere mortals. Minutes after opening on two urban youths playing with sparklers, dreaming about making a difference, we become fully tuned in to the manga world of Santa Inoue’s serialized epic. Live-action comics, rap battle exposition, and the silliest feud imaginable—Sion Sono delivers all this with his own amped up brand of gusto.

The mean streets of post-post-modern Tokyo are riddled with crime, prostitution, bootleg tapes, ineffectual cops, and close to two dozen gangs of themed thugs. The biggest and nastiest of all the gang lords is Buppa, a man of staggering vulgarity and true psychosis (performed by Riki Takeuchi as if he were a brain-damaged John Belushi). His prime henchman, Mera, holds a grudge against Kai, the leader of the “peaceful” gang, the Musashino Saru tribe. Kai offended Mera in a sauna some years back, and that’s all we’re told. The catalyst for action is the disappearance of the virginal daughter of the High Priest, who needs her for a sacrifice. The plot I’ve just provided is superfluous, and any more would force me to ramble on for some pages. Suffice it to say, you should just check your brain at the door and run with it.

Tokyo Tribe isn’t a weird movie—it is far too accessible for that (and yes, it is a bit weird how accessible this movie feels). But it does stand as one of the most ridiculous films I’ve ever seen (which is something I say neither lightly nor disparagingly). The glorious excess of Sion Sono’s vision of an alternative Tokyo has more than its share of hard R-rated shenanigans, but is somehow approachable throughout (although by the end, we’ll have seen a beat-box tea maid, balloon sex corridors, a case of cigars and fingers, and a black ninja giant who says only, “Bring me! To a! Sauna!”) While Tokyo Tribe doesn’t break the weird ceiling, it does lustily gouge at the plaster.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Words can never do justice to the awe-inspiring, brain-eating weirdness of Sion Sono’s Japanese dystopian hip-hop kung-fu musical Tokyo Tribe…  should all be either horrifying or hilarious — or, less generously, ridiculous and offensive — but somehow, it’s not. There’s a strange power to Sion’s filmmaking that goes beyond the midnight-movie oddness of the plot.”–Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine (contemporaneous)