Tag Archives: Japanese

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: ADOLESCENCE OF UTENA (1999)

1 Comment

Shôjo kakumei Utena: Adolescence mokushiroku (Revolutionary Girl Utena: Adolescence Apocalypse); AKA Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Kunihiko Ikuhara

FEATURING THE VOICES OF: Tomoko Kawakami, Yuriko Fuchizaki, Takehito Koyasu; , Sharon Becker, (English dub)

PLOT: Newly arrived at school, Utena finds herself in a duel for the freedom of the beautiful and mysterious Anthy, and must fend off multiple challengers while navigating her new-found betrothal.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: For an ostensible transfer of a popular TV series to the big screen, Adolescence of Utena delights not only in jettisoning any obeisance to its source material, but moves in strange and unpredictable directions. Whenever you think you’ve got Utena’s number, you definitely don’t, right up to its outrageous conclusion.

Still from Adolescence of Utena (1999)

COMMENTS: The first moments of this big-screen successor to the popular manga and TV series “Revolutionary Girl Utena” suggest a fish-out-of-water story, as the impossibly wide-eyed title character is led on a tour of the architectural wonder and human-interaction Petri dish that is the Ohtori Academy. Who will she meet? What will she learn? Who will become friends and enemies? A classic shōjo manga in the making. And as soon as those moments end, you can forget all about them, because Utena’s encounter with the cheekily devoted Anthy will shortly become the only thing of importance.

The two girls have an unusual meet-cute, with Utena wandering onto a flower-festooned platform and inadvertently instigating a duel for the rights to Anthy’s hand. It turns out this kind of  accidental heroism happens to Utena a lot; for such a powerful champion, Utena is remarkably unsure of herself. We soon learn why, but the careful crafting of her character lends great potency to her developing relationship with Anthy, empowering what could easily be reduced to cliché. A scene in which the two girls have to create life-drawings of each other, far from feeling obvious or superfluous, develops real romantic power.

All of this takes place in a lush and fantastic design that adds another layer of surrealism and wonder. The school is a wild mashup of Roman architecture and civic planning by M. C. Escher. Places and people are all decked out in a wild palette of colors, with heightened military costumes complemented by crazily flowing hairstyles of pink, magenta, and green. Director Ikuhara supplements these visions with intriguing abstractions, like the radio hosts who only appear in silhouette. Even when the plot and backstory become too dense to be certain you’re following, the visuals are never less than striking, often gasp-inducing.

Adolescence of Utena is already unusual, but the final third raises the bar significantly as our heroine begins to suspect that the universe is hiding a fundamental truth about its nature. She’s right, in a way that rhymes thematically with fellow 1999 release The Matrix; but where ’ Neo had to be flushed out of a simulation to find clarity, Utena makes her escape by turning into a uterus-shaped hot rod and doing battle with a city-sized monster car. It’s a remarkable visual, and it’s hard to undersell the surprise generated by the pivot the movie takes at this juncture. The film’s final image, with the two lead characters in a nude embrace and riding their sex luge into the horizon, is a fitting denouement for a film that has committed fully to following its own path.

Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie

Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie

    New starting from: 61.95

    Go to Amazon

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “…for fear of spoiling the most wild moment in a film made up of wild moments, I would be very reluctant to say what happens in the film around the 65-minute mark, except in general terms, but it is both the most intensely, if fuzzily, symbolic event in the film, involving an extraordinary physical transformation that allows the full scope of Utena’s revolutionary potental to express itself… When it gets to the actual visionary moments, where Utena starts to perceive the greater world than just herself (and this is, basically, the arc of the plot: it’s a coming-of-age story, though one that has been buried deep below the expressive dream imagery), it turns into full-on surrealist explosions of roses, clouds, spaces defined purely in terms of line and shape with no sense of what kind of space they are, though they come across as fundamentally Gothic in their ancient weight and richness.”–Tim Brayton, Alternate Ending

    “A film of absolute beauty, it’s also the weirdest thing I have ever seen. Now that’s a pretty big statement, but I’ve racked my brain, and I can’t think of anything weirder… Yes it’s weird, but all of that weirdness is in the form of metaphor, allusion, and illusion.” – Stephen Porter, Silver Emulsion

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

    Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

    IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (1976)

    Leave a comment

    366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

    DIRECTED BY:

    FEATURING: Tatsuya Fuji, Eiko Matsuda, Aoi Nakajima

    PLOT: A concubine starts a passionate affair with her master in 1930s Japan.

    Still from In the Realm of the Senses (1976)

    COMMENTS: When a movie starts with a girl trying to force her way into another girl, you know you will probably have a sexually explicit tale. And while Senses is not hardcore pornography, sex and eroticism play the major role here. One sexually charged encounter follows another, as we follow our young prostitute heroine and her relationship with her master, a middle-aged nobleman and owner of the house where she lives and works with other girls. The development of this relationship proves increasingly disturbing as sex transforms into power play, a game of submission and dominance, while the young girl gradually reveals her more possessive self.

    Oshima’s infamous sexual psychodrama shocked on release and remains today a classic of provocative cinema, a transgressive and bold narrative portraying sexuality as a power play. While we cannot consider this movie weird, there are elements of the bizarre. Sexual activities increasingly take on a riskier and more sadomasochistic bent. A few intrusive scenes expressing the characters’ states of mind offer a dreamier aesthetic and a healthy dose of Freudian symbolism. And the graphic climax still shocks sensitive spectators.

    In today’s cinematic landscape, however, none of the above is too extreme. Contemporary Asian extreme cinema  approaches similar subjects, namely erotic obsession and the relationship of the two sexes, in more shocking ways. Kim Ki Duk’ s movies, especially Moebius, come to mind, featuring similar imagery and then some. Keeping that in mind, Senses feels a bit dated and mild. The underdeveloped characters and their simplistic or incomprehensible (or just unexplained) motives do not help anything.

    In the Realm of the Senses is available on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “The film invites scorn not only because it depicts almost every sex act you could ever want to imagine taking place—God help us—between a man and a woman (right up to and including a woman inserting pieces of mushroom into her vagina and letting them marinate in her lady juices before serving them up to her man; because if he wants more, it must be true love), but also because it dares to couch the entire hedonistic-masochistic exercise as a cinematic cipher, an oozier version of what, deep down, happens in every relationship.”–Eric Henderson, Slant

    (This movie was nominated for review by “Der Ubermolch.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

    Capsules

    ALL THE HAUNTS BE OURS: A COMPENDIUM OF FOLK HORROR, VOLUME 2

    Leave a comment

    366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

    Severin Films. 13 disc set.

    Severin Films continues their groundbreaking folk-horror “college course in a box” set with the second semester. Expanding and exploring on themes and offering more selections to discover and debate, this time around it has 24 features representing 18 countries, along with tons of extras. Acknowledging the literary roots of the genre, Vol. 2 also comes with a 250 page book, “A Folk Horror Storybook,” a collection of 12 short stories by noted writers in the genre—Ramsey Campbell, Kim Newman, Cassandra Khaw amongst them—with an introduction by Kier-La Janisse, who returns as producer/curator of the whole shebang. The “expansion of themes” may cause some to feel cheated, as there are only a handful of films that fit the expected parameters of “horror” here. But that objection may be more of a failing of the viewer. There are elements of the frightful in all of the selections, and although perhaps  “uncanny” or “spectral” would be better terms, “horror” makes for a good umbrella.

    Still from To Fire You Come At Last (2023)
    To Fire You Come At Last

    Disc 1 features the UK with a film by writer Sean (“England’s Screaming”) Hogan, To Fire You Come At Last (2023), a knowing homage to BBC shows like “Dead of Night” and “Ghost Stories For Christmas.” Four men carry a coffin to a graveyard along a “corpse road” and encounter dangers: from each other, and from something else. Bonus features include commentary by Hogan and producers, along with an earlier short by Hogan, “We Always Find Ourselves In The Sea,” also with commentary, and a separate featurette on corpse roads.

    Paired with To Fire is Psychomania, a 1973 B-movie by Don Sharp involving juvenile delinquent bikers whose leader (Nicky Henson from Witchfinder General) learns the secret of returning from the dead—and promptly does it! He then starts recruiting the other members to follow suit. There’s witchery/devil/frog worship, George Sanders (in his last role), a sappy ballad, and lots of cycle action, making for some fine British cheese. This was a previous Severin release with featurettes about the actors and music, all which have been ported over, along with a new commentary by Hellebore Magazine editor Maria J. Perez Cuervo and a new short documentary on stone circles and standing stones.

    Disc 2 focuses on two American features: The Enchanted (1984) with Julius Harris and Larry Miller (acting under the name Will Sennet), directed by Carter Lord, and 1973’s Who Fears The Devil? (AKA The Legend of Hillbilly John), with Hedges Capers and Severn Darden, directed by John Newland. Based on a story by Elizabeth Coatsworth, Continue reading ALL THE HAUNTS BE OURS: A COMPENDIUM OF FOLK HORROR, VOLUME 2 →

    Capsules

    CAPSULE: BEST WISHES TO ALL (2022)

    1 Comment

    Mina ni ko are

    366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

    Best Wishes to All is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.

    Recommended

    DIRECTED BY: Yûta Shimotsu

    FEATURING: Kotone Furukawa, Masashi Arifuku, Yoshiko Inuyama

    PLOT: A nursing student returns from Tokyo to visit her grandparents remote village, where she finds they are acting oddly.

    Still from best wishes to all (2022)

    COMMENTS: We first meet the nameless young star of Best Wishes to All as a kindly nursing student who, based on sinister musical cues and subtle expressions, seems nervous to travel back to the village she grew up in to visit her aging grandparents. Part of her reluctance may be the family’s obsession with happiness. Since she was a young girl, they have been asking her “are you happy?”; her affirmative replies ring uncomfortably insincere. Dim, disturbing memories from childhood centered around bumps in the night and a perpetually locked door in the upper level of the house also give her pause. And perhaps she also foresees her outwardly pleasant grandparents’ odd behavior, such as their tendency to snort like pigs when eating pork.

    In fact, their strange habits are accelerating, to the point where the heroine wonders if they might be experiencing dementia. But her own reactions become equally strange as the movie goes on. Relatively early on, the true horror of the situation is revealed; and while, at first, our heroine reacts as expected, then the movie shifts into a more dreamlike register. Beginning with an absurd automotive accident, the semi-logical horror story dissolves into a more impressionistic and nightmarish experience. It goes from ominously eccentric to full-on surreal, ending up in blood, betrayal, and, somehow, a middle aged man dancing in his underwear.

    The village nonchalantly accepts the unnatural brutality of the movie’s premise, and the heroine is pressured into believing that this is just the way of the world. The happiness of the lion is the misery of the gazelle. Best Wishes to All posits the logically questionable but metaphorically sound proposition, “does the happiness of one person require the misery of another?” Although the thesis, taken literally, is absurd, the hypothetical is provocative. Who makes the smartphones, coffee, chocolate, diamonds, pornography, and food that you enjoy in your daily life? Wouldn’t you be happier if you didn’t know? Or, at least, if you could pretend that you don’t?

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “…almost 90 minutes at the intersection of happiness and weirdness.”–Sharai Bohannon, Horror Movie Blog (festival screening)

    Capsules

    CAPSULE: WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE (2001)

    Leave a comment

    Akai hashi no shita no nurui mizu

    366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

    DIRECTED BY: 

    FEATURING: , Misa Shimizu, Kazuo Kitamura

    PLOT: An unemployed salesman intends to steal hidden treasure from a confectionary shop, but complications arise when he falls for the elderly owner’s caretaker, a woman with a unique condition.

    COMMENTS: Sasano is already down on his luck when his only friend, Taro, passes away. The architectural firm he worked for has folded, leaving him unemployed, and his wife only calls to insult him while demanding his unemployment check. Taro, known as the “Philosopher,” lived as a hobo in a tent filled with rare books, but he was the only person to treat Sasano with respect and to offer him advice gleaned over the course of a misspent life.

    Taro once told Sasano of a buried treasure, secreted in a pot, in a house with a view of a red bridge, in a summer resort town on the Sea of Japan. At an impromptu funerary meal held in his honor, Sasano mentions Taro’s claim to this improbable treasure. His hobo companions laugh it off; Taro told the rest of them about it, too. But after a series of unpromising job interviews, Sasano decides to leave Tokyo for the seaside, in search of Taro’s supposed pot of gold.

    Arriving in the off season, Sasano stands out as an unlikely tourist. He locates the red bridge, and the house, which Taro had worried wouldn’t still be standing. Sasano spies a woman leaving the building and tails her to the grocery store. There, he catches her stealing cheese while awkwardly standing in a puddle of water. A dropped earring gives him an excuse to follow her back home. She hesitantly welcomes him in, then their chance meeting rapidly becomes a rather. . . aqueous sexual encounter.

    Saeko, as she reluctantly explains, suffers from too much “water,” and when it overflows, she’s driven to commit crimes like petty theft. Thoroughly shocked by the whole thing, Sasano hypocritically reproaches her for stealing, while the relationship provides him convenient opportunities for him to search the house for Taro’s treasure.

    As Sasano spends more time in the town and comes to know its quirky residents, the story heads in a predictable direction; but its tale of two unlikely romances is tinged with metaphysical symbolism surrounding the element of water. In one scene, Saeko takes Sasano to meet a nuclear physicist who studies neutrinos. He explains to them how the particles have to be shot through “superpure water” in order for their experiments to work. The town’s pure water also provides the key ingredient to making the perfect sweet cakes, though as Saeko eventually reveals to Sasano, their river was once dangerously polluted with cadmium.

    Director Imamura’s enduring interest in the connection between human beings and their environment, as well as his explorations into the influence of crime and nonconformity on Japanese society, surface here again, in his final film. The flights of philosophical fancy lead into brief moments of CGI-animated imagery, but most of the scenes remain rooted more or less firmly in reality. Ultimately, Warm Water makes for a slightly kinky but heart-warming tale of how to find purpose, meaning, and happiness in life, along with sex without shame.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “…combines fish out of water stories with a weird metaphor for female sexuality in this sweetly quirky film which never quite gels.”–Laura Clifford, Reeling Reviews

    Warm Water Under a Red Bridge [Blu-ray]

    Warm Water Under a Red Bridge [Blu-ray]
    • Region A Blu-ray
    Check Price