Glasses めがね (Megane) [2007] • Japan

Serenity now. This lovely gem can be dismissed as a new-age tourist brochure for Okinawa (although the locale remains unnamed in the film) if one is feeling rambunctious, or it can be consumed like one of the many bowls of magical shaved ice presented in the film, a spoonful at a time without surprises, savoring the moments that celebrate the simple in life.

The story that will unfold is obvious from the beginning. A harried young city dweller, Taeko, takes a much needed vacation to a remote island inn, meets a few laid back and strange locals which she at first tries to keep her distance from but eventually succumbs to the rhythm of the place and its people. Happiness is attained.

For a film like this to work it needs to look nice, have engaging characters, and not take itself too seriously. It's filmed on Yoron Island, Okinawa, Japan, so director Naoko Ogigami has the aesthetics of location covered. There are plenty of shots of crystal clear waters washing up on pristine beaches that look nice and help set the slow rolling pace of the film. Ogigami has written a witty and sparse script, which drifts along alternating between surreal and a Zen koan, and assembled a wonderful and talented cast to deliver it. Ken Mitsuishi, who's been in 136 films, plays the inn-keeper Yuji with such calm assurance you might think you're watching his biography. Ogigami also brings along two actresses who made an impression in her previous film, Kamome Shokudo (Seagull Diner). Masako Motai plays a mysterious visiting matriarch of the island, Sakura, who makes magical kaki-gori, a dessert made of shaved ice and syrup, and leads the locals in weird morning calisthenic exercises on the beach. Satomi Kobayashi plays Taeko, the vacationing visitor to the island. She seems well suited to Ogigami's style, having played a similar fish-out-of-water character in Kamome Shokudo, a Japanese woman who opens a restaurant serving rice balls in Helsinki. Her performance here shows a slow and subtle transformation that reflects the pace of life on the island. The cast is rounded out with celebrated young actors Mikako Ichikawa and Ryo Kase.

If you enjoy slow, amusing, meditative films with quirky characters this is a winner. If you're looking for slapstick, this is a loser. It's whimsical and slightly bizarre but thoroughly understated. Moments that might seem a little new age tree-huggerish aren't annoying because the tone is not preachy or precious. It's very light-hearted and doesn't take itself seriously.

★★★★★ 

Director: Naoko Ogigami
Starring: Satomi Kobayashi, Mikako Ichikawa, Ryo Kase, Ken Mitsuishi, Masako Motai
IMDb
Asianmediawiki
Japan Times
Time Out (an opposing view)

The Most Distant Course 最遥远的距离 (Zui yao yuan de ju li) (2007) • Taiwan

This is one of those slow and dreamy ones. The story of three different people, each on their own journey, whose lives overlap may be a familiar one but this version has its own unique angles  and just enough depth of character to keep the viewer engaged. All three characters are wonderfully portrayed.

Tang (Tz-yi Mo) is on a road trip capturing sounds and recording them onto cassette tapes from all the places he had hoped to visit with his girlfriend before she broke up with him. He sends the tapes to the last known address he has for her but she has already moved on. Xiaoyun (Lunmei Kwai) now lives at the address and receives the mysterious and unidentified tapes. Unhappy with her present conditions in life, Xiaoyun sets out to find and visit all the places the sounds are coming from with the outside hope of maybe meeting the guy who is sending them.

Tang meets up on his travels with a psychiatrist, played charismatically, if a bit larger than the rest of the film's characters, by Siao-guo Jia, who is also suffering a broken heart and doing some soul searching of his own. The two of them share some odd experiences and some moments of sad humor while Xiaoyun's parallel journey is filled with many beautiful sights along the Taiwan countryside. Everything comes together in a very bittersweet ending that's neither happy nor sad but wide open to possibility.

★★★★

Director: Jing-Jie Lin
Starring: Tz-yi Mo, Siao-guo Jia, Lunmei Kwai

IMDb
Asianmediawiki
Love HK Film
Taipei Times

Nowhere to Turn 여기보다 어딘가에 (Yeogiboda Eodingae) Somewhere Over Here [2007] • South Korea

This is a film that went nowhere beyond a couple festival screenings. There's nothing earth shattering about it but it's not bad. Typical slacker-with-dream storyline about a girl who wants to go abroad and study music. What drew my attention to it was the lead actress Su-yeon Cha.

Cha made three films in 2007: Beautiful, For Eternal Hearts, and Nowhere to Turn. I had seen Beautiful, a film about a woman whose life is hell because of her incredible beauty. That's quite a role to fill. Cha is attractive in a sleepy, natural sort of way, but not typical of today's Korean starlets. Her performance in Beautiful showed promise, exuding poise and confidence, but the film was so scrambled script-wise it was hard to make much of her acting ability. Then I saw For Eternal Hearts, a supernatural thriller, and Cha performed reasonably well in a supporting role, so I took a chance on this one.

Nowhere to Turn follows Su-yeon (that's also her character's name) as she tries to earn enough money to go to England and study music. She has no support from her parents so she runs away from home in protest. She ends up at the flat of a male friend who has a big crush on her but she keeps the relationship platonic. She tries giving piano lessons to earn money but doesn't have the patience. She meets a successful musician and thinks he might be able to help her but all he wants to do is sleep with her. She returns to the puppy dog boyfriend and does something creepy. She discovers another woman is interested in her friend so she tells the woman that he has AIDS. One thing leads to another and she and her boy friend form a musical duo to perform in a contest that offers a cash prize big enough to send her to England. Bummer she didn't sleep with that other musician guy, as he turns up as one of the judges for the contest.

Cha's performance in the film is OK but, as mentioned she has a sleepy sort of beauty, and judging from this film she appears to also have a sleepy sort of acting style. Her role as a drifter we are supposed to root for requires a little more spunk than she brings to it. She does do a very good job of fitting in as a member of the local indie music scene, so there's that going for her. She seems quirky hip, if a little low-key.

All in all there's not a lot to recommend about Nowhere to Turn. It's not a bad film but it doesn't offer much that's new and the performances are only adequate. I liked it a bit more than I think most people will because I find Cha to be an intriguing young actress and I like films about people pursuing a musical dream. It's worth a rental if either of those things appeal to you.

★★★

Director: Seung-yeong Lee
Starring: Su-yeon Cha, Ha-joon Yoo, Jun-suk Bang, Oei Lee, Won-sang Park

IMDb
Asianmediawiki
HanCinema
Soompi
LunaPark6

Trailer:

Out of the Wind 風の外側 (Kaze no sotogawa) (2007) • Japan

This is Sakura Ando's feature film debut. It's written and directed by her father, Eiji Okuda. These are the facts. It's a confused film. It starts off being about a young girl, Mariko, who has a dream of becoming a diva in the world of opera. It's funny seeing Sakura Ando do that elongated mouth opera singing thing, but I digress. There has to be some conflict so a soft-spoken tough guy is introduced. He becomes Mariko's bodyguard and remains nameless for a while. This is a Japanese film. There are perverts targeting young girls in school uniforms.

The boy and girl enter into a typical movie relationship. It starts off distant and rocky but love slowly swirls. Then the focus of the film drifts to the guy who has a dream of becoming a big time Yakuza. Problem is, he's Korean, so he has to prove himself on his way up the ladder by doing all the icky jobs. One of which turns out to be killing a Korean businessman who ... drum-roll, please ... turns out to be Mariko's father. That would mean, you guessed it, Mariko is half Korean. Now the film drifts into an exploration of identity and we're given an excuse to up the ante in the love relationship between Mariko and her bodyguard. The life of Koreans and the discrimination they endure living in Japan is also explored.


It's not that a film can't grow and expand on the themes it explores but it has to be well-written and executed or it will fail. The amount of suspension of disbelief required to get from A to B to C in this film is huge. I didn't have the power to suspend my disbelief that a director would have his young daughter do a nude scene in her film debut, seems creepy, nor was I able to get through the scene where the bodyguard stumbles into the opera house and stabs Mariko's father while she watches the whole thing, albeit with a wrinkled forehead, but never stops singing.

This film is pretty awful, and it's too bad because Sakura Ando's performance is pretty good. It's a real sign of talent when you can be good in a bad film.

★★

Director: Eiji Okuda
Starring: Sakura Ando, Takao Sasaki, Kazu Andô, Yasuhiro Arai, Megumi Araki

IMDb
Asianmediawiki

Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers! 腑抜けども、悲しみの愛を見せろ (Funuke domo, kanashimi no ai wo misero) [2007] • Japan

This is what Japanese cinema is all about: A good title, twisted family drama, black humor that hurts more than it tickles, a little sexual deviance, beautiful women. Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers! has it all.

The films starts with a gruesome bus accident that kills the parents of siblings Shinji, Sumika, and Kiyomi. Kiyomi, an aspiring manga artist, witnesses it and decides the images would make good material for her next project. Four years ago, in their countryside home, elder sister Sumika (Eriko Sato) carved a checkerboard into her father's forehead because he wouldn't finance her dream of moving to Tokyo to become an actress. She turned to prostitution. Younger sister Kiyomi (Aimi Satsukawa) used her sister's actions as manga material and got it published. Sumika, in shame, left for Tokyo. The two sisters have not gotten along since. The death of the parents comes at a good time for Sumika who hasn't made it as an actress and is deeply in debt. She returns to her country homestead in the hopes of collecting some inheritance but finds out there isn't any. The rest of the story, although intricately woven, is not important here. Suffice to say the three siblings have deep dark secrets and rivalries that come boiling to the surface. It's the performances that make this film so good.

Robo-babe, pin-up girl, horror queen, and Cutie Honey: Live Action star Eriko Sato gives the performance of her career as the relentlessly cruel and self-absorbed Sumika. Sometimes a role is just made for someone, and Sato takes this one and runs with it. Aimi Satsukawa brings wonderful pathos to the asthmatic, innocent yet deeply disturbed, Kiyomi. Veteran actor Masatoshi Nagase is solid and creepy as the brother who's gone where brothers are not supposed to go with sister Sumika. Sato is the star of the film and the whole thing would be unbearably dark and cruel if it weren't for the hilarious and wholesome performance of Hiromi Nagasaku as Shinji's wife, Machiko. Shinji procured Machiko via a marriage agency and Machiko, wanting to escape the demands and false hopes of the city thinks she will settle nicely into the lives of some good ol' down home country folk. Oops. Nagasaku, deservedly, has won multiple awards for her performance. She elevates every film she is in and this one is no exception. She plays the straight man to all the morbid cruelty going on around her. Her Machiko is as much of a failure as everyone else but she hasn't learned to take it out on others. She just wants everyone to get along.

Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers! takes the theme of dysfunctional family drama and wrings it dry. If you like your humor dark and cruel, punctuated with double-takes that are sweet, wholesome, and absurd, you'll love this movie.

★★★★★

Director: Daihachi Yoshida
Starring: Eriko Sato, Aimi Satsukawa, Hiromi Nagasaku, Masatoshi Nagase, Seiji Nozoe
IMDb
Asianmediawiki

Switching - Goodbye Me 転校生 -さよなら あなた- (Tenkôsei: Sayonara anata) [2007] • Japan

It cracks me up the way the Japanese (and the Koreans do this too), concoct these un-named, incurable diseases and then treat them as just another plot point, no big deal really. Someone dies here, but this information isn't really a spoiler because it doesn't matter. It's not what the movie is about. Switching - Goodbye Me is the story of two fifteen year old kids, a boy and a girl, who switch bodies and learn about themselves, their relationships, and love. It's a theme that's been done before. In fact, Switching - Goodbye Me is a remake by the same director of a very well received film he made in 1982 called I Are You, You Am Me (Tenkosei).

Switching - Goodbye Me is filled with beautiful cinematography that seems a pay grade above the level of film it's operating in. The acting is all very good, especially from the two teenagers gender-hopping as the leads, and the script is quirky smart. I was a little surprised by the very casual but to-the-point dialog about nuts and boobs and "body parts that change shape" when you touch them. Not because I don't think fifteen year old kids talk about these things but because these two fifteen year old kids are presented as something close to the epitome of innocence. That's the beauty of this film. It's somewhat skewed all the way through. Even the camera angles are all mostly from off the horizontal plane. And the typically Japanese ability to hurl fast-paced absurd dialog at you with a straight face makes for an odd yet peaceful roller-coaster ride.

The first hour of the film is pretty much comedy, turning a bit more dramatic for the second hour. The ending is a slow fizzle which attempts to wrap things up with an upbeat message when it really just rolls over and plays dead. But it doesn't matter. Unless you know for sure you don't like movies about teenagers, I highly recommend this film. It's a family film with a subversive yet sweet underbelly. Kids will get the weirdness and parents will never feel like things have gone too far. The characters are well-developed and likable and it's a very good looking film. A final shout out to both of the teenage actors. They do a remarkable job of channeling the opposite sex, mostly through body language and speech patterns. Switching - Goodbye Me should leave you smiling most of the way through.

★★★★

Director: Nobuhiko Obayashi
Starring: Misako Renbutsu, Naoyuki Morita, Misa Shimizu, Saki Terashima, 
IMDb
Asianmediawiki

How to Create Myself of Tomorrow (Ashita no watashi no tsukurikata) How to Become Myself (2007) • Japan

There are two reasons to watch this movie, assuming of course that flicks about teen angst aren't off limits. The first reason is Riko Narumi. She's got looks, talent, and a maturity beyond her age which should protect her from catching disposable idol syndrome. She's got the skill to bring us inside the film and not question the all too common premise of how the best looking and smartest girl in class, who's from a well to do but unassuming family, can be an introverted social outcast. Her parents fight a little and that's what's got her down. It isn't until the second act, when the class prize loses her social standing allowing Narumi's character to sweep in and relate, that we become engaged and the film picks up its rhythm. And it does it through film technique more than simple storytelling.

The second reason to enjoy this film is the creative way director Jun Ichikawa has put the package together. He uses fades and split screens and shots about nothing all in the service of a poetic rhythm that carries the viewer from start to finish. The two girls don't just meet and bond. In fact, they live in different parts of the city and go to different schools. They communicate with one another via email and text messages. Narumi's character is an aspiring writer and she uses her skill to create a persona to share with her new friend. On one hand, she is trying to give her friend a role model, and on the other she is using the character as a vehicle to express the thoughts and feelings she doesn't have the confidence to own up to herself. Her friend likes the character Narumi has created so much she assumes its identity. Things get complicated and the girls have to finally give in and be themselves. It's not a challenging story but it is innovatively rendered and scored.

I prefer the literal, if a little overly formal, English translation of this film's title, How to Create Myself of Tomorrow, over the one you're likely to find on the DVD box in your favorite import video store, How to Become Myself. I think it better reflects the imaginative presentation of this lovely little teen flick.

★★★★

Director: Jun Ichikawa
Starring: Riko Narumi, Atsuko Maeda, Mariko Ishihara, Yoshizumi Ishihara, Sosuke Takaoka
IMDb

Secret (Himitsu) [1999] • Japan ... & ... The Secret (Si j'etais toi) If I Were You (2007) • France

I saw the 2007 French/American version of this film first without knowing it was a remake. I liked it, especially the performance by Olivia Thirlby, but when I discovered the 1999 Japanese version, which I liked even more, it highlighted for me a little of why I like Japanese films in particular, and East Asian films in general. It's a lot sweeter and more subtle. More sad too, casts a wider emotional net. As a matter of disclosure I'll point out that I am not a remake basher, on principle, at all.

The basic story centers on a seventeen year old girl whose body is inhabited by her mother's soul. The two of them were in a terrible accident, and while in the hospital, just as the mother is about to die she reaches over, all ceiling of the Sistine Chapel like, and transfers her soul into the body of her daughter. The daughter keeps her body but becomes her mother in personality and memories. When she goes to school and hangs out with her friends she doesn't really know what's going on, who the people are or what her homework assignments are, because ... well, she's her mother now, for all practical purposes. It takes her a while to come to terms with what's happened and even longer to convince her father/husband.

Now, to cut right to the chase in case you can't see the 400 pound gorilla in the room, once the father is convinced that his wife is living in the body of his daughter and they, well, ya know, they're all in love and stuff ... so what about sex?

Things get a little creepy but I give both films high marks for how delicately the sex question is handled. I'll leave it at that and say it's not the main theme of either film, just one of many issues that come up.

The English version is loud and antagonistic. It's not a horror movie (not sure how it got marketed as such) unless you consider David Duchovny spooning with a seventeen year old girl to be horror. The daughter is in rebellion mode against the mother before the accident and their relationship takes center stage—the mother discovering her daughter’s world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll while the daughter comes to recognize the love that her mother has always had for her. The Japanese version is much quieter in comparison. The mother and daughter love each other very much and the antagonism angle focuses on the husband/wife relationship. The husband becomes sad and wimpy, feeling oppressed by having his wife around only as a roadblock to his moving on. The diet of sadness is served in small introspective doses, though, and changes how the film resolves. In the English version the resolution occurs between the mother and daughter. In the Japanese version it is between the husband and wife and involves a big twist that should serve to remind viewers that this has been a fantasy film, after all. As mentioned, I saw the English remake first and it didn’t do the twist, and when I watched the original (with the twist) I thought to myself “This is why I like Asian cinema.” It is so Japanese. Just when the limits of despair seem to have been reached, another complex layer of sadness is revealed for your weeping pleasure. (I wonder how the book they're both based upon ends.)

I’m not a remake basher but I think if I had seen the Japanese version first I might have railed against the remake for changing focus and tone. Having seen the English version first allowed me to enjoy it for what it was, and it didn’t in any way impinge upon my enjoyment of the original. I recommend both films but suggest, oddly, seeing the remake first. Both films explore, and handle, the creepy dilemma of “Would you have sex with your wife if she was living in your daughter’s body?” quite well. They’re both sweet and touching ... except for some of the touching.

★★★★ 

(Japanese version)
Director:  Yojiro Takita
Starring: Ryoko Hirosue, Kaoru Kobayashi

IMDb
Asianmediawiki


★★★★ 

(English version)
Director: Vincent Perez  
Starring: David Duchovny, Olivia Thirlby, Lili Taylor

IMDb
Wikipedia

In Love We Trust (Zuo you) [2007] • China

Check this scenario: a divorced couple learns that the only way to save the life of their little daughter Hehe (that's her name, I'm not inserting a chuckle), who suffers from a blood disease, is to have another child. But both of them have remarried. Do they do it? Do they do it in secret? Can they do it?

No surprise to learn director Xiaoshuai Wang studied painting before becoming a director. This is a marvelously composed film. The screenplay is brutal sharp with one large unnecessary gimmick toward the end. I'm glad this theme was done art-house and not commercial melodrama, which it could easily be. The four main performers are solid and compelling, with lots of shots of faces on bodies doing nothing but carrying burden within. And they all pull it off. You'll have lots to talk about after watching this.

★★★★★

Director: Xiaoshuai Wang
Starring: Jia-yi Zhang, Nan Yu, Taisheng Chen, Yuan Tian, Yuanyuan Gao

IMDb
Wikipedia
shanghaiist.com
Screen International

49 great films from the Oughts (the first decade of this century)

Just for kicks.

[Rec] (2007)
The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)
Adrift in Tokyo (2007) aka Tenten
Antichrist (2009)
The Aura (2005) aka El Aura
Babel (2006)
Battle Royale (2000) aka Batoru rowaiaru
Blind Mountain (2007) aka Mang shan
City of God (2002) aka Cidade de Deus
The Equation of Love and Death (2008) aka Li mi de cai xiang
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004)
Eureka (2000) aka Yurîka
Green Tea (2003) aka Lü cha
Hero (2002) aka Ying xiong
Himalaya With Michael Palin (2004)
In The Mood For Love (2000) aka Fa yeung nin wa
Irreversible (2002)
The Isle (2000) aka Seom
Joint Security Area (2000) aka Gongdong gyeongbi guyeok
Let the Right One In (2008) aka Låt den rätte komma in
Lost in Translation (2003)
Lost Indulgence (2008) aka Mi guo
Love Exposure (2008) aka Ai no mukidashi
M (2007)
Memento (2000)
Memories of Murder (2003) aka Salinui chueok
A Moment to Remember (2004) aka Nae meorisokui jiwoogae
Mother (2009) aka Madeo
Next Door (2005) aka Naboer
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Noriko's Dinner Table (2005) aka Noriko no shokutaku
Oasis (2002)
One Fine Spring Day (2001) aka Bomnaleun ganda
Planet Earth (2006)
Queenadreena: Live (2006)
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Secret Sunshine (2007) aka Milyang
Sideways (2004)
Snatch (2000)
Spider Forest (2004) aka Geomi sup
Stranger Than Fiction (2006)
Strawberry Shortcakes (2006)
Suicide Club (2002) aka Jisatsu saakuru
Summer Palace (2006) aka Yihe yuan
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
This Charming Girl (2004) aka Yeoja, Jeong-hye
The Unknown Woman (2006) aka La Sconosciuta
Visitor Q (2001) aka Bijitâ Q
What Time Is It There? (2001) aka Ni na bian ji dian

Paranormal Activity [2007] • USA

Don't fall for the stories of people walking out of this movie because it's too scary. It doesn't even pretend to be scary until at least an hour into it. Somebody's leg is being pulled. And speaking of pulled legs ... that is the only scary scene in the movie.

There are allegedly three different endings to the film. I saw the original one ... and it's not scary or satisfying at all. There's a little bit of off-screen screaming that abruptly turns into silence. OK, that can be unnerving but it's just a technique. It doesn't move the story to anywhere that matters. The ending being shown in theaters now might be better--a whole bunch more technique with a frightening image or two that is over with quickly. The original peters out to nothingness for far too long and has no meaning.

Even if we grant that either or both of the endings I didn't see kick total ass, that doesn't make it a good film. It makes it three minutes of coolness that requires ninety minutes of suffering to get to.

The guy in this film is a completely unlikeable moron. The girl is OK but I never really thought she was scared, more just annoyed by her idiotic day-trader boyfriend. I think everyone acknowledges that this film is mostly, for at least an hour, nothing but set up before anything happens, and that's too much time spent with bad actors working without a script. There's nothing subtle about it.

★★

Ex Drummer [2007] • Belgium

The dialog in the film is so quick-witted sometimes I could barely keep up with the subtitles. It's dark and nihilistic and spares nothing in its onslaught. It's offensive, very funny at times, punk and truly bizarre. There's a subtle structural game going on as well that's all but lost amidst the barrage of hate and humor. Based on the semi-autobiographical cult novel by controversial Belgian writer Herman Brusselmans, Ex Dummer tells the story

of Dries, a famous writer living the good life with his beautiful wife in their beautiful apartment, who is approached one day by three losers who want him to join their band as the drummer. He accepts the invitation as an opportunity for source material. As the film unfolds Dries is sometimes seen as reporting on the events that he experiences and at other times he seems to be inventing them. It's not important to the film one way or the other and appears to be just one of innumerable filmic techniques employed by the director of this punk stew.

Each member of the band must have a handicap. The singer has a lisp and lives on the ceiling of his apartment. The lisp was lost on me as I don't speak the language, but it is apparently so bad it's reached the level of a handicap. The bass player has a debilitating mother complex, keeps his father in a straight jacket strapped to a bed in his attic, and he's got a stiff right arm. The guitar player is deaf and addicted to crack. The drummer's handicap is that he can't play drums ... but he's writing the story so he lies about it.

The band is only going to play one gig, a battle of the bands, and then breakup. There isn't much of a story to follow. We're simply treated to the machinations of this motley crew as they prepare for the concert and their lives crumble around them. The soundtrack is magnificent and the acting is all spot on. If you like punk, real punk without eyeliner, you should see this.

★★★★

Secret Sunshine (Milyang) [2007] • South Korea

This film stars two of the best, and two of my favorite, Korean actors: Do-yeon Jeon and Kang-ho Song, and is written and directed by Chang-dong Lee, of Oasis fame.

The plot in a nutshell: Jeon's character moves with her son Jun to Miryang, the town where her recently killed husband was born. As she tries to start her new life another tragic event turns her world upside down. She looks for comfort in god and religiousness, and then turns a critical eye towards it.

The scene where Jeon's character goes to the prison to forgive the man who committed the most heinous of crimes against her is one of the strongest and smartest statements on religious belief I've seen.

It's a long, slow paced film, but the performances are extraordinary. Do-yeon Jeon won best actress at Cannes for her performance.

★★★★★

Adrift in Tokyo (Tenten) [2007] • Japan • Satoshi Miki

"In my 8th college year, buying 3-color toothpaste I thought could spare me from my rock bottom situation."

Those are the first words of the film as spoken by Fumiya (Jô Odagiri) just before debt collector Fukuhara (Tomokazu Miura) bursts into his apartment, removing his shoes at the front door as is Japanese custom, and roughs him up. The next day the debt collector offers Fumiya an opportunity to erase his debt: walk with him around Tokyo. What we get is a road movie, a very funny road movie, where the unlikely duo walk instead of drive. There's eventual male bonding, marvelous footage of Tokyo, and a smorgasbord of odd characters and situations along the way.

Writer/Director Satoshi Miki has a stable of comedic actors who work with him often and who fill out this film playing the side characters. They remind me of the North American group that came out of Second City Television we now associate with Christopher Guest movies. They share that sense of humor too, where each of the characters seem to exist in their own orbit but since they all do, they get along fine. Dialog is somewhere between non sequiturs and honest answers when you don't anticipate them. And it's all about timing and delivery. Funny people.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the hairstyles of the two main characters. Jô Odagiri, famous Average Joe Japanese actor, sports a Dylanesque jew-fro, while famous Big Bad Guy actor Tomokazu Miura's cut seems to suffer from some sort of mullet imbalance. They're an odd pair perfectly suited to this low-key oddball comedy.

A thrill for me is the appearance of Yuriko Yoshitaka as Fufumi, the niece of the debt collector's fake wife. She co-starred, at age seventeen, in one of my favorite films of all time, Noriko's Dinner Table, as the younger sister, Yuka. While that Sion Sono film was no where near a comedy, Yuriko Yoshitaka's character possessed a bit of the same surreal comportment that works for her in this film. She's tasked here with playing a loud, extremely happy, self-orientor who likes to put mayonnaise on everything, and pulls it off without being overly obnoxious. Your mileage may vary but I think she's got a bright future. She seems comfortable acting.

Quite a bit of this film can be viewed at YouTube in ten minute chunks.

★★★★★

M (2007) • South Korea

M is a simple story of a writer, Min-woo, in search of his muse. Director Myung-se Lee tells it with a painter's instinct and a poet's dream logic. It's meant to be observed more than diagnosed, as one would a series of paintings in a museum. The story isn't difficult to take in unless you're really anal about wanting to know, definitively and with assurance, at every given moment if what is going on is real or a dream, a hallucination, a memory, or simply muted perception. This isn't way-out-there and what-the-fuck like David Lynch even though it will likely conjure up comparisons. There is none of the creepy, challenging nastiness of Lynch whose fun and absurd stylings make appearances here but call attention to themselves gently, as they reflect and infuse the story.

M is lightly sprinkled with odd/absurd dialog throughout, but it's appropriate to the characters as they are drawn. Min-woo is an up and coming writer who can't write a word of his new novel as he suffers a massive dose of writer's block, sleepless nights, crazy editors, possible hallucinations, an oppressive sense that he is being followed—which he is—and the haunting memory of his long lost first love as she infiltrates his present reality. Yeon-hee Lee plays the long lost first love, Mimi, who doesn't seem to know anything about Min-woo except that she loves him very much. She is also being followed, in a twistedly logical sort of way, probably by Min-woo. She isn't sure, however, if it's in life or in death. Yeon-hee Lee brings a good-natured goofiness and a remarkable innocence to the film, her presence is a continuous delight.

I wanted to applaud almost every scene in this movie. Director Myung-se Lee's attention to detail in setting up shots, how they are photographed and manipulated, his use of vivid colors and their changing saturation along with a generous use of black, the camera's movement during scenes and how the movement sets up transitions to new scenes, and how harmoniously, remarkably, the soundtrack keeps up with the intricate strangeness and beauty of the visual art—all these things push the boundaries of storytelling to its limits without being overambitious. Nothing about this film feels experimental because the control of the audio/visual terrain is so clearly, to the point of obsession, masterful. This is an Art Film without pretension.

★★★★★

Love Exposure (Eoggaeneomeoeui yeoni) Lovers Behind (2007) • South Korea

This is an intelligent film with sharp dialog about two women living on different sides of adultery and it explores how this affects their outlook on, and relationships with, each other and their respective partners, but it's shot and scored like a made-for-tv lightweight drama. It could have been so much better. Tae-ran Lee is a hidden gem: smart, sophisticated, and gorgeous with a million dollar head of hair. You've got to see it to appreciate it.

★★★

Rainbow Eyes (Ga-myeon) (2007) • South Korea

Artificially tense and hip cop and killer thriller that threatens to go over the top throughout but gets stuck motorcycling around the rim of its contrived story, complete with coincidental fireworks over a broken bridge in the film's climactic conclusion. Min-Sun Kim is fun as the film's girl good guy cop, albeit paint-by-number.

★★

Lost In Beijing (Ping guo) (2007) • China

China's weird. Didn't we just learn from the Olympic Committee that there's billions of people living there? I think we did. Why then is this one of only a few films I can think of, off the top of my head, coming from there that has any semblance of lived-life-now? Lived life now under peculiar circumstances, sure, because it is a movie after all, but still. Everything else seems to be costumed drama kung fu palace historical Mao-sanctioned fantasy crap. I'm talking mainland China here. Taiwan and Hong Kong don't count. Ang Lee doesn't count. All the Chinese filmmakers making films in other parts of the world, and getting them financed and released in other parts of the world, don't count—and there's the rub.

Lost in Beijing is banned in China and its filmmakers are banned for two years from making films in China. What kind of nonsensical time-out is that? I mean no disrespect to the Chinese, I just want more of them to fall through the cracks and make films like Lost in Beijing—which is nothing like Farewell My Hero's Kingdom of Flying Yellow Flowers.

Fan Bingbing, known in the west as Bingbing Fan, stars in this film as Liu Ping Guo (Ping Guo, the Chinese title, translates literally as "Apple"), a foot massage girl who is raped by her boss (played out-of-this-worldly great by Tony Leung Ka Fai who's been in enough movies that every Chinese citizen could pick a film of his to see without any two people seeing the same film—western audiences may know him as the guy who has sex with Marguerite Duras in The Lover), and the rape is witnessed by her husband, a window washer who just happens to be hanging from a scaffolding washing the windows of the room at the massage parlor where the rape takes place. Foot massage is big business in China so I guess that's why this massage parlor is some kind of skyscraper that needs these scaffolded window washers, but I digress. The husband sees this as an opportunity to milk a little money from the well to do parlor owner. Lost in Beijing turns a critical eye toward the new moneyed urban class set against the rural, immigrant-in-their-own-country, if you will, working class.

Bingbing's husband confronts Tony's wife with the rape news and demands money for his pain and suffering, yes, you read that right, his pain and suffering. Tony's wife laughs at him and suggests a better revenge would be for him to have sex with her, and then in a moment of barely noticed brilliance while she's riding him cowgirl puts sunglasses on him so she can't see him looking at her.

It turns out Bingbing is pregnant and things get a little more complicated. If you complain when a film uses overly convenient plot devices to move forward you probably won't like this film as much as I do. I'm more concerned with the caliber of the characters. All four of the main performances in Lost in Beijing are magnificent. (Tony's relationship with, and handling of, his over sized wallet/day-planner is hilarious, as is his response of randomly checking the top of his head for bald spots when he's busted for trying to use a mirror to peek at Bingbing in the shower.) The direction is good and the camerawork creative, sometimes a little too creative to the point where I got dizzy a couple times so I'm deducting a point for that. Beijing is the backdrop here, captured in all its beautiful gray and bustling self.

★★★★

La Capture (2007) • France

This semi-arty little semi-revenge flick from France features a refreshing performance from Catherine de Léan as Rose, a young woman who wants more than payback for the abuse she witnessed and suffered as a child at the hands of her father. She wants her father to understand that his legacy, and the continued abuse of her mother and younger brother, is wrong. So with the help of a couple friends she captures him, gives him a great big grown-up time out and ties him to a radiator in an empty rehearsal studio and attempts to enlighten him.

La Capture also features some nicely nuanced direction from veteran French actress Carole Laure who also wrote the screenplay. Employing not so much a vignette technique as a chaptered one, scenes fade in and fade out the way someone might illustrate a process using bullet points. Sometimes details are left out or unresolved but that only serves to underscore their unimportance in the telling of this story. For example, a scene of Rose doing a poetic reading to her father of man as social animal philosophy is followed a little later by a scene where several animals populate the rehearsal studio and do nothing more than look upon this man tied to a chair. It's a powerful and interesting scene without explanation of how the animals may have come or gone, but it's not that far-fetched a scenario given the portrait Laure has painted of Rose as a seemingly well-adapted, well-liked, sexually happy and satisfied young woman whose life is grounded in practicing that new-age acting technique where people pretend to be animals.

Catherine de Léan has a tough, natural beauty well suited, for the most part, to the role of skirt and boot wearing Rose. Part of the story arc involves changes to her character that occur after she becomes the one in power exerting control. I wasn't as convinced by her portrayal of the gun wielding crazy sister who rescues her brother from drug dealers, but that may be due to the overall inferior telling of that part of the story. Her brother hasn't fared as well in life, hasn't yet "gotten away" and serves as a more typical case juxtaposition to Rose. Director Laure uses a few provocative, though not too explicit sex scenes showing Rose as more atypical from many victims of abuse. Sexually fulfilled is a necessary ingredient in a happy life, right? There's only an implicit case made for the power of new age consciousness in Rose's well adjusted living.

La Capture does a better job showing us than telling us, but that's not a criticism. This is an engaging film to watch and I think the director set out to make it that way and succeeded. I was in the mood for French and La Capture delivered a well crafted, smartly done package. Nice to see Pascale Bussières as la mère (the mother). It's not a big role, and her character is medicated and abused to the point of numbness—a woman who "floats, barely there ... invisible by choice", but just having her around adds to the film's rep.

And the ending is magnificent!

★★★★

Welcome to the Quiet Room (Quiet room ni yôkoso) (2007) • Japan

2007 marked the return to the big screen of ex-model, ex-singer, no longer ex-actress, drop dead gorgeous Yuki Uchida. Her first film in almost 10 years, Glory to the Filmmaker! was written and directed by Takeshi Kitano's (as Beat Takeshi), and in her next film, Welcome to the Quiet Room, her ex-husband is played by Shinya Tsukamoto. Seems like an odd pair for a photobook girl to be jamming with.

Having only this film to go on I can't really give her high marks as a thespian, but ... good lord, the woman's got Ivory Soap charm and the beauty to back it up. Welcome to the Quiet Room is not a good film ... but you can have a little fun with it. I believe Yuki Uchida is in every single scene. Problem is, she shares them with some obnoxious others. It's as if all the direction they got was "get loud and act stupid. You're in a film about a nuthouse." Uchida also plays the first third of the film with splashes of vomit in her hair and smeared on her face. Subtle, but distracting. And not to sound superficial or anything but I hope this woman has hair insurance. It's too bad that when she's styled up in million-dollar-messy she's the sweetest, sexiest looking thing on two legs—except for the puke accouterments. One of her inmate pals combs the stale upchuck from her hair and adds a couple thin braids off to each side causing her to lose a lot of sex appeal. I've never ogled hair so much.

Yûko Nakamura, from the fabulous film Strawberry Shortcakes, has a small role as the reasonable roommate. She's complicated though. Yû Aoi practically steals the show in a supporting role as a sexy bulimic guru of sorts—the one who has "figured out the system." Ryô is scary beautiful good as the head ward nurse and nemesis to all. And just so we have enough for basketball, Mai Takahashi rounds out the dream team of Japanese beauty in a small role as a lifer and musical genius with an eating disorder who's retreated into childlike behavior. Beyond that, the "get loud and act stupid" crowd gets too much screen time. If you're not put off by folks who confuse obnoxious with funny, give this one a visit. If you're looking to enhance your appreciation of fine Asian cinema you should wait a while for a Yuki Uchida fix. I have a feeling this woman is about to do something good.

Welcome to the Quiet Room is plagued with confused writing and bad direction. ***Here comes a spoiler*** It seems odd that such a lightweight film would end so, so ... unfriendly-ly. When Uchida is about to be released, all her "friends" who helped her find her true self again, through song and dance therapy, sign a big bon voyage card for her. Yû Aoi, her mysterious mentor, is the last to sign because plot recently had her get punched in the face by Uchida, and so we wait with baited breath to see if she is going to sign it or not. She does, and writes "Destroy this in one hour or die", presumably meaning "Once you're out of here destroy all connections to the place or you'll be Welcome to the Hotel California." When Uchida leaves she promptly deposits the card, and a beautiful gift she also received, in the trash can. She's still got contact info for her recently released reasonable roommate, played by Yûko Nakamura from the fabulous film Strawberry Shortcakes, the woman who lent her a brush and gave her chocolate and good advice. Maybe Yûko Nakamura dies or is on her way back in (which would be a great big "I told you so" from Yû Aoi), but the glee with which this last attachment is discarded seems selfish and mean.

★★★