We (or maybe mostly I) have talked about Takashi Miike before (here, among other places), and let it be said: even at his goriest, and by god he can be gory, he’s among the most astonishing–and astonishingly sloppy–stylists working. His Western goes in the greater pile. It begins on a soundstage so resolutely, beautifully drawn and shot in such high-contrast saturated colors that when you see Quentin Tarantino putting on a lousy Southern drawl, then a Japanese actor accosting him in an almost-phonetically-pronounced English, and then later have Tarantino intone phrases from an alleged story of a Japanese temple in an English mimicking that strange Japanese-inflected pronunciation… well, let’s say the artifice is not mere surface ploy but is emphatically and for this viewer wonderfully central.
The story is a neat mash-up template of various generic influences both Western and Japanese (one of the characters even jokes that the protagonist shouldn’t try getting all Yojimbo), and there are some great lovely gun battles, and a few tricky technical games (one lovely bit when a man jumps out of his second-story window onto his horse) — all in all, not a movie to watch to sink into the plot but a movie which delights in–and produces the delight of–genre and aesthetic form. I REALLY enjoyed this.
I’ve been looking forward to this since I saw the first trailer; I didn’t realize it was out yet. I just put it at the top of my queue! Thanks for the reminder.
Actually, the trailer made me want to avoid this one at all costs, but remembering how much I love at least a few of his movies (Yokai Monsters, Gozu…), I’ll give it a go
Precisely. Trying to keep track of the plot, or which character is which in the flashbacks is a mistake here. Just let the movie wash over you, and luxuriate in the imagery, and the dialogue. It is beautiful, funny and, for Miike, astonishingly tender. What’s more, it is practically a PG-13 in terms of gore so it makes the perfect introduction to Miike’s films for a teenager. From the first moment of the soundstage backdrop, looking like a Hokusai painting of Mount Fuji, to the last gun battle when a few flakes of snow turn into a snows-scape in the time it takes for the gunfighters to walk into range of each other, SWJ is a delight.
Mark’s mentioned this one a few times, but I can’t find an actual review–but The Great Yokai War is such weird fun. I couldn’t imagine a Miike film for kids; the one category would swallow up the other, and end in tofurkey. But damn! This was endlessly strange, and full of weird bodies and flights of dizzy surrealism and yet–at heart–a familiar kid’s adventure quest. Another great kick from an endlessly-inventive filmmaker….
My old Miike Yokai post is here.
One of the best reasons to see the Miike Yokai film is the amazing and gorgeous Chiaki Kuriyama, who is best known here as “Go-Go” in Kill Bill and also had a part in Battle Royale. Reynolds didn’t mention her, and now I doubt his manhood. (I’ve watched many of her other movies and they are mostly awful, though she remains blissfully cute.)
And since the previous link mentioned another of our Japanese favorites, “Beat” Takashi Kitano, I heartily recommend Kitano’s remake of Zataoichi, The Blind Swordsman (though it’s now 7 years old). Written, directed and starring Kitano, it’s a new version of a very long-running series of movies and TV programs (about a blind justice-dealin’ samaurai, a kind of Lone Ranger/Zorro type I guess). The old films never interested me much, but the Takashi re-imagining is worth a look. It ends with a big Bollywood dance number too.
That sent me back to Kitano’s early movies, so I watched Violent Cop, which alas was pretty terrible. Fireworks, Kikujiro, Sonatine… Those are wonderful movies.
I have a manhood.