Media watch: NHK’s annual end-of-war anniversary special tackles propaganda

Posted on September 2, 2024 by philipbrasor

I’m about halfway through the second volume of Gary Giddins’ biography of Bing Crosby, which takes in “The War Years 1940-1946.” Crosby was at the peak of his stardom during this period, earning the highest income in Hollywood except for the studio chiefs. He was 38 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and while he could have served, the military preferred he remain in the U.S. and do what he did best—entertain—only that he should do it for the sake of the war effort, meaning singing for the troops (remotely or at homeland bases) and selling war bonds through concert tours with other big stars. Giddins makes a persuasive case that these activities did not get in the way of his career, but, in fact, enhanced his standing as the most popular singer of the day. It was during the war years, after all, that his biggest hit—actually, the best selling record of all time—”White Christmas” was released, as well as most of the “Road” movies he made with Bob Hope and his dramatic breakthrough Going My Way. He was certainly the most popular male star among the soldiers, and he did his best to respond to every one of their requests. And while he was tireless in his service to the war effort, Giddins suggests that part of the reason was that it got him out of the house and away from his alcoholic wife.

But while the book does an impressive job of describing Crosby’s day-to-day existence at the time, it feels slight in terms of explicating the mood of the country. The general impression I’ve always had about America during the war was that everyone’s attention was fixed on the conflicts in Europe and the Pacific, but, up until the beginning of 1943 at least, the book makes it seem as if most people were living their lives pretty much as they were before the war. As it so happens, I watched the NHK Special broadcast on Aug. 26, Japan-U.S. Propaganda War, and it actually explained that for the first year or so, the American public was not fixated on the war. Prior to Pearl Harbor, most Americans did not want to get involved in the European conflict, and even after the U.S. declared war on Japan and Germany, the public remained somewhat cool toward its involvement. The documentary cites an Oct. 1943 survey that found 54 percent of American respondents “didn’t think about the war very much,” thus leading to a different propaganda strategy on the part of the government. Previously, the Japanese were described in newsreels and media in a fairly straightforward manner, and the president, Franklin Roosevelt, forbade graphic descriptions and depictions of the war, but photographer Norman Hatch changed his mind, saying that the American people needed to see what the soldiers were going through so as to support the war effort more fervently. Thereafter, newsreels showed American corpses and talked about Japanese mistreatment of POWs and their troops’ bloodthirsty battlefield methodology. American hatred of the enemy increased substantially as a result, and thus made it easier to carry out bombing raids on civilians, including the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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Review: From Okinawa With Love

Posted on August 31, 2024 by philipbrasor

Like her subjects in the real world, Mao Ishikawa is a fringe figure in the world of Japanese photography. Though she’s won a number of major awards for her work, her subject matter is stubbornly circumscribed, concerned not just with the lives of the people of Okinawa, where she was born in 1953 and raised, but that substrate of Okinawan society that comes into direct contact with the U.S. servicemen through the nightlife industry. Having lived through the American occupation of the island before it reverted to Japanese control in 1972, she knows intimately the peculiar relationship that has evolved between America and Okinawa over the decades, and while she doesn’t appreciate the U.S. military’s intrusive presence, she asserts numerous times during director Hiroshi Sunairi’s even more intimate documentary about Ishikawa and her work that she loves the servicemen she’s known over the years, in every permutation of the verb. This identification comes from a feeling of shared oppression. Just as Okinawans have always been looked down upon by “Yamato” (the rest of Japan), a condition evidenced by the fact that the island has more U.S. bases than anywhere else in the country and that these bases keep the native population in thrall to Tokyo, the sailors and Marines she has been closest to over the years are African-American, who understand discrimination as much as she does.

Consequently, her political views, while staunchly anti-military when it comes to the existence and power of the U.S. bases, are leavened by an almost nostalgic affection for the culture of bar hostesses and their American boyfriends whom she photographed so familiarly during the 1970s and 80s. Though this work is evocative and aesthetically rigorous, it scandalized so-called normal society, and much of Sunairi’s purpose is to show how Ishikawa’s provocative attitude evolved over time, though the average viewer, after just listening to a little of what Ishikawa has to say about life, doesn’t need much explanation. She owned a bar herself in Kin Town, and speaks frankly and with great humor about her many sexual affairs with servicemen. Having been married once and then divorced, she repelled the offers of matrimony from some of her American lovers, but still believes that the relationships were deeper than what most people experience when it comes to romance. Nevertheless, she is also well aware of the undercurrents of violence that occasionally erupt in these relationships given the power dynamic that holds sway in the U.S. military, not to mention the one that pulsates within the social order of Okinawa. She is nothing if not clear-eyed about the interpersonal problems that such imbalances create.

Though Sunairi pays close attention to the photography, his main interest is Ishikawa as a raconteur and representative of a certain kind of free artistic sensibility, and the narrative is ripe with redundant observations about Ishikawa’s iconoclasm. But in the end Sunairi’s persistence pays off in a sequence where Ishikawa’s chronic infirmity (she’s had cancer since the early 2000s) and her desire to reveal literally everything about her life and work reach a confluence of explicatory intention that’s truly moving. I think I would have preferred more outside input into Ishikawa’s influence, but she’s a big enough personality on her own to inhabit fully a feature-length documentary.

In Japanese and English. Now playing in Tokyo at Theater Image Forum Aoyama (03-5766-0114).

From Okinawa With Love home page in Japanese

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Review: Road to Boston

Posted on August 30, 2024 by philipbrasor

It’s often said that South Korean storytelling in movies and dramas is based on one theme, revenge, which gives the impression that the national self-image is one of eternal victimhood. It’s not an entirely fair evaluation, but the country’s history over the last century easily lends itself to such interpretations. The 35 years under the thumb of the Japanese Imperial military has yielded a bumper crop of great tales in terms of dramatic impact, with the aftermath of abject political self-destruction serving double time as a wellspring of national tragedy. Any other country that had been sitting on a story as compelling as the true one told in Road to Boston would have already exploited it years ago, so I can only assume that no one in Korea had gotten around to it until now because there were so many other compelling true stories to pick from; which isn’t to say it’s a great movie, only that it can’t help but be absorbing. 

Son Kee-jung (Ha Jung-woo) was the gold medalist at the 1936 Berlin Olympics in the marathon, a Korean running under the Japanese flag, which he hid from view when he stood on the Olympic podium. He was consequently punished by his Japanese overlords, but his humiliation didn’t stop there. After the war, with Korean independence regained, Son becomes a national hero, albeit a miserable one, what with Seoul sunk into poverty by the time the action starts in 1947 and now under the thumb of the occupying U.S. forces. To make matters worse, Son’s family is trapped in the north, and he has little recourse to get them out. Unlike Son, the bronze medalist at the 1936 games, another Korean named Nam Seung-Ryong (Bae Sung-woo), has continued with his running and coaches young men who mostly want to emulate Son. One, an arrogant kid named Suh Yun-bok (Im Si-wan) is only in it for the money, since he has to work to take care of his ill mother. He also happens to be the most talented young runner in Seoul, and Nam hopes to bring Korea glory as an independent country in the next Olympics, but according to the rules, Korea cannot participate unless it has already participated in a world-class athletic meet (1936 doesn’t count because they ran as Japanese), and Nam has his sights set on the Boston Marathon of 1947. So he tries to enlist Son’s help in getting his charges whipped into shape.

The bulk of the film chronicles not only the subsequent tortuous mental and physical training, which makes Road to Boston a typical sports drama, but the bureaucratic bullshit that Korea had to endure to make it to New England, the biggest obstacle being the American military, which won’t give them any kind of break financially or logistically, meaning Son and Nam have to do it all on their own, often resorting to means that are just as humiliating as those they endured under the Japanese. The resulting triumphs—and here the triumphs are genuine doozies—that much sweeter. Director Kang Je-kyu steeps these impossibly consequential ingredients in a nationalist stew so over-seasoned with sentimental dross that at times it can be over-bearing, and yet he knows that it’s the only way to deliver this tale without diminishing its power for the people who need to experience it. The rest of us can scoff at the extended marathon sequence, with its shameless tribute to the power of proving something to the world, and the overwrought implications that the world’s (read: America’s) image of Koreans was blatantly racist, but we can’t deny the force of the drama. Some countries would kill for this story. 

In Korean and English. Now playing in Tokyo at Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670), Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Yebisu Garden Cinema (0570-783-715).

Road to Boston home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Lotte Entertainment & Content Zio Inc. & B.A. Entertainment & Big Picture

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Media watch: Koike again refuses to acknowledge Korean massacre

Posted on August 28, 2024 by philipbrasor
Police preparing for Korean memorial ceremony at Yokoamicho Park (Mainichi Shimbun)

Sept. 1 marks the 101st anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake, and for the eighth year in a row, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike will not send a message of condolence to a group that holds a memorial ceremony for the Korean residents of Japan who were murdered by Japanese soldiers and vigilante groups in the wake of the disaster. All Tokyo governors in the past, including that famous xenophobe Shintaro Ishihara, have sent a message to the group on Sept. 1, and Koike sent one the first year she was governor, but not since. Officially, the massacre is considered a historical fact, though, as with most matters related to Japan’s mistreatment of non-Japanese people at home and abroad, the numbers tend to vary. Korean groups who have researched the killings—Japanese authorities have never carried out a thorough study and rely on incidental data, such as reports in vernacular newspapers—estimate that 6,000 resident Koreans were killed. The official Japanese estimate is about 250. 

The announcement that Koike would not send a message was delivered Aug. 16 by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. When Tokyo Shimbun contacted the relevant office for a further comment, it was told that Koike plans to attend a ceremony and memorial service for “all victims” of the disaster, thus implying that she does not distinguish between Koreans killed deliberately by people who thought they were poisoning wells and starting fires, as rumor had it at the time, and members of the general public who perished as a result of the destruction wrought by the massive quake. The head of the committee that carries out the memorial to Korean victims at Yokoamicho Park in Sumida Ward, Tokyo, told Tokyo Shimbun that Koike obviously thinks that “sending an additional message of condolence for Korean victims is just too much trouble.” In essence, Koike means to ignore these Korean victims. (note: Some Japanese media have said that the memorial committee is part of Chongryon, the representative association for North Korean citizens living in Japan, but Chongryon is only one of several groups that have supported the ceremony in the past.)

As we’ve already written, the main reason for Koike’s neglect is pressure from an anti-Korean organization that denies the massacre ever happened. This group, called Japanese Women’s Association Soyokaze, send people to Yokoamicho Park every Sept. 1 to carry out its own memorial ceremony, but all they do is heckle the Korean ceremony in a bid to disrupt it, yelling phrases such as “Koreans go home.” This group has been responsible for various incidents of public hate speech directed at Korean residents of Japan, as well as general anti-Korean political activism, including the recent removal of a memorial to forced Korean laborers that had been installed in a park in Gunma Prefecture. The Tokyo government’s human rights division has condemned the group’s speech without condemning the group itself. Soyokaze has said they received permission from a local neighborhood association to hold their ceremony in Yokoamicho Park, though this association has told media that they have nothing to do with Soyokaze and granted no such permission. 

On Aug. 5, Asahi Shimbun reported on a petition sent to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and signed by 83 Univ. of Tokyo faculty and staff urging Koike to send a letter of condolence to the Korean group holding the Sept. 1 ceremony. According to one of the signatories, Prof. Masahiro Tonomura, who has written a book about Korean forced labor, Koike’s vague response to these entreaties can be construed as denial of the accepted massacre record. Thus, Tonomura asserts, Koike—who makes a big deal of her academic background—undermines trust in scholarly research, which has concluded that the massacre actually happened. In addition, it is incumbent on the governor to acknowledge the massacre due to ongoing bigotry and discrimination against Koreans and other minority groups in Tokyo. Ignoring such issues means she is not upholding her duty as Tokyo governor to foster a “diverse society.”

Asahi asked Soyokaze for a comment and received no reply. However, the group’s home page said it was planning to show up again at Yokoamicho Park on Sept. 1. 

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Media watch: NHK critiques atomic bombing through dramatic proxy

Posted on August 25, 2024 by philipbrasor

Last week I interviewed a Japanese journalist for an industry publication about Japanese content sales overseas, in particular Japanese TV dramas. I brought up the current NHK morning drama series, or “asadora,” which is aired every weekday for 15 minutes and always centers on a female protagonist. The one NHK is presenting now, and which started in the spring, is called Tora ni Tsubasa (English title: The Tiger and Her Wings). It’s a fictionalized biography of Yoshiko Mibuchi, who was one of the first female lawyers in Japan and the first female judge. The journalist said she has watched every episode and admired the way the series frankly covered the sexual politics of Japan during the Showa Era, when it takes place, especially its sympathetic treatment of one LGBTQ+ character. 

I had only seen a handful of episodes, but the significance of the series for me was something different. Mibuchi was the judge in charge of the first lawsuit brought against the Japanese government by victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a subject that, as far as I am aware, has never been touched by Japanese television in dramatic form. And while NHK often covers the atomic bombings in documentaries, especially during August when the anniversaries come around, it tends to approach the issue in historical terms in a neutral manner. The journalist acknowledged this point, but since the case didn’t come up until the 98th episode, which was broadcast on August 14, she didn’t think it was the primary theme of the series. She saw it as simply a fictionalized bio-drama of a prominent historical figure with whom many Japanese were probably unfamiliar.

In that regard, I thought the show would be more valuable for opening viewers’ eyes to aspects of the bombings that aren’t discussed in Japan openly. In the series, Mibuchi has been renamed Tomoko Inotsume (Tora-chan is her nickname), and she will presumably preside over a case that greatly affected the legal standing of hibakusha (victims of the atomic bombings). According to a Tokyo Shimbun article about the trial, the genesis of the court case came about around 1955, when two separate suits brought by hibakusha against the government, one filed in Tokyo, the other in Osaka, were combined into one. In addition, the irradiation of a Japanese fishing boat and its crew by the U.S. atomic testing at the Bikini atoll in 1954 was allowed as material evidence. The plaintiffs insisted that the atomic bombings violated international law, but since the Japanese government had abandoned any war-related demands from the U.S. in the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the victims could not sue the U.S. and so aimed their wrath at the Japanese government, demanding compensation based on property rights guaranteed by the Constitution. The Japanese government insisted that the suit had no standing because matters between separate sovereign nations do not hinge on the domestic laws of either country, which Tokyo Shimbun agreed was a flimsy argument. In any case, individual victims do not have the right to demand compensation in terms of international law. To add even more irony to the case, in its defense, the government took the American justification for the bombing at face value, saying that it sped up the end of the war and thus prevented many more deaths on both sides of the conflict, a theory that is still being debated. 

Mibuchi presided over all 9 trial sessions except the last one, when she was replaced by another judge and transferred to family court. She was not present when the verdict was read on Dec. 7, 1963, though Tokyo Shimbun agrees that her sensibility was all over the court’s statement. Though the court rejected the suit owing to procedural matters, in its 131-page ruling it stated that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were indeed illegal acts of war in terms of international law, since they caused the indiscriminate killing of civilian non-combatants in a location with no strategic value. It mentioned that the use of poison gas after World War I was deemed a war crime, and the court saw no difference in terms of pain and suffering inflicted by the atomic bombs. It was the first time a legal entity had addressed the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the statement would reverberate in the subsequent international movement to abolish nuclear weapons and figure more locally in the treatment of hibakusha over the years by the Japanese government. 

Tokyo Shimbun points out that it took a certain measure of courage to write an opinion that overtly criticized the U.S. at the time, since Japan was very careful not to offend the country that defeated it. Tora ni Tsubasa could clarify this important historical moment for a wider audience. 

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Review: Monkey Man and Polite Society

Posted on August 23, 2024 by philipbrasor

Though they have little in common except the setting and Dev Patel as the lead, it’s easy to recognize the stylistic and thematic centrality of Slumdog Millionaire in Patel’s directorial debut. The latter is a classic tale of retribution, while the former was more or less a rags-to-riches story, but both take place in the underworld of Mumbai, with its unsavory characters and grimy attributes, and Patel obviously observed a lot from Danny Boyle’s direction. However, Monkey Man is ostensibly a bloody action flick in the mold of John Wick, with which it shares some technical staff (as well as a scene that references Wick by name) and any number of John Woo movies. It’s also rather long, which means Patel and his co-screenwriters, Paul Angunawala and John Collee, have to sustain the viewer’s curiosity through a lot of extended mayhem, which, regardless how inventively it’s pulled off, needs to be supported by motive and some kind of rationale. In this case, Patel’s character, Bobby, is seeking revenge for the death of his mother when he was a child at the hands of a group of corrupt police who were evicting poor folk from a tract of land a developer, at the behest of an evil religious cult leader, wanted for itself. The trick is to keep the methods Bobby utilizes to reach his goal comprehensible while also justifying the often byzantine fight scenes that are the product of these methods. 

So while the road to satisfaction is paved with ridiculousness, it follows a certain narrative rigor that keeps things lively and interesting, if not totally derivative. Bobby, for instance, earns cash to finance his revenge plot by taking dives in underground bare-knuckle fights for a venal promoter (Sharlto Copley, probably the only actor they considered for the role), and then enlists some street hustler kids to steal a purse from the manager of a ritzy night club where the targeted cops hang out in order to gain the manager’s favor when he returns it and hits her up for a job. I would say that Patel didn’t need to spend as much time on these details as he does, but the fight scenes, at least, provide some background as to why he’s such a deadly combatant when he has to take on multiple attackers kung-fu-style. The gun action, in contrast, feels gratuitous, especially since Patel, who’s become one of the most versatile young actors in movies, went to the trouble of working out to get his body lean and buff, the better to seem like a raw-boned, maniacal fighting machine. 

The sociopolitical subtext is trite and not as affecting as that in Slumdog Millionaire, but it’s obvious Monkey Man was conceived as frivolous—albeit seriously executed—entertainment, so the social ills it highlights are just a vehicle. Still, one wonders if Patel, who is British, could have financed it completely with Indian money given that subtext. It definitely would have required more dedicated music sequences.

The sub-continent-associated characters in Nida Manzoor’s action comedy Polite Society actually live in Britain, but, as in Manzoor’s very funny TV series, We Are Lady Parts, they carry with them the customs and religious sensibilities of their ancestral homeland, a context that Manzoor skewers with gleeful abandon. Though this particular subset of immigrants and their UK-raised children are Muslim, the specificity of faith has no real purchase on the plot. It’s all about tradition that can’t be easily shaken off, and thus the conventional parents of our two protagonists, sisters Ria (Priya Kansara) and Lena (Ritu Arya), would prefer they do the right thing and find nice Muslim boys with which to start families. Ria, however, has dreams of becoming a stunt woman, and enlists Lena to make demo videos of her busting moves that she can post online to sell her brand. Lena herself had enrolled in art school to study painting but suffers a serious failure of self-confidence in her abilities and has gone on hiatus, so she’s susceptible to her mother’s machinations to set her up with a handsome doctor, Salim (Akshay Khanna), whose own mother seems a little too enthusiastic about the match in Ria’s estimation. So as Lena falls more in love with Salim, Ria concocts a plan to extract her from the clutches of matrimony, which she’s convinced Lena wasn’t meant for.

Nothing particularly original there, but Manzoor develops this familar plot line in action movie terms, complete with elaborate fight scenes and far-fetched tumbles down sci-fi adjacent rabbit holes that reminded me of the movies of Jordan Peele, who, as it happens, produced Monkey Man and reportedly had a hand in its direction. In fact, the two movies have more in common than their creators probably imagine, if they even think of each other at all.

Monkey Man, in English and Hindi, now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Shibuya Cine Quinto (03-3477-5905), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Polite Society now playing in Tokyo at Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

Monkey Man home page in Japanese

Polite Society home page in Japanese

Monkey Man photo (c) Universal Studios

Polite Society photo (c) 2022 Focus Features LLC

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Review: Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros

Posted on August 22, 2024 by philipbrasor

It’s safe to say that the overarching interest of the 93-year-old master documentarian Frederick Wiseman is how people work. He plants his camera in a work environment and just records people fulfilling their tasks. In many cases, the environment is publicly operated and open—a city hall, a court, a library—but occasionally he inserts himself into a private enterprise whose history and culture is circumscribed. His latest epic focuses on La Maison Troisgros, a 3-star restaurant, located in the countryside of Roanne, France, that has been run by the same family for three generations. In fact, the provenance of the establishment may go back further, but Wiseman is somewhat stingy with the particulars of its biography, saving them for the very end of his four-hour film, at which point the viewer may have gotten past any desire for background, having been so totally submerged in the business’s rarefied ethic. It’s an odd way of structuring a portrait of what amounts to an idiosyncratic operation based on artistic and culinary whim rather than on economic prerogatives. 

And that’s not the only aspect of the production that distinguishes it from previous Wiseman works. Because the place where the hotel-restaurant complex is located is so gorgeous, Wiseman luxuriates in connecting shots of quite stunning beauty, thus making the overall film as aesthetically purposeful as the elaborate dishes whose preparation he so lovingly chronicles. I would estimate that a good half to two-thirds of the running time is devoted either to discussions of how meals should be constructed, or the actual construction itself. Because of the high prices the customers pay at the restaurant, the owner-chef, Michel Troisgros, feels it is beholden on him to open the process of the food preparation up to his patrons, and so there are long scenes of him standing at tables in front of rapt epicures explaining how this dish came about, along with a spicy anecdote that explains something of its centrality in his own life. When he and his heir, César, sit down and go over how to improve a certain dish, Wiseman doesn’t give us the gist of their discussion, he gives us the whole thing, including those bits about “reductions” and “umami” that the layman will not comprehend without additional voiceover, which, of course, Wiseman never indulges in. Being the true democratic completist he is, Wiseman doesn’t ignore the rest of the crew—the sous chefs, the wait staff, the accountants, the housekeepers, the suppliers (almost all ingredients are locally produced), the dishwashers. Everyone gets their due, as well as the opportunity to prove once again that there is no such thing as an insignificant job, especially in a restaurant.

The issue some may take is that the fareon offer is out of their league financially and otherwise, and there is something occasionally off-putting about the satisfied expressions on the faces of the privileged who can afford to dine at La Maison Troisgros. Personally, I am enormously happy whenever someone endeavors to feed me, whatever it is and however it is compensated for, and thus could never be a food critic because I could never criticize food, so while the dishes will likely send some viewers into fits of rapture, others may simply wonder what the big deal is. But I do like The Bear, and Wiseman’s presentation of the mechanics of a big kitchen has the same appeal, only without the high drama. These people seem to get along unusually well, even when they mess something up big time.

In French and English. Opens Aug. 23 in Tokyo at Bunkamura Le Cinema Shibuya Miyashita (050-6875-5280), Cine Switch Ginza (03-3561-0707).

Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 3 Star LLC

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Review: 12.12: The Day

Posted on August 21, 2024 by philipbrasor

The portentous English title of Kim Sung-soo’s box office hit about the 1979 coup that replaced one South Korean dictatorship with an even worse one could have been convincingly changed to Amateurs, a more accurate description of the action that ensues in this very action-packed movie. Since there still isn’t a definitive history of what actually happened on that day, and this is the first cinematic treatment of the affair, the filmmakers take certain dramatic liberties that play up the venality of the instigators of the coup under the megalomaniac General Chun Doo-hwan (Hwang Jung-min) while inflating the heroism of the commander of the Seoul garrison, General Lee Tae-shin (Jung Woo-sung), who endeavored to stop Chun. And while Hwang has great fun portraying that cartoony, outsized venality, the movie as a whole isn’t as entertaining or even as provocative as Im Sang-soo’s The President’s Last Bang, which frames the assassination of President Park Chung-hee that precipitated the coup as basically a war between rival yakuza organizations. Many have taken issue with that facetious interpretation, but since even the assassination is open to debate, I have always liked to think that Im’s movie provided more thematic verisimilitude than did, say, The Man Who Stood Next, which was more conventional in its approach to the killing. 

Despite the fact that Kim has changed the names of many of the principals because of Korea’s strict libel laws, anyone with any elementary knowledge of Korean history knows who these people are, but the way they’re presented has more to do with Korean movie entertainment than historical edification. To his credit, Kim and his writers keep the action comprehensible, expertly juggling multiple plotlines to show how Chun’s make-or-break scheme to usurp government control for his secret military society, the Hanahoe, could defeat anyone who opposed him following proper military protocols because Chun would do anything to achieve his goals, including the killing of fellow soldiers. Kim makes no plausible political case for Chun’s ambitions. The general gives lip service to warding off North Korean infiltrations, but for the most part it’s clear that his ego is running the show. Because no one on either side of the conflict is emotionally or psychologically prepared to stand up to such a person, they can’t handle it in the long run, but Kim sets up plenty of scenarios that pull the advantage back-and-forth between the two factions until full-out combat ensues in the middle of the night, while the citizenry sleeps unaware that they will wake up to a government they didn’t expect or want. 

The Korean and Japanese title of the film is Seoul Spring, because following the death of Park, people expected a real democracy to bloom, and it would have been interesting to watch 12.12 with a Korean audience to witness their reaction to a film that depicts, however fantastically, one of the most infamous days in their annals. Even I felt a creeping sense of existential despair throughout the exposition, knowing what the final outcome would be, so while I think that Im’s somewhat mischievous treatment of this kind of material has more cinematic potential, in the end it probably would have put off those whose lives were actually affected by these events. But one thing’s for sure, Hwang’s borderline comic portrayal of a military maniac operating on pure grievance and self-interest is one for the ages. 

In Korean and English. Opens Aug. 23 in Tokyo at Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho (03-6268-0015), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

12.12: The Day home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Plus M Entertainment & Hive Media Corp.

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Review: The Fall Guy and The Garfield Movie

Posted on August 16, 2024 by philipbrasor

The stated goal of this action comedy, based loosely on a 1980s TV series, is to get the Motion Picture Academy to inaugurate an Oscar for stunt people, and given that the Academy recently announced it will do such a thing (though not for a while), the movie is clearly a success. As to its success as an entertainment product, it works hard for the viewer’s good favor, but I’ve felt for a while now that Ryan Gosling, the titular character, has been over-exending himself as a movie star ever since La La Land. Directed by David Leitch, a former stunt coordinator who’s seen success on his own with high-concept actioners (John Wick, Bullet Train), The Fall Guy positions Gosling as the kind of stone professional who may be too good at his job, which sort of describes Gosling as film icon. He’s not as insufferable as Tom Cruise, but you can tell his approach to leading man-ism is mostly about how well he sells a film’s overall gestalt, and not just his own performance.

Gosling’s character, Colt Seavers, is a highly touted stuntman whose own self-regard is severely tested by a horrific on-set accident that puts him in the hospital and then out of action for months, though the long recovery period seems to have more to do with his hurt pride than his physical well-being. Meanwhile, the stunt coordinator in charge of that shoot, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), has, like Leitch, graduated to the director’s chair and is now making a sci-fi epic called MetalStorm. The producer (Hannah Waddingham) tricks Colt into visiting the set so that he can be recruited to stunt double for the conceited star, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), for whom Colt has doubled before, but mainly it’s to force Colt and Jody to make nice again since Colt obviously blames her for his almost getting killed. For the most part, the give-and-take between director and stuntman, which glides on an unsubtle romantic undercurrent, is the best part of the movie because Gosling and Blunt excel at this kind of comedy, but then the screenwriter throws the whole thing out the window by revving up the plot with Ryder’s sudden disappearance and Colt’s search for him, which forces him into a whole new universe of action-packed intrigue that gets out of hand. Where did all these cartoon villains come from, and why?

It’s a question that the movie answers in time, but not necessarily in a satisfactory way. It should be said that the reason you go to see a movie like The Fall Guy is to find out exactly how they pull off some of those stunts, and Leitch delivers in that department. The screwball love stuff is just gravy, but the bada-bing action set pieces that line up like dominoes in the second half never cohere into anything more than pointless, deafening mayhem. 

The mayhem in The Garfield Movie is not as loud, but even more pointless when you consider the IP. I don’t know how many movies have been made so far about the lasagna-scarfing orange tabby—and that’s not to mention the TV show—but this is clearly one too many since it doesn’t even tap into the character’s most well-established traits. It’s really just a lame caper film that happens to trade on Garfield’s cynical sense of humor. 

First of all, Garfield (voiced with a bit too much enthusiasm by Chris Pratt) is not as annoying as he is in the comic strip, and his constantly pulling the rug out from under his “owner” Jon and persecuting the intellectually challenged dog Odie are toned down as if dictated by some kind of PC killjoy. In fact, the whole emotional atmosphere is stacked against that kind of cruel humor by positioning Garfield as a poster cat for neglected felines. We learn that Garfield was abandoned by his father as a kitten at an Italian restaurant, where he was adopted by Jon after eating his entire pizza. Years later, after becoming the cat we love to roll our eyes at, Garfield’s father, Vic (Samuel L. Jackson), reenters his life and then quickly pulls Garfield and Odie into a criminal scheme to help a sad bull (Ving Rhames) rescue the love of his life. 

None of this plays to Garfield the cat’s strengths as a character and so the movie has nothing particularly distinctive to offer as entertainment. It’s simply another mediocre heist flick with a couple of colorful characters. Even the main through line of Garfield’s resentment toward his father’s betrayal isn’t sustained for anything more than a few beats, and the big bad business subtheme is gratuitous at best. It’s hard to figure out just why this movie was made.

The Fall Guy is now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku (0570-060-109), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Shibuya (050-6868-5002), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

The Garfield Movie, in subtitled and dubbed versions, is now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

The Fall Guy home page in Japanese

The Garfield Movie home page in Japanese

The Fall Guy photo (c) 2024 Universal Studios

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Review: New Normal

Posted on August 15, 2024 by philipbrasor

The framing story of Jung Bum-shik’s omnibus slasher flick is difficult to parse at first. The various stories spool out in Seoul over a four-day period in May after it snows unseasonally, and for some reason an element of “chaos” is injected into the populace, but since Jung sticks to the specific, meaning isolated characters, some of whom appear in more than one story, the impression isn’t so much arbitrary madness as it is unfortunate confluences of character that lead to murder and mayhem. Fortunately, Jung has a sense of humor, and while it may not be to everyone’s taste the ironies are sharp enough to make the horrors more interesting, if not necessarily more unsettling. And like any good fiction filmmaker who works better in shorter formats, he knows how to plant a twist where it’s most effective. 

The order of the stories is non-linear, and as in Pulp Fiction, a movie that New Normal resembles structurally, characters who die in one episode may pop up in a later one. The opening tale, “M” (the titles are all taken from existing movies), is the simplest and least original. A single woman (soap opera queen Choi Ji-woo, working decidedly against type) is visited by a fire alarm inspector whose rapid fire double entendres and overly intrusive manner raises red flags in the mind of the viewer because the TV keeps mentioning a serial killer at large. Choi shows up later in another story, “Dressed to Kill,” about several young people trading profiles on a dating app in a dangerously reckless manner. The protagonists of the stories are hardly sympathetic, except for the put-upon female convenience store clerk (Ha Da-in) in “My Life as a Dog,” whose dreams of musical glory are dashed by the demands of capitalism, thus driving her to websites where feral people trade tips on how to kill those they hate. Jung gets a lot of mileage out of digital media, but it would be overly reductive to say that he’s targeting modern technology as the root of all the evil he depicts. In the best segment, “Be With You,” a lovelorn young man follows a very analog series of valentines stuck in vending machines to a possible date with a fetching young woman, whose plans for him turn out to be anything but romantic. 

Jung doesn’t connect the evils on display to some kind of overarching social malignancy. They seem organic and pegged to the usual deviant personalities, though I suppose you can infer that such deviancies have been exacerbated by the social fabric becoming less tightly woven. As such, New Normal comes across as yet another film about the horrors of everyday life in post-millennial South Korea. It’s a thrilling place to visit cinematically, but you wouldn’t want to live anywhere near there.

In Korean. Opens Aug. 16 in Tokyo at Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011). 

New Normal home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Unpa Studios

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