Review: Sister

Posted on November 24, 2022 by philipbrasor

Not even 20 years ago, most prominent films from China, whether officially approved or not, could expect a release in Japan, but not any more. It has less to do with content or even popularity than with lack of local distributors (not to mention venues) that are interested in—or that even understand—Chinese cinema. I imagine this family melodrama, which looks as if it were shot on a shoestring budget, wouldn’t have merited a Japan release if it hadn’t actually been a box office hit in China, which, due to its sensitive theme and fairly restrained dramatic presentation, was probably not predicted even in China. 

The story isn’t particularly original. Ran (Zhang Zifeng) is a nursing intern at a hospital in the city of Chengdu who hopes to advance to a graduate program in Beijing. Her career path is interrupted by the deaths of her mother and father in an automobile accident. Though she has been estranged from her parents for a number of years, she is called back to her home by relatives who expect her to take care of her 6-year-old brother, Ziheng (Kim Darren Yowon), whom she doesn’t know at all since she entered nursing school around the time he was born. Eventually, we learn through flashbacks that Ran’s father compelled her to pretend to be disabled so that they could apply to the authorities for permission to have another child. This was when China enforced its one-child policy, and Ran’s father desperately wanted a son. Ran resented the subterfuge, which is one of the reasons she left home, so she feels no particular responsibility to her parents’ memory or her brother himself, which causes much friction with her various relatives, who not only want her to take Ziheng but also demand she give them a piece of her parents’ property, which is now legally in her name. 

Zhang plays Ran as pugnacious and aggrieved, and the performance lifts the movie out of whatever sentimental mire it’s in danger of being stuck in. In fact, Zhang, a former child actor, has become a certified star due to the relative success of Sister. She also helps sell director Yin Ruoxin’s social criticism regarding Chinese society’s lingering gender discrimination. Ran is up against a lot to achieve her dream of becoming a medical professional. In addition to her relatives’ restrictive expectations, her boyfriend, another intern, doesn’t seem to be fully behind her determination to move to Beijing. Even her hospital colleagues disappoint her as professionals when they cave to a man who insists his wife bring her pregnancy to term even though it will likely end in miscarriage and possible death for the mother. 

That’s why the predictable outcome of the film may dishearten many viewers. Ziheng is a terror in the beginning who, having not been told his parents actually died, resists Ran’s halfhearted attempts to take care of him while she looks for adoptive parents and endeavors to sell the family home. Over time, her resistance is eroded by Ziheng’s fundamental neediness, and while the development of their relationship is affecting and natural, its direction is towards a conclusion that feels determined by forces outside the scope of the nuanced and thoughtful script. It’s difficult to avoid the feeling that, regardless of how pointedly she has addressed her social themes, in the end Yin felt she had to acquiesce at least partially to traditional sensibilities. 

In Mandarin. Opens Nov. 25 in Tokyo at Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608).

Sister home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2021 Shanghai Lian Ray Pictures Co., Ltd.

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Media watch: Japanese actor gets grief for apologizing to Korean press

Posted on November 20, 2022 by philipbrasor

Japanese actor Yoko Maki is the target of online vitriol for comments she recently made in South Korea. According to a Nov. 18 post on the website Shukan Josei Prime, Maki was interviewed by the Korean “media company” OSEN and talked about her experience portraying zainichi (Japan-resident) Koreans in two movies—Pacchigi! (2005) and Yakiniku Dragon (2018). Maki herself is not zainichi Korean and prior to the first job she says that while she was aware of the “existence” of zainichi Koreans in Japan she did not know any personally. Consequently, she thought they “had nothing to do with me.” However, because she had been hired to play a zainichi Korean character, she endeavored to find out more about their background and took out some history books from the library. After reading them she realized that the history of Japan she had learned in school included nothing about the zainichi experience. She then offered an apology for Japan’s past treatment of Koreans, presumably both Koreans who lived under Japanese colonial rule prior to the end of World War II and zainichi Koreans who are born and live in Japan and are often the target of hate speech. She goes on to say that as a member of the “younger generation of Japanese” (she is 40), she feels “embarrassed.”

Shukan Josei Prime, the web site of the weekly women’s magazine Shukan Josei, commented that Maki offered her opinion on a topic she is obviously “naive” about. The article goes on to say that it is only natural that she has caused an uproar on social media and is being criticized roundly. For instance, Tsuneyasu Takeda, a TV personality and so-called political pundit whose main claim to fame is that he is a descendant of Emperor Meiji, expressed displeasure that Maki would say she felt “ashamed” of being Japanese and that she should learn the “true history” of Japan-Korea relations. This is the view of certain people in Japan who think that Koreans have nothing to complain about with regard to their relationship to Japan during and since the war. They believe that Japan liberated Korea from Chinese control and lifted it out of the darkness; and deny any and all evidence indicating Japan’s oppressive rule and atrocities against Koreans. As for the treatment of zainichi Koreans, they tend to dismiss the matter by claiming that Koreans who live in Japan are basically parasites and should become Japanese nationals and give up their heritage, thus effectively proving the disgruntled zainichi Koreans’ complaint, which is that they are subject to discrimination.

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Review: Silent Night

Posted on November 19, 2022 by philipbrasor

This apocalpytic satire, the debut feature of Camille Griffin, seems stuck somewhere between existential melodrama and biting social commentary, mainly because the unidentified crisis that determines the actions on screen isn’t explicated enough to make the viewer really care. As the title suggests, it’s Christmas season and a well-to-do couple, Nell and Simon (Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode), are entertaining other well-to-do friends at Nell’s mother’s spacious English country estate. Everybody brings their families, which means there are lots of children on hand to join in the…well, not celebration, though everyone tries their best to enjoy the seasonal spirit. At first, the film’s purposely artificial cheery mood, undermined by a current of dread, draws the viewer into the hackneyed holiday movie mood, and one almost expects Chevy Chase-level hijinks to ensue in pursuit of laughs at the expense of this mood. 

But the dread slowly creeps to the fore, even as the revellers continue to try and act normal, playing Scrabble, singing songs, getting drunk, and digging into their meal with forced gusto. The exceptions are some of the children, especially the hosts’ young son, Art (Roman Griffin Davis), who surveys the party with an air of increasing frustration and, eventually, anger. There’s also a pregnant guest who gives the game away by defending her decision to not abort her child even though there is no future for it. It seems that the adults—or, at least, most of them—are resigned to an ugly fate simply because the authorities have convinced them of this fate, but the particulars of the coming crisis are only sketched out in the most rudimentary ways, and I, for one, couldn’t understand why anyone would possibly go along with it unless the director had some pointed political agenda in mind. Even with that it’s difficult to decide just how much she distrusts any government control over the collective factors that affect our lives. Is climate change beyond anyone’s reach, or does following protocols dictated from on high to check a deadly pandemic make one less human? 

It’s obvious that, as the party winds down and everything turns solemn and desperate, these people are being led into a scenario that doesn’t have to happen and that the only reason they are going into it is because they have no free will, which is a ridiculous premise, especially when you realize the only characters resisting it are the children. I can understand the innocent wisdom of babes, but this whole situation takes way too much for granted. Adults, even rich, selfish ones, aren’t this uniformly stupid. 

Now playing in Tokyo at Cinemart Shinjuku (03-5369-2831), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

Silent Night home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2020 SN Movie Holdings Ltd

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Review: Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

Posted on November 18, 2022 by philipbrasor

Had Anthony Fabian’s comedy been produced when its source material was published in 1958 it would probably be cited today as an earnest, heartwarming example of postwar British cinema. It might even have been considered a classic. But it’s hard to view it nowadays within its temporal context, since its entire basis for being entertainment is nostalgia for a time when the notion of a woman breaching the bonds of class and gender was a quaint one at best. The titular cleaning lady (Lesley Manville) is a war widow who still talks to her dead husband from a bridge overlooking the Thames and knows her station. Fabian pokes fun at Mrs. Harris’s clients, who range from a stuffy upper-class couple to a desperate, scatter-brained show biz ingenue, while showing how those in Mrs. Harris’s own class are closer to the truth of life, even if they don’t have the material means to enjoy it fully. Then, through a string of improbable good—and bad—fortune, Mrs. Harris finds herself in the possession of a little money and decides she’s going to blow it on a Christian Dior dress, which necessitates a trip to Paris.

Most reviewers who’ve had a positive take on Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris characterize it as a fairy tale, meaning it’s a feel good story that could never actually happen, but for an instance I thought the movie might be heading toward something more thematically substantial. When Mrs. Harris arrives in the City of Light, she’s met with a garbage strike, a somewhat pointed comic comment on the French penchant for working class solidarity, and the sight of piles of rubbish outside the House of Dior seemed as meaningful as Mrs. Harris’s own quixotic mission to buy a haute couture “frock” with bundles of banknotes. There’s also the matter that Dior is having its own cash flow problems, which means the haughty manager, Claudine (Isabelle Huppert), has to swallow her pride and let the frumpy, Cockney-accented housekeeper sit among the rich old dames who watch the latest season of new ensembles, even if it is at the behest of a nobleman (Lambert Wilson) who takes pity on Mrs. Harris and vouches for her. But Fabian does nothing to build on the comically and historically significant elements presented by this tableau and simply milks it for its sentimental value, even when, later on in the story, Mrs. Harris instigates a work stoppage by the seamstresses who actually produce the wares. 

What kept me from cringing to death was Manville, an actor whose subtle skills I have always taken for granted. She gives Fabian exactly what he wants, a character whose selflessness and good humor masks her general disappointment with how her life has turned out, and thus is more than grateful when her luck changes for the better. What Manville brings to this professional obligation is a total immersion in character that somehow transcends the stickiness of the film’s premise, which is that Mrs. Harris will never herself transcend her position and thus we shouldn’t expect her to try, expensive dress or no expensive dress. She’s a joy to watch, especially as you compare this to her current turn as Princess Margaret in The Crown. The two performances are literally a world apart, and extremely satisfying; even, you might say, edifying. 

Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Chanter Hibiya (050-6868-5001), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Shibuya Parco White Cine Quinto (03-6712-7225), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2022 Universal Studios

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Review: The Menu

Posted on November 17, 2022 by philipbrasor

So-called haute cuisine is mercilessly derided in Mark Mylod’s attractively staged satire, which takes place in a restaurant on an island that can only be reached by boat. Rich patrons partake of the artfully prepared meals of master chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes), who serves up disdainful philosophical tidbits with each course. His customers, who pay more than $1,000 each for a meal, love the fascist mindset as much as the cooking, even when the disdain is directed squarely at them, because they know they are getting a unique experience. On the night in question, they get even more since many of them have been specially selected for this particular menu, which promises to be even more daring than usual. 

Screenwriters Seth Reiss and Will Tracy offer up a cross section of arrogant 1 percenters, including a haughty food critic (Janet McTeer), a spoiled movie star (John Leguizamo), and a bunch of young, pointedly offensive businessmen, each designed to be a target of the viewer’s enmity in their own special way. In contrast, the wide-eyed foodie, Tyler (Nicholas Hoult), seems almost woefully naive about his obsession and is thus the main object of ridicule, but the venom injected into his scenes is diluted by his date, Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), who is the only person on the receiving end of Slowik’s wares who sees things for what they are, simply because she’s not rich and is here by accident, or so it seems. In fact, when Slowik finds out about her provenance it seems to upset his carefully laid plans, since he has something dastardly in store for this evening’s guests and she doesn’t fit in. 

The dark humor is mostly situated in Fiennes’ performance, which is as dry as overcooked pot roast, and for what it’s worth the comedic elements not only dampen much of the film’s horror potential but also its pointed social criticism involving the destruction of nature and the perpetual grinding down of the serving classes. As each course presents new challenges to the assembled palates the viewer may quickly tire of the cleverness, the way a genuinely hungry person would want to get to the main course and be done with all the trivial hors d’ouevres. To belabor the metaphor further, too many layered subtexts make for a movie that ends up being thin gruel. 

Opens Nov. 18 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Shibuya Cine Quinto (03-3477-5905), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

The Menu home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2022 20th Century Studios

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Review: Sinkhole

Posted on November 11, 2022 by philipbrasor

Though nominally a disaster movie, Sinkhole fits neatly into a subcategory of Korean films that address the current housing finance crisis. As it stands, young people in Korea are putting off marriage and other life goals because they are getting into debt to buy property, and sometimes the debt overwhelms them. The protagonist of Kim Ji-hoon’s movie is an average salaried employee of a small company who has put everything he’s got into buying a new condominium on the outskirts of Seoul, and at first the various difficulties he faces—friction with new neighbors, jealousy from colleagues—are played for laughs. Even when Dong-won (Kim Sung-kyun) starts suspecting that the quality of his new apartment may not be up to snuff, there’s a kind of slapstick quality to his disappointment and anger. His young son, for instance, finds it entertaining that marbles move across the floor by themselves. This subtext deepens when Dong-won invites his subordinates to his new digs for a housewarming party and they talk about their own housing-related woes, but just as the script starts exploring the theme in detail the bottom literally drops out of the movie, and Dong-won’s apartment building is swallowed by a sinkhole.

This disaster scenario lays out another subtext: South Korea’s unfortunate history of man-made disasters that are usually caused by poor construction practices and civil engineering. Of course, in order for the movie to pack as much drama and tension into the ordeals that the building’s residents now face just trying to survive, the disaster itself is exaggerated—the building sinks about 300 meters into the earth. Interestingly, Kim maintains the slapstick mood for a while, even as loved ones go missing and bad weather threatens to shift the ground even more. But Dong-won and his neighbors, including the ne’er-do-well single father, Man-su (Cha Seung-won), who has been a thorn in Dong-won’s side ever since he moved in, work together to make sure everyone gets out alive. Kim does some fine work in the requisite white-knuckle moments, and the patented Korean sentimentality doesn’t grate as much as it usually does. As a disaster movie, Sinkhole is efficient and entertaining (despite some cheesy special effects), but moreover its sly depiction of how generations of working people in Korea are being pushed into economic ruin by the conventional need to buy property not only holds its own against the action prerogatives but makes a more lasting and forceful impression.

In Korean. Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063).

Sinkhole home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2021 Showbox and the Tower Pictures, Inc.

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Review: Don’t Worry Darling

Posted on November 10, 2022 by philipbrasor

If Olivia Wilde’s sophomore effort as a director were better, I might lament the distracting pre-release gossip surrounding the movie’s reported on-set squabbles and romantic intrigues, which mostly dominated its big premiere at Cannes, but as they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity and if the tabloid intelligence does anything it actually deepens Don’t Worry Darling‘s shallow subtext. Though I would recommend approaching the film as a thriller rather than as social criticism, Wilde and her scenarist, Katie Silberman, give away the game at such a furious pace that, depending on the viewer’s patience, they may not derive any sense of suspense.

We know, for example, that the California desert community of Victory is something of a dodge right from the get-go. It’s the 1950s (or 60s, depending on which oldie is playing on the soundtrack) and the action is set on a cul de sac where perfectly made-up women stay at home cleaning house and making perfect meals that their husbands can enjoy when they get home from work. They offer their better halfs lots of sex and spend their copious leisure time shopping, drinking, and working on their figures. Because Wilde incorporates all the most hackneyed stereotypes of American postwar connubial culture into the story, the viewer immediately gets hip to the notion that Victory is not a real place, a feeling reinforced by our protagonist Alice’s (Florence Pugh) occasional hallucinations and brief out-of-body experiences. That means the viewer’s job is to figure out just what it is that’s wrong with Victory.

Alice’s distress only increases as her husband, Jack (Harry Styles), is promoted within the shadowy Victory Project, the only employer in town, which is busy working on some top-secret engineering endeavor the wives are not privy to. Once Alice starts speaking up about her unease, prompted by the attempted suicide of a neighbor that’s been hushed up, the movie becomes more interesting but keeps stalling, thus effectively damping the story’s tension. What’s more, the particulars of the plot confound what would initially seem to be the film’s overarching theme about the tenacious appeal of patriarchal systems. Except for Alice and the woman who attempts to kill herself (and who is Black, though even that aspect isn’t explored in context), none of the women question their secondary status, but even Alice seems to have larger issues (her very survival) than parity with her partner. All this mysterious business is explained with perfect precision in the end, but by then you’ve already concluded that Don’t Worry Darling is merely a rehash of ideas that have been done to death before, and with better results. 

Opens Nov. 11 in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Shibuya Parco White Cine Quinto (03-6712-7225), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Don’t Worry Darling home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2022 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

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Tokyo International Film Festival 2022

Posted on November 7, 2022 by philipbrasor

Here are the posts I wrote for the TIFF 2022 home page.

–Competition Jury Press Conference

–A Light Never Goes Out Q&A session

–Kaymak Q&A session

–The Cord of Life Q&A session

–Butterflies Live Only One Day Q&A session

–This Is What I Remember Q&A session

–1976 Q&A session

–Ashkal Q&A session

–Life Q&A session

–World War III Q&A session

–Mountain Woman Q&A session

–Opium Q&A session

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Review: The Roundup

Posted on November 5, 2022 by philipbrasor

The top-grossing film so far in South Korea this year, Lee Sang-yong’s followup to the 2017 crime thriller The Outlaws does not, as the saying goes, mess with the formula, which in this case focuses on what the producers call the “beast cop,” Ma Seok-do, a burly, unworldly, intuitive police detective whose effectiveness is all in his fists. This a guy who invariably gets into fights with the criminals he tries to arrest and always beats the shit out of them—a cinematic m.o. that logic should tell us would be a dead end, since we know the outcome of every bloody battle. Then again, we almost always know the outcome in these sorts of conventional crime films, regardless of which country they’re from. It’s just that Korean cop movies are less hesitant about exploiting those expectations. Moreover, in Ma Dong-seok (or Don Lee, if you prefer his Hollywood moniker), the franchise has charisma to burn, even if the character he plays would seem to represent the worst qualities of the South Korean police force.

This aspect becomes all the more apparent when Detective Ma, along with his somewhat hapless superior, Capt. Jeon Il-man (Choi Gwi-hwa), are sent to Vietnam to escort a Korean fugitive back home after he mysteriously gives himself up to the South Korean embassy. I’m not sure if the Vietnamese authorities appreciate that Ma (who wrote the story for the film) and Lee make the country look like a lawless frontier teeming with foreign gangsters, but, then again, I wonder if the South Korean police appreciate how the cops in this movie treat every suspect like a punching bag. In any case, Ma can’t quite fathom why this relatively low-level crook is practically begging to be arrested and returned to jail in Seoul and eventually strongarms the truth out of him—a rival gangster who preys on Korean tourists has threatened his life. Once Ma extrajudiciously hunts down this bad guy, Kang Hae-sang (Son Sukku), who has kidnapped the son of a rich loan company executive for ransom, he sets off a chain reaction of brutal retributive violence that reaches back to Korea.

The violence, in fact, gets to be a bit too much, but that is the movie’s selling point. What keeps it from falling into the realm of the totally absurd is the integrity of the script, where the smallest plot detail is reasoned and justified and even the requisite car chase has a logical flow that makes complete sense within the context of the story. Ma, of course, sells himself wholesale with his often clueless grasp of social niceties set against a clear understanding of the moral stakes, and it’s obvious the movie wouldn’t have been half as entertaining with someone else in the lead. Ma the actor really is an international goldmine. 

In Korean and English. 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 Roundup home page in Japanese

photo (c) ABO Entertainment Co., Ltd & Bigpunch Pictures & Hong Film  & B.A. Entertainment Corp.

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Media watch: The administration’s very unoriginal solution to rising energy prices

Posted on November 4, 2022 by philipbrasor
Environmental minister Akihiro Nishimura (Asahi)

Last week, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced a ¥29 trillion economic package to fight inflation, centered mainly on the energy sector, that will supposedly save every household in Japan about ¥5,000 a month on their utility and gasoline bills. As part of this plan, the government said it would expand its existing subsidies to gasoline wholesalers and others in order to check the price at the pump, thus effectively placing the administration’s carbon neutral policy on hold, though, according to an Oct. 30 article in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, no one has actually come out and said this, including bureaucrats in the Ministry of the Environment and most mainstream media outlets. 

As the Nikkei reporter, Junya Iwai, points out in the article, inflation aligns with the ministry’s fundamental carbon neutrality policy, since higher prices for gasoline would compel consumers to shift away from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles and other forms of transportation that don’t use fossil fuels. However, the current administration is worried about falling support rates and thus believes it has to be seen as doing something about inflation, especially given that imported oil is subject to exchange rate fluctuations and the yen’s value has been historically low in recent months. The subsidies are meant to reduce retail gasoline prices and thus bolster consumer confidence, and since the Cabinet as a whole has promoted these measures, the environmental ministry has to go along with them, even if they go against their own fundamental policy. The new environmental minister, Akihiro Nishimura, has said virtually nothing about the matter. 

The gasoline subsidy plan, in fact, was supposed to end last March, but it has subsequently been extended several times. As a result, fossil fuel consumption has increased, thus confounding the environmental ministry’s aims. Iwai says that there are bureaucrats within the ministry who are very critical of the government’s continued use of gasoline subsidies to increase public support for the administration, since they think the longer the subsidies last, the longer it will take for Japan to reach its carbon-neutral goals. Iwai himself comments that subsidies like the one being used to bring gasoline prices down usually are only implemented on a temporary basis because the end game is predictable. However, as the subsidies continue to be renewed and even expanded, there’s a danger they will become “normalized.” As it stands, the budget for the gasoline subsidies has already reached ¥3 trillion. In contrast, the environmental ministry’s budget for subsidizing carbon neutral policies at the local level is only ¥20 billion on an annual basis. Moreover, the ministry’s request for money to fund home insulation improvement and further energy conservation measures has hit a wall of passive resistance in the government. 

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