Looking to scratch that “weird Japan” itch but with some more substantive meat under the oddity? This has a bit of an After Hours energy, as a small goodbye party thrown by a depressed family losing their home spins out into a full blown festival with funerals, weddings, impromptu yakisoba stands, and Biollante. The surreality emerges slowly, like a turtle poking its head out to test the air before sprinting for the ocean – going from a couple randos stopping by to a full on Bollywood dance number. My only real complaint is that there are a few points where the film goes into Funky Forest territory a little too far too fast.
I need to check out more Masashi Yamamoto – I’ve only seen this, Three Points (which I didn’t care for), and Man Woman and the Wall (which was delightfully perverted).
You want a master class in how to make a monologue absolutely riveting? Look no further than this intensely angry short film that maps Toyoda’s anger about government failings during the pandemic onto the story of a samurai (an intense, excellent performance by Yosuke Kubozuka) made scapegoat for an older epidemic. Very much a spiritual successor to Harakiri, and with a funky Noh-meets-noise rock score.
A pinch of Matrix, a healthy smatter of Lego Movie, two tablespoons of They Live, and a dusting of Truman Show, stir in some Ready Player One. Let sit for one year and serve slightly cold.
Anybody looking for a window into the utter chaos Afghanistan is facing as the US pulls out in the face of Taliban advances would do well to watch What We Left Unfinished, a documentary about the aborted film industry that briefly flourished during the chaotic years between 1978-1991. While the current regime is propped up by the US instead of the Soviets – and hopefully at least slightly less cynically colonial – the fragility and barely tamped down violence, and the hopes of the artistic community, remain strikingly similar.
Mariam Ghani, visual artist and daughter of the current President, here takes as her subject five unfinished films partially shot during the that interim period – post-monarchy and pre-Taliban. A period when communist regime succeeded communist regime and coup followed coup, with three successive leaders assassinated within the span of just a few years.
Ghani not only recovered footage from the films – thrillers and action pics depicting the rise of the new regime and battles against lawless elements (let us be clear, these were meant to be popular cinema) – but was able to interview many of the key figures involved, directors, actors and actresses, cinematographers, in order to assemble a snapshot of what was and what could have been.
Part of the fascination lies in the contrasts between the pictures painted by the filmmakers – the brutality of the communist takeover (one filmmaker talks of filming the table where former Pres. Daoud and his family were massacred and how that footage was confiscated later by the Soviets) versus the increased funding and quasi-freedom for filmmakers. Some evoke a type of Weimar Republic, with a flowering of cinema and funding, while others better remember the contemporaneous reign of terror, people being disappeared for criticizing the government and Soviet “advisors” with total editing discretion.
There can be no question that the films were funded for propagandistic purposes – the villains were drug traffickers, mujahedeen, and Pakistani spies, enemies of the regime. But yet, even as they dance around that, all the filmmakers have such affection for their work – even as they worked within the system they felt they were showing truth, as much as possible.
And the resources – Afghan Film studio briefly had incredible access to the military allowing for impressive special effects and explosions, the kind of military-friendly films you see in China now with movies like Operation: Red Sea or in the US with flicks like Top Gun. Of course, filming with soldiers sometimes became an actual battle, as real bullets were fired and actors were killed during filming. And as intelligence agents wrote scripts and coup leaders inserted themselves into the films.
Ghani has assembled these materials with a deft touch, almost Herzogian in her use of editing and music. The film is elegiac yet hopeful, much like the interviewees. At least, no matter what happens in the coming weeks, we’ll always have this document of a unique period.
What We Left Unfinished opens in US theaters and on demand on Friday, August 6, from Dekanalog.
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Now THAT’S how to do a comic book superhero movie. Total live action cartoon full of bizarro touches and cheesecake, it’s genially sleazy in an old fashioned pin-up kind of way but maybe 1/10th as perverted as the original Go Nagai manga. And the costumes and effects and villains and songs are all delightful.
But man, it’s nice to see a Hideaki Anno project that doesn’t smack of massive depression. I’ve been on a bit of an Anno kick, finally powering through Evangelion and reading Insufficient Direction, so it’s fun to see him so happy. Can’t believe it took me so long to see this.
Man, ‘80s-era Ruggero Deodato is so batshit crazy. Stellar cast (Michael York, Donald Pleasence, Edwidge Fenech) and crew (Pino Donaggio does the music!) in service of a semi-nonsensical giallo about York as a professional pianist/part-time ninja (yes, you read that right) who goes on a murder spree after contracting the world’s worst case of progeria. Plenty of boobs, knives, black gloves, and confused Italian police ensue.
Oh, and ninjas.
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If the British clinging on by a thread in Zulu (1964) pissed you off, this is the movie to watch. A prequel to Zulu, Zulu Dawn shows the British stumbling into the absolute fiasco that was the Battle of Isandhlwana, as a combination of greed and arrogance leads British colonial forces to a crushing defeat at the hands of the Zulus.
I wish I could say that any of the Zulus have huge roles, but at least they are portrayed as competent, courageous, and strategically-minded, while the Brits are the very embodiment of the proverb “pride goeth before a fall.”
The main reasons to watch this, though, are the stunning, large scale action sequences and the deep cast bench. You’ve got Peter O’Toole as the icy, patrician colonial commander, Burt Lancaster as a swashbuckling cavalryman, Bob Hoskins as a gruff sergeant, Denholm Elliott as an officer out of his depth, and on and on. Not essential viewing, or entirely successful, but aficionados of historical war films will find much to enjoy. And it certainly lead me down a fascinating Wikipedia hole.
Gritty NYC! Halfway into this, I legit had to check to make sure Death Promise wasn’t a modern parody along the lines of Black Dynamite. Nope, near as I can tell all this low budget action insanity is for real, as Charles Bonet teams up with his buddies to kung fu murder a group of evil landlords in extremely ‘70s NYC. This feels exactly like a Dirk Diggler movie, only without the porn. And it is GLORIOUS!
Highlights include:
– The slammin’ 70s wardrobe.
– Super silly deaths.
– Our hero’s buddy creating a distraction by jumping out onto the villain’s lawn and singing “Girl from Ipanema”
– Crackling expository dialogue like this from the cops guarding one of the evil landlords: “After all, the Judge is a pretty good guy, we’ll take care of him while he’s laying there.”
– All the evil landlords discussing how they’ll spend their ill-gotten gains in typical ways – investments, buildings, women, cars – except the mob boss, who pipes up about how he’s always dreamed of traveling and seeing Turkey.
– Kung fu vocalizations that make Dolemite seem normal.
– The theme song!
Seriously, this is Miami Connection lost treasure good.
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We all know that auteur Hayao Miyazaki polished his chops on a work for hire Lupin film, the delightful Castle of Cagliostro. But what about the OTHER auteur who slaved in the Lupin salt mines? That’s right, Seijun Suzuki, following his long blacklist, co-directed his own Lupin flick, the much weirder and rather less delightful Gold of Babylon.
Oddly, where Cagliostro felt like a dry run for the lyrical sentiment and whimsy of Miyazaki, for its first third at least, set in NYC, Babylon feels like Ralph Bakshi went on vacation to Japan and knocked out a PG-13 Lupin in between Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic, full of local color and bizarre caricatures.
After that it mostly settles into more standard Lupin hijinks, with a wild international treasure hunt and Zenigata leading a team of sexy (and vastly more competent) Interpol policewomen after our heroes – albeit with an absolutely bizarre storyline involving space gods looking for gold. It’s decent enough, and has plenty of fun moments, but it never transcends its origins like Cagliostro.
By the way, minor quibble, but I find the way this film animates women’s lips very offputting.
Watching the original 1974-1975 Space Battleship Yamato series (presented in bowdlerized form as Star Blazers in the US) is a little like unearthing the first Homo Sapiens, the ur-text, you can see its DNA in everything (Macross/Robotech, Evangelion, hell, I’m watching the relatively recent Gurren Lagann and the influence is plain as day).
The plot is suitably epic, the Yamato and its crew must travel across the universe to save Earth and defeat the evil Gamilan space fascist empire. And while the story can occasionally get a little saggy in the middle, the last batch of episodes hit like a real punch, with some incredible action and genuine pathos/tragedy.
The animation is definitely crude on occasion and the characters aren’t as well drawn as I’d like. And the sexism and silly fan service were already there – Yuki, the only significant female crew member, has to be both nurse and coffee maker, and spends too much of her time being sexually harassed by R2D2 or having her clothes disappear during warps. But the space opera and massive cosmic battles are impressive and exciting, prefiguring Star Wars by a couple years, and the Leiji Matsumoto designs and backgrounds, especially for the Yamato itself, are absolutely gorgeous.
I’d recommend this to anyone with more than a casual interest in anime or space opera, especially if you can find the full original Japanese version. And while there are various sequels and remakes, the 1974-1975 story is absolutely complete in itself and leaves no dangling story threads, so you can watch this without committing to some larger watch.
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