Tag: 2021 Reviews

Review: The Great Yokai War – Guardians

There’s a lot of things your can say about Takashi Miike, but resting on his laurels is not one of them. Now well over 100 films into his filmography, he’s covered everything from the violet and bizarre to samurai epics and comedy. With THE GREAT YOKAI WAR: GUARDIANS (妖怪大戦争ガーディアンズ), he not only returns to kid friendly fare but a story he left dangling 16 years ago.

Ostensibly a sequel to 2005’s The Great Yokai War, it’s actually a standalone story that takes place in the same kind of world. Ancient fossils have joined together to form a giant rolling yōkai (or yōkaiju) that threatens to crush Tokyo. The young Kei Watanabe (Kokoro Terada) thought he was an ordinary elementary school student, but it turns out he is the descendent of ancient yōkai fighting stock. Kei soon finds himself immersed in a world where he can see all of the friendly (and not so friendly) monsters, and is tasked with stopping the yōkaiju before it reaches the capital.

Like many of Miike’s films aimed at children, this one is often chaos on wheels — which is not necessarily a bad thing. Yet it makes vast improvements over the original, not only updating the special effects but maintaining a more streamlined narrative and a genuine sense of childhood adventure. After all, how many films are you going to see this year where there’s a dude riding a motorcycle leading an army of thousands of Japanese raccoon dogs?

Even more so than its predecessor, there’s huge swathes of the film that feel like they are there to lead us down a path to find some cinematic Easter eggs. Some of these are very specific to Japan, including spirits and gods not widely known outside of the country. There are dozens of creatures that pop up in this film, from Aburasumashi to Zashikiwarashi and every Fox-Faced Woman in between. (I’m also fairly confident Pennywise was lurking in the background of YAMMIT, the world yōkai summit). It’s never a hinderance to the enjoyment though, ultimately being aimed at kids of all ages.

Of course, it’s the special effects that do a lot of the heavy lifting in the back half of the picture. Gone are the slightly jerky stop motion creatures of the original, as evidenced by the more seamlessly long-necked antics of Rokurokubi (played by Myra Meadows). When the the titular great war kicks in during the final act, featuring the highly publicised appearance of a giant Daimajin from the 1966 Daiei film series, it’s pretty damn cool. It’s the Japanese monster version of Avengers: Endgame, except it contains at a musical number.

By the time you read this review, Miike has already moved onto his next three films. In fact, The Mole Song: Final is due out in Japanese cinemas in November. His films may not always be perfect (or consistent), but there’s an undeniable heart that still beats at the centre of his family fare.

THE GREAT YOKAI WAR: GUARDIANS is reviewed as part of our coverage of JAPAN CUTS 2021.

2021 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Takashi Miike | WRITERS: Yusuke Watanabe | CAST: Kokoro Terada, Hana Sugisaki, Sakura Ando, Takahiro Miura, Yuko Oshima, Eiji Akaso, Renji Ishibashi, Kenichi Endō, Akira Emoto, Nanako Matsushima, Kazuki Kitamura, Nao Ōmori Takao Osawa | DISTRIBUTOR: Toho, JAPAN CUTS 2021 | RUNNING TIME: 118 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 22 August – 2 September 2021 (JAPAN CUTS 2021)

August 31, 2021
Review: Sasaki in My Mind

Some of us walked straight out of high school and never looked back. It was so long ago and it’s a struggle to remember people’s names let alone their impact on you. In Takuya Uchiyama’s latest project, he looks at those elements that linger, whether you want them to or not, and the often uphill struggle to become the people we try to be later in life.

Developed in collaboration with actor Gaku Hosokawa, the film follows Yuji (Kisetsu Fujiwara), a struggling actor who works a mundane job in a box factory and lives in a tiny apartment with his ex-girlfriend (Minori Hagiwara). His fellow actor pal (Nijiro Murakami) offers him a role in a play he is working on, having written the part specifically with him in mind.

After a chance encounter with an old high school friend, he’s told that their mutual pal Sasaki (Hosokawa) visited the recent reunion. The incident gets Yuji reflecting on the titular Sasaki, an often chaotic and troubled teen who inexplicably drew people in around him. Yuji is forced to confront Sasaki’s influence on him, and even see where Sasaki’s path has led him over the years.

Loosely based on one of Hosokawa’s school colleagues, it’s possible every viewer knew a Sasaki at some stage. Perhaps not the kind that would stand on desks naked while his schoolmates chanted his name, but there was always a Sasaki type flame you wanted to be illuminated by through proximity. “You’re taking after him,” comments one of Yuji’s old friends.

As a kind of coming of age film for someone in their late 20s, SASAKI ON MY MIND (佐々木、イン、マイマイン) is partly about realising what has been holding you back and perhaps why you have failed to succeed. It takes a major turning point for Yuji to recognise his own self-sabotage. As the director of the play says, “You have to shine in your own spotlight.”

Following his award-winning debut Vanitas, director Uchiyama has honed his craft through music videos (such as King Gnu’s ‘The Hole‘) and short commercial work. Here he uses them to intimate effect, punctuating the main narrative with non-linear flashbacks to various points in time. It’s particularly effective in the last act, where a series of skips through the chronology show how time has caught up with both Yuji and Sasaki.

“I think this movie is a movie for losers,” said Uchiyama in an interview with Tokion last year. “I want to tell people it’s okay if they’re uncool or awkward, and encourage them to want to live another day.” Which is where we are left, a film that’s quietly affirming and a reminder that it’s never too late to be true to yourself.

SASAKI IN MY MIND is reviewed as part of our coverage of JAPAN CUTS 2021.

2020 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Takuya Uchiyama | WRITERS: Takuya Uchiyama | CAST: Kisetsu Fujiwara, Gaku Hosokawa, Minori Hagiwara | DISTRIBUTOR: Third Window Films, JAPAN CUTS 2021 | RUNNING TIME: 118 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 22 August – 2 September 2021 (JAPAN CUTS 2021)

August 30, 2021
Review: Mari and Mari

The idea that someone important to you could vanish and be replaced by a stranger is the stuff of Lynchian nightmares. Indeed, the duality that inhabits director Tatsuya Yamanishi’s esoteric debut has been widely compared with Haruki Murakami in the way it sedately examines fragile personas through the lens of this unusual relationship.

Casting agent Norio (Kou Maehara) and his girlfriend Mari Tanabe (Nao) lead a seemingly perfect relationship. They’ve been dating for three years, and their affection and easy-going intimacy are evident from the opening scenes. One day, Norio returns home to find something is amiss. Mari is asleep on the couch, but as the sun’s rays eek their way into the apartment, it becomes clear that it is no longer Mari.

Not the Mari he knows at least. This other person, who also says her name is Mari (Hana Amano), says that she lives there now and the original Mari has gone away. Norio discovers that his Mari has left her job and her friends and family are none-the-wiser. Gradually, the new Mari becomes part of Norio’s life, even if a part of him is still unable to accept the change.

The often dreamlike vibe of MARI AND MARI (彼女来来) can be interpreted in several ways. There is, of course, the most literal one, arguably indicated by one translation of the Japanese title (‘she came’): the literal replacement of one person for another. Yet you don’t have to scratch too far beneath the surface to see this might also be a film about the different people we become at different stages in our lives. Norio is content with as little change as possible, indicated early in the film by their routine. Mari’s evolution as a person, albeit one we scarcely get to see, is interpreted here as a physically different person that Norio doesn’t know what to do with.

Yamanishi doesn’t make it easy for us though, keeping the audience at arm’s length for much of the picture. Long takes of apparent stillness are intercut with Norio’s rooftop conversations with his co-workers, ones in which he presents a very different face to the world. Recurring motifs of the colour red — sunsets, drinks — punctuate the dim colour spectrum Yamanishi and cinematographer Shin Yonekura play with. Rei Miyamoto (as Vampillia) provides an often discordant score, an audible indicator of life out of balance.

What’s evident by the end of the film is that none of this is a linear process either. The changes relationships go through are sometimes impermanent, and can settle back into something altered but the same years later. As the runner up of this year’s scaled-back MOOSIC LAB [JOINT] 2020-2021, Yamanishi has already made a mark on the Japanese indie cinema scene. It will be interesting to see that if his cinematic journey mirrors that of his fictional creators, growing into something different but familiar.

MARI AND MARI is reviewed as part of our coverage of JAPAN CUTS 2021.

2020 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Tatsuya Yamanishi | WRITERS: Tatsuya Yamanishi | CAST: Kou Maehara, Hana Amano, Nao | DISTRIBUTOR: Nikkatsu, JAPAN CUTS 2021 | RUNNING TIME: 91 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 22 August – 2 September 2021 (JAPAN CUTS 2021)

August 27, 2021
Review: Candyman

In the opening moments of Nia DaCosta’s CANDYMAN sequel, two things are abundantly clear. Like the 1992 original, it’s a film about Chicago, picking up on the social impact of Cabrini-Green’s public housing development. It’s also a film that’s still very much about race and class in America, and the horrors that are even more real than a vengeful spirit that appears in mirrors.

DaCosta’s update, cowritten with Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld, is both a direct follow-up to Bernard Rose’s film — itself based on a Clive Barker short story — and a spiritual relaunch. From the cold open, in which we see a child’s shadow play of police terrorising the black population of Cabrini-Green in the 70s, it’s clear that the film’s core messages are also about the here and now.

The 2021 story picks up with Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a struggling visual artist who lives with his girlfriend Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris), an art gallery director who supports his work. Anthony’s career is in arrested development until he picks up on the legend of the Candyman, the supernatural killer Daniel Robitaille (Tony Todd) who appears if you say his name in the mirror five times. As Anthony begins to explore the urban legends through his art, the Candyman is reborn in more ways than one.

Just as the original film established a firm sense of place, CANDYMAN 2021 sets out to show how the gentrification of historic black neighbourhoods have merely shifted the invisible (and sometimes very visible) class and race based lines. Indeed, long before we even get to brass tacks, we have lengthy establishing scenes in the lavish apartments and galleries of the rich. “White people built the ghetto and tore it down when they realised they built the ghetto,” say Anthony and his friends before someone asks if their rosé is still in the freezer.

When the violence begins, it is in these spaces: galleries, apartment blocks and other spaces typically protected by class privilege. The horror here, as DaCosta, Peele and Rosenfeld seem to be saying, is in those past crimes and atrocities quite literally coming back to kill us. It’s a long walk-up to get there at times, and even then some of the connective glue between scenes feels like it is missing. For example, there’s a series of asides where Anthony explores his past, and it really feels like there’s a much longer version of these sequences hanging around on the cutting room floor.

Which might be where CANDYMAN loses some modern audiences, especially those who like their slashers uncomplicated and their Candymen always visible. Reprising his role for the fourth time, Todd’s Robitaille is kept in the shadows for much of the film, taking a backseat to the personal horrors the narrative leads discover for themselves. By contrast, there’s a scene with teen girls standing in front of a bathroom mirror that seems inserted purely to add to the body count. Yet if the films Peele has previously been involved in have taught us anything, you don’t have to look far to find injustice beneath the surface.

On a technical level, it’s a slickly shot and stylish affair, with some inventive paper shadow puppet sequences recapping the past film entries, the film certainly succeeds in updating the style while remaining true to the core. Shot largely in the North Park area of Chicago, the city itself is a living entity. From the opening fog-filled shots through Chicago icons like the Marina City Towers through to exteriors elsewhere in the city, Chicago is a lead character that should get billing alongside Abdul-Mateen and Todd.

CANDYMAN is designed to be enjoyed on its own for a new generation of filmgoers, but the links it creates to the past entries serve the dual purpose of mirroring the historic and inherited nature of racial violence and prejudice in the city. Without spoiling anything here, DaCosta leaves the door wide open for future iterations and for the Candyman to return at any time. All you have to do is say his name.

2021 | USA | DIRECTOR: Nia DaCosta | WRITER: Jordan Peele, Win Rosenfeld, Nia DaCosta | CAST: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Colman Domingo, Tony Todd | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures | RUNNING TIME: 91 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 26 August 2021 (AUS), 27 August 2021 (US)

August 26, 2021
Review: B/B

From the moment Kosuke Nakahama’s film opens until its gut-punch of a conclusion only 77 minutes later, B/B rarely lets up for breath. Part mystery and primarily a character study, it deals with some very heavy topics as it shifts tone and texture constantly.

When we meet Sana (played by the singularly named Karen) — in a fictional 2020 where the Olympics have been cancelled due to a corruption scandal — she’s being interrogated by a skeptical detective and a psychologist. Through Karen’s rapid-fire delivery of shady insults and negative view of the world, we glean two key facts. A murder has occurred, and Sana has dissociative identity disorder.

Her 12 personalities have witnessed something, and the framing device is there to determine who saw what and when. As such, it’s kind of an elaborate parlour room gathering with multiple people inhabiting a single chair. Sana has been spending time with Shiro (Koshin Nakazawa), the victim’s young son. As one of the rare people who accepts and separates her personalities, the two become fast companions.

Nakahama made B/B as his graduation film, and it’s an elaborate demonstration of an emerging talent. Each of the personalities are played by different actors, so we see physical manifestations of each of Sana’s identities. There’s a samurai, a schoolgirl, a mother, a middle-aged blowhard who just thinks he’s a samurai and so on. Rather than Sana just taking on these personas, they actively argue and vie for dominance.

Karen, in an remarkable early career outing, effortlessly slides back and forth from the dominant persona of Sana to a handful of her identities. While there are scenes where all the identities interact with each other, often for a comedic effect, Karen has a more understated performance by focusing on one or two of them. This helps sell the concept when the film takes a noticeably darker turn in the second half, dealing with abuse and shared trauma. “To save is to not cause pain,” claims Sana, or possibly one of her personalities. “By causing pain we are all perpetrators.”

While taking place in only a handful of locations, Nakahama and cinematographer Junki Kobayashi make the most of lensing it. Bright and vivid exterior colours mix with interiors that feel alternatively claustrophobic and surreal. There’s one sequence where Sana sits alone in her apartment: it’s lit in neon blue while her personalities overwhelm her with their bickering. In another, a room with only harsh lighting from a table illuminates the so-called Council of Sages, the term Sana uses for a gathering of her identities. It’s incredibly effective in a short feature such as this.

It would be very easy to see this as something that mocks or belittles dissociative identity disorder as so many similar films have been know to do. Yet in a searing final speech, it’s possible that Sana’s condition serves as a microcosm for broader society, arguing that we’re collectively complicit in the ills of the world. If this is a kind of hell we’re in, then we’re all partially to blame for it. It’s an intriguing and engaging introductory thesis from Nakahama, and I can’t wait to see what he has lined up next.

2020 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Kosuke Nakahama | WRITERS: Kosuke Nakahama | CAST: Karen, Koshin Nakazawa, Tarou Sanami, Hito:michan, Chimari Nonohara | DISTRIBUTOR: JAPAN CUTS 2021 | RUNNING TIME: 77 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 22 August – 2 September 2021 (JAPAN CUTS 2021)

August 25, 2021
Review: Kakegurui 2 – Ultimate Russian Roulette

Based on the manga by Homura Kawamoto and Tōru Naomura, the Kakegurui franchise has taken on a surprising multimedia life. Well, we say surprising but the heightened language of warring high school factions is fertile ground for a dedicated fanbase.

Indeed, you don’t often see compulsive gambling as a basis for a popular series. It’s set in the exclusive Hyakkaou Private Academy, where elite and wealthy students seemingly live their lives free of classes but in a perpetual state of competition. Social status is determined by gambling wins.

Utilising the same cast as the TV series, this film picks up some time after the events of the first feature film. Deceptively innocent, Yumeko Jabami (Minami Hamabe) has upset the delicate apple cart by causing absolute chaos in the Student Council, who allocate ranking to students based on their financial contributions. In order to restore their status quo, they side with the seemingly demonic Shikigami (Ryusei Fujii), a former student suspended some years early.

Plot details get a little sketchy from here on in, but that scarcely seems to matter: it’s all about the style. Indeed, there are long sequences that feel more like music videos or simply trailers for the film we’re already watching. The first film could rightly be praised for its proximity to the look and feel of the source material (because I did just that at the time). KAKEGURUI 2: ULTIMATE RUSSIAN ROULETTE ( 映画賭ケグルイ絶体絶命ロシアンルーレット) is very much in the same vein, with stylistic fidelity to the source material at all costs,

It all leads up to the titular game of Russian roulette, where these privileged school kids sit around with guns and a whole lot of shady looks being cast. It’s meant to be the height of tension, but with the endless exposition infused in the writing, this sequence alone seems to go on longer than The Deer Hunter — and that’s three hours.

It’ a shame it all feels so flat, as director Tsutomu Hanabusa — through Tori Girl, Kakegurui, Project Dream: How to Build Mazinger Z’s Hangar and this year’s Tokyo Revengers — has consistently shown his ability to breath life and energy into these works.

Kakegurui has ample material to draw from. The manga series alone has been running since 2014, with various spin-offs on multiple media platforms. So it’s incredibly surprising that a film with death penalties for overdue student payments, explosions and a semi-demonic subplot can feel so ordinary.

KAKEGURUI 2: ULTIMATE RUSSIAN ROULETTE is reviewed as part of our coverage for the Fantasia Festival 2021.

2021 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Tsutomu Hanabusa | WRITER: Minato Takano, Tsutomu Hanabusa (based on the manga by Homura Kawamoto and Toru Naomura) | CAST: Minami Hamabe, Ryusei Fujii, Mahiro Takasugi, Aoi Morikawa | DISTRIBUTOR: GaGa Corporation, Fantasia Festival 2021 | RUNNING TIME: 120 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 5-25 August 2021 (Fantasia 2021)

August 24, 2021
Review: Spaghetti Code Love

If the last couple of years have taught us anything, it’s how important it is to find connections — and how keenly one feels the absence of them. While Murayama Takeshi’s debut narrative feature isn’t specifically about the current global situation, it certainly speaks to the isolation one can feel even when living in one of the most populous cities in the world.

SPAGHETTI CODE LOVE (スパゲティコード・ラブ) begins with a question: “Why? Why me?” It’s the anguished cry of a child in an arcade, and all a (as-yet-unnamed) woman can do is just hold him. So begins a series of interconnected stories of people looking for love and companionship in Tokyo, and the collision of their expectations with reality.

There are 13 people that we meet in this hyperlinked drama, a complex collection of interwoven stories that occasionally intersect. There’s struggling photographer Tsubasa (Nino Furuhata), for example, who believed that everything would be better when he moved to Tokyo. He communicates with an impressionable teen via Twitter who comes to the city with stars in her eyes. Tsubasa thinks his big break will come when he gets to shoot model Kurosu Rin (Yagi Rikako), but her diva antics and internal insecurity kill that dream immediately.

There’s an Uber delivery rider obsessed with an idol, determined to forget her after 1,000 deliveries. A pair of high school students constantly and morbidly talk about death. Another school student angsts over a life plan assignment that spins him into an existential crisis. One woman spends all of her money on an online fortune teller while her neighbour listens and judges her. Natsumi (Kagawa Saya) feels like the only thing she has to offer potential relationships is her body. A different woman regularly greets a man every night with a home cooked meal. “I’m fine being ordinary,” she thinks. “As long as he’s with me.”

What director Murayama and writer Naomi Hiruta do so well in this film is tap into the interiority of these separate but connected individuals. Overlapping dialogue and voice overs show us the face they present to the world versus the one they keep to themselves, such as Natsumi and her boyfriend’s very different takes on an argument. Kurosu Rin is a great example of this, at one point repeating “I’m special” to herself as a personal mantra. What they don’t know is that there is a commonality to their pain, which Murayama demonstrates through montages showing each of them having similarly existential thoughts at the same time.

It’s beautifully photographed too, with cinematographer Chigi Kanbe (a regular collaborator with Shunji Iwai) lensing Tokyo and its surrounds with a lovingly crisp lens. The opening shot, for example, is almost entirely shot through the filter of an arcade machine’s glass. Together they paint the city as a huge and beautiful place — which it is, of course — but it serves as a stark contrast to the unfulfilled dreams of its inhabitants.

One of the recurring motifs in the film is the old ‘tree falling in the woods’ thought experiment: if nobody hears your internal angst, does it really exist? Coupled with the spaghetti code of the title, which generally refers to unstructured and difficult-to-maintain source code, the film becomes it’s own thought experiment about what happens when we let go of our baggage and embrace the idea of of having no plan at all.

2021 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Murayama Takeshi | WRITERS: Naomi Hiruta | CAST: Yuki Kura, Toko Miura, Hiroya Shimizu, Nino Furuhata, Yagi Rikako, Kagawa Saya | DISTRIBUTOR: Happinet Phantom Studios, JAPAN CUTS 2021 | RUNNING TIME: 96 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 22 August – 2 September 2021 (JAPAN CUTS 2021)

August 22, 2021
Review: The Goldfish: Dreaming of the Sea

Filmmaker Sara Ogawa is primarily known for her work in front of the camera, most recently Dear Patient. For her first directorial outing since the mid-length Beatopia (2017) and the short She’s Gone (2018), Ogawa has not chosen an easy topic. In a film that deals with trauma and grief, THE GOLDFISH: DREAMING OF THE SEA (海辺の金魚) marks her as filmmaker with a unique and refined point of view.

Ogawa’s film begins as something of a puzzle. A teenage girl, Hana (Ogawa Miyu), is by the ocean frantically calling for her mother. Moments later she is teling the younger Harumi (Hanada Runa) not to be afraid. Both live in the Home for Children of the Star, a foster home run by a kindly patriarch (Serizawa Tateto). Hana is turning 18 and has taken on ‘big sister’ caring duties, serving as an ideal model for the others. The recently arrived Hana is the polar opposite, rebelling and running away at every turn.

THE GOLDFISH is a film that slowly unfolds, a remarkable feat for a film with such a slender running time. It’s very rarely said overtly, but we soon learn that both Hana and Harumi have a shared experience of a difficult relationship with their mothers. Hana’s mother is in prison for a crime we only get sketches of at first, and she barely remembers. Harumi is unable to verbalise her trauma, but her bruises speak to what they might be.

There are shades of Hirokazu Kore-eda and Naomi Kawase‘s stylistic beauty in Ogawa’s work. In fact, that’s Kore-eda’s longtime collaborator Yutaka Yamazaki behind the camera. The lens floats around a dinner table some of the time. At others, it’s right up close and intimate as Hana reads Harumi a bedtime story. Maintaining a measured pace throughout, Ogawa’s film is one that literally takes time to stop and smell the flowers while maintaining a laser focus on character.

The two young stars are excellent, conveying a natural presence that never feels like conscious performance. Both performances demonstrate an understated and communal trauma. Ogawa shows some of that past through a sparse use of flashbacks, but they wear their pain just under the surface in every scene. There are numerous moments of levity though, such as Harumi repeatedly putting candy back in Hana’s shopping basket after being told not to.

Building to an emotional and cathartic conclusion, we realise how much Hana (and by extension Ogawa Miyu) has been holding back for the brief duration. Like the titular goldfish, she’s finally heading for the bigger pond and all that represents. Coming full circle and answering the question posed in the opening scene, Sara Ogawa signals her arrival as storyteller to watch.

2021 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Sara Ogawa | WRITERS: Sara Ogawa | CAST: Ogawa Miyu, Hanada Runa, Serizawa Tateto | DISTRIBUTOR: JAPAN CUTS 2021 | RUNNING TIME: 76 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 22 August – 2 September 2021 (JAPAN CUTS 2021)

August 21, 2021
Review: Go Seppuku Yourselves

At the entrance to a forest temple, woman in traditional Japanese garb begins a slow and steady march. The red of her outfit contrasts with the muted shade of her surroundings. She wears a black and gold hannya mask, the representation of a jealous female demon. As she slices her finger off, the titles drop to the pounding music of Mars 89. It must be a Toshiaki Toyoda film.

Although Toyoda has been a fixture of the Japanese film industry since the early 90s, his films of the last couple of years have taken on a renewed focus. With Wolf’s Calling (2019), he began his Resurrection Trilogy, a series of films surrounding the Mt Resurrection Wolf Shrine. With The Day of Destruction (2020), he continued his hybrid modern fable with a shout of rebellion into the void of an indifferent world.

The gloriously titled GO SEPPUKU YOURSELVES (全員切腹) brings the tale full circle. Taking place sometime in the early Meiji Era, an epidemic of illness has befallen the land. A man (Kiyohiko Shibukawa) has been tasked with aiding in the ritual suicide (seppuku) of a wandering samurai (Yosuke Kubozuka) who has been accused of poisoning the water.

Despite the period setting, there is no doubt that Toyoda is commenting on the here and now. Just like The Day of Destruction, the global pandemic lurks behind the Meiji facade. The demon that is assumed to have ‘poisoned the well’ could very much be an analogy for the intangible nature of a pandemic, even if the film treads a fine balance between literal and figurative causes.

Yet it’s also very much a missive against corruption in the powers that be. In the centrepiece scene, which takes up the last third of the film’s slender running time, the condemned samurai takes the opportunity to speak some harsh truths to that power. “The world is not worth living for,” he declares, echoing some of the sentiment expressed in The Day of Destruction. “You are the ones spreading the epidemic,” accuses the samurai. “Your lives will never be as good as mine.” It’s a mic drop moment before the inevitable final act, as well as an unblinking provocation.

As with all of Toyoda’s recent work, the short is just as much an exercise in sound and visual ferocity as anything else it might be. From the simple dichotomy of the white and black costumes of the protagonists, to the juxtaposition of humans and nature, it’s impossible to take your eyes off the screen.

Using the Mars 89 score in the same way he’s done with Seppuku Pistols and Kodō (Shiver), it’s also arguable that Toyoda’s use of music is the closest modern equivalent of Japan’s benshi performances that accompanied silent films. The final scene is vaguely reminiscent of Miike Takashi’s Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (2011), in that it mixes an almost unbearable tension with the serene beauty of the surrounds.

What Toyoda achieves in 26 minutes is something some filmmakers struggle to convey in feature length films. Taken as a whole, the three films form a thematic whole that feels both fresh and immediate while harking back to a less complicated style of storytelling. So, when we look back at the sea of screenlife films that emerged from the pandemic era, Toyoda’s trilogy will no doubt stand out as the guttural cry from a world that’s been placed inside a cinematic time capsule.

2021 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Toshiaki Toyoda | WRITERS: Toshiaki Toyoda | CAST: Kiyohiko Shibukawa, Yosuke Kubozuka | DISTRIBUTOR: Toyoda Films, JAPAN CUTS 2021 | RUNNING TIME: 26 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 22 August – 2 September 2021 (JAPAN CUTS 2021)

August 20, 2021
Review: Come Back Anytime

In Chiyoda, the political heart of Tokyo, there is an ramen shop named Bizentei. Run by self-taught ramen master Masamoto Ueda, he only serves three kind of ramen — and has been doing it for more than forty years. “I’m just an old guy doing what he knows,” says Ueda.

Judging from COME BACK ANYTIME (またいらっしゃい), the debut documentary from filmmaker John Daschbach (Brief Reunion), what Ueda knows is how to make a simple and tasty ramen dish and keep a loyal customer base. Necessarily recalling the classic ramen western Tampopo (1985) and David Gelb’s Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011), Daschbach’s film isn’t just another addition to the food porn genre (although it ticks this box). It’s a story of the community that Ueda built around his unassuming restaurant.

Before we learn anything about the man behind the broth, Daschbach introduces us to the people who eat his ramen. As they recount the first time they tasted his soy-based ramen, it’s clear that it means something more than just a lunchtime meal to the patrons. “Just like the taste of mum’s cooking,” says one regular. Another interviewee is a ‘ramen expert’ who claims to have tasted between 500 and 600 bowls.

Ueda’s philosophy is presented as something he just does, rather than any specific perfection he was working towards. “I don’t use anything cheap, but nothing special either,” he comments. Once could argue that there must be something special about it, as we watch him foraging through the forest for ingredients before journeying to his farming hobby. Naturally, Ueda ferments his own pesticides.

Through a series of casual exchanges, we learn about his history, his family and his admirers. There’s one story of a woman who lost several people in her life, and found the community at Bizentei around the time of her personal tragedies. It’s from her that we get the film’s title: Ueda reportedly told her that she was welcome to “come back anytime.”

Arguably could have been a short film, or an episode of Chef’s Table, but if this film teaches us anything, sometimes things just take the time they take. There’s no drama in Ueda’s story. This is simply a snapshot of a man who makes ramen and what that means to all the people who encounter it. Even as a viewer, it’s hard not to want to crawl inside the screen to and be part of the community. Daschbach’s skill her is in stripping back this profile to its most important part. Or, as Ueda might put it, “You just skim the scum and it becomes nice and clear.”

2021 | Japan | DIRECTOR: John Daschbach | CINEMATOGRAPHY: John Daschbach | CAST: Masamoto Ueda, Takashi Tanaka | DISTRIBUTOR: MIFF 2021 | RUNNING TIME: 81 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 5 – 22 August 2021 (MIFF 2021)

August 19, 2021