Tag: Toshiyuki Nishida

Review: What to Do With the Dead Kaiju? [Fantasia 2022]

It’s a legitimate question. This glorious titled film from director Satoshi Miki (Louder! Can’t Hear What You’re Singin’, Wimp!) asks the tough questions that we all have at the end of a giant monster movie. Once the foul beast is felled, what happens with the remains of a creature that takes up several city blocks?

In WHAT TO DO WITH THE DEAD KAIJU? (大怪獣のあとしまつ) — which can also be translated as ‘Aftermath of the Great Monster’ — a large monster attacking Japan mysteriously dies. The clock starts ticking on when the gases inside the corpse will explode and cause even more devastation. Officer Arata of the Japan Special Force (Fullmetal Alchemist‘s Ryosuke Yamada) is put in charge of the task.

In an already complicated sea of political turmoil and bureaucratic red tape, in steps Yukino Amane (Tao Tsuchiya) with some grand ideas. Not only is she secretary to the minister for the environment, but she is also Arata’s ex-fiancee. The dead kaiju becomes a political football, a national icon and a symbol for potential tourism. Not to mention the burgeoning market for delicious kaiju meat.

Miki’s latest satire throws a lot of concepts at the screen at once. It is a sharp political satire on the one hand, but eschews the ultra-realism of modern office sitcoms for a more over-the-top tone. A minister falls headfirst into the carcass at one point, her legs akimbo as she gets stuck in a gaping wound. One bureaucrat likens the job to “kitchen waste,” while another introduces the notion of a deus ex machina (or “Chosen One”) that will take care of the work for them. Actually, isn’t this sounding awfully like reality to you?

Of course, we get to watch this in the context of our own global catastrophe, one that exposed both the shortcomings of government and corporate entities alike. Officials are quick to rename the dead beastie ‘HOPE’ in the hopes that it will a rallying cry for a nation. (This in turn leads to some fun puns about flushing hope out to sea). Meanwhile, the media becomes preoccupied as to whether the smell of the giant rotting body smells more like ‘poo or puke.’

KAIJU is clearly a film made on a budget, as evidenced by some basic effects and a seat-of-the-pants feel about it. Sometimes this works in the film’s favour: the creature is only see in part at first, and giant sky ships are allowed to exist only in silhouette. Some might even say it all adds to the film’s charm, although one can’t help but wonder what a bigger budget version of this would look like.

Yet expedient costs are all part of the in-joke the film is sharing with the audience. Following the reveal of a deus ex machina telegraphed in the first act, a post-credit sequence wryly comments: Another kaiju is on its way — se us pull it off with less than half the budget.” You know what? I reckon they just might pull it off.

2022 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Satoshi Miki | WRITERS: Satoshi Miki | CAST: Tao Tsuchiya, Ryosuke Yamada, Toshiyuki Nishida, Rinko Kikuchi | DISTRIBUTOR: Shochiku, Fantasia Film Festival | RUNNING TIME: 115 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 14 July – 3 August 2022 (Fantasia)

August 6, 2022
Review: Voices in the Wind

There’s a disconnected phone booth in Japan’s Otsuchi, the small town where 2,000 citizens lost their lives in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. It is said that speaking into the receiver will carry messages to deceased loved ones. Over 30,000 people have visited the site to date.

VOICES IN THE WIND, or Wind’s Telephone (風の電話) as its more accurately known in Japan, is inspired by this modern cultural touch-point. Yet rather than simply focusing on the booth itself, which is actually introduced much later in the film, writers Kyoko Inukai and director Nobuhiro Suwa focus on a young girl as she comes to terms with her own grief.

Now on the edge of seventeen and living with her aunt in Hiroshima, Haru (Serena Motola) lost her parents and brother almost a decade earlier in the 3.11 disaster. When her aunt falls ill, she takes the initiative to travel across the country to her birthplace.

Throughout the course of Haru’s coming-of-age road trip, she encounters people who have different ways of dealing with the lingering effects of the tragedy. With a handful of exceptions, the majority of encounters are with genuinely nice people. There’s a displaced Kurdish family, for example, who talk of their own grief and longing for a home that doesn’t exist anymore. They also welcome Serena like family.

Compared with the fairly beige Fukushima 50, it’s also good to see a film that questions some of the decisions authorities have made. This is mostly in the form of a conversation with a character played by the legendary Toshiyuki Nishida, who speaks directly to the discrimination locals face, Tepco’s silence and complicity and the personal guilt survivors feel. Indeed, the initial setting of Hiroshima obviously conjures up parallels with the bombing, something referred to several times throughout the film.

The rebuilding efforts and ongoing eerie devastation still lingers, beautifully captured by director Nobuhiro Suwa. Contrasted with the yellow fields of the surrounding areas, the film visually answers the question of why people are drawn to return to the area and “live in the place where they were born.”

Relative newcomer Motola (21st Century Girl) delivers a remarkably nuanced performance that is sure to put her on the top of casting lists. There’s two excellent emotional scenes of her facing her own guilt while visiting the mother of a deceased friend, and another when we get to the phone itself. Yet it’s the powerhouse anguished scream of ‘why?’ into an abandoned field that will leave few eyes dry.

Which gets to the heart of this film’s journey: the acceptance of 3.11 as both a name and place that will define an unspeakable tragedy for an entire generation. “Because I’m alive,” Serena laments, “I remember you all.” In a year of some excellent films on the long-lasting impact of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, including the fatalistic It Feels So Good, this rumination on grief is one of the most emotional impact.

2020 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Nobuhiro Suwa| WRITER: Kyoko Inukai, Nobuhiro Suwa | CAST: Serena Motola, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Toshiyuki Nishida, Tomokazu Miura | DISTRIBUTOR: JAPAN CUTS (US), Broadmedia Studios (JPN) | RUNNING TIME: 139 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 17-30 July 2020 (JAPAN CUTS)

July 27, 2020
Review: Outrage Coda

OUTRAGE CODA (アウトレイジ最終章), the third and final chapter in ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano’s Outrage Trilogy, opens on a deceptively lighthearted comedic note about fishing, kimchi, and gunplay. Yet the sense of foreboding one feels is not just informed by its dark predecessors, but by the violent revenge play that is moments away from unfolding.

Set sometime after the events of Outrage Beyond, Otomo (Kitano) is now isolated on Korea’s Jeju Island, working for the local boss Chang (Tokio Kaneda). Holidaying yakuza Hanada (Pierre Taki), a middling level member of the Hanabishi clan, roughs up some of Chang’s prostitutes. Naturally, Otomo is sent in to sort him out. Following the death of one of Otomo’s loyal henchman at the hands of Hanada, the aging Otomo and sidekick Ichikawa (Nao Omori) find themselves back in Japan in the middle of a power struggle with the Hanabishi.

In more ways than one, OUTRAGE CODA represents the last dying gasps of the old guard. After the departure of the prostitutes in the opening scenes, nary a woman is to be seen for the duration of this old boys’ club. This whole film is the representation of a way of life that no longer serves a purpose in modern Japan, and Otomo is a still breathing personification of that era. For Kitano the filmmaker, he is writing a literal coda to themes he has been playing with since at least 1993’s Sonatine.

Otomo is a constant presence in the film, but his screen time is metered out, just as was the case in the first two entries. As soon as he lands back in Japan there is a dynamic tonal shift, both in the film and the interplay between the principal yakuza. Every moment he spends on screen is pure joy, perhaps matched only by Tokio Kaneda’s phenomenally beleaguered face and anachronistic series of tycoon vests.

Even though the film carries an extremely measured pace, the series comes to a conclusion with bursts of frenzied violence. The glorified shooting up of a convention has more bloodletting than all three Outrage films combined, and has strange parallels to The Godfather Part III. It’s hard to see this kind of expected casual gunplay as entertainment in 2017, and perhaps a sign that this particular brand of action is going the same way of the on-screen crooks.

“That old fashioned gangster definitely served us well,” remarks Nishino during the climax of the film. For Otomo and Kitano alike, truer words were never spoken. Otomo’s cinematic exit is as pragmatic as Kitano’s approach to his final film. There are no happy endings to be had here, but Kitano has still managed to create something that is greater than the sum of its bloodied parts.

[stextbox id=”grey” bgcolor=”F2F2F2″ mleft=”5″ mright=”5″ image=”null”]2017 | Japan | DIR: Takeshi Kitano | WRITERS: Takeshi Kitano | CAST: Takeshi Kitano, Toshiyuki Nishida, Tokio Kaneda, Nao Omori | DISTRIBUTOR: Adelaide Film Festival (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 109 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 7 October 2017 (Japan), 14 October 2018 (ADLFF) [/stextbox]

October 11, 2017
JFF15 Review: Star Watching Dog

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Director: Tomoyuki Takimoto

Runtime: 119 minutes

Starring: Toshiyuki Nishida, Testsuji Tamayama, Umika Kawashima

Country: Japan

Rating: Worth a Look (?)

More info

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About the only thing with even broader appeal than veteran comedian Toshiyuki Nishida in Japanese cinema is the enduring attraction of cute and fluffy animals on film. So one can only imagine the power of combining the two in a film designed to tug at the heartstrings of anybody that has them. Based on the manga Hoshi Mamoru Inn by Takashi Murakami, first serialised in 2008, this epic journey of one dog’s devotions to his master is guaranteed not to leave a dry eye in the house.

Upon finding the body of an unidentified man (Toshiyuki Nishida, A Ghost of a Chance) and his dog, who died six months later, City Hall employee Kyousuke Okutsu (Testsuji Tamayama, Hankyu Railways: A 15-Minute Miracle) feels compelled to find out more about the man. Using his own leave time, he attempts to trace the journey of the man to his final resting place in the mountains of Hokkaido. Joined by teenage runaway Yuki (Umika Kawashima), he soon discovers how many lives the man and his dog Happy touched along the way, and how Happy stayed loyal long after the end.

If you didn’t get just a little bit choked up just reading the synopsis, then it may be time to check your pulse. Star Watching Dog (星守る犬) is designed to sell boxes of tissues, which is strange because they just hand them out in the street in Japan. The tale of the man is never told directly, but rater through the recounted stories of those that he has met along the way. We initially get a bad impressions of the man, as a drunken roustabout who travels with his ill-behaved dog. However, as the story unfolds, it becomes obvious that he is a kind-hearted man who has experienced a run of bad luck. Thankfully, he is not without his faults, as flashbacks to his earlier life with his wife and daughter reveal, and this is a far more compelling character aspect that that of a saint traveling the roads of Japan.

Nishida, typically known for his comic performances in the ongoing Free and Easy films or the works of Koki Mitani, tones down some of his more outlandish traits for what is possibly a more obvious award-worthy performance. Watching him transform from kindly stranger to homeless vagabond is not only a great piece of acting, but also designed to make audiences think about how easily we could all hit skid row in the right (or wrong) circumstances. Given the topsy turvy economy of Japan over the last fee decades, not to mention the more recent hits of the Global Financial Crisis and this year’s natural disasters, this is a poignant point indeed. This is where Star Watching Dog is at its strongest. It may be a manipulative weepy, but it isn’t one without a social message.

There are a few strange narrative choices along the way, however, not least of which is the inclusion of schoolgirl Yuki. While her story parallels aspects of those around her, and serves as a counterpoint to Okutsu’s self-reflection, she is a character best taken in small doses. Her arc is never really tied up either, with the spectre of bad things to come still looming over her when she and her travelling companion eventually part ways. Toshiyuki Nishida’s most powerful moments may be in the last act of the film, but the flashback-within-a-flashback is an odd trick to pull on the audience at a late stage, and perhaps highlights some of the more manipulative aspects of the film. Still these are minor quibbles, as Star Watching Dog will inevitably leave you in a big gooey mess by the time the credits roll.

[stextbox id=”custom”]Star Watching Dog is an emotional roller coaster ride guaranteed not to leave a dry eye in the house.[/stextbox]

Star Watching Dog is playing at the Japanese Film Festival on 19 November (Sydney) and 3 December (Melbourne) 2011 at the 15th Japanese Film Festival in Australia.

November 20, 2011
JFF15 Review: A Ghost of a Chance

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Director: Koki Mitani

Runtime: 142 minutes

Starring: Eri Fukatsu, Toshiyuki Nishida, Kiichi Nakai, Hiroshi Abe

Country: Japan

Rating: Worth A Look (?)

More info

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It really came as no surprise when Koki Mitani’s A Ghost of a Chance (ステキな金縛り aka Once in a Blue Moon ) opened to a ¥533,4 million ($7 million US) weekend at the box office just a few weeks ago. The King of Comedy had previously seen massive successes with audiences on Suite Dreams and The Magic Hour, and his unique brand of comedy has a strong appeal with the Japanese market. However, his lack of success abroad has baffled many commentators, perhaps because he falls between the cracks of the arthouse crowd and the more extreme cult genres that Japanese cinema has been known for in the last few years. The 15th Japanese Film Festival in Australia aims to remedy that somewhat with a mini-retrospective of Mitani’s films. With the opening ceremony held in Sydney last night, it was the perfect way to commence a festival that is filled with more comedy than ever before.

Emi Hosho (Eri Fukatsu, Villain) is a failing lawyer, trying to live up to the legacy of her dad’s career. When she is assigned an unusual case of a client accused of murdering his wife, things take a turn for the strange. The defendant (played by musician KAN, LoveDeath) claims that he was staying at an inn at the time, and was trapped by a kanashibar, or supernaturally induced sleep paralysis. Determined not to lose another case, Emi travels to the inn where she encounters Rokubei Sarashina (Toshiyuki Nishida, Star Watching Dog),a 421 year-old samurai who also happens to be a ghost. As the only witness to her client’s innocence, Emi convinces him to testify in court. The only problem is getting the rest of the world to see what she sees.

Mitani’s high-concepts are always bordering on the ridiculous, and are at their best when they cross right over into insane territory. A Ghost of a Chance really shouldn’t work as a concept, and the fact that it mostly pulls off the task of drawing in a mass crowd is something to be applauded. Holding this film together is a leading performance from Toshiyuki Nishida, who is used to stealing every scene he is in. Best known to the Western world as Pigsy from the TV series of Monkey, he is every bit the 400 year old samurai. Playing it completely over the top, his character dominates the film to such an extent that the defendant must humbly ask “Isn’t this trial about me?”. When Nishida does leave the screen, his presence is palpably absent, although the other characters each have their quirks worth exploring.

Like many of Mitani’s recent works, A Ghost of a Chance suffers from its unwieldy length, and this is perhaps a hangover from his extensive theatre background. What has traditionally tempered this is a cracking pace that wouldn’t seem out of place in a Howard Hawks film, but here the film certainly takes its time to get moving. The extended exposition is not as overtly madcap as his last feature, The Magic Hour, and it is not until the introduction of the legendary Toshiyuki Nishida that the film begins to pick up pace. However, many of Mitani’s familiar elements are all in place in the opening sequence, including Koji Yamamoto (Ninja Kids!!!) in a delightful caricature of a moustache-twirling villain from the silent era. Part of the success of Mitani’s previous efforts have been the anachronistic bubble in which Mitani’s films exist, and A Ghost of a Chance has a thoroughly modern setting, albeit a very warped take on it.

If you accept Mitani’s central conceit, and you kind of have to, there is much to love about A Ghost of a Chance. There are several deus ex machinas that seem to drop in when it is most convenient to the plot, including the death of one character, but this is all in the (pardon the pun) spirit of the thing. Fumiyo Kohinata’s feather-suit wearing and Frank Capra loving being from another world adds his own flair to proceedings, and Eri Fukatsu’s breaks free of her Bayside Shakedown TV origins and delivers a wide-eye enthusiasm that is needed as a counterpoint to Kiichi Nakai’s (Princess Toyotomi) anti-villain.

[stextbox id=”custom”]A Ghost of a Chance is typically long Mitani, but filled with well-crafted levels of silliness. The perfect opener for this year’s Japanese Film Festival and hopefully one that will see Mitani finally find some success in the West.[/stextbox]

A Ghost of a Chance opened the Japanese Film Festival in Sydney on 17 November 2011. It will also open the Melbourne leg of the festival on 29 November 2011 at the 15th Japanese Film Festival in Australia.

November 18, 2011
Trailer for Koki Mitani’s A Ghost of a Chance

AsianMediaWiki has revealed the English subtitled trailer for A Ghost of a Chance (ステキな金縛り), the lastest film from the Japanese King of Comedy Koki Mitani. Mitani is known for University of Laughs, Suite Dreams and The Magic Hour, and his film A Ghost of a Chance just hit the Number 1 spot at the Japanese box office last week.

Synopsis: Defence lawyer Emi is assigned to a particularly unusual case: a man is suspected of murdering his wealthy wife, and his only alibi is a 421-year old ghost, Rokubei. At first Emi is hesitant, but when she pursues her lead she is visited by the ghost herself. And so the fun begins in the courtroom when Prosecutor Osano starts to cross examine…

Once again starring the incomparable Toshiyuki Nishida, and a cast of Mitani regulars, this looks to be the Japanese comedy smash of the year.

A Ghost of a Chance (aka Once in a Blue Moon) opened in Japan on 29 October 2011 in Japan from Toho, and will be the Opening Night film on 17 November (Sydney) and 29 November (Melbourne) 2011 at the 15th Japanese Film Festival in Australia.

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Download the trailer

November 16, 2011
JFF15 Review: Suite Dreams

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Director: Koki Mitani

Runtime: 136 minutes

Starring: Koji Yakusho, Toshiyuki Nishida, Takako Matsu, Koichi Sato

Country: Japan

Rating: Highly Recommended (?)

More info

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King of Comedy Koki Mitani is still going strong in Japan despite his lack of recognition outside the country. Only twelve days after the release of Suite Dreams (aka The Uchoten Hotel / The Wow-Choten Hotel, 有頂天ホテル / ＴＨＥ有頂天ホテル), the film had attracted 1.5 million audience members to its unique style of comedy. It broke the mould for box office expectations in Japan, by being an original property that was a pure audience pleaser. Speaking with Variety at the time of release, Mitani was quick to give reasons for the success of his comedies: “The audience has become used to enjoying my style of comedy. I’m now reaping what I’ve sowed.” What Mitani has laid down over the last few years is an intertextual love of cinema that is disarmingly hilarious.

The swish Hotel Avanti is readying itself for its New Year’s Eve celebration, but at the same time must contend with the convention of deer specialists who have turned up to honour their Man of the Year. To make matters worse, a disgraced politician has chosen to hide in the hotel with a media scrum in pursuit, and a well-known entertainer is making very public suicide declarations. With one of the general managers growing increasingly erratic, and a duck on the loose, it is up to the other general manager Heikichi Shindo (Koji Yakusho, Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai) to calmly guide his “family” of guests through the night.

“Madcap” barely seems adequate to encompass the totality of the massive enterprise that is Suite Dreams. Like many of Mitani’s other films, including the later The Magic Hour, the film exists in its own dimension of space-time, where a bygone era has become lodged inside a hotel and exists as a plane that people can wander in and out of. Inspired by his favourite screwball comedies, Suite Dreams appears to be a direct tribute to the dramas that played out in William Goulding’s 1932 film Grand Hotel. Indeed, a poster of that film hangs in the building and is directly referenced by the lead character. Yet this is a caper, first and foremost, and with his assembled group of Japan’s finest actors, and this is what Mitani does best.

Drawing from his theatrical background, Mitani juggles a large ensemble cast in what would be an unwieldy 2 hours and 15 minutes in anybody else’s hands. From Billy Wilder to Robert Altman, Mitani sees the drama and comedy in every aspect of human existence, and the observation of such could just as easily fit into a Jacques Tati or Peter Sellers work. There is no dead weight in this goliath of a comedy, with quite literally every line ringing true with genuine emotion or comedy gold. This kind of approach could just as easily be tiresome, or at worst a confused mess, but like the screwball comedies that Mitani so clearly admires, the pace is the trick. Mitani uses a “one shot per scene” technique that keeps the momentum going, rather than artificially creating it through editing. There are multiple storylines running here, some of which converge while other remain discreet pockets of joy. In fact, the alternate title for the film is “The Uchoten Hotel”, which roughly translates to “The Ecstasy Hotel”, and this is perhaps the best description of all.

The master balance of comedy and pathos is undoubtedly in the carefully constructed screenplay and Mitani’s capable direction, but the large cast hold it all together. Central to this is Koji Yakusho’s hotel manager, calmly managing the events and only phased by the sudden appearance of his ex-wife. Yakusho’s most recent roles have been in the much weightier 13 Assassins, The Summit: A Chronicle Of Stones to Serenity, The Last Ronin and is known to Western audiences from Memoirs of a Geisha. This experience sees him hold the madness together, but he is also there to be upstaged by the slick Koichi Sato (another Mitani veteran, most recently in A Ghost of a Chance), and of course, Toshiyuki Nishida as Zenbu “Maestro” Tokugawa. The veteran comedian, who has starred in all 20 films of the Free and Easy series and is in no less than five of the films at JFF15 this year, is the kind of character actor who simply owns the space he is given to inhabit.

Suite Dreams is a microcosm of human existence, as are the best comedies of its kind. The film is not without its flaws, including the typically lengthy denouement of Mitani films. Yet while characters such as singer-songwriter Kenji (Shingo Katori, who briefly reprises his role in The Magic Hour), and the airline stewardess who wants to help him achieve his dream, are completely unnecessary, they are welcome inclusions to a cast that make you feel at home. Once you check into The Uchoten Hotel, you’ll find it tough to check out.

[stextbox id=”custom”]A delightful comedy from start to finish, that isn’t so much hindered by any minor flaws as celebratory of them. A rightful classic in the Mitani canon, and one that follows the style of comedy that he has become known for.[/stextbox]

Suite Dreams is playing as part of a Koki Mitani retrospective at the Japanese Film Festival on 23 November (Sydney) and 30 November (Melbourne) 2011 at the 15th Japanese Film Festival in Australia..

November 14, 2011
JFF15 Review: The Magic Hour

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Director: Koki Mitani

Runtime: 136 minutes

Starring: Satoshi Tsumabuki, Toshiyuki Nishida, Koichi Sato

Country: Japan

Rating: Highly Recommended (?)

More info

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Koki Mitani is known as being the King of Comedy in Japan, and rightly so. His work in theatre and film has attracted audiences in large numbers, but he remains largely unknown outside of his native Japan. JFF15 aims to change that this year, not only with his latest film A Ghost of a Chance opening the festival in grand fashion but by staging a retrospective of his films that includes the madcap Suite Dreams and this 2008 comedy, The Magic Hour (ザ・マジックアワー).

When gangster Noboru Bingo (Satoshi Tsumabuki, Villain) is caught having an affair with Mari Takachiho (Eri Fukatsu, A Ghost of a Chance), the wife of crime syndicate boss Konosuke Tessio (Toshiyuki Nishida, Star Watching Dog), he is almost certainly done for. Convincing the boss that he knows the famed hitman Della Togashi, he is told that he must find him or die. Desperate, Bingo does the only thing that he can think of: hires struggling actor Taiki Murata (Koichi Sato, The Last Ronin) and convinces him to play the part. The only problem is that Murata really believes that he is in a film, and he is so convincing that he inadvertently leads everyone into a gangland war.

The “magic hour” of the title is a film term that refers to the time between dusk and nightfall, when the last lingering rays of light from a setting sun give an unearthly glow to the scene. Mitani rather knowingly based his film around this concept, in fact trapping his tale inside a kind of time bubble of a non-Japanese town of the 1920s or 1930s. The town he has constructed for the film is, in fact, a lavish set the kind of which is rarely seen in modern cinema, let alone Japanese cinema, giving the film the same otherworldly aura that “magic hour” is said to give photography. Early in the film, the waitress, Natsuko (Haruka Ayase) actually observes: “Doesn’t this remind you of a film set?”. The Magic Hour is a kind of throwback to the screwball comedies of the era that it clearly admires, filtered by way of Paper Moon, Billy Wilder and Woody Allen^[1]. It’s a lighthearted affair, with a ridiculous premise at its core, and these are just some of the many reasons to fall in love with Mitani’s now classic comedy.

Like a number of Mitani film before it, it may go on a little longer than it needs to, but anything this fun warrants extra time spent on it. Toshiyuki Nishida, best known outside of Japan for playing Pigsy in the popular Monkey TV series, recalls his hammy origins despite being nominated for ten Japanese Academy Awards and winning two of them. His affable cluelessness sells the seriously ridiculous high concept of the film to the point of believability, and the ease at which Satoshi Tsumabuki slips into the frustrated “straight man” role shows why his committment to diverse roles has seen his star rapidly rise in the last decade, not to mention why he was cast as the Exceedingly Handsome Guy in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.

Fans of classic cinema will find much to enjoy in The Magic Hour. In addition to Mitani’s regular cast of characters, such as Shingo Katori returning as his role from Suite Dreams, Mitani has constructed several films within a film. At least one of these films, called Kuroi Hyaku-ichi-nin no Onna parodies or follows esteemed director Kon Ichikawa’s Kuroi Ju-nin no Onna, and stars veteran Kiichi Nakai (The Burmese Harp) and Yuki Anami (Ponyo). Indeed, Ichikawa appears in the main feature briefly as the director of the parody film in his last appearance before his death in 2008. The film pays tribute to him during the credits, but the best tribute to him is the film itself, as a proud salute to the masters of Japanese cinema and the legacy of their work.

[stextbox id=”custom”]A joyous celebration of cinema new and old in another hilarious comedy from the King.[/stextbox]

[1]. Yamasaki, R. (2008) “The films of Mitani Kōki: Intertextuality and comedy in contemporary Japanese cinema“. New Voices. Retrived 13 November 2011.

The Magic Hour is screening on 18 November (Sydney) and 30 November (Melbourne) 2011 at the 15th Japanese Film Festival in Australia.

November 13, 2011