Viewing 'JTMaruyama'

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2005-04-26 11:31:10 (2005-04-26 11:32:19, 2005-04-26 11:31:10)
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2, 2005-04-29 12:11:51, 2005-04-29 13:26:13, 0,
Movies submitted (4)
Battle Royale (2000)
Kinji Fukasaku never disappoints when taking on interesting projects. YAGYU CONSPIRACY (1978), MESSAGE FROM SPACE (1978), DAY OF RESURRECTION (aka VIRUS 1980), and SAMURAI REINCARNATION (1981) are just some of his eclectic and curious body of work. Enter Fukasaku's BATTLE ROYALE, a bloody and violent story about a future Japan that sacrifices its youth in the name of stability and peace. The outrageous premise of the story involves a government sponsored lottery that randomly selects a class of Junior High School/High School students to enter a contest called BATTLE ROYALE. BATTLE ROYALE is basically a gladiatorial style event where students must kill each other to win their freedom. The catch however is that only one student can be allowed to live and if any others survive, then all the contestants will be eliminated via explosive collars around their necks. This makes for continual conflict as friends, rivals and lovers kill each other in order to survive. BATTLE ROYALE has received much criticism and interest due to its no-holds-barred portrayal of teens killing indiscriminately and its vicious tone but in retrospect this may have been overblown as the violence level isn't as graphic as others have claimed it to be.
Bounce Ko Gal (1997)
Junko (Sato Hitomi), Raku (Sato Yasue) and Lisa (Okamoto Rikiko) are three Japanese teens who find friendship while trying to survive all the temptations and dangers of modern life in Tokyo. At first glance, Masato Harada's "Bounce Ko Gals" appears as if to be a film condemning the youth of Japan as being selfishly "hedonistic" and "spoiled" but during the course of the film we find that like all teens across the globe these kids still have dreams, goals and ambitions and that they still value the same things as their parents do (friendship, loyalty, success and trust).
House (1977)
A group of naive college friends known only by their odd "pet names" take a weekend trip to a remote mansion in the woods where they soon find themselves assaulted by a strange and evil mystical force that has taken over the "house". While comparisons to Tim Burton's 1988 film "Beetlejuice" are understandable (Obayashi incorporates a lot of the same type of gothic imagery and campy visuals as Burton), a more closer match would be to Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead" series (which it surprisingly predates by more than a couple of years). Like Raimi, Obayashi infuses "House" with an abundance of over-the-top visuals and clever SFX effects. It is amazing how Obayashi is able to do all this using 1977 visual effects techniques as opposed to the current trend of CGI. While a lot of the effects may seem pretty crude to today's generation of viewers, "House" none-the-less is fairly enjoyable on a visual level.
Akai Tenshi (1966)
While most Japanese movie fans may be familiar with director Masumura Yasuzo's eerie "Moju" (AKA Blind Beast; 1969), "Akai Tenshi" (Eng. Lit. - Red Angel) is one of the director's more somber films. Set against the backdrop of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937) Masumura focuses on the life of a newly transferred Japanese Army medical nurse Nishi Sakura (Wakao Ayako) and the horrors she sees and experiences as she tries to cope with the human casualties of that senseless war. In the course of her duties Sakura befriends the stoic doctor/surgeon Dr. Okabe (Ashida Shinsuke) who is a Chief Medical Officer for the Army. Although much older than she, Sakura finds herself hopelessly in love with the doctor whom strangely reminds her of her own father who had passed away when she was a child. To escape the realities of the war, Okabe has become addicted to morphine, which he has Sakura administer. Eventually Sakura helps Okabe break this addiction and soon becomes his lover. The two lovers are soon transferred to the frontline where they have to tend to a group of cholera-infected soldiers. Can their love survive the slowly escalating conflicts surrounding them? While the film touches upon a number of exploitative elements, it is surprisingly very conservative in its handling and depictions of the more salacious aspects (there is very little nudity and the sex scenes are done tastefully and without the usual gratuitousness expected from these films). The film definitely does not condone the acts of the Japanese Military of the time and goes out of its way to show the human casualties of the conflict, often in very graphic detail. War is hell and this film hammers that point across in its depictions of the war wounded and the psychological trauma these soldiers suffer.