Why are Japanese films so terrible?

Sword Of Doom - I really liked this until the ending because I've seen too many films where it ends with a haunted samurai freaking out and lashing out; such an interested situation is set up and feels kind of wasted. Nakadai's creepy smile is hilarious.

New Tsukamoto
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ISetFZ3-fI

This YT site has quite a good selection of movies from the 1920s-40s.

http://www.youtube.com/user/modernrocksong/

amazon uk has the BluRay version of The Human Condition trilogy for £15 at the moment (i paid £40 for the dvds a couple of years ago). it's 9.5 hours in total and i enjoyed it, same director as Kwaidan and Harakiri.

this is one of those classic ilx thread titles *chef kiss*

I watched Sakuran by Mika Ninagawa yesterday, which is about a delinquent courtesan in 18th century Japan. The plot’s a bit eh but the visuals were stunning - lots of red, lots of beautiful goldfish and gorgeous clothes and hair. It’s based on a manga series which can be difficult to translate into a film.

I watched this a few weeks after watching Helter Skelter, a later film by the same director. I’d read the manga this one was based on and it’s a favourite so I really enjoyed it. Again, it’s visually stunning but it handles the themes of the source material really well and it’s a better piece. It’s not quite as full-on on the body horror as the book, but it’s a really faithful adaptation. It’s got a great cast as well and is well worth your time.

I'm looking for recommendations for some good, gritty 70s cinema, Action/Thriller/Yakuza/Crime/Avant/Samurai, that kind of thing, thanks!

not really my era but...

https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2011/12/the-25-best-yakuza-movies/26

that last one, Yakusa Papers, is the one i see recommended most frequently.

dang, 25 yakuza flicks and no seijun suzuki! i've only seen tokyo drifter and branded to kill by him but i recommend if you're ok with something a little weird! (that list def doesn't have a problem with "weird" if it has fuckin dead or alive on it)

oh fuck there is a suzuki film my bad. i'm new to reading

anyone know these '58-61 'new wave' films in a NY retro?

https://www.japansociety.org/page/programs/film/the-other-japanese-new-wave

Can we do something about this lousy thread title, or start a new one?

Anyway, what a series in NYC, Oct-Nov

https://filmforum.org/series/shitamachi-tales-of-downtown-tokyo

https://www.diabolikdvd.com/product/solid-metal-nightmares/
Brilliant Shinya Tsukamoto box set for americans/region A viewers

The UK equivalent is smaller as Third Window already has a bunch of his films on bluray
http://thirdwindowfilms.com/films/tsukamoto-killing-haze-denchu-kozo/

I’ve no idea which geographies this will work for but the travelling Japan Film Festival has some Japanese indie movies streaming for free. Haven’t watched any of them yet.

https://www.japanesefilmfest.org/streaming/

I feel like this thread title is a classic early-ILX challop, we deserve to be reminded of it

anyone seen any Yuzo Kawashima? Restorations in NYC:

https://www.japansociety.org/page/programs/film/yuzo-kawashima-x-ayako-wakao🕸

The UK Shinya Tsukamoto set from Third Window

Adventure Of Denchu Kozo - I think this is his second officially released film and I wasn't sure I'd ever see it. It's about a boy with an electric pole in his back time traveling and fighting vampires in the future. It's very of its time, lots of goth and cyberpunk imagery, post-punk soundtrack and the techniques used in the first two Tetsuo films.

Haze - Nice to know more people will be seeing this now. I've seen it a few times and this time I watched it with commentary (trusting that the normal audio probably works). It's a claustrophobic nightmare and I wonder why more people haven't attempted things like this. Probably his most ambiguous film, Tom Mes helps us by pointing out clues about buddhist hell (if I remember correctly) and japanese folklore. I never guessed any of this but always loved it anyway.

Killing - Some are calling it a deconstructionist Samurai film. Think about the samurai recruiting from Seven Samurai being much smaller, bleaker and leading straight to disaster. It's a normal length film but feels like a short film; pretty good.
Musician Chu Ishikawa died during the making of the film so Tsukamoto explored his unreleased archives and found appropriate pieces to complete the soundtrack and it completely works. Sad that this will be their last film together, unless Tsukamoto decides to keep utilizing what Ishikawa has left behind.

Region A only, hope that means a UK release because I have an old Region 1 dvd

https://www.mondo-macabro.com/mondo-macabro-blu-ray-limited-edition/gemini-limited-edition.html

https://thebedlamfiles.com/film/the-enchantment/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo3cxt3D89o
Pretty good, one scene particularly reminiscent of Hitchcock's Marnie. The whole channel is worth checking out, I've always wanted to see Tokiwa and Crazy Family (which might have a chance on bluray in the coming years but I'd probably buy it) and I'll probably watch them in the next two weeks.

The Crazy Family is okay, it's quite funny, the soundtrack is good and I'm almost certain that it was a big influence on Visitor Q, but it seems longer than it should be to me.
I've found Ishii a very diverse director and my enjoyment of his films has been very variable. Some of his fans seem to really dislike Isn't Anyone Alive? but that was probably my favorite, surprisingly enjoyable for a film with so much dicking around and the hilarious cassette message justifies the whole thing.

I need help, film experts! I'm remembering a movie that has a crane shot of an old fashioned movie palace early in the movie. A sort of omniscient narrator is addressing the audience as a character outside of the movie theater. I think that this introduction is a frame and a pretext to go back in time to begin the story. I'm not sure if the metacinema motifs continue.

The movie might be Japanese. It shares some of the style of certain movies directed by Juzo Itami or Nobuhiko Obayashi. To me, it looks like it's from the late 80s or the 90s, recalling movies from an earlier time period.

I might have the decade and the country wrong, but I don't think I do.

I think it's Sada!

Definitely Sada! This old Variety review confirms it. I liked this movie and you should watch it if you haven't.

Meanwhile, I'm watching Obayashi's Labyrinth of Cinema on Mubi, which is why the opening from Sada got stuck in my head in the first place!

why are Mizoguchi Blu Rays so hard to come by in UK, I want to watch Genroku Chushingura :(
just look at this shit https://www.amazon.co.uk/Late-Mizoguchi-BLU-RAY-Masters-Cinema/dp/B00EZT3KYA

i have the dvd version of that, was £36 in 2011.

also have the 47 Ronin thing you mention, again dvd, bought on eBay from Korea, based on the packaging. it was quite cheap but looks legit.

I *think* the bulk of that Mizoguchi box set can be gotten on the Eureka 'Masters of Cinema' series, which are DVD only (kind of a twofer deal) but they were still individually expensive, iirc I paid through the nose for Akasen Chitai.

the dvd version is just a box made up of the 4 twofers, identical packaging even (i had sansho dayo and then bought the box).

i think the BRs weren't available individually (i never buy BRs if i have a choice so i may be wrong there). and the box design is different - the original dvd box design made it a bit more obvious it was MoC.

Even that Artificial Eye Mizoguchi Blu-Ray box that I would see all the time is up to over £120, in some places.

(i have that one too!)

yeah, it's maddening when there's the odd film that's out of print. i reckon if you're patient they'll be available again in some form, sooner or later. i mean they must look at the prices and can see the demand.

like Tokyo Olympiad is newly avialable, and Black Rain, albeit as part of a 3 disk box where i already have the other two... still waiting on Story Of A Tenement Gentleman and The Idiot.

Just SOME of the great films we'll be putting out on bluray over the next year...
Watch this space! pic.twitter.com/3USyI0WZai

— Third Window Films (@thirdwindow) July 20, 2021

Finally we get Crazy Thunder Road!

https://www.japansociety.org/arts-and-culture/films/japan-cuts-festival-of-new-japanese-film

lol, I've never opened this thread because I didn't realize y'all were celebrating Opposite Day up in here. Gonna have to gather my thoughts now.

there's a whole series of these threads - why are french films terrible, why are italian films terrible - and they get revived to talk abt those national cinemas, can't say it's my fave ILX running gag

(especially as I had posted that Third Window info in the boutique blu ray thread)

Yeah, I've ignored every one of those threads because I thought they were just full of stupid + blinkered opinions. We clearly need to step up our marketing acumen, people.

Ooh, I've wanted to check out Funky Forest for a while now, it looks ridiculous.

I agree that bumping "why are x films terrible" to discuss cinema from different countries isn't a great idea, but it seems to happen a fair amount. Start new threads with better titles, people!

> why are french films terrible

the french film title is actually funny, expecially if you do it in the accent and with a little shrug.

French films are shit. Porquoi?

still annoyed about lack of cheap region 2 copies of tokyo olympiad. the timing is ideal

Could rename the threads but I'm kind of attached to the "why are british films shit?" title despite liking a lot of them.

Nihon no eiga wa warui desu. Nan de?

bet that's wrong

I'm always against renaming threads unless it's a correction, an addition (e.g. an RIP) or removing something offensive. It makes the older parts of the thread less comprehensible, and I also have an attachment to keeping ilx history preserved where possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkaOz48cq2g

Nihon no eiga wa warui desu. Nan de?

I'd probably use "ga" instead of "wa" just to make it flow better, and "doushite" or "naze" are more often used for a singular "why?"

RFI: film in which a ne’er-do-well artist maudit gets something like a doctor’s note from one of his girlfriends saying she caught tuberculosis from him and calls it a “love letter.” I thought the title was even Love Letter, but that seems to be the title of a big blockbuster I don’t remember seeing.

I thought it might be part of Seijun Suzuki‘s Taishō Trilogy but haven’t been able to watch one of those in a while, and plot summaries didn’t seem to line up.

kurosawa's Scandal and Drunken Angel both have TB patients in them but i can't remember enough of the details to know if it's one of those

Drunken Angel was my first thought but I'm pretty sure it's not that.

Okay it was called Love Letter in English, in Japanese 恋文, the 1985 one directed by Tatsumi Kumashiro. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-08-29-ca-14527-story.html
Think I got the plot a tiny bit mixed up with something else as well.

Which probably was his Appassionata, which showed Out of Competition at Cannes this year!

Speaking of movies you can't remember the name of... Yoshihiro Tatsumi's graphic memoirs A Drifting Life mentioned a movie where a store owner was told that one day people will come in the store and kill him. His family then fear every odd customer that comes in. Tatsumi mentioned that critics weren't fond of it but audiences remember it. I no longer have the book and I don't remember the title. Does it sound familiar to anyone?