Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 6th, 2009
Daisato (director/co-writer Hitosi Matumoto) is having his daily life filmed by a TV crew. This life is pretty depressing. He doesn't make much money, his wife has left him, and his neighbours hate him. His job isn't exactly low-stress, either: he is Big Man Japan, a hereditary job that involves defending Japan against monster attacks. So whenever he gets the call, he has to run to the nearest power plant, get himself zapped until he grows into a 50-foot giant, and do battle with various bizarre creatures (one looks like a plucked chicken with a huge eyeball/penis appendage). But though he does his best, his ratings are down, his show is broadcast in the dead hours of the morning, his agent appears to be taking advantage of him, and there's a new monster in town that mops the floor with him on their first encounter.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 23rd, 2006
Synopsis
Masahiro Motoki plays a well-to-do doctor, very much concerned with class difference, eager to distance himself from slum-dwellers, whom he regards as barely human. He is deeply in love with his fiancée, a woman suffering from amnesia. His life collapses in chaos when his parents are murdered by a prowler, who then throws him down a dry well. This prowler turns out to be his twin, who proceeds to take over his identity.
One hell of a rattling score gets things off to a disturbing s...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 26th, 2006
Manny Coto almost saved Star Trek. After 2 years of Rick Berman’s floundering on Enterprise, Coto came in and gave the show its legs. It was too little too late, of course. The show would be canned when most critics, myself included, thought the show was finally clicking. This near resurrection should come as no surprise to anyone who has seen Odyssey 5. Coto created this Showtime series. Superior f/x and a compelling story arc drove this cable cousin to Stargate SG-1.
The astronauts of the Space Shu...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 11th, 2006
It’s rather stunning to discover that My Neighbor Totoro was made way back in 1988, long before the days of CG and all automatic illustration. And perhaps that animation does detract from the overall experience from the film, but if that’s the only reason that it would be a problem, then people simply need to get their taste in order.
In another film from legendary Japanese film director Hayao Miyazaki (who made the Oscar-winning film Spirited Away), the film follows sisters Mei and Satsuki, w...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 1st, 2006
Synopsis
Plenty of Japanese horror films have storylines that vary from the oblique to the opaque. Pulse is no exception, so forgive me if this synopsis is a bit confusing (or confused). An internet website offers visitors the chance to see actual ghosts. Viewing the footage seems to make one vulnerable to an actual visitation, and when someone encounters a ghost, that person withdraws from others, shunning all society, and becomes consumed by loneliness to the point of suicide or something ev...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 18th, 2005
Synopsis
Thankfully, as part of Criterion’s desire to be completists of the Akira Kurosawa collection, they have finally decided to release Ran on DVD. For the sake of time, I’ll include my thoughts of the film based on my review of the Kurosawa boxed set, which included a previous version of Ran:
In Kurosawa’s last outstanding film (inspired by “King Lear”), the aging Lord Hidetora Inchimonji decides to split his power equally among his three sons Taro, Jiro and Saburo. Saburo ques...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 18th, 2005
Synopsis
In Akira Kurosawa’s later years, it was almost criminal that a director with his resume was forced to practically beg for financing. Kurosawa was in the midst of a career drought, having made only two movies in almost 15 years with Dersu Uzala and Dodesukaden. This coming after a run of films that has proved influential to even today’s filmmakers. While Kurosawa did have to obtain foreign financing for his movies in later years, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, both of whom cite...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 9th, 2005
Synopsis
The Date crime family is unwillingly drawn into a mob war with the much more powerfulTendo group. This war disrupts the happy existence of one small sub-family, consisting of Muto,the boss more interested in his model planes than in crime, and his two loyal soldiers Seiji andYoshifumi. Muto promises to kill a high-ranking Tendo member to prove his worth, but Seijiknows he isn’t up to it. He arranges for Muto to be packed safely off to jail instead, and thenstages an attack ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 8th, 2005
Synopsis
Teenagers Mai and Yu have just become girlfriend and boyfriend when Mai is killed in atraffic accident. Her distraught father uses her digitized physical characteristics and memoriesto create an AI resurrection. The new Mai gradually becomes more and more human and fullysentient (think a digital Pinocchio), and she winds up in the Yu’s laptop. A megalomaniacal CEOwants the technology in order to download his own consciousness into the Net and thereby rulethe world. His mini...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 4th, 2004
Synopsis
A yakuza is charged with eliminating his violently unstable mentor. On the drive to do thedeed, said mentor is (apparently) accidentally killed. But then his body vanishes from the car ofour hero, who is then charged with finding the corpse and making absolutely sure the man isdead, or else. His search takes place in a town populated entirely of grotesques, from a man whohas the same repetitive phone conversation day after day, to another whose face half plaster-white, to a...
