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Reviews
Gyarakushî kaidou (2015)
Funny and engaging
Upon seeing the poor rating for this film, I was very surprised since I enjoyed it thoroughly. It was engaging and hilarious with good character development. Some people may call it strange at times, but for me that is part of its charm (And, no, I'm not one of those hipsters who likes weird things merely because they are weird). I would realistically give it an 8, but since other people have rated it so harshly without even leaving a review, I will do the opposite.
Tsumetai nettaigyo (2010)
Shock and gore but very little more
Love Exposure (by the same director) is one of my favourites of all time and so I was hoping for another cinematic treat. Unfortunately, this did not even come close. In fact, I found myself angry by the end of it and this was because I found the sexual violence disturbing, I did not buy into the plot twist, and most of the characters seemed unreal to me by the end of the film. These things ruined it for me.
I wouldn't complain about the depiction of sexual violence if the film had more depth to it, but if there was any worthy point, then I totally missed it. My Japanese partner watched it with me and told me she had been thinking that it might be offputting to some/many Westerners since they would not understand the aspects of Japanese culture which give this film different meanings. This was certainly part of the problem for me, but further to this, it was the fact that it seemed to try to be many things (black comedy, gory horror, thriller, psychological drama) but failed to bring them together well enough.
We Are the Strange (2007)
Thinking out of the box?
Being a fan of unusual movies, I decided to go and watch We Are the Strange when it was shown at Leeds Film Festival. Unfortunately, this movie is not strange in a good or interesting way. The plot is pretty much non-existent and if it wasn't for the lengthly character description at the beginning of the movie, it would be nothing more than complete confusion in cinematic form. Although the random mismatch of animation styles used in this movie creates a sense of chaos which is fitting to the world in which the film is based, this does not make for good watching and becomes repetitive very quickly.
Some people praise the mixture of animation styles and lack of a plot as 'thinking out of the box'. However, thinking out of the box is not always a good thing. For instance, if I decided to cook myself something new by combining elements of different world cuisines, the result might be: a fish, beef and pasta pie seasoned with typical Indian spices and topped off with a rich chocolate and Weetabix sauce. This would be thinking out of the box, but would anyone want to eat it?
All this movie achieves, is to portray its creator's (M dot Strange) self-indulgence. M dot Strange would have saved a lot of time, both for himself and others, if he had simply made the visuals for a five minute music video. There is an obvious reason why most people don't make whole movies by themselves - the results will be unwatchable!