NYCIFF ’24: Kensuke’s Kingdom

This Michael Morpurgo novel is sort of like Island of the Blue Dolphins with primates. You can also think of it much like The Cay, but in this case, the pre-teen boy is marooned with an elderly Japanese soldier and a dog (who is definitely a trade-up from a cat). Either way, young Michael will learn a lot about mother nature’s creatures and human nature in Neil Boyle & Kirk Hendry’s animated adaptation of Morpugo’s Kensuke’s Kingdom, which screens during the 2024 New York International Children’s Film Festival.

After they both lost their jobs, Michael’s parents decided the responsible thing to do would be buying a boat and sailing around the world, with him and his sister. Their logic is hard to follow (isn’t school supposed to be important for kids?), but this is a movie, so, fine, so be it. Yet, it turns out to be a questionable decision when Michael and his dog Stella are washed overboard during a storm.

Miraculously, both Michael and Stella land on the beach of a remote desert island. Without any visible means of foraging for food or fresh water, they would die were it not for the provisions mysteriously left for them each morning. Despite his mercy, Kensuke wants nothing to do with the boy and his dog. When they do finally meet, Michael’s awkward clumsiness angers the old Japanese man. However, an understanding grows between them, especially when Michael deduces the fate of Kensuke’s family in Nagasaki. They will also join forces to protect the island’s orangutans and gibbons from evil outsiders.

Morpurgo’s story (from the author of War Horse and Private Peaceful) is very much in the tradition of the aforementioned young adult novels, but the island setting and the primate characters make it particularly well suited for an animated treatment. The lush tropical environment and Kensuke’s Ewok-baroque bamboo home are visually striking. The animals also look great. Honestly, it is hard to go wrong when you give the audience a clever dog and a bunch of monkeys.

Japan Cuts ’20: Fukushima 50

Thanks to the fifty brave plant workers, the 2011 Fukushima nuclear emergency was not Chernobyl. It wasn’t Apollo 13 either, thanks to irresponsible behavior of government and utility executives. Nevertheless, the courage and sacrifice of those who stayed behind at the Fukushima Daiichi power station has made them folk heroes. Their story is told in Setsuro Wakamatsu’s Fukushima 50, which screens as the official centerpiece of the Japan Society’s Japan Cuts Festival of New Japanese Film (all virtual this year).

Initially, 50 of the 800 Daiichi plant employees stayed, but eventually their ranks swelled to 580, including firefighters and sub-contractors. Fifty is still a nice round number. It wasn’t really anyone’s fault. The combined effects of the earthquake and tsunami (the shifting tectonic plates actually lowered the protective sea-barrier) just set off a chain of disastrous events. Of course, site superintendent Masao Yoshida is best qualified to lead the crisis response, but he is constantly micro-managed and second-guessed by Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) executives in the capitol, as well as the Prime Minister’s office.

Fortunately, he can rely on the cool head and expert advice of his old colleague, Toshio Isaki, the shift supervisor. He was on-duty in the control room of the most critical reactor. It will also be Isaki who assigns “suicide squads” of veteran employees in a desperate attempt to relieve pressure on the containment facilities and cool the core.

Fukushima 50 is an unabashedly old-fashioned, but immediately gripping ripped-from-the-headlines disaster movie. There are some reasonably impressive catastrophe effects in the first act, but most of the tension comes from the claustrophobic setting and steadily escalating stakes.

NYAFF ’17: Rage

It’s all about the red herrings. Three young men happen to bear a resemblance to the vague descriptions of a notorious killer following his plastic surgery. In one case, it is because he is indeed Yamaguchi, the murderer of a suburban couple. The other two have the misfortune of being socially awkward and having the wrong kind of look. Those who had just started to trust the three mystery loners will begin to suspect they might be the killer in Lee Sang-il’s Rage (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

You do not have to explain the evil men are capable of to Yohei Maki. He has just rescued his runaway daughter from enslavement in a sex club, where she was horribly abused. He is trying to provide a low stress environment that resembles normalcy for Aiko, so he doesn’t object when she commences a relationship with his quiet, new part-timer, Tetsuya Tashiro. Frankly, he is probably the only young man in their provincial seaside town who will look past her notorious past.

Meanwhile, in Tokyo, Yuma Fujita has a decidedly unromantic meeting with the sort-of-willing Naoto Onishi is a gay bath house. Despite staying resolutely in the closet as far as his business associates and college friends are concerned, Fujita takes the unsophisticated Onishi home with him. While he successfully grooms the young outsider into the sort of companion he desires, he never fully trusts him.

Our third suspect will be Shingo Tanaka, a backpacker squatting in an abandoned bunker on a small, deserted isle in the Okinawas. Izumi Komiya and Tatsuya Chinen happen upon him when they arrive one day for a picnic. Unfortunately, their story will take terrible detour when Komiya is assaulted by two G.I.s late one night on the streets of Naha.

It is remarkable how convincingly Lee’s adaptation of Shuichi Yoshida’s novel casts suspicion on each of the three lone wolves. Lee never really gives us the clues to unmask the killer on our own, because the whole point is to experience the uncertainty and paranoia. Tsuyoshi Imai’s editing rather brilliantly serves that purpose.

Ken Watanabe also once again proves he is one of the best in the business when not making massive Hollywood tent-poles. There is a poignant simplicity to his performance as Maki, the desperately concerned father that will hit viewers on a deep level. Likewise, the deceptive power of Aoi Miyzaki portrayal of Aiko Maki make the coastal Chiba segments the most emotionally involving. Still, Suzu Hirose is heartbreakingly innocent and vulnerable as Komiya.

Ironically, Go Ayano and Kenichi Matsuyama are largely forced into one-note performances Onishi and Tashiro to maintain suspicions, whereas Mirai Moriyama is allowed more flamboyance as Tanaka. Poor Pierre Taki is admirably salty and world weary as Kunihisa Nanjo, the senior detective working the original double-homicide, but he is largely crowded out of his screen time by the three suspects and their story arcs. It really is tough to be a public servant, isn’t it?

Frankly, Lee drags out the three moments of truth far longer than necessary. Still, it is a smart, bracing film that manages to be both forgiving of human weakness and grimly cautionary regarding human nature’s capacity for sin and violence. Very highly recommended, Rage screens this Wednesday (7/5) at the Walter Reade, as part of the 2017 NYAFF.

Juzo Itami’s Tampopo

We call any old instant noodles ramen here in the West, but in Japan, there are very definite rules as to what constitutes ramen and how it should be prepared. It is a deceptively simple but nourishing dish, like many great Japanese films. When it released in 1985, it launched the culinary movie trend best represented by the likes of Babette’s Feast, Le Grand Chef, and Eat Drink Man Woman. It also predates the other great “noodle neo-western,” A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop. You will learn to respect and crave ramen in Juzo Itami’s newly 4K-restored Tampopo (trailer here), which opens this Friday at Film Forum.

While his partner Gorō drives, Gun reads a book of ramen reminisces that makes both of them hungry. Fatefully, they stop at Tampopo’s ramen restaurant. Frankly, her ramen is not very good, but Gorō rather enjoys her company. In fact, when a thuggish contractor creates a scene, Gorō two-fistedly settles it outside, despite being out-numbered. Thus, an ambiguously romantic friendship is born between Tampopo and her champion. As an unlikely ramen expert, he also starts coaching her in ways to improve her noodles and broth. Soon, he recruits a rag-tag team of specialists to lend their particular expertise and eccentricity.

In between Tampopo’s worst-to-first campaign, Itami intersperses loopy food-related interludes, including a scene involving a grocer stalking a serial produce-squeezer that plays like a send-up of the supermarket scene in Stallone’s Cobra, except Tampopo predates that film as well. Periodically, Itami returns to an unnamed Yakuza in hiding with his lover, whom he sexually relates to through food.

Like so many of the foodie movies that followed it, Tampopo definitely uses food as a metaphor for life and love. However, few films are as willing to be as randomly goofy as Itami’s ramen opera. Clearly, there are things that happen solely because Itami thought they were funny—which they were and still are. Arguably, he raises silliness to a high art form. It is hard to imagine a film like this making it through focus groups and studio note-writing screenings today, so it is enormously refreshing to have it back again.

Amid all the lunacy, Itami’s wife and muse Nobuko Miyamoto shines like an Ozu heroine as the title noodle purveyor. Tsutomu Yamazaki is wonderfully sly and hardnosed as Gorō, like a vintage Clint Eastwood. A ridiculously young looking Ken Watanabe adds earnest vigor as Gun, while a relatively youthful Kôji Yakusho becomes the symbolic face of the film as the Yakuza in the white suit. In fact, Tampopo is absolutely bursting at the seams with fine supporting performances, in both the main narrative and the periodic interludes.

You just can’t see films like this anymore, because screenwriters now all read the same books that tell them how to structure a script, literally beat-for-beat. Tampopo breaks all the rules and it is a much richer viewing experience as a result. The humor is often outrageous, but it holds up quite well over the years and crossing cultures. It is funny, but it is also acutely human. Indeed, there are good reasons why so many ramen restaurants were renamed “Tampopo” after the film released internationally. Highly recommended for culinary movie fans and Nipponophiles, the 4K restoration of Tampopo opens this Friday (10/21) in New York, at Film Forum.

The Sea of Trees: Gus Van Sant Stumbles Around Aokigahara

Yet again, another film dramatizes the dangers posed to humanity by forests, yet refuses to take up the cause of deforestation. In this case, those woods are truly lethal. We are talking about the Aokigahara forest below Mount Fuji, considered the world’s top suicide destination site (previously seen in the horror movie, The Forest). An American has come to do what depressed people do here, but a New Agey woo-woo encounter might change his mind in Gus Van Sant’s The Sea of Trees (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

If you are in this movie, you probably don’t have much to live for. Arthur Brennan certainly feels that way, at least initially. As we learn during an interminable series of flashbacks, Brennan is wracked with guilt over the death of his wife Joan, even though she was a real pill up until she was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. Frankly, his suicidal despair just doesn’t follow from the long agonizing scenes of marital discord Van Sant mercilessly inflicts on his viewers.

However, just as Brennan is about to put the audience out of its misery, he stumbles across the badly wounded Takumi Nakamura, a laid-off salaryman, who entered the forest with similar intentions. With their survival instincts kicking in, Brennan and Nakamura will work together to weather the harsh elements and hopefully find their way out of the supernaturally dense woods.

Actually, the film sort of perks up during the survivalist second act, but it eventually descends into a maudlin orgy of on-the-nose symbolism and eye-rolling sentimentality. Is there really a Nakamura with Brennan or is he a psychological projection or maybe even a helpful spirit? Oh, but it is so ambiguous.

So basically, Sea of Trees is Swiss Army Man without the fart jokes. No question about it, the best thing about the film are the trees, which cinematographer Kasper Tuxen’s wide angles manage to make look both serene and sinister. Matthew McConaughey struggles valiantly, wisely taking an understated approach to the overwrought material on his plate, but it is a losing effort. As Nakamura, Ken Watanabe looks like he is counting the seconds until he can leave the dank, muddy forest. In her not so brief scenes as Joan Brennan, Naomi Watts seems to be auditioning for a revival August: Osage County, but she is still a thousand times more subtle and reserved than Meryl Streep. Yet perhaps most baffling, emerging Japanese star Hyunri (who was absolutely revelatory in The Voice of Water) has a throwaway walk-on-cameo as a flight attendant.

Sea is one of those films whose unforgiving reception at Cannes has given it a notorious vibe. All the ruckus tomato-throwing often creates a perversely sympathetic climate among domestic critics for such films (like Only God Forgives), until we get a chance to see them. Granted, Sea is not wildly offensive, but the Cannes press corps still wasn’t far wrong. Not recommended, The Sea of Trees opens today (8/26) in New York, at the Village East.

Shanghai: Gong Li Lights Up the Foreign Concessions

We tend to forget Japan fought with the Allies in WWI. Afterward, British and American interests were just as determined to exploit the Foreign Concession system as their Japanese counterparts. Yet, Shanghai’s complicated and contradictory multinational governance made it one of only two completely open safe harbors for Jewish refugees during the so-called “Solitary Island” period. Obviously, the city is the perfect place to conduct espionage. Unfortunately, one of America’s best agents has just been murdered, but his friend and colleague intends is out to find the killer and make him pay in Mikael Håfström’s Shanghai (trailer here), which opens this Friday in select theaters.

Paul Soames has assumed the cover of a National Socialist-sympathizing journalist, but he is really a democracy and freedom loving Naval Intelligence officer. However, his friend Conner was the true idealist. Yet, his prescient warnings about National Socialist and Imperial Japanese aggression were routinely ignored. Soames soon deduces Conner seduced Sumiko, the opium-addicted mistress of Tanaka, the police captain of the Japanese Concession and more importantly the local intelligence chief. Now suspiciously missing, Tanaka is turning the city inside out looking for her.

Soames’ search for Sumiko brings him into the orbit of gentleman gangster Anthony Lan-Ting and his society wife Anna. Lan-Ting has accepted an alliance with the Japanese for the sake of business, but his wife has secretly risen through the ranks of the resistance. Soames ingratiates himself with both Lan-Tings when he saves Anthony from an attack on Japanese officers organized by his wife, but executed without the surgical precision she had expected. She genuinely loves Lan-Ting, but like the wife of the local German military contractor, she finds Soames jolly fun to flirt with. Yet, as Tanaka cranks up the pressure, the attraction shared by her and Soames becomes more seriously ambiguous.

If you watch Shanghai soon after Zhang Yimou’s Coming Home, you will be astonished by Gong Li’s range. While she just rips viewers’ hearts out as the achingly tragic mother in Zhang’s literary masterwork, she plays Håfström’s noir heroine with all the va-va-voom you could ever hope for. She makes the screen smolder, even opposite a little twerp like John Cusack. Yet, she also compellingly projects the inner turmoil of a woman whose loyalties are divided between her husband and her country. It is a big, juicy, psychologically complex role, but Gong has the skills to pull it off.

Cusack just is not right for a Rick Blaine-ish romantic role, but fortunately, his gee whiz, fish-out-of-water persona works well enough for most of his solo scenes navigating the various intrigues. Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays Conner with characteristic intensity in his flashbacks (too bad he wasn’t the one paired up with Gong), but the ever-reliable David Morse is grossly under-employed as Soames’ embassy contact.

Of course, Gong owns the film, but Ken Watanabe basically walks away with every scene she is not in. He is hardly another Captain Renault, but he is no Maj. Strasser either. Watanabe rather keeps us guessing, humanizing Tanaka, while playing his extremes to the hilt. Strangely, Chow Yun-fat is the one most conspicuously short-changed for screen time, but you can rectify that by watching The Last Tycoon, a natural companion film that focuses on a similar gangster-turned reluctant patriot. Unfortunately, Rinko Kikuchi is just squandered as the seldom seen Sumiko.

Attentive eyes will also spot future-star-in-the-making Andy On as one of Anna Lan-Ting’s comrades-in-arms. His appearances are brief, but his screen presence and action chops still come through loud-and-clear. Also look for Benedict Wong, who is quite good in the small but significant role of Juso Kita, Soames’ informer.

Håfström shifts gears from big historical set pieces to noir intimacy relatively adroitly. Hossein Amini’s screenplay intelligently incorporates the circumstances of the Foreign Concessions, as well as the events leading up to Pearl Harbor. Although he is clearly riffing on Casablanca, he wisely avoids paralleling the Bogart classic beat-for-beat. As a result, it all works quite well, in a pleasingly old fashioned kind of way.

Frankly, it is rather baffling why Shanghai’s release has been so long-deferred. In the intervening time, On’s star has risen, but Cusack’s has fallen, yet Gong remains on top of her game. She is more than enough reason to see Shanghai, along with Julie Weiss’s elegant costuming, Watanabe’s slyly villainous turn, and an unusual deep and accomplished supporting cast (blink and you miss Downton’s Hugh Bonneville). Recommended for fans of historical espionage thrillers, Shanghai opens this Friday (10/2) in key markets.

Japan Cuts ’14: Unforgiven

For Jubei Kamata, it is the end of an era—the Tokugawa Era. The former samurai-assassin used to kill with impunity and then he simply killed to stay alive, but he gave up killing at the behest of his beloved late wife. However, killing is a skill you never forget. Reluctantly, Kamata digs up his sword for a final violent errand in Sang-il Lee’s Unforgiven (trailer here), an inspired cross-cultural remake of Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning western, which screens tomorrow as part of this year’s Japan Cuts: the New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Film.

In a remote frontier village on Hokkaido Island, two ranchers brutally disfigure Natsume, a young prostitute. Rather than prosecute them, local police chief Ichizo Oishi merely requires the former samurai pay restitution to the brothel owner. Outraged by his callous disregard for Natsume’s suffering, her fellow prostitutes pool their money to place a bounty on the offending settlers.

Old Kingo Baba intends to collect that bounty, so he tries to recruit his old samurai comrade Kamata, a.k.a. “Jubei the Killer.” Already haunted by his past carnage, Kamata dearly wishes to keep his promise renouncing violence. Unfortunately, a disastrous harvest leaves him no other option to provide for his young son and daughter. Soon, Kamata and Baba are joined by Goro Sawada, an impulsive would-be outlaw, who also happens to be half Ainu (the indigenous people of Hokkaido and Sakhalin). As it happens, Kamata’s late wife was also Ainu, giving the two men a distant kinship and a shared outage at the Meji government’s repression of Ainu customs.

Arguably, the Ainu element further deepens the Unforgiven story beyond the Eastwood’s revisionist critique of a violent, misogynistic American west. Closely paralleling the original, Lee’s adaptation perfectly fits within the rough and tumble early Meiji northern provinces, where many former Shogunate ronin sought refuge.

Ken Watanabe (who starred in Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima) is impressively hard-nosed and world weary standing in for his former director. Akira Emoto’s nervous energy playing Baba is a bit of a departure from Morgan Freeman’s analog, but it works well in context. Koichi Sato is smoothly fierce in the Hackman mold and Shiori Kutsuna is devastating as the disfigured (but still beautiful) Natsume. Yet, it is evidently still hard to get the balance of exuberance and angst right for Sawada/the Schofield Kid.

Cinematographer Norimichi Kasamatsu gives the Hokkaido vistas the full John Ford treatment, while Lee invests the action sequences with a tragically operatic vibe. It is a gritty period production that represents a triumph return to the tradition of Jidaigeki films and westerns riffing and channeling each other. Frustratingly, it is also a reminder of how rare the contemporary western has become in Hollywood, even though Japanese cinema continues to find creative grist in its national history. Highly recommended for fans of moody westerns and samurai films, Unforgiven screens tomorrow (7/15) at the Japan Society as part of the 2014 Japan Cuts.