Japanese Films

Illuvatar

I was wondering if anyone else was into these. I've watched Battle Royale 1 and 2 (both very good), also have seen Death Note 1 and 2 (even better movies). And wanted to know if anyone else knows of any good japanese films.

Dont be at yourself

Before this descends into the usual parade of Tartan releases and Takeshi Miike's back catalogue, I'd like to recommend two:

The Waterboys: A comedy about a group of loser high-school students who sign up to a boy's synchronised swimming team on account of the hot teacher, who quickly leaves to have a baby, consigning the boys to misery in the synchro team. Very funny, and great coreography! it was a huge phenomenon in Japan, spawning a TV series and inspiring real-life all-boy synchro-swim teams!

Tanpopo: This one's an old one, but highly recommended. It's about a trucker who helps a mother set up a Ramen restaurant, while being muscled by the yakuza and searching for the perfect ramen recipe. It's light-hearted drama, but there's something about it that just keeps you captivated.

netman

Well, all of the old Akira Kurosawa's films are well worth watching while we're speaking of back catalogues

There's also a lot of great Anime films, most notably works of Hayao Miyazaki.

damonjewel

Check out the original 'Ring' films. If you have BBC3 check out Johnathan Ross's show Japanorama, that will give you some great ideas of what to check out.

Running Bing

In recent times I think Korean cinema has produced the far stronger films but check out stuff from Ozu( not mad on what on Ozu from what I have seen but he is held in seriously high regard) and Kenji Mizoguchi's stuff is brilliant.


If your only looking for the more modern stuff like horror/extreme stuff then as NekkidBibleMan says you will find more than enough stuff from miike and the tartan asia extreme releases.

ActorSeeksJob

Some movies off the top of my head that I'd recommend

Save the Green Planet - strange + quirky movie which was surprisingly good!

Oldboy - amazing

Infernal Affairs - excellent movie all round, remade as The Departed, although i prefer IA. Excellent acting by the two lead roles, in particular Tony Leung.

Zatoichi - amazing samurai movie

Dont be at yourself

Only one of them is Japanese...

Placebo

Death note was DIRE !!!

watch the whole Chan-wook Park , revenge 'series' , 3 films all based on revenge. South korean.

Sympathy for Mr vengence
Oldboy
Sympathy for lady vengence

in order.. would be nice, YOU WILL NOT be dissapointed. You can rent them at LASER. probably get old boy in Xtravision

Casshern is a great action japense film/ Amazing sound track aswell
il post more later

faceman

I try to avoid comments like im into japanese films or im into subtitled films cos they are not genres by themselves. However I do enjoy some japanese director´s work but some is dire. Kurosawa is my fav.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

Hana and Alice, and All about lily chou chou
are two amazing japanese films.. well worth watching, just ****ing fantastic

johnny_ultimate

There are loads which have been mentioned many times before - Audition (superb - Id recommend this to anyone), the works of Kurosawa (Ran or Dreams in particular - probably amongst the most beautiful live action films ever made), Studio Ghibli films et al.

If you are looking for something a bit more obscure:
Ping Pong. Usually despise sports film but this one was extremely likable. A nice little quirky comedic drama, if you are into that sort of thing.
Anything by Satoshi Kon (animé director, check out the anime/manga forum).

Karl Hungus

Illuvatar wrote:

I was wondering if anyone else was into these. I've watched Battle Royale 1 and 2 (both very good), also have seen Death Note 1 and 2 (even better movies). And wanted to know if anyone else knows of any good japanese films.

Judging by your love of both (!) Battle Royale films, I think I'll probably forego the recommendations of the likes of Ozu, Awai, Yamada, Kurosawa and some of Kitano's work probably wouldn't interest you either. You appear to be more into the action / gore and anime side of things, so I'll keep the recommendations along those lines:

Ichi The Killer (****ed up. An absolute must-see)
Casshern (Basically a live-action Anime)
Azumi (Similarly, a very anime-style period piece, with lots of stylized action)
Versus (Same director as Azumi, but a more horror-orientated film)
Brother (Takeshi Kitano's most violent film, a brutal Yakuza story)
Zatoichi (Another Kitano film, and it's one of his best)

Here's a good site for you too:

www.kfccinema.com

Has plenty of reviews, by category so you can find what style you're after easily and is generally a good guide to Asian Cinema as a whole. Plenty of news too, which is nice.

Necronomicon

Prefer Korean movies myself, but love the whole Asian scene in general.

Karl Hungus wrote:

Brother (Takeshi Kitano's most violent film, a brutal Yakuza story)
Zatoichi (Another Kitano film, and it's one of his best)

I heartily endorse these movies, two Kitano masterpieces, but I thought Versus was pretty sub-par, while I haven't seen Ichi because I really dislike Miike and have given up trying to see where the hype is coming from (although I have to admit, I do have a soft spot for Audition).

ActorSeeksJob

hoho my bad NekkidBibleMan
I thought Casshern was a dreadful dreadful movie.

As for Kurosawa's Ran, where would you even get that? As far as I know its not out on dvd anywhere..I did have the pleasure of seeing it a while back, very impressive.

johnny_ultimate

ActorSeeksJob wrote:

As for Kurosawa's Ran, where would you even get that? As far as I know its not out on dvd anywhere..I did have the pleasure of seeing it a while back, very impressive.

There's a double disc version readily available. Should be able to get it in any decent retail outlet - laser etc.. Here's the Amazon link.
It's Dreams Im pretty sure is not available on DVD - which is a shame as Ive never seen the whole thing.

Karl Hungus

Necromomicon wrote:

Prefer Korean movies myself, but love the whole Asian scene in general.

Meh, I think they all have their good sides and bad sides. As much as I'd like to say that South Korean produces nothing but motion picture gold, the reality is more along the lines of a considerable amount of masterpiecs, and a load of crappy band-wagon jumpers.

For example, as amazing as A Tale Of Two Sisters way, there's about a dozen ****ty Korean horror movies following the trend.

Necromomicon wrote:

I heartily endorse these movies, two Kitano masterpieces, but I thought Versus was pretty sub-par, while I haven't seen Ichi because I really dislike Miike and have given up trying to see where the hype is coming from (although I have to admit, I do have a soft spot for Audition).

I can see why some people wouldn't like Versus. I'm a fan because it's purely a switch-your-brain-off extravaganza of gore, zombies, ancient warriors and OTT action. You just don't get such glorious comic-book action from anything else, and while I would say Kitano's films are better, or rather, I'd get a lot more out of them, they shouldn't really be compared as they each do their own thing.

Miike is an oddity. The fact that he makes so many films in such a short space of time (7 films in 2001 alone!) means that he can be very hit-and-miss, but when he gets it right, it can be a masterpiece. He's easily one of my favourite film-makers, but even then, there's some of his films I just don't like at all, whereas some of his films can be such masterpieces that they can be compared to the likes of Takeshi Kitano, or Shinya Tsukamoto. Although Tsukamoto is another one that may divide opinions.

Petey2006

Check out the films of (previously briefly mentioned) Takeshi Kitano. His work is fantastic and unique.

Highlights-

Kikujiro
Hana Bi
Sonatine
Boiling Point
Violent Cop

Makaveli

johnny_ultimate wrote:

Ping Pong. Usually despise sports film but this one was extremely likable. A nice little quirky comedic drama, if you are into that sort of thing.

This film is just good fun. Well worth watching.

Happiness of the Katakuris is another you should watch. It's a Miike film but not like any of his other ones really.

Most of the Asian films I've gotten recently have been South Korean though. That's probably down to the fact that I didn't realise a lot of those films existed and I'm just playing catch up, but I also think there's a lot of very good films coming out of South Korea and they're not all horrors.

Ever since the Ring became popular in the West, Asian horror films have been made readily available for us to get but most of them are pretty poor. Tartan must have made an absolute killing off of the Ring's success and all the subsequent Asia Extreme releases.

If you're into war films, from what I've seen, South Korea has produced the best ones. Brotherhood and Joint Security Area are both fantastic films imo.

Necronomicon

Karl Hungus wrote:

Meh, I think they all have their good sides and bad sides. As much as I'd like to say that South Korean produces nothing but motion picture gold, the reality is more along the lines of a considerable amount of masterpiecs, and a load of crappy band-wagon jumpers.

For example, as amazing as A Tale Of Two Sisters way, there's about a dozen ****ty Korean horror movies following the trend.

Agreed, in fact I have one or two (like this), but I think the same could be said of Japenese and Chinese movies as well.
I wouldn't pick up a Korean movie over a Japanese movie because of where it came from, I can just think of a few more Korean movies off the top of my head (Vengeance Trilogy, JSA, A Tale Of Two Sisters, A Bittersweet Life, Public Enemy, Brotherhood etc).

Miike is an oddity.

For me, the final nail in the coffin of my interest in him was Visitor Q. It just screamed to me that he wanted to put as much weird **** onto the screen as possible for the sake of it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not adverse to weirdness in my movies, but this was way OTT and seemed to be there for the sake of making a sick movie.

Although Tsukamoto is another one that may divide opinions.

I can't say I've heard of Shinya Tsukamoto, and a quick check in IMDB says I haven't seen anything by him either...any recommendations?

Also, if we're talking about Asian movies apart from just Japanese movies, how about Bangkok Dangerous? I started a thread on it a little while back after I saw it for the first time, terrific film about a deaf-mute assassin who falls in love with a girl he meets in a Pharmecy. He has to keep his two worlds apart, while flashbacks explain how a deaf-mute was able to become such a profficient killer. Great film.

Karl Hungus

Necromomicon wrote:

Agreed, in fact I have one or two (like this), but I think the same could be said of Japenese and Chinese movies as well.
I wouldn't pick up a Korean movie over a Japanese movie because of where it came from, I can just think of a few more Korean movies off the top of my head (Vengeance Trilogy, JSA, A Tale Of Two Sisters, A Bittersweet Life, Public Enemy, Brotherhood etc).

Yeah, South Korea has certainly overshadowed Japan in recent times, but on the whole, Japanese directors have produced an overwhelming amount of masterpieces.

Necromomicon wrote:

For me, the final nail in the coffin of my interest in him was Visitor Q. It just screamed to me that he wanted to put as much weird **** onto the screen as possible for the sake of it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not adverse to weirdness in my movies, but this was way OTT and seemed to be there for the sake of making a sick movie.

This might seem odd, but I loved Visitor Q. It was OTT, and it was a sick movie, but I just enjoyed it a lot. I'm not even going to attempt to explain that one, I don't know why I enjoyed it so much, I just did.

Necromomicon wrote:

I can't say I've heard of Shinya Tsukamoto, and a quick check in IMDB says I haven't seen anything by him either...any recommendations?

Hmm, Tetsuo is always a good place to start, that was my introduction to his work, but I have to say that my personal favourite would be his more recent film Vital, which I reviewed here.

Necromomicon wrote:

Also, if we're talking about Asian movies apart from just Japanese movies, how about Bangkok Dangerous? I started a thread on it a little while back after I saw it for the first time, terrific film about a deaf-mute assassin who falls in love with a girl he meets in a Pharmecy. He has to keep his two worlds apart, while flashbacks explain how a deaf-mute was able to become such a profficient killer. Great film.

Haven't seen it yet, but it was on my to-do list at some stage.

qwertplaywert

only really seen 2 japanese movies,both battle royale ones
1 was one of best movies ive ever seen
2....wasnt