Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (1970)

directed by Kihachi Okamoto

Japan

115 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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I revisited this movie after about two years because I wanted to see if it was truly as mid as I remembered it being. Everybody I've talked to about it agrees: it's good, but it's just good. I really don't want this movie to be "just good", because it has literally everything I could ever want out of a chanbara film: Zatoichi? And Yojimbo? Directed by Kihachi Okamoto? Co-starring Shin Kishida as a goth yakuza with a pistol? Soundtrack by Akira Ifukube? How in the world could all of that combine into something even remotely less than awesome?

Well, I will say one thing: no matter how so-so the bulk of the film is, those last fifteen minutes absolutely whip.

Ichi journeys homeward, to a village on the outskirts of his hometown, but finds that since the last time he'd visited, it's been taken over by yakuza, and the townspeople are suffering for it. He's hoping to relax a little, especially after a tumultuous fight that opens the film, but the town has changed so much that none of the tranquility he remembers remains. Thrown into the mix is a character instantly recognizable (although they never say that it's him, the implication is fairly obvious): a scruffy, drunk ronin played by Toshirō Mifune. And a fairly complicated subplot about hidden gold.

I have a theory that there's two major reasons why this movie didn't turn out as good as it could have. The first is that it rests too heavily on the interplay between Katsu and Mifune's characters. I actually don't see this as an objective problem, because personally, over the past two years, I've seen a shipload of films starring both actors, and I was very entertained watching them play off of each other here. Is that enough to carry an entire film? I don't think so, unless you are specifically watching it for either of these two. I also think that, despite the title making it clear that, yes, they are putting Mifune in this on purpose and they want you to think of his character from Yojimbo, the ronin is far meaner than Sanjuro ever was. I do kind of love it - his wheedling senseiiii!! as he mocks one of his lackeys is, though cruel, really funny - but it feels like too-clever marketing to do all of this and then make the bodyguard in question a different character from who you're thinking of.

The second reason why I think this fell short is because they didn't let Okamoto do the Okamoto thing. I don't know anything about the production history of this film, or of the Zatoichi series in general, but I was getting a sense that Okamoto had maybe been told to tone down his usual wildness a little bit so that his entry wouldn't be the proverbial sore thumb of the franchise. So instead of two hours of antics and shenanigans à la Red Lion, we get two hours of talking capped by fifteen glorious minutes where Okamoto is finally loosed upon the production.

If you've seen a lot of his films, you can instantly recognize a battle scene from an Okamoto movie. It doesn't matter whether he's directing a war film or a swordfight in a jidaigeki, all of his climactic battles have the same disorganized, chaotic, brutal, bloody choreography. Nothing is pretty or practiced: limbs fly off, people die with no dignity whatever. Okamoto witnessed combat during the Pacific War and he films his battle scenes with a kind of frenetic violence that can be uncomfortable to watch. That is present during the climax of Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo, and the stylistic choice is also paired with a pathos that had been building since the beginning of the film: the hidden gold is finally uncovered, in the form of dust secreted inside Jizo statues, and the fight occurs as high winds kick up, so the town is literally suffuse with the gold: the yakuza, the town youths, Ichi, and Sasa are all fighting while physically covered in the thing they're fighting for, which is impermanent, blowing away with the wind, ultimately useless. The futility of violence is on full display, and although Ichi may not be a party to greed the way the other characters are, he is still part of the fight.

I also think, because I managed to see a print of this that was one of the clearest, crispest film-watching experiences I've ever had, this is an extremely well-shot movie. The lighting is really unique. Every shot has this Caravaggio quality to it, with the extreme darks and stark lights side-by-side. It's genuinely beautiful for every second of the film. The physicality of the run-down town that the film takes place in is also impressive: I particularly liked one shot where Ichi is tackling a four-story staircase, and the scene is filmed from outside the house, so you see Ichi going up the stairs through the open windows. And the Ifukube score sounds like all of his other scores - which is to say, fantastic.

I've given this an extremely subjective four stars because it's got everybody I like in it and the climax is so good it makes me sweat. But you do have to sit through about an hour and forty minutes of actors who you may or may not be a fan of to get to it. It's ironic that despite much of Okamoto's typical directorial quirks being removed from the equation, this unusually lengthy entry in the Zatoichi series still feels different - not entirely in a good way - from the others.

The Whale God (1962)

directed by Tokuzō Tanaka

Japan

100 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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I tried watching this quite some time ago but couldn't make it through, I guess because it felt too long. But recently, thanks to it finally getting a good home media release, people have started talking about this movie again - and for good reason, because sitting down and mustering the energy to focus on this fairly demanding, but extremely rewarding film made me realize how much of an underrated gem it is.

This is a movie about a whaling village driven collectively to madness by their repeated failure to catch and kill an abnormally large whale which they've taken to naming the "Whale God" (kujira-gami; it's more or less a literal translation, but there are subtleties to the word "kami"/"gami" that I encourage you to look into). From an outside perspective, it's easy to balk at that runtime given the simplicity of the plot - "Movie about a whale, 100 minutes" - but there's so much that goes into the story that it makes those 100 minutes feel expertly utilized.

Most of the first half of the movie deals with establishing individual characters and developing conflicts between them. One thing that's interesting about this is that the presence of so many extras and various background actors in every scene gives the characters who are focused on more of a sense of just being random members of the village. They're not - one of the leads is the son of the village's best spearman, and other prominent figures such as the village elder and his daughter come into play - but there's none of that feeling of the movie being full of random nobodies and then a couple of famous actors that you might get in a Hollywood film with a similar setting. Not that the actors in the forefront are nobodies: we have Kōjirō Hongō (Gamera, reluctantly), Shintarō Katsu (Zatoichi), and Takashi Shimura (everything), as well as Shiho Fujimura in a smaller role, who is not immediately recognizable but had a career playing various supporting female characters in many famous films. But these more familiar faces are blended really well into the overall atmosphere of the village so that everybody feels like they're on even ground.

I want to take a second to talk about Katsu's performance in specific because he's really great here. His character, Kishu (this I think was less of a name and more just a nickname based on where he says he came from) is an outsider whose only goal is to make money off the Whale God. The village elder promises his home, title, and his daughter's hand in marriage to whoever can kill the whale. Not only does Kishu have his sights set on all of this, but he openly brags that he won't be satisfied there; he'll sell the daughter to a brothel and continue making money off of his kill. Katsu in this role exudes a malevolence, a total lack of conscience. He has an unsettling and domineering physicality to him that makes for a real contrast with his role as Ichi. Kishu plays off of Hongō's character, Shaki, in very interesting ways; had I the time to do so, I would want to go on at further length about how deeply homoerotic the fight scene between the two of them felt, but I'll leave that thought in my brain for now.

An element of this movie that I think is absolutely fascinating but remains subtle is the fact that this whaling village is either undergoing or has already undergone Christianization. A white Christian priest has a church in the village, and when Shaki adopts the child his girlfriend Ei has after Kishu rapes her, they have the baby baptized in the church. Although the backdrop of Christianity is there, the villagers nonetheless continue to conceptualize the whale as a kami, and this is never shown as being in conflict with the growth of Christianity in the village. Indeed, traditional religion seems to take precedence over Christianity when it really matters - although the priest is against it, the villagers move the dying Shaki to where he can converse with the remains of the whale in his last days. 

There is an implication here that, with Shaki and Ei's child, the future of the village and its traditional animistic religion is uncertain. The killing of the Whale God could be an element of this. With the death of the whale there is now one less god in the world - a trivial thing, perhaps, when your worldview holds that every single object and animal is inhabited by its own god - but the presence of a new God begins to take shape. The villagers' collective rage and hatred towards the whale swells to such an all-consuming height that one cannot help but begin to wonder if there's something else underneath it.

An incredibly dark, at times somewhat slow-paced film, The Whale God is capped off by twenty or so minutes of total practical effects insanity. Both Hongō and Katsu spend the latter part of the film on top of the whale (sorry, Raúl Ruiz fans, pun intended) in a protracted sequence that looked absolutely miserable to film but extremely compelling. The whale is very realistic, but what really cinches it is the performance both actors give while attempting to ring the whale's nose and bring it to shore to be killed. It's totally believable, as is everything else about the film. Akira Ifukube's inimitable score, Kaneto Shindo's screenplay, Tokuzō Tanaka's direction, and the myriad of impressive acting skills on display here all work together to create a film of rare caliber.

Seven Samurai (1954)

directed by Akira Kurosawa

Japan

207 minutes

5 stars out of 5

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For a long time I was carrying around a dirty little secret, and that secret was that despite being a huge fan of Showa-era Japanese film, I had not seen Seven Samurai. I wasn't unfamiliar with Kurosawa, and I wanted to watch this, but you gotta carve out time for a 207-minute-long movie, even when you know doing so will be a rewarding experience. (This is not, as of this time, the longest movie I've ever seen; it is tied with Inagaki's 1963 Chushingura, which is also exactly 207 minutes.) Many people have written a library's worth of words about this movie far more intelligently than I ever could, but not saying at least something about it feels wrong.

It's kind of amazing that almost four hours of film can come out of a remarkably simple premise. The plot of the film is that a village of poor farmers, pushed to near-starvation by continued bandit raids on their rice crops, hires a group of samurai to fight back against the bandits and protect them. The film is split down the middle by an intermission, and while I'm not sure if it was intentional to divide it into two distinct halves, there is a definite change in tone, from a focus on planning in the first half to a focus on doing in the second. And the beauty of it is that the planning stages are almost as interesting, if not more so, than the action.

Now, this was my first watch, and I haven't even read any of those far more intelligent things people have said about this movie yet. But I think I'm onto it. I think I might have it figured out. I think the idea here is that Seven Samurai is not about the samurai.

Kurosawa does this thing that I've noticed in almost all of his films where he has a way of making characters - even ones who should be the "protagonists", ones who we spend the most time with and should be getting to know the best - decentralized. Instead of populating his movies with heroes, he populates them with people, making it so the characters who are in the spotlight feel like they're functionally no deeper than the villagers in the background. We never get much backstory on the seven, and if you're not familiar with the movie, like I wasn't, you might be expecting that. I think the movie plays with that expectation intentionally: it's only the leader of the seven, Shimada (played by Takashi Shimura in one of his best performances), who realizes that the victory belongs to the peasants, not his group. Neither are the antagonists ever expanded upon: the difference between villain and victim here is somewhat ill-defined, and the film presents a cycle of violence that should make the viewer slightly uneasy about assigning glory to any side.

The best example of this kind of surprising de-valorization of characters who would in any other movie have been framed as heroes comes in Kikuchiyo's death. Most if not all of the samurai do have at least some kind of personality, but Kikuchiyo is the most outsized by far - of course he is, it's Toshiro Mifune in the role - and he dies in the mud without final words, like a peasant. Which he was - he's one of the only characters to have backstory, and we learn that he was born a poor farmer just like the villagers he's reluctantly protecting. That totally unexpected coda to an incredibly colorful, loud, energetic character is the perfect example of how this movie shifts the focus off of who we would expect to be focused on, and onto the people in the background.

Seven Samurai is one of those movies where time has done it a bit of a disservice - it's not that it doesn't warrant the reputation it has as one of the best movies ever made, but its constant popularity throughout the past 70 years has done a lot to obscure our context of the film. Because movies like this can be made with relative ease today through the use of CGI and other "cheats", one can sometimes forget that all of this was real, physical stuff; real sets, real mud, real (extremely terrified) horses. The history of Japanese cinema began decades earlier, but I would argue that with such landmark films as Seven Samurai, Godzilla, and Twenty-Four Eyes, 1954 was a huge step for the country's film industry.

I won't brook a single argument about whether or not this deserved to be three hours and forty minutes long. It deserves to be longer, if it wants to be. There's nothing in here that feels unnecessary to the larger picture. Visually, narratively, and in its dialogue, this is a really monumental film. But it's also that way because of what isn't in it. It's brilliant because it leaves these holes through which you can get a better feel for the real core of it. The end doesn't feel triumphant - the peasants certainly seem to have triumphed, but there's not a sense of satisfying victory. But the end isn't the point. To risk deploying a cliche, this is a movie that is totally about the journey rather than the destination.

Ultraman: The Adventure Begins (1987)

directed by Ray Patterson, Mitsuo Kusakabe

USA/Japan

78 minutes

1.5 stars out of 5

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So I knew that an Ultraman cartoon produced by Hanna-Barbera existed, but I'd for the longest time I was under the impression that it was an entire series, not just this one-off thing, so I'd been treating it like Hanna-Barbera's Godzilla: "I'll get around to that someday, maybe, if I feel like it." The Adventure Continues was evidently intended to be an entire series, but that didn't work out, and honestly, I'm okay with it.

The premise should be somewhat familiar to anybody who's seen an Ultra series, and easily digestible to those who haven't: three pilots - Chuck, Beth, and Scott - collide with a mysterious energy sphere, later revealed to have been Ultras from the M78 nebula heading to Earth. The pilots would have been killed in the accident, but the Ultras chose instead to merge with their bodies, giving them the ability to shift forms. At the same time, an invasion by aliens from a planet called Sorkin is going on, and although attempts are made to deal with the monsters non-violently, the Ultras must protect the Earth against these giant monsters with their newfound powers.

It's been a while since I've rated anything this low. Maybe it feels worse because I've been watching a lot of good stuff lately, but I've got to say, the quality of this one ranges from "mildly entertaining" to "pretty dismal". I'll try to be kind to it, and get the stuff I liked out of the way first, but after that... no guarantees.

I have a soft spot for late-'80s/early-'90s anime, which is basically what this is; the animation is clearly not done by a US studio (as many cartoons aired in the States weren't) and it's got the vibe of anime from that era, where everybody is blocky and buff and all the women look the same. I'm not saying the animation is good, but it's comfortingly familiar to someone like me who enjoys that kind of thing. There is interesting conflict between Dr. Susan Rand and her team, who are dedicated to researching the monsters instead of just killing them, and the three pilots/Ultras. They're eventually persuaded into seeing the value of a non-violent solution to dealing with the monsters whenever possible, but unfortunately, it's not possible very often. Looking at this with the knowledge that it was meant to be expanded into a full series, introducing that option of having monsters who were not intentionally destructive and were dealt with in a kind and gentle fashion would have provided a nice change of pace. The fight scenes are also extremely entertaining; aerial battles are definitely the place (the only place) where the animation team shines and the cartoon feels like it's actually getting decent.

Also, Zoon, the big fat dragon who's just a sweet confused baby, was great. What an adorable little dude. I loved seeing the Ultras take care of him and relocate him to somewhere he could live in peace. Perfect creature.

I really have to struggle to come up with nice things to say about this, because the balance of good and bad here is weighted heavily towards "bad". Maybe this is my fault for having internet brainrot, but I could not stop thinking about G.I. Joe PSAs throughout this entire thing. The voice acting is so bad and so ill-fitting with the animation that it creates these unintentionally hysterical moments, such as the pilots' boss witnessing them all die horribly in a fiery crash and just solemnly going "They were the best." All of the dialogue feels like a parody of emotion, a script written by an AI who's never met a human before and has only been fed on Saturday morning cartoons. And that's not even touching on the jokes - the humor is so, so stale. Absolutely nothing about it that's intended to be funny is. The only humorous moments were when I was cracking up thinking "Hey, kid, I'm a computer! Stop all the downloadin'!"

I was trying to give this the benefit of the doubt, because I think all Ultra is good Ultra, and I didn't want to have a bias against The Adventure Begins just because of its being produced by a domestic, mainstream studio. I don't have to worry about that, though, because as it turns out I have a bias against it because it is bad. To be fair, it's not really right to judge this by itself, because how many pilot episodes are considered the best part of a series? If it had been given the chance to develop its storylines and feature more interesting ideas and fresher jokes, it could have turned into something good, and maybe that's the real tragedy here - maybe this thing was cut off before it could blossom. What we have, though, is just a dud, to me. The action sequences are fun, but I couldn't say I got much out of this. If there's anything good about it, it's that Tsuburaya has embraced Team USA into their fold, and they appear in some truly fun scenes in the Ultra Galaxy Fight side-series. Ultrawoman Beth for life.

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974)

directed by Jun Fukuda

Japan

84 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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This year is the 50th birthday of one of my favorite Godzilla films, which also means it's the 50th birthday of Mechagodzilla itself. I used to talk about how I didn't particularly like Mechagodzilla, but somehow I've come around to it, to the point where I think it's genuinely one of the most fascinating aspects of the series to think about. Pitting something created artificially against something created by accident brings a new angle to the "man vs. nature" question that often comes up within the narrative of a Godzilla film.

In fact, thinking about "man vs. nature" provides an interesting lens through which to examine Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, because it's really man and nature tag-teaming it in this one. Mechagodzilla looks insurmountable at some points: that final battle where the real Godzilla and King Caesar are up against it and it's firing off weapons from every single part of its body is one of the most breathtaking battles in the series - yes, from any era, even beating out some Heisei stuff, IMO - because it's a moment where there's really nothing Godzilla can do, save for standing there and enduring the constant barrage of missiles and hoping to outlast it. But, all of this being said - and this is something I really only realized on my fourth rewatch - Mechagodzilla, and by extension its creators, the Black Hole Planet 3 aliens, were defeated by our friendly local irradiated dinosaur and a big guy who lives in a mountain who can only be summoned by a lady singing a song.

It's the chthonic vs. the invasive species. The whole "defenders of Earth" theme would be more explicitly developed in Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, but Godzilla and King Caesar being guardians of the Earth is the de-facto backbone of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla. 

There's ongoing debate - and probably always will be - about which Godzilla movie best balances its human story with its kaiju business. I don't see this one brought up to argue for the merits of its human characters, but personally (and this could just be because I've seen it four times and I know everything I can expect out of it) the mix between human/kaiju storylines feels totally satisfying here. It's not like the human characters have any depth, or relatable backstories that make me root for them as people, but they're still fun and interesting to watch. You don't want to see them get killed by aliens, which is, honestly, the bare minimum standard for any given character in fiction. Everybody's also dressed really nice all the time. Nobody looks like they woke up that day and just threw something on. I admire how put-together the whole cast of characters looks throughout the entire film.

You can't not talk about this one without talking about the practical effects. Teruyoshi Nakano's fingerprints are all over the thing. Even if you're a new fan who isn't familiar with the team behind the movies, you would easily be able to tell a Nakano movie apart from something else based on the sheer quantity of explosions. It's because of him that that final battle looks so unique; it's because of him that Mechagodzilla's entire body being a weapon is executed so flawlessly onscreen. There's a quote from him about how he wanted to blow the roof off one of Toho's soundstages but Toho didn't let him, and I gotta say I think they should have let him cook.

Another thing I realized on this rewatch is how jarring the Fake Godzilla scenes are. At this point they'd really perfected the "friendly Godzilla" design, and seeing that chubby, affable, cartoonishly-proportioned version of Godzilla break Anguirus' jaw so badly it starts spewing blood and limps away (and out of the series for the next 30 years) feels wrong. I think it was kind of a bold move to have a character who'd become pretty much explicitly a children's superhero look like it was committing brutal acts of violence. With Eiji Tsuburaya's death, they went to some weird places with this one, and I do love it. I do.

I don't really have much to say about this that other people haven't said better. I like this one more with every rewatch. There's something so pitch-perfect about it. I love every Godzilla movie, but I will admit that some of them do have moments where it feels like nothing is happening. This isn't one of them: I'm always either focusing on the wacky artifact-stealing/INTERPOL/ancient prophecy/ferry ride/kidnapping stuff or on the fieriest kaiju battle ever put to film. I wouldn't cut anything from this. It's all good.

Twenty-Four Eyes (1954)

directed by Keisuke Kinoshita

Japan

156 minutes

5 stars out of 5

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Even before meeting her, Miss Ôishi's class have already given her a nickname ("Miss Koishi", or "little pebble", a play on her surname, which means "large stone"). The children love her just because she's there; a kind, friendly face; the only person who's willing to let them be children for a while in the middle of the harsh island life that requires them to grow up much too fast. This is shown by Miss Ôishi's reaction to a prank that trips her in the sand and causes her to tear her Achilles' tendon, taking her out of her job for several months: kids will be kids. She'd be within her rights to be frustrated with her class, but they had no way of knowing what would be the result of their innocent joke, and if she were to punish them simply for being children, the innocence they had such a tenuous hold on would be further damaged.

For the first part of this film, the focus is mainly on the children, and they're portrayed as a group. It's not that they don't have their individual lives, but they're united for a brief time by the experience of being children and facing the hardships that all young children face. The theme of unity is something that comes up very often in this film: not unity in a political or ideological sense, but in a sense of just being a human, being alive in a difficult world. When the children sing their school songs, which they remember throughout their lives, and which are a thread that continues to connect them well after leaving school, they're together not in motivation or outlook but as a family of individual souls connected by a shared humanity. One could watch the more lighthearted first act of this film forever, because the performances Kinoshita elicits from the children are so wonderfully authentic that it feels like watching real children go about their lives. One of the most endearing parts is when they learn where Miss Ôishi is staying while recuperating from her injury, and somehow, as a group, manage to catch a bus to her hospital, but they don't plan it very well, so by the time they arrive, they're just a band of miserable, dusty, crying, hungry children. The unwavering loyalty the kids show to their teacher remains constant throughout the timeline of the film, no matter the strife that they all endure.

This is a beautifully shot film, incredibly expansive in its scale but at the same time enclosed. It doesn't restrict itself to the school or the homes of the children, but instead involves what truly feels like the entire island. And that's because it literally is: the film was shot on Shôdoshima, the island that it depicts. I don't think any studio sets were used here, so the scenery is utterly breathtaking. It may have been deliberate that as the world of the children gets smaller and is defined more by societal pressures, there are less sweeping nature shots, and characters are more commonly shown in towns and houses. But for a little while, Twenty-Four Eyes reminds us like very few things do of what it's like to be a child in a vast and new world.

Eventually the war comes even to a small secluded island. Despite being beautiful, tender, and softspoken, this has to be one of the most brutally effective anti-war films I've ever seen. Even before the events that would lead to Japan's official entrance of the war, it rapidly becomes dangerous for Miss Ôishi to go on teaching the same way she had been before. One of the school's other teachers is arrested on suspicion of being a communist simply because another teacher he was friends with was reading a book rumored to have communistic or at least anti-war messages to his students. Miss Ôishi pipes up: she's taught the same book to her kids, and has it in her classroom at that moment. (The principal burns it upon this revelation.) Suddenly, practically overnight, Miss Ôishi can no longer teach her students material just because it's well-written and sounds good and talks about the value of life. Now, her job is as an extension of the Empire, to teach her students to become nothing more than soldiers whose only value lies in their ability to die for their country.

This is when the film takes its inevitable turn towards being completely devastating. Miss Ôishi is driven right out of her job by her newfound restriction from teaching her students anything that might lead them to appreciate being alive. With a new and growing family, her time is now taken up with caring for her own children, and the love of teaching is beaten out of her - but not her love of her students. Her class is decimated by the war. Her male students are drafted and only two of them come back, one permanently injured. Her husband dies in the war as well. Even before the war, life takes its toll on her children almost from the minute they can walk: several of her girls are required to stay at home and care for younger siblings, or to earn money doing jobs for their family. Again, Miss Ôishi's role as the one refuge for these children where they can learn about a world bigger than their island and experience wonder and care is crucial to their lives and hers. Despite narrowly escaping censure or worse for "communist sympathies" (the appreciation and protection of human life), Miss Ôishi remains staunchly anti-war. When it ends, she doesn't care that Japan lost, she's just happy it's over.

I believe that this film is something that needs to be paid attention to now because of the change in curriculum that comes when the government begins to intervene in Miss Ôishi's school. When the children were young and war wasn't on the horizon, being taught how to live in the world, how to appreciate just being alive in nature with your friends, seemed as or more important as being taught actual book knowledge. But that doesn't make for a good soldier. Indoctrination with a message espoused by the government or a miscellaneous ruling party, for ends that ultimately serve the larger structure at the cost of the lives of individuals, is occurring now, in the US, in what is occasionally referred to as "peacetime". Teachers aren't - and haven't been - free to teach children how to live. They can only teach them how to be citizens.

Despite the overwhelming amount of suffering the children and Miss Ôishi undergo, the end of the film remains - although bittersweet and emotionally raw - still lit up with hope. After 18 years, the children still haven't forgotten their teacher, although their number has been greatly reduced - by war, disease, circumstance, and the simple process of growing up. I think the end message of this movie is that the only real way to live a life is to be there for other people who are also trying to live their lives, no matter how much it might hurt when things separate you. Watching this just cements my feelings about cinema even further, that movies like this have to be seen and remembered, because even though it is fiction, it's still crucial to the human experience to tell stories that are a lot like real life, but a little more beautiful. Also, I knew I recognized Hideko Takamine from somewhere, and I realized that I first saw her in Naruse's A Wanderer's Notebook, in which she played a character who underwent changes in response to her circumstances over some span of time in a similar way to Miss Ôishi. Her performance as the lead (if one wants to define "the lead" as her, not the children) in this movie makes it what it is.

- "Are you against soldiers, Miss Ôishi?"

- "No, but I prefer fishermen and rice merchants."

- "So you're a coward?"

- "Yes, I'm a coward."

Godzilla Raids Again (1955)

directed by Motoyoshi Oda

Japan

82 minutes

2.5 stars out of 5

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Of every Godzilla movie, this was the last one I'd only watched once since I saw it for the first time four years ago. I don't think I'm alone in considering it possibly the worst Godzilla movie (certainly, if I may get on my soapbox, worse than the Heisei movies that people tend to deride, like vs. Megaguirus or 2000), which was an opinion I'd had ever since I first watched it, but enough time had passed that I wanted to see if maybe I liked it better this time. As it turns out, the opposite happened: I think I actually like it less. But I do, at least, have more to say about it now.

I think the most obvious area where Raids Again is lacking is in the human story. There are human characters there, but they don't have the kind of depth to them that the human cast in the '54 film did; however, I don't dislike the characters in this one, because even if they aren't fleshed out on a personal level, they're interesting for the position that they occupy. All of the main players in this are military pilots who are actually fighting Godzilla up close and personally. Many Godzilla movies following this one have focused on members of the military or of a defense team, but usually when this happens in later films it's because there's something special about the team itself: maybe they're a newly-formed splinter operation with a unique superweapon and skills specifically created to combat Godzilla, or they work closely with an outsider scientist/psychic to come up with the best possible strategy to defeat Godzilla. Not the guys in Raids Again. These are just JADF pilots, and god damn, they're good pilots. It took the most frightening weapon the world had yet seen to kill Godzilla in the first film, and this crew buries - not kills, but buries - Godzilla by shooting at it with a bunch of normal planes. It's been interesting post-Minus One to go back through the franchise and appreciate all the things that influenced MO, of which I think this movie was one.

The other thing I really like about this movie is the way the kaiju fights are filmed. Raids Again introduces fan favorite (if not Toho favorite) Anguirus for the first time, and the scuffles Anguirus and Godzilla get into are remarkably violent and animalistic. This is because, while kaiju scenes are usually slowed down in post to give a sense of enormous scale, the fight scenes in Raids Again are instead either at normal speed or actually sped up. I don't know if it's true or not, but I've heard that this was an error on the part of the camera operators that got left in because the crew thought it looked cool. And it does! It's possibly the only interesting and unique part of the film.

There are other moments, too, where this feels like it gets close to capturing some of the magic of the first movie. Mostly these moments come when individual characters are focused on. I really enjoyed the scenes when Hidemi (Setsuko Wakayama) is alone with the radio on, listening to radio coverage of Godzilla and Anguirus' fight and the JSDF's attempts to stop it, and she looks out her window and sees a massive cloud of dust and debris out over the sea where the fight is happening in real life. That was a really neat trick of perspective and made the action feel massive but also real and close to home. The aerial combat scenes are also very well done, but Eiji Tsuburaya was special effects director, so "well done aerial combat scenes" are basically a given.

All in all, though, this is just not a great movie. It's a decent movie, but it's not great. I honestly think a lot of this might be down to Motoyoshi Oda as a director. I like his other movies, but he mostly did either lighthearted comedies or slightly scandalous horror-mysteries. Oda seemed like a cool guy personally and I think he's a good director, but Honda's direct experience with war gave the '54 Godzilla a weight and direness that's totally lacking in Raids Again. And it's a shame, because this is the only one of his movies to have any kind of release outside of Japan. His most internationally-famous film and it's the one that reflects the most poorly on him as a director. Someday we will see A Texan in Tokyo. I bet it's better than this.

The storyline also just faffs around a lot. The prison-break subplot is flat-out bizarre and I forgot it was in here. Like almost every Godzilla fan, I bought a copy of the novelization of Shigeru Kayama's Godzilla/Godzilla Raids Again story treatments, and I'm really curious to read it and see if the prison break is there.

I'll end this by saying that it's essentially impossible for me not to like a Godzilla movie. I just love Godzilla and everything it represents so much that if you stick Godzilla in a movie I will watch that movie and enjoy it, no exceptions. But there's just something off about Raids Again. It's absolutely, undoubtedly an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the first film - I mean, this came out six months after the first one, six months - which doesn't inherently doom it; the same crew were working on it, for the most part, so it comes from the same talented hands as the first movie. But it still comes out lacking. The first Godzilla was an allegory, and an incredibly sober, haunting one. Raids Again is a monster movie. I love monster movies with my whole heart, and they can be as deep as the '54 Godzilla if they want to be, but this rushed, awkward sequel does not seem like a "wants to be" situation.

I revamped my vs. Biollante review.

Just can't get enough of that big plant beast.

All Monsters Attack (1969)

directed by Ishirō Honda

Japan

70 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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I was lucky enough to catch a screening of the '54 original Godzilla on a nice big screen at my city's art museum last week. It's a masterpiece, a defining moment in 20th century cinema, and one of the best movies ever made. Watching it again cemented my feelings on this. I came home and I found that I wanted to do nothing but watch another Godzilla movie before sleep overtook me, so I obviously chose one that would go well with the dour, almost hopeless tone of the original...

...All Monsters Attack.

In all seriousness, it's easy to make fun of this movie, and I'll admit I do it sometimes too, but I'm strongly with the camp that advocates for the film's redemption and critical re-examination. Yes, it's the one that uses probably 15-20 minutes of stock footage (in a film that's only 70 minutes long). Yes, it got one of the most infamously horrendous English dubs of any Godzilla movie, which is largely responsible for people thinking the Godzilla series as a whole is stupid and juvenile. Yes, the suits look bad. But for every point All Monsters Attack has against it, I would argue that it should not be viewed as anything less or "separate" from Honda's filmography, because it retains the same moral and emotional core that all of his films share. In fact, Honda - notoriously hard on his own work - considers this one of his favorite Godzilla films that he made.

It's hard for me to imagine anybody could watch this and not immediately catch on to the depressing undertones of it. The happy, oblivious fantasies the main character Ichiro (played by Tomonori Yazaki, who's great in this but didn't continue acting past childhood) engages in throughout the film distract from a harsh reality, but that's exactly the point. Ichiro is a latchkey kid growing up in a heavily industrialized, polluted area, whose parents both work and who spends much of his time either getting bullied by other children or daydreaming about his favorite monsters. Hell, the theme song that plays over the opening credits - written by Shinichi Sekizawa, who wrote the film itself - talks about how the Earth is a hard place to live. Maybe we don't notice so much today because we're more used to it, but seeing Ichiro and all the other kids playing among piles of coal and a landscape of concrete and smog gets a little more upsetting every time I watch it. The kids themselves are totally unaware of the increasingly dangerous landscape and their disconnection from the natural world, but as adults, we get a better sense of what they're missing.

As other people have noted, you can't even really say the film ends on a high note, because while Ichiro finally gets into his bullies' good graces, he does it by accepting a mean-spirited dare. The implication seems to be that Ichiro is going to grow up to be an even more poorly-adjusted little boy than he already is if his parents don't start paying attention to him. If there's anything optimistic about this whole story, it's that Ichiro has kind of a "cool uncle" neighbor, a toymaker (Hideyo Amamoto playing severely against type) who is the only character to actually treat him like a person instead of as a child to be dismissed and dealt with.

I always like to use this movie as an example of how widely varied all of the different continuities within the Godzilla series are: no two Godzilla movies agree about much of anything - look, there's even one where Godzilla doesn't actually exist. Honda always used Godzilla films as a vehicle to talk about social issues of the time, and this is no exception. Although Godzilla itself isn't used as an allegory for anything really dark and dire this time (if anything it's an allegory for just... being a good dad), the socially relevant message is still present in Ichiro's real life and the world around him.

I'll admit that this is definitely not a perfect film. The kaiju battles feel incredibly low-stakes. The mishmash of stock footage means the appearance of the Godzilla suit is not consistent, and none of them are Godzilla at its best. Minilla, on the other hand, looks a tiny bit better than in Son of Godzilla, and is almost cute (or at least not hideous) from some angles. And I've always liked the appearance of Gabara, although on my most recent rewatch I've realized not having a tail makes it look really weird and unbalanced. But this is probably one of the only Godzilla movies where I've felt a little bored during the action scenes, just because they're trying so hard to be kid-friendly. I think this movie could have been a lot better if the odds hadn't been stacked against it (poor budget resulting in the reluctant decision to use stock footage, an ailing Eiji Tsuburaya's absence from the production, a studio increasingly choosing profit over creativity, etc). That being said, though, I just don't get the real hate so many people feel towards this. I like it. It's good. It's not my favorite, but I get what it's trying to say and I take it at face value.

The Return of Godzilla (1984)

directed by Koji Hashimoto

Japan

103 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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I'm noticing a pattern that's emerging every time I rewatch any given Godzilla movie, which I've done, for most of them, at least three times now: the first time I don't give it much thought, or I come at it with an attitude of inherent skepticism; the second time I think "what was I thinking when I said I didn't like this"; the third time I'm in love with it enough that I have a hard time saying anything bad about it. What this says about me as a film critic, I don't know, but I'm having a good time. Let me have fun.

I guess "fun" might be the wrong word to use in relation to this, one of the most serious Godzilla films.

Throughout all 70 years of the franchise's existence, there's only been four mainline films in which Godzilla carries the story alone, not fighting an opponent; all four of those have a markedly different fan response than the others. Having Godzilla be the sole monster in the film signifies, in large part, that the film is going to be responding to the original 1954 movie in particular. (Not that Godzilla's "vs." films don't also do this, but it's the solo ones that really allow for contemplation of the series as a concept.) Shin Godzilla takes a lot of its DNA from this movie, expanding upon the idea of bureaucracy during a time of crisis; Minus One involves the idea of war and survivor's guilt, and I don't have space here to talk about what the original does. So I'll move on to The Return of Godzilla.

One of the complaints - not always really a "complaint", but something people are definitely aware of - I hear about Godzilla films is that Godzilla itself is only in them for a few minutes. This is objectively true, but I think it's only an issue if you're unfamiliar with the series. In my opinion, and in the right hands, a Godzilla movie can be at its most terrifying when Godzilla is not in the frame, but only exists as a shadow haunting the story. Return of Godzilla was in precisely the right position to achieve this, because it was building on the massive hype of the first return to the franchise since 1975's Terror of Mechagodzilla, and it was releasing to an audience who, themselves, were at an age where many of them did not experience Godzilla firsthand in 1954, but had a concept of it that was formed through later films and secondhand knowledge. Godzilla lurking just outside the frame is all the more powerful when Godzilla has been lurking just outside the frame of real life for the past 30 years.

And I would argue that the most terrifying parts of Return of Godzilla come not when Godzilla is actively destroying cities but when the people who may have the power to influence a response to it are tasked to act. The tensest, most nerve-wracking scene in this film is when the representatives of both America and Russia are practically begging the Prime Minister of Japan (played brilliantly by Keiju Kobayashi) to let them nuke the country again. These are representatives of countries who Japan had clashed variously with at different times in the not-too-distant past, and while they may espouse peace during peacetime, as soon as they see the opportunity, they're disturbingly eager to drop bombs again. It's even worse when you consider that Japan's PM seems to be older than the both of them - I don't know what his age was meant to be, specifically, but he's certainly older than 40 and probably has firsthand memories of the last time his country was nuked. Now he's in a room with men bowling each other over to be the first to persuade him to let them do it again.

The character of Godzilla in this film is also reworked in a way that's very interesting. The continuity here totally ignores all the other films of the past 30 years save for the original and establishes Godzilla as, at the basest level, an animal. This Godzilla has almost no intelligence and operates solely on instinct, not hostility. For a long time I thought that scene where Godzilla is siphoning off steam from a nuclear power plant and then gets distracted by some birds and wanders off was just really silly, but when I rewatched it this time I found it incredibly poignant. This is the enemy, this is the thing that returns to haunt humankind perennially, with no end, and it's so absent-minded that a flock of birds can make it forget what it was doing. This is the creature we're nuking. A big animal. A cat with a laser pointer. This is not lost on the film: Godzilla's death in Mt. Mihara is treated with a weighty solemnity, and the fact that the plan to lure him into the volcano is even possible - that Godzilla is so instinctual, so unintelligent, that you can get it to walk straight into an active volcano if you play the right sounds - itself serves as an admonishment to the humans who have to do it in the first place.

The only thing I still don't like about this movie is Godzilla's physical appearance. There's something - I don't know what it is exactly, maybe the eyes are too big, the arms too long. It just doesn't look right. This is all purely on the aesthetic level, of course; the cybot Godzilla is a technical feat and I appreciate the time and work that goes into constructing a Godzilla suit even if it's one I personally don't like. But I'm somebody who will defend even the goofy appearance of the '54 and Raids Again suits, and I'll readily admit that this suit... I just don't like it.

The deep human tension and political strife that signified really the first time the franchise had experimented with those things make this movie stand out from the others. I don't think it's a perfect movie - for example, on my third rewatch I noticed that there's literally one woman in the entire film - but it showed that the franchise could do new things and head in a direction vastly different from the heroic, child-friendly Godzilla it left off on - and that people wanted to see it. This film kicked off the most critically-successful era of Godzilla, a string of story-driven, technically masterful films that remain some of the best in the series, and its ideas would go on to inspire future films as well. I don't know how other people feel about it but I don't think I gave it enough credit the first time I saw it. I hope Minus One isn't the last solo Godzilla film we get for another long span of time.

ESPY (1974)

directed by Jun Fukuda

Japan

94 minutes

3 stars out of 5

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Another incredibly good international tagline: "PARANORMALISTS CRUSH A STUPENDOUS PLOT TO DESTROY MANKIND".

I don't know why I held off on watching this for so long. I mean, it should have bothered me a lot more that there was a tokusatsu movie directed by Jun Fukuda that I was basically ignoring. (There's a lot of his other non-toku movies that I desperately need to see, but I digress.) It may have been the length; 95 minutes is just about my threshold for how long I can watch something without falling asleep. But it was Fukuda's birthday recently, so I decided to give this a watch.

The film centers around an organization made up of five people with strong psychic and telekinetic abilities who use their powers to fight crime. You're kind of dropped in the middle of the action; the captain of the organization (played by Yūzō Kayama, who looks faintly out-of-place in a sci-fi movie) recruits their fifth and newest member, Miki, after he uses his powers to avoid wrecking his race car, and from then on stuff just happens, there's not a ton of backstory. I've read at least one review referring to Miki as an "audience surrogate" and I think that's an interesting way to put it. Miki is basically only there as a way to introduce the concept of the ESPY group in a manner that feels like you're approaching it from the outside, rather than being confronted with confusing internal politics right away.

The group takes on their toughest challenge yet: foiling an assassination plot that has so far claimed the lives of several important politicos already. Their main objective is to stop the prime minister of Baltonia, a fake eastern-European country, from being assassinated. The actual story is very thin on the ground, but it's padded out to a(n arguably overlong) 94 minutes with no shortage of action scenes, location-hopping, psychic fights, regular fights, and a cute dog.

I watch a lot of sentai and one thing that's essentially a constant is that the villains are always more interesting than the good guys. Maybe this is just my bias as a big fan of Tomisaburō Wakayama speaking, but I think that's the case with ESPY too. Wakayama plays a mysterious character named Urlov, head of a rival organization just referred to as "enemies", and I wish more time had been spent on his opaque and sinister motives than on... whatever else this movie was doing in the meantime. At his death scene during the climax of the film, the plot decides to get a little freaky with it and suggest - basically imply, really - that Urlov either was or was possessed by some kind of extraterrestrial force, which was the reason behind his animosity towards all of humankind. Urlov the human tells a story about watching his father, a psychic, be imprisoned and eventually executed for no actual reason, and it's easy to imagine that maybe this is where that possessing force came in: he struck a bargain with something that gave him immense psychic power, because the two of them had the same grudge against humans. But this is total speculation based on about five minutes of film. Wakayama's compelling performance gave me more to think about than the actual psychic stuff.

This feels like a movie that a lot of people would probably just be watching for the actors who are in it. It's a who's-who of charismatic Showa guys; Kayama is the captain, as I said, and he's joined by Hiroshi Fujioka, Goro Mutsumi, and Masao Kusakari, who I'm really not familiar with (I think the only thing I've ever seen him in was a movie called Invitation of Lust, but we're not going to get into that here). The team's token female member is played by Kaoru Yumi, and her character predictably gets the shaft as the sole woman in the film.

All in all, it's just kind of an odd thing. It reminds me really strongly of Dengeki!!! Strada-5: team of people with special abilities who fight crime, all of them men except for one woman, captain played by a guy who was really famous 10-15 years ago and doesn't usually do tokusatsu stuff. The whole affair has more of a "TV series" vibe than anything. The script apparently existed as far back as 1966, but the boom in popularity of psychic media due to Uri Geller (ugh) was the impetus for finally getting it made in the '70s. Shooting took a month, which... yeah, it feels like a movie that was shot in a month. It's fun, but I still like Fukuda's Godzilla movies much, much better. There's a sense of energy and youthfulness to those that I personally felt was absent in ESPY when compared to things like Ebirah, Horror of the Deep and Son of Godzilla, although that could be because those films were openly aimed at children. Either way, I still think Fukuda's directorial style is better suited to the aesthetic of the 1960s.

As a final note, Toho Kingdom cites a quote from Fukuda where he says he was disappointed that audiences weren't as surprised by Fujioka's teleportation scene as he'd hoped. I gotta say I was NOT part of the crowd who wasn't phased by that. All the other business happening in this movie and I still didn't expect somebody to straight up teleport.

The Great Buddha: Arrival (2018)

directed by Hiroto Yokokawa

Japan

60 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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This is going to be a short, quick review because I have other stuff to do, but I liked this film so much that I would feel bad if I didn't say something about it. The version with English subtitles that I watched will give you some background before the film, but basically, to recap, The Giant Buddha Statue's Travel Through The Country (sometimes also known as "The Great Buddha Arrival") was a film, made and released in 1934, that is important to the history of tokusatsu. It doesn't feature any kaiju, but as the title would imply, it concerns a giant buddha statue that becomes animate, and the work put into miniatures and presence of a human in costume as a giant being means that it's generally considered the "first"* tokusatsu movie. Unfortunately it is also lost due to the Pacific War; no one alive has seen footage of it, but a few tantalizing still pictures do survive.

There's something really striking about how important and respected the 1934 Giant Buddha is, despite being almost entirely lost with no chance of ever being found. It's something that at this point is so far in the past that no one living has any memory of it. Of course modern art - including film - learns from older art, but typically we learn from it because we still have older art to look at and interpret. Nobody has any way of viewing The Giant Buddha anymore, but it's still part of the tokusatsu canon.

So this film posits itself to be a remake, but in reality what it is is weirder and more difficult to pin down than that. It opens with Akira Takarada (RIP - it's great to see him here, and he doesn't remotely look 84) talking about The Giant Buddha, which was released the year he was born. In the fictional version of events The Great Buddha: Arrival sets up, the earlier film was apparently a recreation of a time when the director witnessed firsthand the Great Buddha of Shugakuen (currently in Tokai City) standing up and walking about. This does not happen in a vacuum, there are historical events occurring at the time that are important to the plot, but that I am not familiar with; evidently there was a rash of suicides around this time that are also covered in the 1934 film, and the director was about to become one of them when the Buddha became animate. So it's not like the statue is walking for no reason, there is a connection between it and the sphere of human activity. I would go further into that if I could, but I'm not aware of it beyond what this film explains to me.

In The Great Buddha: Arrival, the main character - played by the real-life writer of the film - works at a film studio and is compiling all of these snippets of research together to make something like a documentary about the lost film. So this is a half-documentary, half-sequel; again, the way it's so hard to classify is why I loved this film so much. It doesn't simply take an idea and expand upon it. It does that and it takes the existence of the original film itself and envelops it in its own concept, bringing the lost film into something a little different from reality, creating this story where - because there is now nothing left to dispute it - the existence of the film is itself an element in the film's mythos. And while all of this is unfolding, the Buddha statue once again begins to walk.

Narratively, I will admit this film is all over the place. There really aren't any "characters" since it's filmed with something close to a faux-documentary style, and the characters that are there don't actually talk to each other much about what's going on. The two film studio workers have more dialogue about the bike one of them is trying to strap a jet engine onto(???) than the Buddha, or the lost film. Much of the dialogue here is sound bites of Takarada and an huge cast of famous tokusatsu actors from the previous century talking about the Buddha, or about the lost film. And honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way. I didn't need more plot, or more intriguing characters. It is enough for this movie to be exactly how it is.

I guess I'm really not even talking about this movie itself, now. I've been thinking a lot recently about how important it is that there is a current generation making movies like this. I may be overstepping here, as my home country's film industry sucks and I can't lay any claim to tokusatsu other than being a huge fan of it, but I just feel like it's absolutely crucial as time goes on that the memory of the origins of the medium are not forgotten, and are continually retold and reinvented. And I mean, this really goes for any type of film from anywhere in the world. The people who made the movies are going to be outlived by them, and so preserving them and continuing to learn from them and keeping an open dialogue between films from the past and today's culture is what we have to do. Even a film that is lost can remain "alive" if we keep engaging with it.

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*With some qualifications. Reminder that "tokusatsu" just means "special effects", and it's a technique, not a genre; saying this is not like saying something is "the first horror film" or "the first spy flick". It's just one of the earliest movies from Japan to utilize the kind of techniques that would become popular later in the 20th century.

I have a new blog.

Clap your eyes on it.

Regular updates will continue here as well, of course. Unfortunately.

Atragon (1963)

directed by Ishirō Honda

Japan

95 minutes

5 stars out of 5

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Alright. I'm finally reviewing Atragon. I've seen this movie more times by far than anything else (except for maybe Banshee Chapter and the original Jurassic Park) but I've never managed to review it because every time I watch it I seem to get a bit distracted.

Upon my latest rewatch, I've come to realize this is my favorite movie of all time. I've always been the kind of person who doesn't have a single favorite movie because there's so many, how can you ask me to pick just one? But I'm pretty confident now that it's this one. And not only that, this is also the movie I would pick if somebody asked me to explain why I love tokusatsu. It's a perfect example of the use of incredibly detailed miniatures and practical effects to execute a story that is also extremely well-written and resonant, a balance that not every tokusatsu film achieves. I think this movie is basically flawless in every way. It's something that feels like it accomplished 100% of what it set out to do.

I also want to quickly say that one of the only times I've ever gotten really mad at another film reviewer was when I saw this film referred to as "jingoistic". I just don't know how far in the sand your head must be to watch this entire thing and not get a strong anti-war message from it. I'm not sure if maybe the English dub casts it in a different light; the extent of my experience with the dub is accidentally renting it on DVD, going "aw man, this is a dub" and returning it. But the film itself is possibly Honda's most explicit anti-war statement aside from Farewell Rabaul (and Godzilla, of course).

The initial setup of the film is almost reminiscent of Toho's hardboiled crime flicks of the late 1950s until it begins taking a different tack with the slow reveal of multiple factions within society working in opposition to a peacetime Japan. The central conflict of the film is between the undersea empire of Mu, sunk 12,000 years ago and now returning to reclaim their "colonies" - the rest of the Earth - and humanity, but this also contains a conflict between a group of former military personnel holed up on an island after the Pacific War, refusing to accept the new constitution and disarmament of Japan. The leader of this group, Admiral Jinguji, has been secretly building a massive multi-terrain warship (the Gōtengō, or "Roaring Heaven") unlike anything any country has ever seen, and wants to keep it solely for Japan - Imperial Japan - when it becomes militarily active again. As the threat from Mu becomes greater, Jinguji's old commanding officer as well as his daughter attempt to convince him to let the Gōtengō be used for the good of the whole world.

Jinguji embodies Honda's critique of nationalism, and the role is possibly Jun Tazaki's best. In retreating to his island, Jinguji separated himself from his daughter Makoto, a toddler at the time, and when the two finally reunite, Makoto is horrified to find her father so dedicated to his ideology that he refuses to accept reality and shuns the rest of the world. One of the others who come to the island refers to Jinguji as a "ghost wearing rusty armor called patriotism". The specific word used here that gets translated as "ghost" is "bōrei", and I want to take a minute to talk about that because there are a lot of different concepts within Japanese culture that are translated en masse as "ghost". "Bōrei" is a term that is synonymous with other, more common ghost words, but is a little more antiquated and Gothic, and refers to a departed or ruined spirit that has left their physical form. It has literary overtones as well. Referring to Jinguji as a ghost is itself a very evocative turn of phrase, but I wanted to mention the term originally used because in its original language there would have to have been thought behind what kind of spirit, specifically, to reference. Jinguji does eventually come around, and personally, I love how little focus is given to this moment: the entirety of Jinguji's change of mind takes place in one sentence: "I think I'd been wearing rusty armor. I took it off, and I feel fine." It's not emphasized that this is a radical shift in ideology; Jinguji is the same person, but he's been confronted with the error of his ways in a manner that finally got through to him. That the film itself doesn't dwell on this allows me to imagine Jinguji's inner conflict more acutely than if he'd been given a protracted redemption arc.

(I do kind of feel like the subs on the 2006 Media Blasters release leave something to be desired, and I was wondering at some points if they were using dubtitles. I generally try to stay away from complaining about subtitles unless they're egregiously bad, because I'm not fluent in Japanese, but... did I catch them translating "mokusatsu suru" as "ignore"? Were there not some significant real-world repercussions to doing that exact same thing at one point in history?)

Let's move on to the practical effects, which are stunning and I love them. You really can't get any better than the enormous Gōtengō prop. It was a functional drill, and if I remember correctly, was at least partially built by a hardware company. There is something so magnificent about the Gōtengō that never gets old no matter what film it reappears in or how many times I watch this one: that first scene of it rising out of the water, accompanied by Ifukube's massive, swelling orchestral score, is impressive every time. The ship is the centerpiece of the film (literally - the original Japanese title is "Kaitei Gunkan", or "Undersea Warship"), but Atragon also contains enough beautiful matte paintings and miniatures to ensure that the undersea Mu empire feels like a real, fleshed-out location. I've always been captivated by the interior view of Mu's engine room, those massive, spinning rotors that completely dwarf any human being give off such a sense of scale that it's difficult for me to remember they're just miniatures in real life.

And there's Manda. I never really thought the inclusion of Manda was as jarring as it seems to be for some people, but maybe that's because I love this movie so much that I don't think about it enough. There's such a focus on military grandstanding and who has the best submarines that I guess if you look at it one way it could be a little silly to see Mu suddenly pull out their giant underwater dragon that they feed people to. But I love Manda and I hate when they freeze it after it attacks the Gōtengō. Manda did nothing wrong.

I'm going to try to end this review here because I could talk at length about this movie for much longer than I already have. It's just one of those things that's perfect from start to finish and never gets old. It is dated but its message isn't. I'll say one last thing before I wrap this up: every time I watch this I notice something new about it, and this time what struck me was how much the supporting cast gives to it. Yū Fujiki being a ham and Kenji Sahara wearing the most obvious disguise ever (perhaps rehearsing for his future stint wearing the most obvious disguise ever in Space Amoeba) add a little humor to a very serious and heavy film. The Empress of Mu, played by Tetsuko Kobayashi (who apparently also did her own makeup for the film), has few spoken lines but a screen presence that supercedes her. Every part of this movie is so good. I can't believe people think it's boring. I want to get everybody to watch this with me.

The Great Yokai War: Guardians (2021)

directed by Takashi Miike

Japan

118 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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After enjoying Takashi Miike's first reboot of/tribute to the Yokai Monsters series, I definitely wanted to check out the second, which at the time I watched it was still very new. Neither of these movies seem particularly well-known outside of Japan, so I didn't know what I was getting into. Immediately, it became very apparent that where the previous movie had only a handful of moments that felt a little too sinister for a young audience, Guardians is wholly for the kids. If I didn't already know that Miike directed this, I would have had no idea; save for some of the humor, there's no trace of the director of Visitor Q and Audition here. Which is good - to be that versatile is an asset for any creator. But to me as a fan of Miike as a horror director first and foremost, it's surprising.

So the thing about this movie is that it kicks ass. I'm going to apologize right here and now for not viewing it objectively, because my unshakable opinion is that this movie kicks ass. I'm able to recognize that it has many flaws, and with a certain mindset it could be slightly embarrassing and overwrought. But I still think it's aces. The tone of it is pure, classic children's adventure story: like the first film, it's a coming-of-age thing, but with more emphasis on themes of protecting your family and being kind above all else. I haven't seen a movie this untaintedly joyful in a long time (and again, this is coming from the guy whose episode of Masters of Horror got banned for being too freaky). Saccharine, censored, cautious children's media is a dime a dozen, but it's rare to see something with a message about caring and trying to be a good person that's executed and written this well.

In classic fantasy movie fashion, our protagonist is a little boy who finds out he comes from a powerful lineage, going back a thousand years to his ancestor, Watanabe no Tsuna, an accomplished yōkai fighter. His bloodline grants him powers that can help him fulfill his destiny, but he needs to learn some courage first. Like in the first film, the main character's initial encounter with yōkai after finding out he has the ability to see them when most people don't is pure gold. There's an incredible variety of yōkai, from the humanoid to the weird, and I never get tired of seeing them all assembled in such masses that I couldn't possibly register every single one of them even if I paused the movie and stared at it for a while. In a funnier moment, the yōkai of Japan assemble other "yōkai" from across the world at a yōkai summit (a "Yammit") to ask for their assistance, and honestly, I'm obsessed with the idea that Pennywise is a yōkai. Many of the same creatures from the last movie are in it again, but as this seems to have little to do with its predecessor, they have a slightly different appearance and characterization. There are also more oni, who serve as kind of antagonistic figures, but they're less cut-and-dry Bad Guys than they are obstacles for the main character to figure out how to help and apply his philosophy of relentless goodness to.

The real antagonist isn't even an antagonist either. This movie, in more ways than one, ditches the good/evil dichotomy so inherent in modern Western interpretations of folklore and replaces it with something more nuanced, something that asks the viewer to take more than a few moments to judge a character. The threat that the main character, Kei, is called upon to face is a gigantic human/crustacean ghost hybrid that is in the process of rolling its way across Japan, directly through Tokyo, in an attempt to go back to the unspeakably ancient sea it remembers as its home. It has no ill intent, but it is born of grudges, an assemblage of unfulfilled dreams and a deep longing that causes it to coalesce, like a pearl by way of irritation. This is not an evil monster that has to be destroyed, this is an aching, homesick being.

At every stop, even though he gets a cool sword and then another, cooler sword, Kei faces his opponents with an eye towards understanding them and getting on their level rather than defeating them outright. Everything and everyone around him is as scheming and underhanded as usual, but he evades all of that by simply going through life asking what he can do to help. When his kitsune companion and their party are betrayed by a yōkai-oni double agent, and a horde of oni outnumber them by several orders of magnitude, he does not want to fight them, because "We don't fight friends of our friends". His initial reaction to the arrival of a huge number of enemies is not fear, in fact, but gladness to see that his two-timing new friend has other friends outside of his cell phone.

I don't even hate the CGI. There's much more of it than in the previous film, and it's much more noticeable, but the costumes still manage to take center stage. And like I said, it kicks ass. There are just so many moments in this where I was thinking "oh my god, yes". This movie is awesome in the way that a ten-year-old boy might use the word. Awesoooome!!!! as in radical, as in a cool skateboard trick, as in saving the city whilst being in the fifth grade. I loved every moment where this movie went over the top. I love the lengthy musical number at the end. I love Daimajin (yes, Daimajin) being swayed by the power of brotherly love. I love the tiny sideplot about the yuki-onna having a big old crush on Inugami Gyōbu, even though she's a creature of the cold and he's fiery and hot. I love the army of tanuki. This is a good movie because I liked it. It has problems but I'm too busy liking it to talk about them. Sorry.

The Great Yokai War (2005)

directed by Takashi Miike

Japan

124 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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I watched all of the original Yokai Monsters films throughout October 2022 and loved pretty much all of them to some degree, but never ended up reviewing any for some reason or another, so I wanted to give it a go for this one.

The inimitable Takashi Miike's celebration of the Yokai Monsters series and the film studio that produced it doesn't have much to do with the older movies directly, which is fine, because none of them have anything to do with each other either. This film is set up as kind of a coming-of-age story, taking place during the hazy, liminal time of summer vacation, when the boundary between reality and fantasy feels flimsy. Our main character, Tadashi, is bitten by a kirin during a festival and therefore chosen to be the "Kirin Rider", whose responsibilities, according to local legend, involve various feats of strength and triumphs against other local folkloric creatures. But it turns out he also has to do a whole lot more than that. If you know anything about Miike, you probably know him for his tendency towards extreme gore and absurd situations - really, as a director he's so unique that summing him up that way doesn't even scratch the surface - but this is a bit more subdued for him, though with a lot of the tricks he usually employs still recognizable. 

What this feels like is a love letter to growing up in Japan as a horror fan, and I'm talking pre-Ringu and Ju-on days, before that was all that Japanese horror was associated with. I'm very hesitant to call this kind of film and indeed Yokai Monsters as a whole "horror" at all, because even though they depict things that are eerie and weird, they don't have any association with horror in terms of the Western conception of it as a cohesive genre. Yōkai themselves are so isolated as a concept that I don't really feel comfortable lumping them in with general monsters and creepy-crawlies like your Draculas and your werewolves and whatnot. If you're not familiar with these creatures, nothing will be explained to you in The Great Yokai War - this is a movie that assumes prior understanding. Due to the protagonist being a young child, some context is given to him along the way, but as a viewer you just have to roll with it. And it also name-drops other things that a young person who was really into the macabre and strange would be familiar with, like GeGeGe no Kitarō, for example, and the fact that the main villain is none other than Yasunori Kato (you know, that guy).

I absolutely love the way the whole tone of the film changes when Tadashi starts making his way up the mountain and encounters all of the yōkai. There is no firm delineation between the realistic, mundane life he's familiar with and the world of myth, but you can tell that somewhere along the way a boundary is crossed. In the city, where everyone is moving on with their lives and no longer paying attention to legends, the kirin has to be puppeted by two people, a depiction of itself. Up the mountain, the kirin just is. In the city the man wears a mask, up the mountain the man is what he really is.

Besides having to save his wandering grandpa, Tadashi also ends up (along with an immense number of yōkai who, aside from the main crew, seem to mostly just be there for the party) having to maybe-not-technically "save" the whole of Tokyo from Kato's weaponized rage and bitterness. In an enormous complex of factory stacks and industrial buildings situated on the back of a flying, salamander-like creature, itself the size of a city, Kato is harnessing the negative energy from all the things the people of Tokyo throw away without a second thought. This is why the city is not wholly "saved" at the end: it goes through a reckoning, is mostly destroyed, but the message is that maybe it needed to be knocked down a couple of pegs, that people had to be reminded to care a little bit more... but not the way Kato wanted.

There's something I also really love about the way Kato is ultimately undone by a single bean coming into contact with his big evil cauldron in which he made his big evil scrap metal creatures. For all of his power and planning, for everything he constructed and put into motion, one tiny element of the traditional, of the remembered, of the story that is continuing on, was enough to destroy him. Just one bean representing everything he wanted to hurry up and forget ruined all of his evil schemes.

This is altogether pretty light on story, it's mostly something you watch if you're an effects nerd like me, but it's still got an important message about care and responsibility. The ending is surprisingly dour, but I liked this because it serves as a final reminder to us, the viewers, of what can happen if we don't have respect for the world around us. I'm looking forward to the more recent sequel and hope it only expands on what this film began.

Army of the Apes (1974)

directed by Kiyosumi Fukasawa, Atsushi Okunaka, Shunichiro Kazuki, Sogoro Tsuchiya

Japan

667 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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I've never reviewed a full tokusatsu series before (not from lack of affection, just from lack of being able to say anything coherent about 25-50 episodes' worth of stuff in a single post) but something about Army of the Apes is making me need to talk about it. Forgive me if I don't reference specific episode numbers or titles; the reason for this is because currently, the series is only available with subtitles as an 11-hour-long YouTube video, and I lost track of what episode I was on.

So it's pretty obvious that this is a Planet of the Apes type of thing. I'm being very deliberate in not referring to it as a ripoff, because the intent was to have the series be a wholly original work. After a broadcast of Planet of the Apes reached very high viewership ratings in Japan, combined with the boom in disaster movies (Submersion of Japan, Prophecies of Nostradamus, etc) that was happening at the same time, Tsuburaya decided to get in on the action with their own series. In classic "me" fashion, this is the only of the Apes media I've ever seen, so I can't comment on similarities to other material.

At the beginning of the series, Izumi, a scientist/teacher working on research into time travel, and her two students, Jiro and Yurika, are forced by imminent natural disasters to enter experimental time-travel capsules as a last resort. They're thrown several thousand years into the future, and emerge into a world ruled by intelligent apes - you know the deal, I'm not going to go into it too much. Along the way, they meet the only other Homo sapiens still alive in that time, Godo, and an ape boy, Pepe, tags along with them all as well. The middle of the series lags a little bit when the characters all get separated from each other, and the story flip-flops between Izumi and Yurika and Godo, Jiro, and Pepe, all having their own problems and all trying to reunite. One point against the show is that oftentimes it doesn't feel like it knows how to handle its own cast.

But - and this is a rare thing for a toku series - the whole cast is very likable. I got a real kick out of Tetsuya Ushio (Godo) because he's so incongruous to the series. This is pretty much a straightforward, long-form sci-fi drama, nobody transforms or has superpowers or anything, but there's still this guy going Sonny Chiba on a room full of apes every other episode. Looking up Ushio's previous credits and finding out he played Hyoman made complete sense. Watching him fight, it's obscenely obvious he was a henshin hero at some point in his career. Izumi is a good character, too; she's saddled with two young children who are not family, and they're all in a strange, disorienting timeline, but she manages to keep their spirits up and protect them from bearing the full weight of their situation alone.

On the ape side of things, we've got some serious drama. There's a divide between gorillas (the ruling class/political elite) and chimpanzees (the proles, as it were). The two major players here are Bipu, the cabinet minister (I had to look up who plays him because he's absolutely enormous, and it turns out it's the big guy from Latitude Zero, Wataru Omae), and Geba, the chief of police. Of the two, Geba is the most entertaining to watch, having all the energy of a yappy dog who's been given too much power. The two of them also have opposite opinions on the humans, who are widely reviled by the apes: Bipu wants to keep them alive, although he's still somewhat ambivalent towards them, and Geba hates them with a fury. The humans are hunted down wherever they go, especially after Bipu seemingly dies. Political ape intrigue is also constantly running in the background, and eventually it builds up to a full-scale assassination plot that unfortunately goes nowhere at all.

I can't really explain why I like this series so much, and it might be that I'm attributing stuff to it that isn't really there. I've personally always been attracted to stories where there's only a handful of humans left in the world. In the first half of the series, there's a lot of moments where the crew seems to still have hope that there are other humans out there, but those hopes are dashed over and over until eventually they just focus on trying to survive. The sense of loss is so palpable, even in a low-budget series like this. There's a brief arc involving a robot that I really loved because it drives this feeling home. The gang finds a robot named Chip who was built by an enclave of now-long-dead human scientists when things started to get really bad. When the last human left the bunker and never returned, they told Chip essentially to hold the fort, and it had been doing that ever since, for potentially upwards of a thousand years. Just waiting for its programmers, who would never come back.

It's kind of frustrating that there were so many instances like that during the series where a longer story could have been told, but was glossed over in favor of returning to the ongoing fight against the apes. It's a short series, but I think if there had been more episodes that focused on the individual characters (maybe some backstory on Godo living in the mountains alone after his family died), the show would have felt a little fuller. But it's got great practical effects! The ape masks are quite impressive (and hell to wear, as per usual) and between suit acting and voice acting, the series really gets its mileage out of everything.

Also, I didn't know where else to put this in the review, so I'm just going to leave it here at the end: according to Japanese Wikipedia, Tetsuya Ushio apparently had an exorcism done on him at some point during filming.

The Ghosts of Yotsuya (1956)

directed by Masaki Mōri

Japan

86 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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I'm a big Yotsuya Kaidan fan. I'm immensely fascinated by all the different retellings of the story and the spin every director who handles it puts on it, as well as the meaning the story can take on depending on who tells it, and the meaning a viewer can give to it that it may not have originally had. Although the framework stays consistent, the details change a little from film to film. As such, there's no way to really say that a Yotsuya Kaidan adaptation is "standard fare", but... Masaki Mōri's Ghosts of Yotsuya feels like pretty standard fare, and I mean that (mostly) in a good way.

I'm kind of interested in Mōri as a director because there's not much information about him out there. His short Japanese Wikipedia article says he died of overwork at only 55. He directed a respectable amount of films, but the only two that have ever been subtitled (not that getting subtitled is a measure of worth, it just makes films accessible to a wider audience) are this one and Ghost Story: Depth of Kagami, which I've seen and which is a decent movie, but no great shakes. Even this movie is fairly obscure; I couldn't find it online, but I received a DVD as a gift, and the third-party distributor (Sinister Cinema) who put it out seems to be the only place you can get it. To make matters more confusing, the synopsis on the distributor's website is for this, the 1956 movie, but the poster on the cover of the DVD is for Nobuo Nakagawa's version! I'm quite happy with the DVD, the print is very crisp and the subtitles are good, but as usual, I am begging distributors who release any adaptation of Yotsuya Kaidan to use a serif font for the subs.

The story in Ghosts of Yotsuya begins amid fireworks, and is told in such a way that details at the outset are relatively scarce, but more of the past is revealed as the film goes on. This is one of the more upstanding Iemons I've seen, which is another interesting variation: there's kind of a spectrum of Iemon Nastiness™ throughout the adaptations, where on one end he's almost a bystander in a murder plot that he becomes guilty of by association, and on the other end he is the one who kills Iwa directly. Here, Iemon loves Iwa, but his family isn't happy with her, and wants him to marry a much wealthier woman, Ume. He refuses, and Ume's family won't accept simply sending her to him as a mistress, so everyone is at odds about what to do. Whether Iemon genuinely does love Iwa or simply feels a sense of duty to her out of guilt for killing her father - a fact which, somewhat entertainingly, everybody knows except for Iwa - is a little ambiguous, but he does seem to feel genuine regret at the way things turned out at the end. Usually in these movies Iemon is pushed to act by the people around him, which is the case here. His own mother is out for blood, explicitly commanding him to grow a spine and kill Iwa. Naosuke's as amoral as ever, of course, and goes cheerfully along with the plot, but in this case it's Iemon's family who's the real impetus for most of what happens.

The big reason why I wanted to watch this was to see Tomisaburō Wakayama in a very early role. He would play Iemon again, much more amorally, in Tai Katō's 1961 The Tale of Oiwa's Ghost. As with most everyone else, his performance is very stiff - at least until Iemon's big freakout at the end, which is the best part of the movie - and it's funny to see him basically just doing a job, considering how distinctive an actor he eventually would be. He's got a full face of heavy makeup and looks quite a lot like his brother here.

There are some adaptations of Yotsuya Kaidan that feel like they're attempting to be ghost stories, and some - notably Keisuke Kinoshita's version - that feel like they want to be a character study and nothing else. I think this leans a bit more towards the "character study" side. Iemon is somebody who is constantly being pulled at from all sides and doesn't seem to have enough of a concept of self to figure out his own morals. One of the things that drives him in any adaptation is self-hatred; his resentment at his own low birth limiting his station, and his fall into poverty making him irritated with his life and in turn his family. After she dies and begins haunting Iemon, Iwa makes explicit a really interesting point that I never really thought about: by killing her (directly or indirectly) and their child, and joining Ume's family, he ends his own family line, forever. Iemon basically dooms himself from the start of the story, and everything that happens between then and the end is a long, protracted journey where he drags everybody around him down with him. As I said, his breakdown when Iwa and the masseur return from the dead is the high point of the film, and it bleeds out to Naosuke too, who seems to be less tortured by conscience and more just wanting to get all the ghosts to quit bothering him. Interestingly, Sode, who's usually more of a peripheral character, does not mess around in this one. She finds out Naosuke had a part in the murder of her sister and immediately comes at him with a huge knife.

This movie isn't bad by any means, but it felt much longer than it actually is. It goes through all the beats at all the right times, but aside from an unusually sober, reasonable Iemon, it doesn't feel too remarkable in terms of addition to the story. But I still love watching these, and I'll continue to hunt down all of them that I can find. I would love to see more from this director as well, especially any other ghost story films he has.