Crate expectations

I have a strong aversion to protagonists who lack moral ambiguity. I mean too perfect. Passively condescending. Arrogant. Delusional. Too close to real life how there are those self-righteous hypocrites whose squeaky-clean ethos is oppressively untenable. 

     Golden Age in Hollywood is where I find all the best templates. Lang paranoia. Screwball love grifters cheats prostitutes toxic matches. Wilder romanticized waif discarded sexpot suicidal self-destructive slighted emotional map of how the heart feels.

Wife of a Spy (2020, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is one part smug oh look at how perfect we are couple. Especially the husband YUSAKO. But then it clicks it’s period appropriate. Especially the genre. Back in the Forties we wanted to see couples who were a more perfect version of ourselves. Do gooders. The life of means manners and marriage we should aspire to. It took me a while though with Yusako’s recurring defense I’m not a spy I’m acting out of my own self-interest I’m such a good person schtick. 
     But there’s more to what these period genre conventions are hiding. In Wife of a Spy the timeline has everything to do with the chronology of the War. The couple start out just as the history of cinema started out just as the world started out idealistic. Then comes the war. Then comes the darkness. Cynicism. Suspicion. Betrayal. Paranoia. Atrocities.
     What makes this strand of espionage suspense distinct unfamiliar and different striking off guard is its political stance. Because back then wartime means nationalism. Or at the very least civic duty. Chip in. Do your part. Maybe I’m naïve but I can’t think of any correlative frame of reference where the hero is so unpatriotic. Leaking information treason aiding enemies. But the empire of the sun looms ominously in the shadows as perpetrator of mass war crimes gradually methodically exposed infecting our moral codes as audience with its own akin to biological plague weaponized arc.
 
This hybridization of period and modern genre codes achieves the perfect pitch blending nostalgic sentimental escapism with disillusionment destruction detached no simple resolution profound disjointed culmination of enlightened despair. SATOKO wandering away from us into the air raid night with her country her life her psyche burning to the ground. The film and she don’t let her country of the hook either.
   We are meant to feel what she feels. And do. That’s what Wife of a Spy manages to achieve. We mourn that Yusako wasn’t portrayed as the kind of hero period propaganda would have dictated all the more because reality has sunk in by then. And we redefine our notions of heroism and projected outcomes with a little more weight because of it.

Less a fun park ride than some kind of propaganda exercise

Japanese woman films travelogue in Uzbekistan for television. Is To the Ends of the Earth (2019, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) as boring as its premise would suggest? Excrutiatngly yes.

 

Ruminative search for place. Identity. Yawn. First half has some mildly amusing tensions based on the sexism YOKO is subjected to from the Uzbek guides along with the irony of the sexism her team the Japanese production harbor. 
     Warm and fuzzy feminine. Conflict of ethics over the purchase of and intended liberation of a goat. Third act seems to be the fulfilling payoff success of finding Chorsu Bazaar subject to make the show a smash. But then authorities apprehend Yoko for filming where it’s not allowed. False alarm. Everything’s ok. Back home a huge refinery fire in Tokyo Bay. Is Yoko’s bf dead? False alarm. He’s ok. But we’re not. The heavy dose of obligatory drama feels insufferable. How much more can she endure becomes how much more can we endure. 
     At least Okoo is ok. To the Ends of the Earth has its charm. But it doesn’t work tonally structurally thematically or have any worthwhile sense of purpose enough to give us a reason for watching it.

Love is nothing more than a weak painkiller sentimental fake comfort

Wow I see the first Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie that I hated and its follow up turns out to be as if he remade it in a way that more closely corresponds to my own desires. Uncanny.

 

In Before We Vanish (2017, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) three aliens are sent to comprehend concepts from humans set up a communication device to convey its completion then await invasion however one of them has difficulty taking the concept of love. He stumbles into a church where cute children give their answers. A charismatic priest provides the definitive love chart from the Gospel. Finally the alien’s surrogate wife shows him. So once the entire alien species find out what love is to humans they call off the invasion. Most sentimental optimistic life affirming possible outcome. 
     In Foreboding (2017, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) same basic arc. But this time at the end the alien MAKABE through seeking to gain the concept of love ultimately sees that it’s a delusion gimmick masking humanity’s fear of death and as far as their aims at coexisting and loving one another they’ve failed. Their entire our entire civilization remains on the verge of death. Invasion time. World annihilation. The end.
 
No seriously as much as I hated Before We Vanish I completely adore delighted in loved Foreboding. Before We Vanish has this bombastic whimsy quirk romcom score set on bright sunny days. Foreboding has a scarce ambient track menace gloomy dark funeral march feel to it.
     Foreboding is set in a hospital. TATSUO has this line like you should get out of here a hospital is not a healthy place. Sources point to this being extracted from a longer five hour version I’d love to see some day. But its focus is narrowed to fewer characters. Mostly Makabe and ETSUKO. Its tone is a consistent psychological horror that feels every bit as scary as if it really were the end of the world.
     If you look close enough you could maybe see Etsuko’s endurance resilience in the face of the apocalypse striving to save her husband. But no. I see it as bleak. She’s working in some crappy just above sweatshop conditions hospital job her husband is a janitor nervous wreck spineless murderer turned dope addict. That’s what breaks my heart the most. Probably my favorite aspect of the plot. By the end I don’t see Tatsuo as anything more than a junkie desperate clinging to Etsuko because she literally holds his next fix in her pocket. Now that’s an apt symbolic dynamic for what holds a loving couple together. The ending makes literal the lyrics from one of my favorite Charli xcx songs. Love of my life selling all the drugs that I like.

Metaphysical linguistics lessons

First speedbump through my Kiyoshi Kurosawa run. This one didn’t do it for me.

 

So what do we got workin here? In Before We Vanish (2017, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) its tone manages to strike that whole satirical Earth is not worth saving well enough. As cynical as generating more sincere empathy for the SHINZY alien than any of the humans. 
     Maybe that’s what makes me remiss in formulating any critical appreciation of Before We Vanish. The motor is too recognizable for me and it has a certain forbearer that is such a prominent crucial work so dear to my heart entire emotional cinematic composition that I could never look past the Karen Allen of it all.
    
The other all too super familiar trope is the learning alien whose data is the humans he encounters. It’s been mined well and often. As a gag. For all the time we spend watching the central conceit of the movie the three aliens taking concepts from humans it never even comes close to a laugh. Or interesting. It’s like auditing a preschool class.
 
The petite highschool girl fighting huge dudes is rad enough. But weighed against everything else so what? Similarly though when she goes up against a gang of mercenaries in an isolated warehouse once she gets her hands on that grease gun it’s on. Any scenes with AKIRA TACHIBANA sociopath wave of mutilation cute precocious oblivious unstoppable are fun yes.
     The narrative stakes just aren’t there. What payoff that might have redeemed the slog we’d invested our attention into proves illusory. Okay sorry I am such a sourpuss here but for the love of Karen Allen please.

The secret of the dark room

Emotionally macabre. The scary thing is how does this film get me to empathize to actually truly feel the sorrow and sadness for these deplorable pathetic irredeemably selfish toxic deranged lost souls?

 

Daguerrotype (2016, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is a gothic ghost story through which Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns to themes of men with obsessive inabilities to relinquish their chokehold on the past on a woman on their delusional fragile identities lost intwined therein. Who cares right?
     Me. I’m into these loser goth boy crybaby fables. So emo. The dark room is such a great image system in Daguerrotype. It’s STÉPHANE HEGRAY’S troubled psyche. Stéphane has this fixation on daguerreotypes as a figurative manifestation of his paralyzing desire to preserve a foregone past ultimately to the point beyond which it may even have existed. A past where he seeks to objectify immobilize immortalize the women in his life closest to him. And as he’s losing his hold on it he drinks himself away losing his hold on reality on himself on his health on life.
     But this dark room image system also serves a secondary function. JEAN is this young either too lazy or too desperate to earn an honest living drifter type whose morally polluted psyche is just as dark as Stéphane’s. Daguerrotype lays out this whole climate of young men not being able to find any work resorting to drastic means giving up or compromising to survive. Again this unemployment horror is more profoundly disturbing than Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s supernatural flourishes but they’re not competing they’re in balance with one another. I just can’t resist stressing how effective they are.
     So in contrast the other image system is MARIE as bright room. In the second half notice how she literally brightens the room with gold light when Jean goes there. But there’s also the contrast between her father Stéphane’s passion hobby this cold inanimate poison antique with hers botany nurturing this living regenerative life giving delicate greenhouse. And of course the outcome of improper disposal of the waste from the mercury.
 
When photographing Marie why does Stéphane build that life size daguerreotype though? The answer probably isn’t worth spelling out. That’s the kind of ambiguity Kiyoshi Kurosawa is master of. Does Stéphane actually see the ghost of Marie? Why doesn’t Jean? Why do we hear her say Dad? Who was the young woman the appraiser sees upstairs? DENISE?
     The tragic irony is in the dark room the master passes down everything to the apprentice. The powerful way it does so is it’s unbeknownst to Jean until it’s too late. And even then he probably never realizes it. Covering it up burying it under his own self-delusion. Psychologically so on point it stays with you the antithesis of beauty. 

motives patterns and continuity

Shochiku. Lavish production values. First of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s late masterpieces. There’s always been something about the police procedural genre of movies that has this familiar cozy nostalgic inviting intellectual sensation of relaxed paced learning where the journey is the reward as much as if not more than the outcome.

     Creepy (2016, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is a studio movie. Wall to wall emotional underscoring emphasizes the suspense cuing us when and how to respond. Instantly and thoroughly accessible engaging. Broad. Unabashedly crowd pleasing. Until it isn’t.
 

The procedural makes detectives of us all. At that house in Hino City who were those five bodies? Or for that matter this might be obnoxious of me to ask but if they were vacuum sealed in those body bags why does NOGAMI have that repulsive retch smell reaction in the house? It’s the three Hondas and two Mizutas right? No these questions aren’t important. Aren’t as compelling as.
     What hold does NISHINO have over MIO? When he gives her Nogami’s gun we notice how she doesn’t for a second seem to consider using it on him. How does she still go to school every day?  Why wasn’t SAKI HONDA susceptible to Nishino’s influence even though the rest of her family was? How was she allowed to live? What does she remember? 
     Before I get any further it’s worth mentioning that Creepy isn’t grounded in the verisimilitude of what we might call the real world nor is its logic what we might call accessible. It’s cinematic which is better. Embrace artifice and you won’t be disappointed. The ways the lives of Mio Saki YASUKO and TAKAKURA are affected is what’s relevant here. 
 
Nishino is the embodiment of Evil. He only wears black. He only gets others to enact his heinous crimes. Although never called heroin by name he uses so called shots to enslave his victims. This figure through cinema is a symbol of the psychological anomaly in society that makes men evil. 
     But the big twist thematic conceit of the film is what does pure evil really want? To have his own happy family. To live right next door to you. To have the perfect little life we all want. And that’s what’s so scary. Antisocial Personality Disorder psychopath doesn’t fit the profile categories of motives patterns or continuity because he wants to be just like you. 
     As trad as Creepy starts off the second half and into the final act the façade shatters. Just like Nishino. And it will be because he pushes it too far. Just as the narrative does. The narrative transgresses by pushing us too far. It operates on our limits until we can’t take anymore either. It doesn’t play fair. 
 
The circumstances under which we may observe Nishino preying upon Yasuko is sublime. There are two key scenes between just she and he where the color is boosted. The greens of the grass and skintones saturated for a brief moment in this otherwise subdued washed out palette. Why? Even the filmmaking techniques are pushed too far.
 
In closing some movie nerd miscellany. In that trope scene where Nishino and Takagawa see who can get Yasuko to choose between them the cut does this thing I know Kiyoshi Kurosawa does in his later work I have been obsessed with for a while and haven’t spoken with anyone else about or read about in any helpful way but I wanna call it a match reverse.
     Specifically a wide where the perspective although it may contain depth is flat in the sense of frontal geometrically even horizontally. So when it cuts to the reverse each of the bodies of the characters are shown in the exact same size of the previous composition and placement in said previous frame. My guess is they have a video playback person put an overlay on the image to achieve this. I don’t know if I’m even properly describing this. But anyways. 
     Also around the midpoint when Nogami opens that sliding heavy metal door it totally gives The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974, Tobe Hooper) iconic vibes. Even more so because like in that movie he enters without being invited in and no one is around. That hypnotic yellow pinwheel fan spinning. If I said it was reminiscent of the Texas tower windmills I’d be pushing it too far.

Finally a movie that shows how great suicide is

Tender sweet as a marshmallow over a crackling campfire. Childlike innocence imbued picaresque extended sleepovers ghost romance syllabus of spirituality.

 

The profound thesis of Journey to the Shore (2015, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is calm down even though I committed suicide it has nothing to do with you I did it for my own personal reasons I still love you watch me prove it to you. Its themes are how crucial resolution is to our spirit. 
     If Kiyoshi Kurosawa films tend to end with a symbolic or implied sense of where its characters are headed Journey to the Shore would be a sunset. Literally it has a sunset montage. With a dose of sentimental Hollywood-lite rom-com schmaltzy whimsicality indulging fantasy what life could have been playing house potential possibilities that never existed the film is exceedingly beautiful. Broken up into three parts Newspaper followed by Gyoza Maker then Physics Professor each conceals an underlying troublemaker antagonist in need of redemption. 
     The midpoint is when MIDORI gives into this flaw herself. Her insecurity turns to paranoia over TOMOKO which then backfires and turns into a bitterness not of a woman rival but of a woman she envies. The identical composition frontal direct reverse coverage heavy handedly suggests to us these two women are one and the same. But I doubt it’s just me who sees an unspoken spiteful arrogance in Tomoko’s delivery? Ultimately what this brings up is the withering motif Kiyoshi Kurosawa uses.
     How blissful the deterioration of the SHIMAKAGE flower wall is in contrast to Midori’s alarm waking her from her dream into nightmare reality disheveled flat and subtle shock horror of her dying houseplants. This cut erases time. When in commune with our spirit there is no such thing as time. 
 
Although we perish. Our bodies do. One day we will see our final sunset. Journey to the Shore is full of questions for us to ask ourselves like did we take care of everything we needed to while alive? Settle everything with our loved ones? Will they be okay after we’re gone? However many billion years old the Earth the Milky Way are they too will wither away yet the universe has only just begun.
     The third act in this spiritualscape has expanded so vastly with the inclusion of the waterfall cave pathway to the dead. When KAORU falls under scrutiny for coming to town on a bus with YASUKE it is now we who are tested as if are we going to now let ourselves be the ones who have to ruin everything by seeing this all as a lie? Kaoru’s husband is becoming something indescribable something hideous because he’s confused.
     Confusion. That husband foreshadows or confronts Midori with the threat of foreshadowing what can happen to her if she falls into this transcendental existential confusion. I think when she meets the ghost of her father he’s headed there too. All of this poison doom so dangerous becomes nothing though when we pass into the wide of that field with Midori and Yasuke walking and all those children play shooting guns at each other. It’s a paradise moment. And we’re ready for the sunset.
     Journey to the Shore is pretty powerful. Stays with you. It haunts us with our own regrets. If forces us to ask ourselves what we hold onto that we shouldn’t? What should we let go of?

Christie Smith SS26 Fashion Show

Were you apprehensive worried by the trailers that this looks too colorful too chaotic like a Joel Schumacher Batman mess? I was. Don’t worry. It’s not. 

 

I Love Boosters (2026, Boots Riley) is the kind of comedy Hollywood should have been making the whole time since the Golden Age. It’s also unbridled imagination hyperartificial final solution to the what if question. 
     Like Golden Age screwball the comedy is the delivery system yet it has to be backed up by a character story. Clear as can be CORVETTE is against CHRISTIE SMITH. I Love Boosters is a Keke Palmer vehicle and rightly so. Has Demi Moore ever played a character anything like this? Her delivery elevates the Christie Smith character’s pseudointellectual narcissist powermad psychobabble cultleader influencer innovator disruptor pop messiah dictator hilariously sparklingly endearingly effective.
     The plot structure again like Golden Age screwball is busy. Hawksian screwball onslaught rambunctious fast-paced. But around the midpoint an element is introduced so unbeknownst unannounced unexpectedly dynamic creative highly conceptual that it shapes the entire latter half into the stuff of awe dream cartoon. Call it what’s in the magic bag. But it’s staggeringly sci-fi impact is purposeful practical relevant pays off and far less convoluted oversaturated needlessly complicated as the multiverse trope problem plaguing the franchise houses. And speaking of Hollywood glut mediocre cashgrab comicbook slogs how does I Love Boosters do so much more and so much better at half the runtime? 
 
The art direction’s intentionally excessive color palette is more aggressively monochromatic than anything since production designer director Bo Welch’s The Cat in the Hat (2003). But it serves the unified aesthetic of its milieu as extension of its subject matter. Fashion. Low class urban bitches. With all due respect to urban bitches.
     Does the ending work? As far as Corvette’s story yes adequately. About the political messages? There aren’t any silly this is an entertainment. And it’s intelligent. Like the way Hollywood used to be good at.
 
In closing. Random bits. The wall to wall expressionistic aggressive art score fits well. And the LaKeith Stanfield recurring plot device character offering soliciting the answers to the meaning of life’s questions along with accompanying leitmotif acoustic therapeutic escape is just that much more reason as a whole I Love Boosters is evidently every bit and more the comedy I dreamed it’d be.

4/21/2016 AMC Phipps Plaza 14
Atlanta, GA

The holiday resort development is destroying Hikone Island

Sci-fi Freudian potboiler odyssey into unconscious into subconscious repressed trauma mystery romance. Real (2012, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is languid with Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ability to maintain a consistent tone of existential dread doom escaping reality self-delusion ominous swirling whirlpool of oblivion in the best possible way.

 

Its tone is everything. Crappy low-budge cgi effects is better than spectacularly hi-tech effects any day. It’s more scary. It’s more fun. The disintegrating before our very eyes ATSUMI swiss cheese moment is more emotionally resonant. The philosophical zombies AI slop is the worst unsettling best way Real traps us in artificial horror.
     The confusing foggy narrative structure aims at conveying the labyrinth of our psychological emotional intrapersonal universe. How do you uncover a mystery that’s built out of fog? Does Atsumi’s dad chiding KOICHI about the irreversibly destructive damage his parents did to this place fifteen years ago have a clear analog irl? Does it need to? Does it matter?
     Also what’s the timeline here? Atsumi and Kiochi are twenty-five and met when they were ten? When all the stuff went down? That’s a lot of baggage. The Kiyoshi Kurosawa sunshine peering through motif recurring in this film tells us their future is bright though. After two hours of toxic sludge excavation what does that say about life though?

Can I start all over again?

Claustrophobic somber bleak domestic melodrama. Existential undertow dragging you into the abyss. Dive right in. How did the resolution in Tokyo Sonata (2008, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) make you feel? Cathartic? Exhilarated? Or worst. Life affirming? Okay have fun with that.

 

The mom holds everything together. Tokyo Sonata is about power structures. Dismantling authority. Or keeping up appearances in order to preserve said authority. Or in its nuanced portrait of this nuclear family both.
     The climax Tokyo Sonata builds to is the mother father and youngest son all make an attempt to escape but are unable to as if they have a biological shock collar that prevents them from doing so. The moral paradox society is built on values encompassing family and government yet despite what happens when these are corrosive destructive within they still serve their purpose. And dare I say a greater good. Structurally there’s some fun stuff to delve into.
     The obvious is the contrast between the dad hiding losing his job and the youngest son hiding taking piano lessons. The dad going from salaryman breadwinner to bum is a variation of an anxiety Kiyoshi Kurosawa mines on other occasions. And it remains more unsettling than his supernatural existential horror. But there’s a huge twist here. Just observe where he’s at after that four months later jump and you’ll see what I mean. Anyway the mom seeing the dad at the hobocamp and discovering that the youngest son has been spending his lunch money on piano also feels like she’s in some remote way analogous to the uh USA.
     The mom collects intelligence. How? Unlike the dad she crosses borders. Like the US invading Afghanistan and Iraq she goes into both of their sons’ rooms. This sets up the uproarious irony that she actually succeeds in her campaigns whereas the oldest son literally joining up with the US Army deployed to the Middle East let’s say not so much.
     There’s also somewhat of an ironic twist with the home invasion brigand played by Kôji Yakusho. It’s like out of desperation the mom runs off with him only to be confronted with the harsh truth that he’s a failure at business and impotent so basically her husband. And that he’s a misanthrope and antisocial so basically her youngest son. Fate the architect of what it’s to be for her and there’s no escape. Although this does provide the catalyst for her arc growth assimilation acceptance appreciation.
 
Clearly the moral in the end of Tokyo Sonata is instead of trying to run away out of desperation and start over with a brand new life escaping your miserable old one what you really ought to do is love life and see that each new sunrise is an opportunity to start over by trying to do better. To be better. And how isn’t this life affirming?
     Because it’s too late. The authority has already been undermined. Even for me some of the ultradarkest humor is when the doc bandages up the youngest son the dad pushed down a flight of stairs says he has a concussion but otherwise he’s fine. Talking about a concussion like he skinned his knee falling of a tricycle. Think about it why after the boy’s finished with the recital does no one applaud?
 
Okay yes I guess my dark sense of humor is too morbid but get a load of how the mom has a nightmare of the oldest son coming home from the Middle East PTSD morally shattered because of killing too many people. Then the reality turns out far worse. Irony of ironies the mom reads that letter from the oldest son and the tone could be described as quaint perhaps we find out along with her that he’s doing well after being sent home by the Army.
     Except he instead chooses to join up with Islamic Extremist terrorists in Iraq just to get to learn what it’s like for them. I’m sorry that’s still the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.