Steven Rubio's Online Life

fall guy (kinji fukasaku, 1982)

This is the twenty-fifth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2022-23", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 8th annual challenge, and my fourth time participating (my first year can be found at "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2019-20", the second year at "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2020-21", and last year at "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2021-22"). Week 25 is called "Sonny Chiba Week":

This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen film starring Shinichi "Sonny" Chiba.

This was a bit of a cheat. Yes, Sonny Chiba is in this movie, apparently playing himself. But I never spotted him ... he's just one of many actors in a behind-the-scenes look at film making. I'd only seen him in two movies prior to this. Like many Americans, I'd seen him turn up in Kill Bill, but my first encounter with the Chiba legend came via his 1974 martial arts classic The Street Fighter, which we saw at a drive-in. That was the first film to receive an X rating in the U.S. based solely on it violence. The scene I can never forget came when Chiba castrated a bad guy by pulling out his genitals with his bare hands.

Suffice to say, nothing like that happens in Fall Guy. Not that it wasn't possible ... director Kinji Fukasaku is known for lots of violence in his films (among them, the infamous Battle Royale). Fall Guy is an uneven blend of comedy, action, and drama. It's an interesting look at Japanese film making in the 80s, with larger-than-life caricatures. Mitsuru Hirata is good as the title character, and Keiko Matsuzaka is unbelievably beautiful. There's an aggressive sex scene that could be seen as rape, and whatever you call it, it's bad. The whole movie probably needed more Sonny Chiba.

floating clouds (mikio naruse, 1955)

Mikio Naruse continues to be an interesting case for film scholars in the West. He directed nearly 90 films in his career. He is highly regarded, yet his name doesn't often come up in lists of the top Japanese directors. He exists on the outskirts of famous lists ... the most recent such list, the Sight and Sound poll, had no films by Naruse among its top 250. I have only seen one other film by Naruse, Apart from You, which didn't do much for me. It was also different in many ways from Floating Clouds, including the fact that it was a silent movie.

So I am no expert on the work of Mikio Naruse. But I am glad I saw Floating Clouds, because at least now I get why some people swear by him. I wouldn't call it a classic. It's repetitive, feels longer than its two-hour running time, and the main characters are frustrating to watch. (The acting, especially from Hideko Takamine, is very good.) It's a tale of Yukiko and Kengo, who had an affair near the end of WWII. After the war, Kengo returns to his wife, despite telling Yukiko he would get a divorce. They have an on again/off again continuation of the affair, plus Kengo has other affairs, plus he never does divorce his wife. Struggling to get by, Yukiko becomes a mistress to an American soldier (it's not clear whether she works as a prostitute, or if people just make assumptions). She later becomes a live-in partner of a man who had in the past raped her. Late in the film, she gets an abortion (she was pregnant with Kengo's child).

I don't usually offer such detailed plot summaries, but I found this narrative to be startling. I might expect it from an HBO series, but to be watching a Japanese movie from the 1950s that had the above going on ... well, it's on me that I was at the least surprised to see this told in a fairly straightforward manner.

Naruse is sympathetic towards Yukiko, but the things she goes through could fit nicely into something by Lars von Trier. It never feels like Yukiko's love for Kengo is overwhelming and beautiful. Instead, her repeated attempts to get him back become annoying, and Kengo is never shown to be worthy of her attention.

So Floating Clouds is atmospheric, with good acting. It made me want to see more films with Hideko Takamine. But I wouldn't go any further.

5 centimeters per second (makoto shinkai, 2007)

This is the twenty-first film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2022-23", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 8th annual challenge, and my fourth time participating (my first year can be found at "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2019-20", the second year at "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2020-21", and last year at "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2021-22"). Week 21 is called "Advanced Anime Week":

This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen film from Owen Shapiro's Advanced Anime list.

This was a challenge, all right. First off, Shapiro's list disappeared, making it hard to complete the actual challenge. The list had been replicated by others, though, so it looked good, until I found that almost every film on the list was unavailable to me. I decided to pick something that 1) I could access and 2) was at least nominally anime, if not "advanced". And thus, 5 Centimeters per Second.

The film is quite subtle. It follows the story of young Takaki Tōno, and contains three episodes from different points in Takaki's life. In the first, he meets a girl, Akari, in elementary school, and they have a deep friendship that fades somewhat when Akari moves away. In the second, Takaki is in high school, and a classmate, Kanae, is in love with him. But she can never express her true feelings to Takaki. Finally, in the third, Takaki is grown and a programmer, still thinking of Akari. They seem to meet on a road, but a passing train comes between them and they don't end up contacting each other.

There is a bittersweet feel to it all. Relationships are intense, but they don't last, and lives move on. The movie is gorgeous, even when the tale is melancholic. But, to be honest, I found it all a bit boring, even with its short 62-minute running time. It's a typical movie for the challenge, something I wouldn't have seen on my own, but ultimately far enough outside of my taste preferences that I appreciated it without loving it.

platform (jia shangke, 2000)

This is my first film from director Jia Shangke, another entry in the It's About Time department. Platform was Jia's second feature, made when he was 30 ... he is considered a leading light in the Chinese "Sixth Generation" school of films.

While there was much to appreciate in Platform, I felt like I was only scratching the surface. Clearly, Jia is commenting both on the 1980s, when the film mostly takes place, and 2000, when the film was released, but I don't have enough context to pick up on subtleties. What is left is a good, if long, look at 20-somethings as they interact with each other and experience the changes in Chinese society. The focus is on a theater troupe whose repertoire seems to focus on things The Party would approve of. As time progresses, the troupe becomes more pop, but again, my lack of context means I noticed this without being able to know the implications of much of the situation.

The main characters are played by Wang Hongwei and Zhao Tao, both of whom have worked frequently with Jia. (Zhao is married to Jia.) Jia often uses stationary camerawork, but the compositions are effective, and there is enough movement to prevent a static look.

I liked Platform; I just wanted to get it enough to love it. #376 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of all time, #36 on the 21st-century list.

Here is the opening scene:

film fatales #159: take this waltz (sarah polley, 2011)

Thought I'd check out the only Sarah Polley movie I'd missed, ahead of hopefully seeing Women Talking tomorrow. It's my least favorite of the three I've seen, which is not an insult ... I think Stories We Tell is an outright classic, and Away from Her was also very good. Take This Waltz has a lot going for it, starting with Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, and Sarah Silverman. Polley paints a loving picture of Toronto (Luc Montpellier is the cinematographer) ... Polley idealizes Toronto, and the summer setting gives us a different Canada than we're used to (people have fans on in their homes because it's hot). The film is an effective rom-com (or better, rom-drama).

But there's one big problem, at least for me. Take This Waltz is about a married couple, Margot and Lou, still in love, but together just long enough to reveal a few empty spaces. The wife cute-meets a man who lives across the street, and much of the movie is in the will-they/won't they vein. The problem is that man, played by Luke Kirby, struck me as a creepy stalker more than a possible love partner. Williams does a great job of expressing the yearnings of her character ... I want her to find happiness. But I never wanted her to connect with this creepy guy.

I don't know who to blame. Polley, for creating the character? Kirby, for portraying the character? Me, for disliking the character? All I know is, while I understood why Margot was drifting away from Lou, she could do a lot better than Mr. Stalker Guy. (Not to mention, he works as a pedicab driver in Toronto, an excess of cute that never worked.)

a few 2022 movie lists

I'll probably watch a few more movies this year, but unless one is an all-time classic, these will likely remain the best movies I watched in 2022 for the first time. I gave all of them a rating of 9 on a scale of 10. Sorted by release year:

• Woman in the Dunes (1964)
• Attica (2021)
• Drive My Car (2021)
• Flee (2021)
• Petite Maman (2021)
• Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
• RRR (2022)

Best movies I re-watched this year (all 10/10):

• The Wizard of Oz (1939)
• Citizen Kane (1941)
• A Hard Day's Night (1964)
• Jaws (1975)
• The Last Waltz (1978)
• Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

The ongoing Geezer Cinema list. We watched 48 Geezer movies this year, beginning with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse back on January 4:

[Letterboxd list of Geezer Cinema movies]

And this list of everything I watched this year:

[Letterboxd list of movies I watched in 2022]

geezer cinema: godzilla, mothra and king ghidorah: giant monsters all-out attack (shusuke kaneko, 2001)

The first Geezer movie in a month, and we had to deal with a few holdups. It was my turn to pick, and I got tickets for Black Adam, but I wasn't feeling too good, so I exchanged them for tickets the next day. But we didn't feel much better, so we opted to stay home. I read that November 3 is Godzilla Day, so I hunted down a Godzilla movie for us to watch. Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack got some good reviews, so I chose that one.

I've seen a lot of Godzilla movies, although not as many as the real fans. I saw the original from 1954, saw Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964), Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992), and many more, right up to last year's Godzilla vs. Kong (my favorite is the 2014 Gareth Edwards-directed Godzilla). I looked up some info about this new-to-me movie ... fans were looking forward to it because director Shusuke Kaneko had done good things with a Gamera reboot (three films in the late 90s). GMK (as it is known to fans) is something of a reboot itself, existing in a universe where only the original happened (although there's a brief dig at the 1998 American crapfest). It's 50 years later, and Godzilla hasn't been seen since 1954. But he turns up, and in this one, he is a pure bad guy. The other titular giant monsters rise to fight him, along with Baragon, who for some reason doesn't make it into the title. There is some humor that I couldn't tell whether it was intentional, acting that was reasonably good (especially from Chiharu Niiyama), and excellent special effects beyond the guys in monster suits (not just guys ... Rie Ōta was Baragon, and she was the first female suit actor to be a kaiju in a Godzilla movie). It's entirely possible this is a better movie than Black Adam ... maybe we made out in the end.

the mysterians (ishirō honda, 1957)

Anything I watch while on vacation will be driven by devices. If I'm going to watch a movie on my Kindle, I'm not picking a big-screen classic. Criterion is streaming lots of horror movies this October, including a bunch of Japanese movies from Ishirō Honda that were staples of my TV watching as a kid. The Mysterians came fairly early in his monster-movie career, and before he died, Honda said it was his favorite.

These posts will mostly be quickies... I'm typing this on my phone, for instance, which encourages brevity. The Mysterians is more science-fiction than monster movie, as an alien race from a destroyed planet comes to Earth ("in peace") looking for a place to relocate. No one takes them seriously... All they want is a small piece of land. They also want to teach the Earth people about the dangers of nuclear war (the reason their planet was destroyed). Like I say, sounds OK to me, but the reactions by the humans are completely hostile, with first the Japanese and then the entire Earth increasing their military response (and failing against the superior technology of the aliens). 

Oh, there's one more thing: the aliens are largely radioactive, they have trouble making healthy babies, so they want to take a few female humans for mating purposes. 

It's all predictably loony. It's fun watching these movies with subtitles. It's as if they quit being Saturday afternoon junk and become art films. The effects are good in The Mysterians. But I think it's a stretch to call it a clear classic outside of its genre.

like someone in love (abbas kiarostami, 2012)

Like Someone in Love was one of the last pictures from the noted Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (Where Is the Friend's House?, Close-Up, Certified Copy). While I have only seen a small portion of the many films from Kiarostami, I've never seen one I didn't like, and Close-Up was probably the best film of 1990. Kiarostami filmed Like Someone in Love in Japan with a Japanese cast speaking Japanese, and you'd think the result would be a bit distanced from Japanese culture. But it actually has the feel of a Japanese film ... Ozu is often mentioned in discussions of the movie.

Like Someone in Love features three primary characters: Akiko (Rin Takanashi), a college student who also works as a call girl, her boyfriend Noriaki (Ryô Kase), and an elderly client (Tadashi Okuno). According to Kiarostami, Tadashi "had earned his living in film for 50 years, but had never uttered a line. He was a professional extra." It's an interesting piece of casting ... Tadashi Okuno was not an amateur, but he had a self-effacing presence that make his character feel natural in his imperfections. There is something resembling a plot, but you don't come to the movie wondering "what happens next". The forward progression of the film derives from the gradual unfolding of the characters as we learn more about them. However, it's never clear if the characters see themselves as progressing. We are on the outside, watching them, and from that we get the distancing I mentioned earlier.

There is a lot of dialogue in Like Someone in Love, and much of the film takes place indoors, in cramped environs. Nothing seems very private. We are stuck in close quarters with the characters, even as we as an audience are distanced from the people we see on the screen. In one remarkable scene (like many, it takes place inside a car), Akiko listens to a series of voicemails from her grandmother, which we hear, but Kiarostami shoots from outside the car, through the windows.

Like Someone in Love was shot entirely in digital, and the look can be distracting for those of us who still expect movies to look like film. In any event, the cinematography is impressive throughout. #403 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of the 21st century.

the life of oharu (kenji mizoguchi, 1952)

The life of the titular Oharu may remind you of Job. Actually, I made that observation about another Mizoguchi film: "The family at the center of Sansho the Bailiff is filled with good people .... They suffer, oh do they suffer, like Job, or like Björk in Dancer in the Dark." Oharu (spoiler alert) loses her first love (played by Toshirô Mifune) to an execution. She is sent to be the mistress to a lord, meant to bring him an heir. When she succeeds, the lord sends her back home. Her father puts her out to be a courtesan ... she fails and returns home again. She goes to serve a family ... the wife tosses her out. She marries ... her husband is murdered. She tries to become a nun ... she is raped and thrown out of the convent. She becomes a prostitute, but she is aged and in rejected by potential customers.

It's all too much, and in some ways the comparison to a heroine from an early von Trier movie is apt. But Kinuyo Tanaka does remarkable things with Oharu. She feels the low points, at times she is overwhelmed, yet there is something about the actress that suggests inner strength. That strength might be almost comedic if Mizoguchi took a different approach. The film is on Oharu's side, and it paints a dismal portrait of life for a woman in 17th-century Japan. But I'm never sure about Mizoguchi's sympathies. #260 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of all time.