HungFist wrote:Saw Why Don't You Play in Hell last weekend. Disappointing. Has promise and many good scenes, but the ending is a CGI blood mess beyond belief. I can't believe Sono is now doing that kind of CGI crap that is such a disgrace to real action cinema.
Tak Sakaguchi is kinda awesome as a Japanese Bruce Lee wannabe, though.
There's a lot of fun references. The film Tak and guys are filming within the film is Blood of the Wolves - a movie Sono and Sakaguchi were to co-direct and probably even started filming but never finished. Also, in the movie theater scene they play The Room, which is a Sono film from the early 90's. Mickey Curtis plays the projectionist.
The best thing about the film is Fumi Nikaido. Japanese pretty girls tough playing tough usually end up being just cute with zero credibility, but Nikaido is simply amazing. Guys are gonna be in love.
It's just a shame that the film is so uneven. It doesn't find any proper balance - too many characters, some embarrassing comedy acts, recycled music from older Sono films, and the when the ending comes you get about 3000 liters of blood and it's all CGI.
It's a better film than the last few Sono's, but a far cry from the amazing Sono films like Hazard, Noriko's Dinner Table, Suicide Club, and Love Exposure.
Well... While I generally agree with your comment, I will have to comment: To Be fair, if you look at the splatter massacre of the ending of this movie, it must've been pretty difficult to set up - especially on a tight budget. They would probably have had to shoot the final sequence for a much longer time, had they not used CGI blood effects - it would've been very hard. I agree, it comes off as really lazy; yet, at the same time, I also don't blame Sono for deciding upon it. Just look at the small place in which they shot the movie; with practical effects, it would mess up the cameras, and they would probably have to shoot most of it in, like, one take, or something. It made total sense to me they used CGI, even though it looks cheap.
I suppose one solution they could've come up with for this movie, could have been to create a bigger space for the final showdown, like Kill Bill Vol.1 'House of Blue Leaves' studio. That way, they could've utilized practical effects, given they would've had more space to set up cameras and whatnot. They do reference to Kill Bill a lot, too. It makes sense, though; Sono is a genre film kind of a guy, right. Sono draws inspiration from that Western, postmodern aesthetic, and he mixes his Classical music with J-pop rock stuff, and messes with stuff all the time. I like how they threw in the 'Battles Without Honor and Humanity' beginning theme, in this humorous way. I guess classics always end up getting parodied in our modern times - 'Seventh Seal', 'Psycho', 'Exorcist', etc. etc. Next Sono movie should be a parody of a movie of his own - a parody of a parody!
I totally agree about Fumi Nikaido! OMG! This is the dangers of watching movies - you'll end up getting these painful crushes on the female leads, lol...
Those Japanese; they surely work a lot, don't they! She is such a young, little girl, and yet she's already been in several cool movies, including that Miike flick. I am looking forward to seeing the Asano Tadanobu movie, in which she co-stars - she deserves to be in good movies, acting with top stars! She is special, for sure!
I guess, even though I am not even that huge of a Sono fan, I do admire his youthful spirit. To me, Sono is a kid at heart - he's this 52 year old little boy. He looks young, I think, and he focuses on making these adolescent, adorable artsy-fartsy movies about modern Japanese youth. In a way, I would say a movie such as 'Love Exposure', is kind of like a Japanese equivalent of a Bollywood kind of a movie. I see it now - the amusing, goofy stuff he puts in there so to make it colorful and entertaining. In that sense, I think he does a pretty good job, depicting Japanese pop-culture, youth-culture, in an amusing fashion. Personally, I do find his youthful demeanor quite inspiring - it shows that you are only as old as you feel.