a schoolgirl twofer that both somehow starred Hiroko Yakushimaru in the lead role, something I didn't know going in, and totally didn't plan them on the same day for such a purpose!
Sailor Suit Machine Gun: first Shinji Somai despite my calls for more of his films to be released by the various labels, in threads, etc. I bet that he would be my kind of director and he is. the negative-to-middling reviews on Letterboxd that this has are very amusing, as people clearly wanted more of a schlocky movie, which this is not at all. it's tonally a bit all over the place, at times being quite funny and a clear parody of the yakuza film, but then will actually have the emotional pulls that some of those movies have? it felt more like a Seijun Suzuki movie without his more in your face energy, moving at a more relaxed pace. I appreciated the comedy a lot more than say, the two Juzo Itami movies I've watched so far (the two Criterion have released) and liked the summery mood of the film, with a great theme song (and title card). that said, I feel like this could've stood to press more at the idol film like it did the yakuza genre, could've been quite interesting. therewillbeblus noted in the dedicated thread for this movie that this does owe a lot to noir, with the whole theme of an outsider (in this case, one of the more extreme cases of such!) being brought into the underworld. I really loved...
the bittersweet ending. more like this please, in a French movie or something I feel like Izumi would've been unceremoniously killed off, but I love the pessimism so much more of the ending we got
I really can't wait to see more of Somai's work. I didn't love this movie, but did quite like it and think he can land a masterpiece with me at some point.
School in the Crosshairs: second Obayashi after
House and I was expecting/hoping to be blown away and suddenly be taken by this guy. I know he has some ardent fans on some corners of the internet but this, much like the previous film, gets way too remarkably silly for me. it started promising, as noted above I just love the 1980s Japanese look and energy a lot, which this movie has plenty of. the title song wasn't as much my thing as
Sailor Suit's which kinda worried me, and then the movie just goes all in on the anime-but-in-real-life goofiness that
House does. Obayashi's fans claim there's a lot more going on here than just weirdness-for-weirdness' sake but I think I'm gonna need some sort of scholarly reading to try and get into that, something that Third Window thankfully included with their disc, which I'm gonna give a spin at some point. I'll keep trying with Obayashi, but I genuinely have no clue what this movie ended up being.
and for something not in that thematic pairing..
Time Bandits: I told my mother I was disappointed in her for never showing me this as a kid, to which she replied she wasn't a big fan of it, which is fair. this is a really brilliant, imaginative film, I think somewhere along the lines of
The Princess Bride (which I also only saw for the first time as an adult, and loved) and kinda reveals what it would've been like had Terry Gilliam actually directed the Harry Potter films. Craig Warnock puts in a tremendous performance in the lead, something that's really
required for this to work as well as it does. the adult actors are just icing on the cake, and it was awesome to see Sean Connery and Shelley Duvall in this, neither of whom I was aware of until the credits started. actually really loved that Connery was in this, and wish he did more movies of the sort. I loved the energy this movie had (typical for Gilliam) and think it's great something this genuinely weird and funny worked as well as it did. again, going back to the discussion in its dedicated thread about the ending...
I'm definitely on board with it, it's extremely Roald Dahl to me and I think that's pretty perfect. his parents were so awful to him! why should we care about them! who knows if he ends up an orphan or whatever, if it even matters. that last second pan out is genius and very, very Gilliam (even kinda lets you know how Brazil is gonna go!)
I hadn't seen one of Gilliam's movies in a long time, wasn't sure if
Brazil would still hold up or not. this kinda tells me it will. also one more thing
the George Harrison song over the end credits is incredible and I'm glad Gilliam won out over Handmade on this being a GH-fueled musical. it's way cooler hearing him show up over the end credits
hopefully I don't forget to vote this month!