MEMORIES OF TOMORROW (2006)

Masayuki has a nice life filled with a loving wife, an easy job as a manager at an advertising agency, a pretty house and a daughter that's about to get married. Then he starts to forget things. At first, it's small stuff like his car keys or an exit on the highway, but soon his forgetfulness becomes more pronounced and he's forgetting meetings. At his wife's urging he goes to the doctor and it's even worse than they ever feared: at age 49 Masayuki is in the early stages of Alzheimer's and within no time at all he'll be what they call in the medical field: all fucked up.

I'm normally not into these person-with-a-heart-of-gold-gets-sick tearjerkers since they're predictable and depressing, but this one stars Kazue Fukiishi so I wanted to check it out. Unfortunately, her role is pretty small. Ken Watanabe does a great job as the sick guy and Kanako Higuchi is touching as his patient wife, but as I suspected even before I even sat down to watch this film: it's too predictable to be truly enjoyable. Blah, blah, hard working man, gets sick, heart of gold, tears, The End.

Worth watching, I guess, if you're into this sort of thing, but as for me, outside of the brief Kazue Fukiishi moments, I was pretty bored and I'll never watch it ever again.

ONE MISSED CALL (2003)

A young woman receives a mysterious voicemail from herself two days in the future. Two days later (at the exact moment of the voicemail timestamp) she finds herself unexpectedly saying the same shit she said on the voicemail...right before getting tossed in front of a train by a ghost. So now, one-by-one all of the people on her quick dial start getting phone calls and then dying in boring ways two days later. Yawn.

As you can probably tell by now I'm not really the biggest fan of ghost movies, mainly because I don't finds ghosts scary, but at the same time, I kinda like ghost horror movies because of the variety of the stories and there's really no set rules. So with that in mind, I was very excited to watch a ghost movie directed by the great Takashi Miike especially the Takashi Miike from 2003 because that's the same year me made GOZU which might be Miike's finest moment.. Well, I think he probably blew his creative wad on GOZU, because ONE MISSED CALL is lame as fook! The ghost isn't scary and the movie depends too much on jump scenes.  Also, the story is so confusing.  I pretty much tuned out after Kazue Fukiishi died. She was, by far, the most talented actress in the movie, so I'm not sure why she wasn't the main character.

Another thing that irritated me is after Kazue was violently mutilated and beheaded by the ghost on live television(!!!),  the ghost calls the next girl (still on live television!!!) and she just walks off! Something like that would have been the biggest news story since the moon landing and yet this woman is allowed to wanted off and start exploring an old abandoned hospital by herself?! That's even more unrealistic than the idea of the ghost haunting a phone because you know there would be a hundred television crews following her day and night for the next 48 hours.

Not worth watch. Interesting idea, but the story is too confusing and the payoff nonexistent. Skip it.

Part 2 - One Missed Call 2 (2005)
Part 3 - One Missed Call 3: Final (2006)
Remake - One Missed Call (2008)

Crew members hand visible.

13 ASSASSINS (2010)

Set in the 1830's Japan you have this dude, Naritsugu, who's a total asshole. His hobbies include: tying up families and shooting arrows at them until they are dead (kids included), raping women (including one who he chopped off her arms and legs and tongue first and murdered her family then raped her), indiscriminately killing whoever and walks on the beach. Normally that kind of shit is not allowed in polite society, but Naritsugu is the son of a former Shogun and brother of the current Shogun! Word gets around that he's being a butthole, so some samurai decide to kill this guy for the greater good of the country.

That's easier said than done because this guy is highly guarded, so once they assemble their team of assassins they decide their best bet is to kill him while he's on the road traveling from one town to another. They do all kinds of shit and set up a trap, but once the trap is sprung it's not just a few guards, but over 200 against their 13!!!! Oh shit.

The highlight of the movie is the long as fuck battle scene that takes up the last third of the movie. Even despite some of the cheesy CGI it's a fun battle and one of the best in recent years, but it still doesn't carry the weight and emotion of some of the older Samurai classics like SAMURAI REBELLION, HARAKIRI, YOJIMBO/SANJURO, THE SWORD OF DOOM and of course SEVEN SAMURAI. The fight looks big and pretty, but I wasn't emotionally attached to any of the characters.

I know it kinda sounds like I was disappointed in 13 ASSASSINS and I guess, in a way, I was. Mainly because I listened to all the hype. It is a good movie and a fun watch, but I doubt that I would ever watch it again. The villain starts out to be a real asshole, but I wish he had been more threatening instead of in the end coming off as insane. More blood would have been nice also and not that crappy looking CG blood, I hate that shit. Also the CG bulls looked dumb as fuck. On one positive note the super brief appearance by Kazue Fukiishi made my day.

FUNKY FOREST: THE FIRST CONTACT (2005)

FUNKY FOREST is a hit or miss collection of very bizarre short stories that suffer overall from a complete lack of any narrative or story structure. Some of the skits are absolute genius (like the Babbling Health Springs Vixens stories or the school sport scene where a girl with a racket bats at the milk shooting out of a older man's deformed nipples), but other skits could have easily been left on the cutting room floor: the looooong dance scene on the beach; the forest house music scene; the "Transfer Student" cartoon and the backyard dance number at the end should have all been chopped. That might sound like a lot, but with a ridiculous running time of 150 minutes (!!!) trimming this monstrosity down to a quick 85 - 90 minutes would have done the film and it's audience a huge favor.

To me the highlight of the movie was the above mentioned gymnasium scene with the girl batting that the old man nipple milk. It's was fucking genius and a perfect example of the kind of shit that runs through my head nonstop all the time. I loved it. It also starred Tadanobu Asano, who I think is one of the most talented actors I've ever seen. My second favorite was the Babbling Health Springs Vixens which is just a series of short stories about three attractive young women who go to a hot springs resort and talk nonstop. I thought it was riveting for whatever reason, it did help that it featured Kazue Fukiishi from NORIKO'S DINNER TABLE who I think is brilliant. Whenever she spoke I couldn't tear my eyes from the screen. The other stuff that I liked was the Homeroom skits about students talking in front of some very animated classmates. In the next room over there was a music class with some very weird musical instruments. In the hallway there was a strange sequence of events going on featuring a guy in a fuzzy, yellow outfit, an attractive schoolgirl, a guy with really short shorts on and a machine that looked like an older TV except where the screen should have been there was an oozing butthole with a miniature person inside it.

Everything else was mostly junk. The dance scene on the beach was torture to get through (even though the girl was beautiful); the scene with her playing a distorted violin in the forest made me want to jump into the gear of a combine penis first; the Guitar Brother moments looked promising, but went absolutely nowhere; the "Transfer Student" cartoon was crap; the backyard dance was pointless and to make matter even worse there was a three minute intermission!

Plenty of weird shit, but I can't recommend it. If you can find a copy to rent and have plenty of spare time I say go for it, but with the best scenes already on YouTube I can't seen any reason to buy it.