THE LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE (2003)

Asano Tadanobu, Riki Takeuchi and Takashi Miike all acting in the same movie.  Albeit, both Miike and Takeuchi have very small roles, but still it was cool seeing all three of these massive talents on the screen together.

Asano Tadanobu is a quiet loner.  He seems to think a lot about killing himself, but it doesn't look like he's serious.  It's more of a HAROLD AND MAUDE-style fascination with death and the inconvenience of living.  The biggest inconvenience of his life is his yakuza brother who is constantly crashing at his house.  During one visit an assassin kills the brother.  Asano ends up killing the assassin, so now he has two dead bodies in his apartment.  Later on he is contemplating jumping off a low bridge when he spots a cute girl he saw earlier at his bookstore job.  As he's looking at her a car runs her over and kills her.  Asano ends up bonding with the dead girls free-spirited sister and going to stay at her house since he's scared to go back to his.

There's not much to the story, but all the same I really enjoyed THE LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE.  The main reason is Asano Tadanobu.  A lot of actors, in a quiet role like this, would have overplayed the part and looked foolish or underplayed it and just stood there with a blank look on their face the entire movie.  Tadanobu plays it perfectly.  The main emotional tone of this film rides on his body language and facial expressions.  That said, I wish he had been given a strong female actress to work with.  The girl is this movie does an okay job, but the film would have definitely benefited from a better actress. 

Enjoyable slow pace, beautiful photography, a super delightful reference to a previous Tadanobu/Miike collaboration.  Recommended.

BATTLE ROYALE II (2003)

This movie is ridiculous. A new group of students are kidnapped and forced to fight to the death, but this time they're given military weaponry, some small boats and told to invade (D-Day style) an island and kill the leader of a group of terrorists (Tatsuya Fujiwara from Part 1). That might sound cool, but it's terrible. The introduction alone takes 26 minutes, then when we finally get to some action (a beach invasion) it's filmed in that weird shutter speed thing they did in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. It gets real annoying real quick.

Eventually, they make their way to the terrorists compound and they talk and talk and talk forever. At well over 2 hours, this movie was torture. I can't think of any reason to ever watch it. Except maybe to giggle at Riki Takeuchi's insane overacting. His facial expressions are always the best.

Skip it.

Part 1 - Battle Royale (2000)