THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS (2001)

Say whaaat?  A Takashi Miike musical!  How strange is that?

Four generations of the Katakuri family have opened a bed and breakfast out in the countryside with expectations that a major road will be built nearby.  Until then, they're pretty low on customers...and for some reason quite a few of the customers that they do get end up dead!  Scared that all of these deaths will ruin their new business the Katakuri family simply bury them out back.  Yeah, this is not your normal musical.

THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS definitely gets points for imagination, but it should have been trimmed down some to speed up the pace.  Slow pace aside I did enjoy the film.  Tetsuro Tanba's yelling and Kiyoshiro Imawano's performance were the highlights of the movie for me.  Dancing zombies, great camerawork, wonderful direction by Miike, good acting, crazy claymation skillfully used to cover up the low budget.  THOTK might not be up everybody's alley, but in the right state of mind it can be very enjoyable.

LOS OLVIDADOS (1950)

Long before KIDS or CITY OF GOD there was LOS OLVIDADOS.

Set in the slums of Mexico City, LOS OLVIDADOS tells the story of a group a kids who have mostly been left to fend for themselves.  A few of them have parents but either their parents are non-functioning alcoholics, extremely poor or they just straight up don't care about their children at all.  Piles of garbage, (real onscreen) animal cruelty, dirt roads, filth, violence, implied sexual predator...the small world in which the residents of LOS OLVIDADOS live is a never-ending cycle of despair.

Our main character is Pedro, a young boy who's mother doesn't care if he ever comes home or not.  She doesn't even let him eat when he is there.  He spends the majority of his time hanging out with a rough group of boys.  Lead by the violent Jaibo, the group steals non-stop and entertain themselves by abusing handicap adults.  One day, Pedro witnesses Jailbo beating another kid to death.  This is the beginning of the end for Pedro.

Filled from beginning to end with negative images, LOS OLVIDADOS is a depressing film.  It's not as dark as more recent lost youth films, but for 1950 I imagine LOS OLVIDADOS was quite shocking.  When I first saw it decades ago I thought it was a masterpiece, but watching it again just now, it's definitely aged some.  It's still a wonderful film and required viewing for anybody serious about Cinema, but it's not quite good enough to make it into my Best Film category.  Hopefully one of these days we'll finally get a proper remastered release.