Night on Earth

I'd been telling someone about the taxi driver story in the book I'm writing and they recommended me this film. I thought I'd check it out, so stuck it on while eating a Chinese takeaway banquet.

I'm really glad I got to see this! A Jim Jarmusch film from 1991 that had completely slipped under my radar. Looking at the credits it seems like it was funded/produced by a Japanese organisation.

The film is made up of 5 stories, in 5 different cities throughout the world. They are linked through an interlude scene which shows the 5 different time zones on clocks on the wall. The camera then zooms into the clock, through it to a map, to the city. The 5 cities are: Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki. From the intro where we see the Earth in space, it almost looks as if we are an alien coming down to Earth for the night to witness the lives of 5 taxi drivers. Maybe it's an alien writing a PhD on Earth's taxi drivers...

The LA story kicks things off, and this was the ropiest of them all – Winona Ryder is the Tom Boy taxi driver, and who would guess it – she's also a babe who's about to unexpectedly get cast as a movie star by the female exec passenger she takes on. But the ending saves this part of the film, and then it just gets better. I loved all the characters, I loved the dialogue – and a lot of the film revolves around dialogue, but it never drags – and I loved the shots of the cities the cabbies drive through.

I can't decide which of the stories was my favourite, because I think they were all as strong as each other.

The film made me nostalgic for a time when storytelling and pace could be a bit slower. I think the shift to digital has made filmmakers rush too much. Everything is rushed now, there are no slow builds and we've lost a lot in the way of atmosphere from modern films.

Really enjoyed this. 8/10

The Birth of Saké

Yeah, this was an interesting documentary.

I have to say – I was more interested in the lives of the workers than I was in the saké itself. Watching it with a hangover was perhaps one of the reasons why I didn't get too excited about seeing lots of shots of booze.

To be honest, therein lay the issue with this documentary. I looked up the director Erik Shirai on IMDB afterwards and saw that he was a director of photography/cinematographer. There were too many atmospheric shots of steam rising etc. He didn't focus on the people who made the nihonshu enough, and I think that's what slightly marred what could've been an amazing documentary. In comparison to Jiro Dreams of Sushi, this documentary spent too much time trying to look pretty, and would've benefitted from delving into the lives of the brewers more.

Because they were so interesting! These guys have an amazing amount of dedication to their jobs – sometimes at complete sacrifice to their own lives. For example – it was interesting to learn that they all live at the brewery for 6 months and leave their lives behind, but I honestly would've loved to see what these guys do for the other half of the year! It would've taken a tiny bit more work on the filmmaker's part, but I think it would've made for a better film overall. Like the dude Chi-chan who lived in a big old house by himself, and we found out that his wife had passed away, and so he couldn't wait to get back to the brewery. Why couldn't we have spent more time with the characters?

A good subject, and nicely shot, but I think slightly flawed in its insistence on pretty camerawork and slowed down footage. 7/10

Mean Streets

Well... this film was just plain bizarre.

I think I tried to watch it many years ago and couldn't get into it. I can see why – it's a very peculiar film, and there's a lot of WTF moments in it.

I managed to see it all this time, but it did take me two sittings. Started it yesterday, but got tired midway through so I finished it off today.

It's not necessarily a bad film at all. But it is rather confusing and chaotic. A lot of the time the editing and the voice overs (coupled with bad sound recording) make the film feel lurchy and distorted. The drunken scene with Harvey Keitel when he has the camera strapped to him great, and I think works really well, but other parts of the film are equally disorienting due to shaky camera work and choppy composition, when perhaps that wasn't the desired effect.

There's lots of bad cutting between scenes that often makes you scratch your head, or jump back a bit in surprise. I spent a bit of time wondering wait, where are we? What's going on? And I don't feel like it was in a positive way.

Some of the storylines seemed like non sequiturs, and I wasn't sure what they meant. For example, just off the top of my head, the scene where the drunken soldier back from Vietnam jumps up and tries to attack the girl, why did he do that? And why did Harvey Keitel end up dancing with her in a cupboard? What was the deal with the dancer who he invited out for Chinese food, but then didn't show? And why did we cut to a scene with her at the end after the car crash? Why? What? When? How?

The final scene was pretty good (and very unexpected). Robert DeNiro was great in it, and I found the character he played pretty different from anything else I've ever seen him do. The music was also fantastic.

I wasn't sure about all the religious themes running through the film. At times it felt a little overdone.

But the thing about the film is, in this weird way, from the moments of brilliance here and there, you can see that Scorsese was destined for bigger things. 7/10

Contact (Re-watch)

It was a rainy summer's day, so we decided to stay in and watch a film.

I'd seen this film many years ago, and I remembered bits and pieces. My viewing partner commented on the excessive use of music throughout the film, and once this had been drawn to my attention, I couldn't quite block it out.

The film is OK. I liked a lot of the ideas behind it, but I wasn't sure of the execution in parts. It reminded me a lot of the the film Arrival, which I saw at the cinema in November last year. But I have to say that this film hasn't aged so well, and that Arrival just does it all a lot better.

We couldn't quite work out how Matthew McConaughey's character went from being some crackpot journalist in the jungle, all the way to being some hotshot bigwig in the White House. It seemed to be the most far-fetched aspect of the story.

It made me want to watch Carl Sagan's TV series called Cosmos. 6/10

Withnail and I (Re-watch)

I forget how many times I've seen this film. I think the last time I saw it was at the cinema in Kichijoji, Tokyo. I have a vague memory that the art house cinema in Kichijoji was closing down, and allowed its visitors to vote which films they would like to see in the run up to its closure. This was one of the films they chose, and I love that the film has as much of a strong following in Tokyo as it does in the UK.

I won't drone on about how much I love this film, but I'll just say that I think it's one of the best endings to a film ever made. It never fails to resonate emotionally with me.

Such a sad and funny film. 9/10

Dunkirk

Saw this in the cinema on IMAX.

Firstly, and unrelated to the film itself, I couldn't help but snort at the intro to the IMAX cinema when they played a little film essentially telling me how much of a good time I was going to have. It was almost like some weird brainwashing technique to hypnotise you into feeling you'd made the best decision of your life. I still can't get over the fact that we paid £16 for tickets, but I spent the film with a man's head blocking the lower part of the screen. Anyway, enough ranting about overpriced cinema experiences.

The film was good. There was a lot of it that I liked. I'm personally not such a big fan of war films, and I don't like the feeling that people are trying to manipulate viewers into a sense of patriotism or nostalgia for something that is in essence the most diabolical aspect of human history. However, I don't think that was the message of this particular film. This film is a crash course in imagining all of the terrible ways it is possible to die, then dangling those possibilities in front of your face (with full surround sound).

I liked the fact that there wasn't much dialogue. I liked that we never really saw "the enemy". I also enjoyed the separate stories and chronologies because they involved a little legwork on the part of the viewer.

On an aside, I couldn't help but laugh when I saw that they'd given Tom Hardy another role where his mouth was covered and we couldn't really hear what he was saying. I kept thinking Bane in a plane, Bane in a plane whenever he came on.

But I liked the film, and I think I'll watch it again soon. 8/10

Paprika (Re-watch)

I must've watched this originally in 2006 (the year it came out), and I remember being slightly underwhelmed, but I would say mostly confused.

And I suppose this is a perfect example of why I should always revisit films, even if I didn't get on with them the first time. Sometimes I get things completely wrong.

What a drastically different experience it was watching for the second time! I'd got the urge to re-watch the film after I'd seen this incredible YouTuber who posts video essays on films. He goes by the name Every Frame a Painting, and I would definitely recommend taking a look at his YouTube channel here.

I'd watched one video in particular analysing the works of the anime director Kon Satoshi here and seeing how Kon Satoshi had influenced Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky so much (with actual scenes being completely recreated in their films as homage to Kon), I decided Paprika deserved one more, closer, watch.

On a side note, I watched another film by Kon called Tokyo Godfathers last summer as research for the book I'm writing at the moment. It was great – a film about three homeless friends in Tokyo trying to carve out a life for themselves, all running away from their pasts. Unfortunately I watched it before I started this blog, so I don't have a review for it, but would recommend it.

But Paprika was just spectacular though. I suppose I watched it before Inception was even made, but I have to state clearly Inception probably would not exist if Paprika hadn't been made. When I first watched Paprika, I don't think I followed the plot well, but this time I understood it better, and it really blew my mind. People diving down into sleep to experience shared dreams, a mass subconscious of a dreaming city becoming overcome with a common dream of modern consumer-driven madness. The shared dream involved an insane procession of religious and commercial items walking through the streets of Tokyo – Salarymen leaping to their deaths from the tops of buildings, films merging into dreams, dreams merging into films, the city itself fighting against nature, nature fighting back. Breathtaking.

I can't stress this highly enough. Go and watch this film. 9/10

Lolita (Re-watch)

Woke up early with a hangover and saw this on Netflix. Thought it would be a good way to pass the time.

It's not a bad film, but some of it looks a bit dated. There were a few shots that I would've actually cut in embarrassment if I'd been the director.

I think it's always going to be tough making a film version of such an incredible book, and the film toes the line awkwardly between sexualising Lolita, and showing how young and immature she is. I can see how this might have caused some controversy when released, but I would say that this film can only be understood fully by reading the book, which I think depicts one of the greatest unreliable narrators in the history of literature.

Nevertheless, worth a watch. 8/10

Kedi

They need to make more films like this. A documentary following the lives of several cats who roam the streets of Istanbul, getting into adventures and forging relationships with humans.

I loved it.

The book I'm working on at the moment shares something with this documentary, so I was really excited to see it when I first saw the trailer. It really didn't let me down.

It could've been even longer and delved even deeper into the cat population of Istanbul, alongside the interesting people who look out for them, and live alongside them. The old man who went to feed the cats everyday because it helped him with his depression – these are the kinds of stories I like to hear about. People who take a moment to recognise the real beauty in life.

"You can love if your heart's eye is open," one man observes. "Everything is beautiful if you look at it with love. If you can enjoy the presence of a cat, a bird, a flower, all the world will be yours." And later, we hear, "A cat at your feet is life smiling at you."

Incredibly moving. 9/10

The Breakfast Club (Re-watch)

Sigh. Back when films were magical.

When they took chances – perhaps they didn't have the flashiness or the visual effects – hell maybe the dialogue even was a bit ropey here and there, but they tried to be engaging and deal with deep themes.

I've seen this film so many times, and there's not much I want to say about it really, other than the fact that I just wish there was a director like John Hughes around today, because what will the youth of today have to look up to in terms of art in the future.

Nothing but a culture of hedonistic materialism. 9/10