PastPoop

5/12/2003-Foreign Movie Sweetness

I’m going to do you guys a favor and introduce you to the wonderful world of foreign films. There have been some relatively recent releases coming out of England, France (I hate to admit), China, and Japan that have been damn good. The only thing is most you will never see them because

A) subtitles scare you because you can’t read or can’t read fast enough

B) your xenophobic

C) the local theatres only play mainstream, Hollywood flicks

D) the local video stores don’t carry them

E) you are not looking on the internet

F) You are dumb.

Pick any of those choices that apply to you. Now keep in mind that I’m not talking about art films and documentaries, I’m talking about sweet zombie movies, insanely awesome comedies, hyper-violent action movies, and the most off the wall horror movies ever. EVER. First and foremost I will be reviewing some Japanese films, and then move onto some others afterwards. I’m only going to do a couple at a time, so this is going to be a huge multi-part article that may very well require it’s own section. I dunno we’ll see how things pan out. My ultimate goal is to force myself to get more movies once I run out of the ones to review that I currently own. On to the review!

Dead or Alive [Japanese] 1999
Director: Takashi Miike
Starring: Riki Takeuchi, Sho Aikawa

Dead or Alive has nothing to do with the videogames of the same name. Now that I have that out of the way let me give you a run down of the plot. Ryuichi (Riki Takeuchi) is the head of a small gang of (as far as I can tell) 2nd generation Chinese immigrants in Japan, who are making a bid for power by playing the Triads and Yakuza off against each other. Apparently the way you subtly play your more powerful opponents off against each other is to bum rush them with shotguns and Uzi’s and leave no one standing, which is fine by me. Ryuichi is a bad ass and a master of the pistol with some shotgun on the side. Oh yeah he also seems to dig having the Eddie Munster hair. The rest of the gang is made up of other interesting characters: the stripper, the crippled guy, the mad knife tosser, and the guy who specializes in grenades (Who specializes in grenades? This guy does apparently).

Detective Jojima (Sho Aikawa) is the detective who has been assigned to figure out why the Triads and Yakuza are slaughtering each other. His partner is Inoue (Susumu Terajima), an over eager cop who likes to take way too many risks. As a background plot line Jojima’s daughter has some sort of health issues that need to be dealt with but he can’t afford the operation that would save her. Not only that but he is having some marital issues with his wife because of the amount of time his spends working. While that is going on he is trying to solve this gang war and he starts to suspect someone else is involved which results in much hilarity. So pretty much Jojima spends the movies being pissed off and depressed.
What this movie is pretty much about is 2 human titans of badass (Jojima and Ryuichi) stalking each other over the course of this movie and leaving plenty of bodies of behind. It would be a fairly typical cop movie except for some crazy shit that happens. Something to be aware of though, this film has an intense 10 or so minutes in the opening and then slows down quite a bit and then the film ends with another intense 10 minutes (the craziest damn ten minutes I’ve ever seen). What is pretty interesting is that this movie is pretty much a parody, but it actually deals with the serious topic of Chinese immigrants assimilating into Japanese society when it is apparent that they are not wanted. I’ll give you a few high and low points of the movie.

High
- The sweetest opening sequence ever
- One of the sweetest endings ever (others may disagree)
- The biggest line of coke I’ve ever seen snorted on film
- Boobies
- Master grenade tossers
- Knife master in platform sandals

Low
- The foulest death scene I’ve seen in a longtime
- Can be really slow in the middle
- The guy getting off as the guy butt raping him sprays him with blood from a neck wound
- If your not like me you could very well take the ending as the director shitting on the audience

Final Note: I liked it, and I plan on seeing the others. Oh yes there are 2 more, and just as a hint I will tell you that it would be quite impossible for there to be a sequel based on the ending of the first movie. This is a middle of the road flick with some awesome moments but your gonna have to really sit down and watch it in order to appreciate it fully.

Wild Zero [Japanese] 2000
Director: Tetsuro Takeuchi
Starring: Guitar Wolf!, Masashi Endo

To quote the cover “The Great Psycho of Them All!”, “Trash and Chaossss!!!!”, and “Thrill, Speed, and Stupid Zombies…” This is the greatest Rock and Roll Jet Movie I have ever seen my lifetime. What’s a Rock and Roll Jet Movie? I don’t know, but it’s on the cover. I can’t tell you much about what this film is about with out ruining if for you and the screen captures I’m providing should sufficiently clue you in on the insanity as well as sweetness.

Here is what I can tell you. This is a movie about an aspiring guitar player nameed Ace (Masashi Endo), trying to make it big, while following around his favorite punk rock band Guitar Wolf (<http://www.guitarwolf.net/>) that is an actual band in real life. He meets a girl on his way to the next Guitar Wolf show named Tobio and falls in love with her. While that happens Guitar Wolf gets into a dispute with a man who goes by the name the Captain. There’s a gunfight, the Captain loses his fingers, and starts pursuing Guitar Wolf across the countryside with a huge amount of weapons. I forgot to mention that Captain likes to wear hot pants and wigs. While all of this is happening there is an alien invasion in process and cause by the invasion is the sudden rising of the dead. So here is run down: punk bands, zombies, hot pants, and UFOs. See the movie if you can it is awesome.

Final Note: This is a great film that everyone will love. EVERYONE. Find it if you can. I happened to buy the full German DVD special edition DVD that won’t work on American DVD players because most don’t support PAL. I can only play it on my computer. A great resource to buy movies from is Ebay, it’s not certain that you will get legitimate copy but be aware that if it is Japanese or Chinese DVD and it works on you DVD player it’s most likely boot leg. Be careful.

See later and have a good day.

-HighPulp