The Great Yokai War (2005)

.

One show only: Sunday, March 20 @ 2pm (buy tickets)

.

ALL TICKETS ONLY $5!!!

(More info)

.

.

“The army of bizarre creatures is wicked awesome. It’s like a Miyazaki tableaux reimagined by Sid & Marty Krofft.”
- Noel Murray, The Onion AV Club

.

Takashi Miike has made dating movies about torture, shown a man slicing out his own tongue, covered his cast in showers of breast milk, and treated chihuahuas very, very badly. The last thing anyone expected from him was a kids’ movie, but with THE GREAT YOKAI WAR he gives us a LORD OF THE RINGS-sized epic kiddie flick that blows the competition out of the water and puts him on the front ranks of Japanese directors.  This is, to my mind, one of the best movies Miike ever made, and one of the best fantasy films of all time, full of the dark little corners and tough emotions that so many bland kiddie flicks scrub away. For the uninitiated, the yokai of the title are Japan’s funk-a-licious demons from mythology and folklore – there are water yokai, umbrella yokai, snow yokai, and a million other flavors of yokai, promising a movie that looks like a Hieronymus Bosch painting on acid.
.

The flick kicks off in true family film fashion with a nightmare vision of a post-apocalyptic Tokyo, a slinky female demoness (played by Chiaki Kuriyama of KILL BILL VOL. 1 and BATTLE ROYALE) in a short skirt wielding a whip, and then the birth of a goo-covered, flayed, screeching cow fetus who prophesizes the apocalypse. It’s a miracle kids in Japan can sleep at all.

.

.

The story is about a young boy who has to go on a quest to the top of Goblin Mountain in order to retrieve a magic sword and end the war between the sterile, mechanical forces of technology and the lovable, creepy, long-necked, giant-nosed, hairy-faced, wall-sized, hopping, flying, gerning, pogo-ing yokai who are on the verge of extinction. It’s also a battle between old school special effects (the yokai are all rubber monsters and charming practical, onscreen effects and make-up jobs) and the new wave of digital CGI (the bad guys are all slick, soulless computer-generated monsters). Delivering massive battles, non-stop special effects and a story that’s as tight as a drum, Miike turns in a top quality popcorn muncher. But he also delivers the kind of truth that Peter Jackson shied away from at the end of  THE LORD OF THE RINGS: every quest has an ending and no childhood lasts forever. Amidst the burning fusion of ridiculous ideas at the heart of this movie take a moment and be very still and quiet. That sound you hear is a child’s heart breaking.

.

.

Read the fun, baffled, thoroughly entertained review in the New York Times.

.

Read another glowing review.

.

Comments (1) Mar 18 2011

We’ve been seeing a lot of these prints for the first time as they come in, and I just wanted to say that the CITY OF LOST SOULS print is great looking. AUDITION had a little wear on it, but CITY just looks incredible. One more show left on Saturday, March 19 @ 6:15pm (buy tickets).

.

.

Comments (2) Mar 18 2011

CITY OF LOST SOULS

.

Thursday, March 17 @ 2:15pm (buy tickets)

Saturday, March 19 @ 6:15pm (buy tickets)

.

.

Too much is never enough in CITY OF LOST SOULS, an underrated Miike classic from 2000 which sees Miike leave behind logic, reason, good taste and common sense to put together the ultimate action movie and zap it full of high voltage so that it lurches off the table with a roar of “Looove!!!” A movie so loud, so proud, and so gonzo over-the-top that just watching it could get you pregnant with a tiny muscular action baby that’ll bust out of you with twin machine guns blazing during a high speed car chase.

.

.

Things kick off when Mario (Brazilian soccer player, model and four-movie Miike actor, Teah) busts his gal (Hong Kong’s Michelle Reis, best known as the sexually frustrated agent for a contract killer in Wong Kar-wai’s FALLEN ANGELS) out of a prison bus while it’s coasting through the desert, then the two of them jump out of the rescue copter and land in downtown Tokyo. From there it’s a no-holds-barred assault on the Russian mob (guzzling vodka, of course), the Chinese triads (playing ping pong) and the Japanese yakuza (killing people) which involves some of the most bizarre scenes Miike’s ever put on film.

.

It’s as if someone dared Miike to make the ultimate action movie and so he took two action figure leads and threw them into a celluloid blender crammed with every action cliche ever conceived, and then he added a bottle of tequila. There’re capoeira death squads, midgets brushing their teeth with cocaine, lethal ping pong matches and a now-legendary riff on THE MATRIX featuring some awesomely funky CGI chickens. Slathered on top of this tequila-soaked fun cake is a sugary frosting of multi-culti madness. Seeming to take place in a dream Tokyo that’s part-Brazil and part-Los Angeles, CITY OF LOST SOULS is full of South American accents and brimming with actors from Brazil, Hong Kong, Russia, China and Japan.

.

.

It’s not only a love story between its two leads, but a love story between Miike and the action movie genre, and it’s a love that runs passionate and hot. While the kids on screen demonstrate that it’s ultimately youth and beauty that save the day from the old and boring bad guys, it’s Miike who proves that it takes a middle-aged man with serious chops to create a valentine this huge and explodey for action movies. CITY OF LOST SOULS is a movie where everyone is from everywhere and bullets are just another way of saying, “I love you.”

.

Tickets and showtimes

The Midnight Eye review

.

.

Comments (0) Mar 16 2011

To celebrate the upcoming major! massive! Takashi Miike retrospective we’re co-presenting with the Film Society of Lincoln Center (check the schedule and buy your tickets here!) we’re putting up lots of Miike info on the blog all week to give you something to do while you’re on the internets.

.

TIME Magazine’s Richard Corliss has long been a Miike supporter and he includes AUDITION in his “Top 25 Horror Movies of All Time” list. (read its entry here)

.

AUDITION: the most evil date night
movie ever made.

.

The number one chronicler of all things Miike is Tom Mes from Midnight Eye who wrote the book Agitator: the Cinema of Takashi Miike. His interview with Miike on Midnight Eye is terrific and there’s added coverage of Miike’s trip to the Venice Film Festival to present SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO. The most serious and in-depth reviews of Miike’s movies online are at Midnight Eye including one for his teen pop vehicle, ANDROMEDIA, and reviews for movies that are going to be in the retrospective this weekend like AUDITION, CITY OF LOST SOULS (called a “tour de force” and “a turbo-charged piece of blood-drenched gangster lunacy”), as well as IZO (“Miike is generally not too concerned with serving his audience a snug, comfortable viewing experience…”) and FUDOH: THE NEW GENERATION (“It’s the kind of film that has ‘guilty pleasure’ written all over it.”).

.

A shot from CITY OF LOST SOUL’s jaw-dropping,
MATRIX-inspired, CGI cockfight.

.

Nick Rucka has been a longtime friend and supporter of Subway Cinema, even though he lives in Los Angeles which is a cursed city full of mutants and perverts. He’s also a contributor to Midnight Eye and his review of DEAD OR ALIVE: FINAL (part three of the series, part one is screening tonight at Japan Society) is one of the few passionate defenses of that film you’ll find out there. He’s also written a review of SCARS OF THE SUN, a Miike-directed 2006 riff on DEATH WISH, that we have desperately tried to get both for the New York Asian Film Festival and for this weekend’s Miike retrospective and we’ve come up short each time. It’s worth seeing but almost impossible to find, and so Nick’s review will have to do until a complicated ownership situation is sorted out.

.

SCARS OF THE SUN poster.

.

Jason Gray lives and works in Japan, doing subtitling and a bunch of other jobs in the movie business including the occasional acting gig and writing screenplays. He’s been covering the Japanese film business for years both for Screen and on his own blog. His Miike coverage includes a long review of Miike’s English-language Western, SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO as well as a summary of his thoughts on Miike’s maligned but fascinating ZEBRAMAN 2. It’s fun to dig back through his blog and see his entry from 2002 on ICHI THE KILLER advertising back before ICHI became part of the pop cultural canon. And don’t miss his very short post on Miike’s GRAVEYARD OF HONOR remake because it links to Tom Mes’s review and it gives us a chance to give that neglected Miike masterpiece a shout out!

.

GRAVEYARD OF HONOR – we’re not
showing it, unfortunately.

.

More Miike tomorrow! And don’t forget to buy your tickets now for this week’s Miike-a-thon!

.

Comments (0) Mar 15 2011

Argh! We just learned that after 48 hours of arranging and re-arranging travel plans, Takashi Miike has had to cancel his plans to come to New York City for the biggest North American Miike Retrospective ever.

.

Takashi Miike, sad.

.

This is a huge bummer for all of us, but given the massive tragedy that has struck Japan it’s understandable. Miike really wanted to come and we were all working to make this happen, but travel is erratic right now and, more importantly, no one in Japan wants to be away from home and family when anything could happen.

.

He sent a brief note expressing his regrets:

.

“Japan was violently rocked, swallowed by the ocean as the lives of many disappeared amid the rubble. I had wanted to be here with you all. I had wanted to thank you all for coming from the bottom of my  heart. But that wish was not granted. It is unfortunate and I am very  sorry. Please accept my regrets. But, from this adversity — on our lives — we  will all rise up without fail. As a start, I would be grateful if you could enjoy Japan from my films.

.

Sincerely,
Miike Takashi”

.

We’re trying to see if we can arrange some remote Q&A’s or something for the screenings and they’re still going to be an absolute blast, but without Miike, unfortunately.

.

A lot of people still get killed by badass samurai
in 13 ASSASSINS, thought.

.

Comments (1) Mar 14 2011

China Lion, the company doing day-and-date releases of Chinese films in the US of A, is releasing the action/comedy/ trippy food movie, THE BUTCHER, THE CHEF AND THE SWORDSMAN on March 18 at theaters across NYC. It’s the same day the movie hits screens in China and Hong Kong and it’s going to make you hungry, then gut you like a fish.

.

.

BUTCHER, CHEF, SWORDSMAN played at the Toronto Film Festival’s “Midnight Madness” program and it’s being presented by Doug Liman (THE BOURNE IDENTITY) who was so impressed by the film that he’s lent his name to the production for publicity purposes.

.

.

A complete list of theaters is here, but in the New York it’ll be playing at the AMC Empire 25 in Times Square, the AMC Loews Village 7 in the East Village and then in New Jersey at the AMC Clifton Commons 16 and the AMC Loews Fresh Meadows 7 in Fresh Meadows, NY.

.

.

Read a review.

.

Watch the trailer.

.

.

And get a ticket!

.

Cause it’s wild.

.

Comments (1) Mar 08 2011

.
This snuck up out of nowhere, but Japan Society has a massive, huge, amazing series of yakuza films playing in their…

.

Hardest Men in Town: Yakuza Chronicles of Sin, Sex & Violence

March 9 – 19

.

.

Full details

.

15 yakuza movies, many of them never screened before in New York City. If you like tattooed dudes in cheap, sharkskin suits, kicking cringing shop owners to death with their shiny leather loafers then this series is for you.

.

.

Highlights from the series include:

.

THE YAKUZA introduced and with a Q&A by its writer, Paul Schrader, who wrote a few small films such as TAXI DRIVER and RAGING BULL. With a script by Schrader and Robert Towne (CHINATOWN) and with Robert Mitchum and Takakura Ken onscreen, it’s about as respectful of Japan as Hollywood is ever going to get. (full details)

.

Suzuki Seijun’s visually startling essay in eye-popping, clockwork tragedy, YOUTH OF THE BEAST (full details) is not to be missed nor are the two big Kinji Fukasaku (BATTLE ROYALE) entries, COPS VS THUGS (full details) and the third in his BATTLES WITHOUT HONOR AND HUMANITY series, PROXY WAR (full details). It’s too bad all five of Fukasaku’s BATTLES films aren’t being shown, but the first and the third are the best, so at least you’re getting the good stuff with this screening of PROXY WAR.

.

.

There will be a screening of Takashi Miike’s DEAD OR ALIVE (full details) with Miike in the house for an intro and Q&A (fresh off his screenings across town at his Lincoln Center retrospective) and the New York premiere of Takeshi Kitano’s latest film, OUTRAGE: WAY OF THE MODERN YAKUZA (full details) closes out the series. There are lots of movies never on DVD (WALLS OF ABASHIRI PRISON, BLOOD OF REVENGE, THEATER OF LIFE: HISHAKAKU and the excellently-titled BRUTAL TALES OF CHIVALRY) and much, much more.

.

If you miss this, you are a punk.

.

Here’s the full website and schedule, including descriptions of the films (which are excellent) and trailers.

.

.

Comments (1) Mar 08 2011

Two big Pink Eiga releases on DVD in March. Both of them street on March 14.

.

First up there’s the goofy WHORE ANGELS.

.

.

Then there’s the aggressively anarchic ANARCHY IN (JA)PANTY!

.

.

Comments (1) Mar 08 2011