Takashi Miike

[BubWilliams]

Originally Posted by Spike Marshall

I'm pretty sure we had this discussion in this thread but Miike is often at his best as a director with his quieter pieces. Agitator, The Bird People In China, Ley Lines and Rainy Dog are all great films which eschew a lot of Miike's over the top tendencies. It's irritating because beyond the gore and perversion films like Audition, Dead or Alive: Birds, and Gozu are all kind of great films. But they've sort of been taken onboard by gorehounds who only seem to appreciate the more extreme moments in the films.

Dead or Alive: Birds isn't particularly gory or fucked up, it does have its odd/surreal moments throughout, but not in a way as his other movies that are more known for their fucked up nature. I'd say it's actually a pretty 'quiet' movie for the most part, and one of my favorites of his.

[Spike Marshall]

I love Dead or Alive: Birds. But that shoot out, the midget assassination, the joke about the enormous dick, etc. means that it gets put into the same category as Ichi The Killer.

[Xagarath Ankor]

How about Happiness of the Katakuris? The surrealism is definitely there, but it's pretty gore and peversity-free.

[cognizant]

Checked out Agitator which felt like a "ok I shouldnt piss off my yakuza financers too much" kind of film. Very long and romanticized view of our lovable criminals and their penchant for honour above self-preservation. Anticlimactic due to the exciting title I'd say, but still solid entertainment with Miike quirky humour flowing throughout.

Next up Dead or Alive 3.

Originally Posted by Ultraman Mac

I've been somewhat apprehensive about checking out Miike's directorial efforts because a lot of his films seem to be stuffed with a lot of shock value scenes (Necrophiliac sex scenes, or the fact the he used real semen for the opening of Ichi the Killer). Are their any good Miike films that prove this statement wrong?

Originally Posted by Nicholas

I'm a bit apprehensive too, considering that every time people discuss his work, there's usually a "Gah! This movie was fucked up" type of comment. His films seems to have more substance to them but I don't feel particularly motivated in getting past scenes of people drowning in shit and over-the-top violence.
Am I wrong in thinking this?

Fear not as Miike has relatively 'normal' films in his filmography. Rainy Dog, The Bird People in China, Blues Harp and the above mentioned Agitator restrain themselves and dont contain anything grotesque.

But yeah, all this talk of Miike being a shock-value kind of director do disservice to the man. He is an auteur with a specific stamp on all his works, and his quirks are part of his charm while at the same time being a method to make the material he is given, stand out among the crowd, due to budget restraints mostly no doubt. Similar to early Kitano in that respect, like when he took a regular cop movie script and made it something else entirely, with Violent Cop.

Originally Posted by Xagarath Ankor

How about Happiness of the Katakuris? The surrealism is definitely there, but it's pretty gore and peversity-free.

Sumo wrestler + schoolgirl = oh dear.

[Son of Jason]

How about "The Great Yokai War", perhaps the craziest family film this side of Terry Gilliam's "Time Bandits".

[Mac]

Checked out Zebraman earlier this week. The narrative wasn't as engaging or interesting as I would have liked, but it had a quirky quality that kept the film going. I did enjoy the dozens of references to past tokusatsu shows (Especially the Zebraman Promo), whether it be Ultraman or Masked Rider, but in the end, that just could make the film for me.

[cognizant]

Well it's been a while since I last visited this thread and I've seen quite a bit more Miike. Quick thoughts:

Dead or Alive 3. Very interesting in that every character speaks to another in different languages. Wish there were more films like that. I was also amazed that Miike actually bothers to connect the three DoA films together, such a hilarious 'WTF' climax.

Graveyard of Honour. Might be my least favourite Miike film. All I got out of it was that it was a film about an arsehole who does arsehole type things. Thats it. Couldnt get any subtext or metaphor out of the film; Miike's still doing his outcast autuer thing using the yakuza, but by this point seeing a destructive criminal destroy everything around him is done to death and there wasnt anything unique about this attempt.

Deadly Outlaw: Rekka. I actually cant remember anything about this movie. Except Riki's hair as usual.

Gozu. Genius. Its hilarious how Miike makes Aichi look like the most fucked up place in Japan, when the convention is that people from there, or Nagoya at least, are the most conservative. Definitely a film that will get better with rewatches I think.

One Missed Call. Another rare disappointment from Miike. I guess he got fond of the horror genre after Gozu, but ironically he's stuck completely to convention. A predictable 00's horror, nothing interesting to see here, except for the humurous media frenzy surrounding the impending death of one of the girls. Wish the script ran with that angle.

Zebraman. Fucking awesome on so many levels. Maybe even more entertaining than Hollywood's superhero movies of the decade, Batman, Spiderman, etc. I just genuinely love how Miike keeps me on my toes with stuff out of left field; does stuff that other directors cant or wont, and especially with this superhero movie which is unlike any I've seen before. Genius casting with Sho Aikawa.

Izo. Epic mindfuck. Thoughtful but hard viewing, not sure I'll ever watch it again.

Sukiyaki Western Django. Not what I was expecting at all. Went in blind so I dont know what I was expecting, but I sure wasnt expecting everyone to be speaking Engrish! Very funny and interesting film, that eventually won me over by the end. Tarantino is still incredibly offputting anytime he's on screen though, stay behind the camera dude.

Crows Zero. I havent seen such a realistic depiction of a shonen manga come to life. When you read this kind of story in a manga you just accept it, but when you see it in action you realise how stupid and surreal it is. It's just a bunch of hooligans fighting for supremacy in a barren school, no lessons, no parents, no way of making money, they just exist to beat the shit out of each other, it's hilarious.

Yatterman. MASTERPIECE. Absolutely insane and straight into my top 5 favourite superhero movies. Miike makes the best superhero movies because he does not take the genre seriously at all. There's no pretensions, yet he doesnt look down on it either, he embraces it fully.

The film walks the fine line between surreal imaginative fantasy and just blatantly taking the piss out of the whole thing. I'm so tired of knowing how a movie is going to play out beat for beat, especially superhero movies, but I had no idea where this film was going because of all the surreal shit it kept throwing at me. Miike gets the tone perfect, the actors know they're doing retarded shit but never break the illusion. Two actors' performances in particular were excellent, Kyoko Fukada as the dominatrix Doronjo and Anri Okamoto as the tagalong girl Shoko with her constant 'wtf is going on?' expressions which were hilarious. There are so many hilarious scenes, most of them involving sexually perverse shenanigans. I mean really perverse!

Also, for anyone who's seen it, although nearly everything in it had me laughing big time, one very short thing cracked me up over how fucking weird it was: a bridge in New York disappears. But that's not the weird thing, the weird thing was that for some reason there just happened to be an angry dinosaur on it for no apparent reason. Haha!

[Dragon Ma]

I watched Ichi The Killer the other night, the mindfuck ending is classic Miike but I was left wondering whether, everything after Kakihara's splitting of his eardrums was just a fantasy sequence of him getting the death he clearly desired and Jiji hanging himself because he was denied the pleasure of killing Kakihara himself and the kid looking into the camera at the end being the real Ichi.

I really do love the ideas this film dwells on about the nature of sadism and the giving and receiving of pain.

[DanielRoffle]

Originally Posted by cognizant

Graveyard of Honour. Might be my least favourite Miike film. All I got out of it was that it was a film about an arsehole who does arsehole type things. Thats it. Couldnt get any subtext or metaphor out of the film; Miike's still doing his outcast autuer thing using the yakuza, but by this point seeing a destructive criminal destroy everything around him is done to death and there wasnt anything unique about this attempt.

I've never seen this, but from what you describe this looks like a reasonably faithful remake of the Fuksaku Graveyard Of Honour. That movie is very interesting within the confines of Fukasaku's work because, shortly after having created the modern yakuza genre with Battles Without Honour Or Humanity, he's already subverting it - the normal yakuza theme of an honourable man stuck in a dishonourable organization gets inverted, to the point where the yakuza are almost comically honourable and forgiving, while the main character just keeps doing the dumbest, evil shit again and again. It even rejects the sociological apparoach to gangster movies; towards the end, you get snippets of old men being interviewed about the guy and one of them says "they say he's been like this since he came back from the war...that's wrong, he was always just fucking crazy". It's not a movie I'd watch for enjoyment, but when you need a dose of absolute negativity in your life...and also there is something darkly humorous in seeing someone fuck up so enthusiastically with no concerns for societal rules, morals or plain human compassion whatsoever, sort of a Klaus Kinski thing.

[Spike Marshall]

I’ll always love Graveyard of Honour for that magnificent shot of the central character perched atop the prison tower, his sheet billowing behind him, but it never feels quite right. Miike can do quiet pictures, Agitator is a great taciturn (aside from the occasional moment) Yakuza film that manages to be arresting, but they’re a lot more hit and miss than his more madcap stuff.

[LeRolls]

I need to check out Yatterman sometime.

[agracru]

Originally Posted by Dragon Ma

I watched Ichi The Killer the other night, the mindfuck ending is classic Miike but I was left wondering whether, everything after Kakihara's splitting of his eardrums was just a fantasy sequence of him getting the death he clearly desired and Jiji hanging himself because he was denied the pleasure of killing Kakihara himself and the kid looking into the camera at the end being the real Ichi.

Kind of. Kakihara bursts his eardrums and imagines his fight against Ichi; Ichi slices his face and sends the Yakuza sadist tumbling to his doom, which of course exhilarates Kakihara to no end (well, okay, it stops exhilarating him once he is introduced to the ground below him).

But after Kakihara dies the fantasy ends. Jiji finds his nemesis dead but sees no wounds that Ichi would have inflicted (the guy far too intact to have possibly been killed by the eponymous anti-hero). From here, there are a couple of interpretations:

a.) Jiji hangs himself. This is either because he sees his vengeance as complete, or because he feels he has failed in his revenge because Ichi was not responsible for killing Kakihara, who committed suicide. The kid we see at the end is Kaneko's son, Takeshi, who becomes the new Ichi after Ichi dies from blood loss on the rooftop.

b.) Either Ichi or Takeshi murders Jiji by hanging him; if Ichi, it's because Jiji has been manipulating him the entire time, if Takeshi, it's because Jiji is responsible for his father's death by using Jiji as his instrument for revenge.

[Buffalo Wildfire]

Just watched Crow Zero and Crow Zero2 found it hard to believe they were Miike films ...
loved them though

[LeRolls]

Originally Posted by Buffalo Wildfire

Just watched Crow Zero and Crow Zero2 found it hard to believe they were Miike films ...
loved them though

Need to check these ones out when I get a chance. Also heard that they're releasing a SE of Zebraman soon.