About a year ago, I watched a very enjoyable movie called 'Tampopo'; the story of a trucker who helps a widow refurbish her roadside noodle shop and improve her culinary skills. The movie was filled with likeable characters, with scenes of genuine warmth and camraderie, not to mention several outstanding scenes of food being cooked or eaten with great relish.

I started reading up about the director Juzo Itami and discovered that he has been an actor through most of his career and then suddenly took up directing at the age of 50! His first directorial effort, called Ososhiki (The Funeral) won the Best Film award at the Japanese Academy in 1985.

I finally got hold of 'The Funeral' and watched it last week. What a treat! Like many great directors, Itami uses a standard troupe of actors in all his films. The two key actors are Itami's wife Nobuko Miyamoto and character actor Tsutomu Yamazaki. Fans of Japanese films will be very familiar with Yamazaki, who recently was seen in the Oscar Award winning 'Departures' and in the Japanese special effects blockbuster 'Space Battleship Yamato'. 

'The Funeral' tells the story of a funeral (what else) which takes place in the house of the son-in-law of the deceased. Over the course of 3 days, the audience is introduced to a variety of characters, emotions and experiences, most of which would strike a chord with viewers, irrespective of their culture or nationality.

The scenes range from the somber (the mother and daughters break down uncontrollably as the casket is rolled into crematorium) to the hilarious (one of the mourners gets up to answer a phone, but topples over due to cramps from having sat too long) to the risque (the son-in-law bumps into his mistress during the funeral proceedings and they have an 'encounter' in the woods). Fans of Japanese cinema will also be pleasantly surprised to see acting legend Chishu Ryu appear briefly in the role of the priest. 

Itami's later films dialled up the social satire, but in this, his first film, the scenes and emotions are mostly genuine and none of the characters are over-the-top. The Funeral is a definite 'must watch'.

Over the past 2 days, I finished watching 2 hit French films from 2009, LOL (Laughing out Loud) and Le Petit Nicolas. They were 2 of the top 3 grossing French language films in France in 2009 (the other being Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard, produced by Luc Besson).

LOL is a dramedy centering on the lives of a group of a high school students, specifically Lola, who is called LOL by her friends. Lola lives with her divorced mother (played by Sophie Marceu) and 2 younger siblings. As one can imagine, it's stressful being a teenager today...having to handle peer pressure, deal with nosy parents, trying to keep a love life going, etc. 
Although this sort of subject matter is not really my cup of tea, the film in general was entertaining and the young actors in particular were very engaging.
A word of warning - the depiction of teenage life in LOL is both realistic and familiar, therefore potentially unnerving to parents of teens or pre-teens who are likely to be going through a lot of the same (or perhaps worse) in years to come.
There's the usual story arc, with the mother and daughter falling out, but in the end, it all works out reasonably well. The film is going to be remade by the same director in English, featuring Myley Cyrus as Lola and Demi Moore as her mother.

Tonight I just finished Le Petit Nicolas, the film adaptation of the beloved stories by Goscinny from the 1960's. It's the polar opposite of LOL, while also being a story about a kid, school friends and relationship with his parents. But, oh so funny, so nostalgic, so good-natured.
Nicolas has a perfect life with loving parents and motley group of close friends at school. But then, he mistakenly suspects his parents are expecting another baby and thinks he will be abandoned in favour of the new arrival. This leads to various hi-jinks as Nicolas and his friends try to protect his place in the family. In the end, all the confusion is cleared up and we get to see one of the sweetest family scenes ever filmed, as Nicolas' dad tries to cheer him up at the dinner table. 

About a year ago, I watched Masaki Kobayashi's "Human Condition" trilogy. Human Condition is considered to be a 'humanist classic'. It is almost unbearable to watch Tatsuya Nakadai as the idealistic Kaji trying his best to bring out the humanity among his fellow men, only to be ground beneath the boots of nationalistic fervor time and time again.

I went into a depression for several days after which the 3 films almost back to back over a period of 10 days. I wasn't sure that I wanted to watch another movie by Kobayashi, although I had "Kwaidan" on my to-see list.

Then a few weeks ago I heard about a highly acclaimed film with the generic title "Samurai Rebellion", directed by Kobayashi. This would be interesting; how would a pacifist like Kobayashi tackle the 'chambara' or 'sword fight' film genre. It also had Toshiro Mifune in the lead role. Mifune in a samurai film - good enough for me to give it a try!

What an experience! This film is a masterclass in the art of film-making, from a technical standpoint. Kobayashi's approach to lighting, framing & composition, camera positions & tracking shots is stunning. I can't imagine that any film-making class could be complete without a viewing of this film. On top of that, it has a compelling story encompassing feudal politics and moral values.

Samurai Rebellion tells the story of a retired samurai and his young samurai son who must face opposition from their own extended family as they attempt to resist an injustice perpetrated against them by their feudal lord. The extended family believe that as samurai, their duty is to obey orders, no matter what the moral standing of those orders are. This is a common thread that runs through many samurai films and of course, if this samurai code of honor did not exist, then there would be no conflict between moral values and duty, and there would be no stories and movies.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

Eventually the father (Toshiro Mifune) and son (the very photogenic Takeshi Kato, who looks like a Japanese version of John Saxon) take on the forces of the feudal lord with both tragic and noble results. The film is primarily a drama, featuring extended conversations between the various protagonists, each one trying to enforce their point of view in this moral war. It is here that the director's use of lighting, framing and tracking shots, brings the drama to life. The story then shifts to action mode in the last act of the film and here it is standard Toshiro Mifune samurai fare. For good measure, we even have a match up between Mifune and his colleague and friend, played by none other than Tatsuya Nakadai. For fans of Japanese samurai films, the sword duels between Mifune and Nakadai became legendary through Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" and "Sanjuro" films in the early '60s. While Mifune's character won those 2 fights, the result here is slightly different, with both of them mortally wounded. The only survivor at the end of the film is Mifune's little grandchild who is taken by a nanny to safety to another province.

This film won the FIPRESCI (international film critics award) at the Venice film festival in 1967.

**WARNING - SOME SPOILERS AHEAD**

I finally watched the famous (infamous) Japanese cult classic Battle Royale, nearly 11 years after it shook up the Japanese movie industry and even prompted their parliament to criticize the film and question its release.
This is the 2nd ultra-violent movie I am watching in the past week, the other one being Reservoir Dogs, which I watched 19 years after it put Quentin Tarentino on the world map.

Tarentino has listed Battle Royale as one of his Top 20 films, but there is a big difference between the violence of his own Reservoir Dogs and that of Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale. The on-screen violence in Dogs is far less than that of Battle, but the implied violence and its impact feels greater in Dogs, because we care about the characters. Tarentino takes the time to build them up and get us to invest emotionally in most of them.

Clearly, in the case of Battle Royale, the problem is that there is no one to root for...neither the students nor the government/ military forces. Neither of them are drawn as sympathetic characaters. Ironically, it is the teacher, played by Takeshi "Beat" Kitano, who emerges towards the end as having some depth and for whom I felt some "sympathy". Even the one student for whom he sets up a back story, is still primarily a cardboard character. So, while 2 students actually come out of the carnage alive, I didn't really care. Contrast this with Reservoir Dogs, where no one survives, but right till the end, I was waiting to see if any of them would make it through. 

I read somewhere that Hollywood was looking to do a remake of the movie, but after all the various shootings which keep happening in their schools and colleges, there seems to be very little appetite to get such a movie made in America. A sequel was released in Japan, but I don't think I will be in a hurry to watch that. Would much rather pick up a Tarentino film.

I recently watched Sylvain Chomet's animated "The Illusionist" released at the end of 2010. I was really looking forward to watching this film. 
Firstly because Chomet's previous animated film, The Triplets of Belleville from 2003 was a delightfully eccentric, quaintly European adventure-comedy which I thoroughly enjoyed...as much for its storytelling as for the fact that it was so different from typical American animated fare. The other reason for looking forward to The Illusionist was that it is based on an unproduced screenplay by Jacques Tati, the legendary French director, who made 2 of my favourite classic comedies, "Mr. Hulot's Vacation" and "Mon Oncle". 

The protagonist of The Illusionist is the spitting image of Jacques Tati's on-screen alter ego Mr. Hulot from the aforementioned two films. The film follows the unnamed illusionist/ magician as he attempts to find gainful employment in various clubs and theatres, having to compete for stage time with a variety of other entertainers. Along the way, he crosses the path of an impressionable young girl who believes he is a real magician and decides that he is her ticket to a more exciting world. But 'exciting' is a relative term, as the illusionist in reality works in the fringes and underbelly of the entertainment world, filled with has-beens and eccentrics...no beautiful people here. His fellow entertainers seem to be wading through the detritus of their own lives, somehow trying to last till the inevitable end; this is in stark contrast with the wide-eyed young girl who somehow manages to use this world as a stepping stone to her own personal salvation.

Tati apparently wrote the screenplay as a message of reconciliation to his estranged daughter, essentially portraying the illusionist (his alter ego) as a well-meaning, but simple man. At the end of the story, the illusionist can take some comfort from having helped the young girl discover a new life, although (and this is why it is bittersweet) there seems to be nothing better for him to look forward to himself. 

Jean-Pierre Jeunet is my favourite French director (my next favourite is probably Francois Ozon, but more about him on another occasion). Interestingly, my first Jeunet film was Alien: Resurrection, his English language debut in 1997. It was a pretty good movie (more watchable than Alien3 at any rate!) and it prompted me to read up on Jeunet. Upto that point, Jeunet had directed only 2 full length feature films, in fact, co-directed with Marc Caro - they were Delicatessen (1991) and The City of Lost Children (1995). I managed to get hold of The City of Lost Children soon after, but it took me a while to find a copy of Delicatessen. By that time, Jeunet had become famous world-wide for Amelie, released in 2001, a critical and commercial hit.
These 3 films - Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children and Amelie - so far constitute the best known and most critically acclaimed parts of Jeunet's body of work. They are filled with sight gags, quirky flashbacks usually designed as character development devices and of course, memorable characters populating fantastical plots. Not to mention, the presence of one of my favourite French character actors, Dominique Pignon, who has acted in all 6 of Jeunet's feature films.
Last week, I finally got my hands on the latest Jeunet film "Micmacs", meaning "jiggery-pokery". The film features a newcomer to the Jeunet acting troupe, Dany Boon, one of France's most well-known comedians. In fact, Dany Boon himself is a director, having released 2 films, one of which "Welcome to the Sticks" is the most popular French film in history.