The Secret World of Arrietty (2010)

February 21, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The Secret World of Arrietty (2010) movie poster

director Hiromasa Yonebayashi
viewed: 02/18/2012 at AMC Loews Metreon 16, SF, CA

It’s a sad fact that one day, we will live in a world without Hayao Miyazaki actively making movies.  We may already be living in a world where Miyazaki is no longer directing films.  There has been speculation, based on his own words, that Ponyo (2008) may prove to be the last feature film for which he will have a directorial credit.  We have been so lucky to live in world in which a master film-maker created at the top of his craft such films as My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Spirited Away (2001), Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) and so many others.

What we have in The Secret World of Arrietty is perhaps the next best thing to a film directed by Miyazaki.  It’s a film written by Miyazaki and to some extent “planned” by him.  I’m not sure if this includes storyboards or to what extent his hand remained in, but Arrietty does bear more of his mark than other films from Studio Ghibli.  It is directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi who worked as an animator on a number of Miyazaki’s films, and I’d be hard pressed (or merely speculating) to suppose where the word started and stopped.  The most important thing is that while Arrietty may not be entirely a Miyazaki film, it bears a great deal of the charm and beauty of his work.  It’s a fine film.

Based on the novel, The Borrowers by Mary Norton, the story is about a little family of little people who live in a house in the Japanese countryside.  They “borrow” what they need from the bigger humans, hiding their existence entirely from them.  But when Sean, a boy with a heart condition, is brought to the house to convalesce, he discovers the teenage borrower Arrietty and tries to make friends with her.  Ultimately, when the family realizes that they have been discovered, they have to leave and rebuild their home somewhere else, but the friendship between Sean and Arrietty brings about hopeful changes for both.

It’s a sweet film.  Like Ponyo, it’s rated G (a rare enough thing these days in children’s film), with a strict limit to drama, danger, and violence.  While there is no out-and-out magic at play here (a common Miyazaki theme), this family of little people are in  a sense the magic of the world, a hidden, endangered, beautiful element sadly threatened increasingly by change.  The family aren’t sure if they are or not the last of their species.

Arrietty is yet another of Miyazaki’s strong young female protagonists, spirited and innocent, breaking into the world in new ways.

Both Felix and Clara liked it a lot, though Felix, typically was less enthusiastic after a while.  I thought it was quite enjoyable myself.

We are lucky to live in a world in which Hayao Miyazaki is still creating cinema, and we can hope that he will continue to do so.

 

Filed under Animation, Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, Theatrical, With the kids

Tales from Earthsea

April 2, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Tales from Earthsea (2006) movie poster

(2006) director Gorō Miyazaki
viewed: 04/01/11

Great idea? Master Japanese animation film-maker Hayao Miyazaki to take on the “Earthsea” saga of science fiction/fantasy writer Ursula Le Guin.

Much lesser idea? Son of Hayao Miyazaki, Gorō Miyazaki, not an experienced film-maker to adapt some of the later “Earthsea” stories of Le Guin, through his father’s production company, Studio Ghibli.

Unfortunately, Tales from Earthsea is the latter.  And while it’s not a disaster of a film by any means, it does feel like a painfully squandered opportunity.

When I was 13, I read Le Guin’s “Earthsea Trilogy” (as it was at that point) over the summer and really enjoyed them.  I’ve never been a pure science fiction nor fantasy aficionado, though I’ve dabbled over the years.  I couldn’t recall much of the story if you asked me today, but I recalled liking it.  I rank Hayao Miyazaki among the greatest animators of all time, some of his films among my favorite cinema period.  So, I loved the idea of Miyazaki tackling such material, especially since he was drawn to it.

But the reality is that Miyazaki wanted to do a film of The Wizard of Earthsea or something back in the 1980′s.  At that point, Le Guin refused, Miyazaki not by that time established as he would later be.  But when she finally relented to have her books adapted, the work was done by Miyazaki’s son, who had spent most of his career not in his father’s shadow, working in different fields and media.

The story is a complex fantasy featuring wizards, dragons, and personal responsibilities, dramatic, complex, apparently re-working much of Le Guin’s work into something that she liked OK but disowned as her own.   And that’s really it.  It’s not a bad film.  I watched it with the kids and they liked it pretty well, but it’s not a great one by any means.  One expects more from Studio Ghibli and presumably expects more from Le Guin.

It’s only too bad because one can imagine what might have been.  It’s been suggested that Ponyo (2008) will be the elder Miyazaki’s final feature film, and doubtlessly, he can retire and rest well upon his creative laurels.  And Ponyo, quite frankly, is a wonderful movie, a much greater film by far than Tales from Earthsea.  But Tales from Earthsea is not a bad film, yet not a great film most assuredly.

Filed under Animation, DVD, Japan, With the kids

Drunken Angel

January 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Drunken Angel (1948) movie poster

(1948) director Akira Kurosawa
viewed: 12/30/10 at the Viz Cinema, SF, CA

To celebrate the centennial of the birth of Akira Kurosawa, one of the great film directors of the 20th century, I was expecting to see a lot of his films playing at local repertory houses.   Outside of catching Ran (1985) at the Embarcadero earlier in the year, I didn’t get a chance to see any other of his films on the big screen in 2010.  It turns out that the films primarily played at the not so heavily advertised Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley and the small Japantown movie theater Viz Cinema in San Francisco.  On randomly checking around, I saw that Viz was showing a series of six films to close out the year.

I’d never seen Drunken Angel before.  It’s the first of sixteen cinematic collaborations between Kurosawa and star Toshirō Mifune, who is young and slim and clean-shaven as a suave tough in this film.  The “drunken angel” of the title is Takashi Shimura, another Kurosawa regular, as an often besotted doctor, whose drunkenness and outspoken attitude has kept him in the poorer reaches of Tokyo, servicing the working class and also the criminal element, rather than having achieved a larger, more successful practice.

The film is considered a social critique of post-war Japan in the years immediately following WWII and the humbling occupation by American troops.  The film is set around a festering mire, laden with trash and oozing with disease.  If anything, it is the film’s central image, a stagnation that stands in for perhaps the Japanese psyche at the time.  The mire is surrounded by the young toughs, the prostitutes, and the destitute.  And whether suffering from alcoholism, tuberculosis, venereal disease, or depression and malaise, it’s a bleak place.  But Shimura, as the doctor, still seeks humanity and hope amidst the garbage.

The film opens with Shimura treating Mifune, who has been shot in the hand in a skirmish.  The scene is the best in the film, deftly sketching the characters, the brooding yakuza and Shimura telling it like it is to him.  He diagnoses Mifune with TB and gruffly tells him to clean up his life.  There is much colorful detail played out, from a door that won’t stay open to Shimura’s handling of his instruments.

The film is a melodrama primarily, with touches of humor.  And while I’ve seen it referred to as film noir as well, I would think that perhaps portions of it could be seen in that light but I don’t know if it fits neatly into that category.  It’s an excellent film however its sorted, and it shows Kurosawa’s masterful hand throughout.  I’ve come to appreciate Kurosawa immensely in recent years, joining the chorus, perhaps in that regard.  But I am eager to see more of his films and when I can, see them on the big screen.

Filed under Akira Kurosawa, Japan, Theatrical

King Kong Escapes

December 3, 2010 by Leave a Comment

King Kong Escapes (1967) movie poster

(1967) director Ishirô Honda
viewed: 11/26/10

From the director of many a Godzilla film, Ishirô Honda, I queued up a film that I remembered from my childhood for my kids, King Kong Escapes.  While he fought Godzilla in King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), King Kong Escapes wasn’t necessarily a sequel.  In fact, if you get down to it, this film is completely out of left field, except in its adherence to the traditions of the King Kong films.  In this film, King Kong battles a robot King Kong, before Godzilla even battled a robot version of himself.

Especially in the dubbed version perhaps, this film has a ludicrous silliness to the storyline.  On a UN submarine, with a crew on a mission in the South Pacific, headed by an American man, a Japanese man, and a blond American nurse, who all love the legend of King Kong, find themselves on Mondo Island, home of Kong.  While they are met by only one native, speaking “Javanese” which only the male American commander understands, threatening them away from the holy ground, they wind up meeting up with Kong, a man in a giant gorilla suit, who runs through the basics of Kong’s script.  Fall in love with the little blond woman, kill a T-Rex-ish monster, battle a sea serpent, relent to the woman and let her go.

Of course, the wacky part is set in the North Pole where a villainous Dr. Who, a mad scientist with a history with the American commander, has hatched a plan to build a giant robo-Kong to dig out “element X” from beneath the polar ice.  Only it doesn’t work.   So, he sets out to capture the real Kong, hypnotize him into digging for the radioactive element, and sell said element to the mysterious Asian woman who represents an unnamed country that wants to take over the world.

When hypnotzing Kong doesn’t work either, he kidnaps the submarine crew to try to coerce them into getting Kong to do the work.  Only that doesn’t work either because…King Kong Escapes!  In fact, Robo-Kong can’t even catch up with him until he nears Tokyo (where all great Japanese tokusatsu monsters go to destroy).  The inevitable battle ensues on a Japanese version of the Eiffel Tower.

The mysterious woman stops being a villain halfway through, for no particular reason.  Dr. Who seems to be the least competent villain ever.  And if it wasn’t for the pretty good fight scenes and the good quantity of monsters, and Robo-Kong who is pretty cool with his flood-light eyes  and briefly with his hypno-horn on his head, this movie would be a disaster.

As it winds up, it’s pretty entertaining.  Honda, typically, delivers the goods.  For as out-and-out silly as it is, it’s good fun.

The kids enjoy these films.  At first, it was an experiment, but now it’s something that they regularly ask for.  So, we’ll keep ‘em coming!

Filed under DVD, Japan, With the kids

Kuroneko

December 3, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Kuroneko (1968) movie poster

(1968) director Kaneto Shindô
viewed: 11/26/10 at the Castro Theatre, SF, CA

Like his 1964 film, Onibaba, writer/director Kaneto Shindô’s Kuroneko is also set during the Muromachi period in Japan, against the backdrop of a war-ravaged world that has left many in poverty. Also, like Onibaba, the film stars Nobuko Otowa as a mother whose son has been conscripted forcibly into the military, leaving her and her young daughter-in-law to fend for themselves.  And like Onibaba as well, Kuroneko is a horror film of sorts, a ghost story.  In fact, it makes an excellent pairing with Shindô’s earlier film.

Unlike Onibaba, Kuroneko is a much more theatrical film, though I couldn’t tell you if it was Kabuki or Noh or even something else that influences the style of the film.  Onibaba‘s setting in the reeds tied the earthiness and grittiness of reality, adding a naturalism to the film.  And Kuroneko begins similarly, with a house at the edge of a woods, where the mother and her daughter-in-law are living since the son was taken away.  A band of starving, lusting soldiers, samurai burst in upon them out of nowhere, steal their food, rape and murder them, and burn their house to the ground.  Their sweaty, leering faces, echo heavily of Shindô’s vision of humanity from his earlier film.

But what the soldiers have wrought is vengeance upon themselves.  The women are visited by a spirit in the form of a black cat, and make a pact with the evil forces, allowing them to return from the dead to hunt and kill, drink the blood, of all samurai that they can lay their claws upon.  They meet them outside one potentate’s gate, lead them into the forest, to their ghostly home, intoxicate, seduce and slay them.

Much like a traditional ghost story, steeped with irony, the son survives his experience in the army, eventually earning himself a name and a title, becoming a samurai himself.   Once this is so, he returns to the head of his military clan and is given great honor.  He is also assigned to destroy the blood-thirsty ghosts that are killing his fellow samurai.

He comes to find that it is his wife and mother who are the ghostly villains.  He also comes to understand how it came to be that they are now vengeful ghosts, but he is caught between his love for his wife and mother and his duty against death to destroy them.

All told, it’s an elegant ghost story, shot in dramatic black and white.  Perhaps not quite as thought-provoking as its recommended companion film, Onibaba, but quite a good film.  Quite worth seeing.

Filed under Japan, Theatrical

Godzilla Raids Again

November 14, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Godzilla Raids Again (1955) movie poster

(1955) director Motoyoshi Oda
viewed: 11/12/10

I’ve been watching Godzilla movies with my kids for about 3 years now.  So far, all the original Showa series.  And though it began as a bit of an experiment, with much younger kids, this latest viewing was requested by my daughter.  Not the film itself, but “a Godzilla movie”.  And we were down to three left of the original series that are available on Netflix.  Oddly, a few are missing from availability.  And I haven’t figured out what to do about that.

The funny thing about Godzilla Raids Again is that I’d never seen the darn thing.  The second of the original Godzilla films, coming hot on the heels of the original Gojira (1954).   Actually, it’s a little less odd in some ways.  For some odd reason, when it was released in the US originally, Godzilla Raids Again was re-packaged as Gigantis, the Fire Monster.  So despite being the only other black-and-white Godzilla film and being the first to feature a battle between two titanic beasts, Godzilla and Anguirus, this one somehow eluded me for many years.

As in watching these films with the kids, we watch the dubbed and re-edited American versions.   The only exception I made was in watching the original Gojira, which I did without them, and allowed myself to watch it as a foreign film with subtitles.  It certainly can and does make for a different experience.  And in the case of Godzilla Raids Again, it’s probably fairly detrimental to the film.  It’s ripe for comedy quite a bit.

In this one, hydrogen bomb testing unleashes the two dinosaurs and they find their way to Japan to wreak havoc.  Interestingly, they wreak havoc in Osaka, not Tokyo, for a change.  And initially, the monsters are only interested in battling one another.  That is, until Godzilla kills Anguirus and then just has Osaka to take his aggression out upon.  He meets a rather interesting doom, buried beneath an avalanche.

The kids really enjoyed it.  For Clara, it’s hard for her to remember back 3 years ago when she was 3 and we were first testing the waters with giant rubber-suited Japanese monster movies.  Felix was 6, so he remembers the movies a little better.  They’re actually keenly interested to re-watch a couple of favorites, but I told them that I’d like to get through the other two films left in my Netflix queue before back-tracking.

I, of course, grew up with Godzilla myself, this same series of films, some of which were still being released new at the time.  And Godzilla was my favorite monster for whatever reason.  We haven’t been watching them in any particular order over time, which served our purposes for watching whichever seemed to tickle a fancy at the time, but it might have been interesting to watch the evolution of the creature from villain to hero.  And I’m a little bummed because I really would like to watch Destroy All Monsters (1968) (a personal favorite from childhood), All Monsters Attack (1969), and Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973), but Netflix doesn’t carry those titles.

We do have a couple left to go, so, depending on the kids’ whims and fancies, you’ll see more of those Godzilla flicks here in coming weeks.

If you’re interested in seeing a list of all the Godzilla movies we’ve watched, click here for the whole bunch!

Filed under 1950's Sci Fi, DVD, Godzilla, Japan, With the kids

House

October 27, 2010 by Leave a Comment

House (1977) movie poster

(1977) director Nobuhiko Obayashi
viewed: 10/26/10

Freakishly freaky, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 horror/comedy is stranger than the sum of its parts.  Or rather maybe the sum of its parts are just stranger than just about anything out there.

It wasn’t until this film played at the Castro Theatre here in San Francisco earlier this year that I’d ever heard of the film.  And quite frankly, this was an unusual case in which what got me so excited to see the film was the movie poster.  Not the one cited above but below here, with a link to its Criterion Collection release.  The design was so cool, I just HAD to see it!

I had no idea about the movie, though I’d read that it was more of a Surrealist oddity than a true horror film.  And unfortunately, I missed the Castro showing and had to wait for the DVD.

It’s something else!  Though it’s really nothing like them, the two films that came to mind for me were Tsui Hark’s Zu Warriors from Magic Mountain (1983) and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II (1987).  I draw that comparison to an extent based on the manic nature of the film’s fantasy sequences and the eclectic film techniques that create the movie’s special effects.  That, and both Zu and Evil Dead II are two of the most innovative, inventive, and strange films that I’ve seen, while essentially being genre films.  They both made a huge impression on me.  And while House took a while to take a hold of me, I can only imagine what I would have thought of it if I’d seen it 20 years ago.

House is ostensibly a haunted house story, wherein seven very pretty Japanese schoolgirls take a holiday in the country at the home of one of the girls’ long lost aunt.  The film foregrounds its artificiality, using all sorts of strange techniques, with luridly-painted sunset backdrops, animations, split-screen shots, and more.   The film also has invasive musical elements and at times seems a bit reminiscent of an episode of The Monkees or something.  As the film gets going, its hyperkinetic editing, cartoonish characters, and ping-pong-ball pacing make you wonder what you’re in for, but when the oddball horror sequences begin and then go crazy, it’s enthralling.

The madness that ensues is almost too ornate to detail, but the best sequence for me is when one of the girls gets “eaten” by the piano she is playing.  It’s just so damn weird and funny and visually inventive.

Like Zu and like Evil Dead II, the film has a manic energy and left field swings that even 30 years later still surprise and confound.  While Evil Dead II is well-renowned and has been hugely influential (and American), House and Zu are probably well under-seen in the United States.  As I’d said, earlier this year, I’d never even heard of the film.  And, a day after having seen it for the first time, I’m still reeling at its wacky innovation, wild designs, and non-stop chaos.

Filed under DVD, Japan

The Sword of Doom

July 12, 2010 by Leave a Comment

(1966) director Kihachi Okamoto
viewed: 07/10/10 at Viz Cinema, SF, CA

It wasn’t until I looked in the newspaper that I happened to notice that one of the best samurai films, a personal favorite, The Sword of Doom, was playing as a double feature at the new Japantown movie theater Viz Cinema, which I had never been to, nor even knew exactly where it was.  In fact, it was playing with Kill! (1968), another excellent samurai film also directed by Kihachi Okamoto and playing as part of a series of samurai films both old and new at the Japan-oriented theater.  Viz opened only a year or two ago (I lose track) and shows largely a lot of modern Japanese films that don’t get imported by other means plus a lot of anime.  A friend of mine who’s a big anime aficionado had been there and described it to me but I’d never been there.  But the opportunity to see this great movie on film on the big screen…too good to pass up!

The Sword of Doom is an immensely stylish, striking film.  From it’s opening sequence, in which an old man is cut down for no good reason by the ruthless samurai, Ryunosuke Tsukue, aspects of the film’s visual style are apparent.  Ryunosuke’s enormous hat obscures his face, but it also is used to frame shots, from close-ups to medium shots.  As will recur with great profundity in the final battle sequence, in which the walls and doors of the geisha house burn and are torn to shreds, Okamoto used many physical elements to create each image’s framing.  And some of these appear rapidly through action-packed cuts, while others linger for more steady durations.  The whole of the film is a visual pleasure.

But it’s not just the visual aesthetics that make The Sword of Doom such a masterpiece.  It tells the story of a potentially insane, near serial killer, of a samurai, who has little emotion other than wild-eyed blankness, who kills without morals or meaning.  That the protagonist is more anti-hero and yet is not utterly unsympathetic demonstrates the emotional complexity that Okamoto achieves in this film.  It’s not a morally simple tale at all.  And the ending, which occurs during a violent battle sequence with a huge body count, which freezes on a frame of Ryunosuke’s twisted, terrified face, leaves an open-endedness to the story (which apparently was originally to be followed by more than one sequel), and leaves the viewer in a state of shock of sorts.

It’s an amazing movie, one of my favorites that I’ve seen of the samurai genre.  I was disappointed that the Viz theater wasn’t actually showing the film as a double feature with Kill!, rather ushering us out to potentially buy another ticket for the second film. It helped me a bit because I’d sat through another double feature the day before and was feeling that it would have been truly indulgent to sit through another one.  In the end, the need to pay for and wait for the second feature was enough to usher me all the way out of the theater and on to other things.

But I have to say, it was great to get to see The Sword of Doom again, and actually on the big screen.  I will be quite tempted to go back and catch another samurai film from their mini-festival before it ends.  It’s not a bad little place, this Viz theater.

Filed under Japan, Samurai, Theatrical

Ran

June 11, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Ran (1985) movie poster

(1985) dir. Akira Kurosawa
viewed: 06/07/10 at the Embarcadero Cinemas, SF, CA

In celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of cinema great Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998), a number of retrospectives and re-releases of his films are expected throughout the year.  The first of which to hit San Francisco is a re-release of his 1985 film, Ran, his last great epic, perhaps his last great film, and I took the opportunity to see it in the theater on the “big screen” because my only other experience with it was sadly on a video on television some many years ago.

I was 16 or 17 when Ran came out in 1985 and made its way to my hometown of Gainesville, FL.  It’s perhaps the first foreign film that I became interested in, though I sadly didn’t actually see it on release.  Over the years, I’ve come to a great appreciation for Kurosawa, having been catching up on a number of his films on DVD including The Bad Sleep Well (1960), Rashômon (1950), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), Ikiru (1952), and The Hidden Fortress (1958), mostly from his fecund early period of success.  I don’t know that Ran is the only of his color films that I’ve seen, but colorful indeed it is.

The film was meticulously storyboarded by Kurosawa, planned over many years, and while based roughly upon some historical elements, the story is heavily influenced by Shakespeare’s King Lear, as well.  An aging lord, Hidetora, who came to power through much battle and bloodshed, decides, somewhat suddenly, to divide his kingdom between his three sons, with his eldest holding the greatest righteous power.  The youngest and most brash of his sons calls him out as a fool for this, as does one of his noble gentry.  He bannishes them both for their offences.

The problem is, that they were right.  His eldest son, Taro, has a devious wife, who, though often stoic and seemingly proper, sows the seeds that will lead to the undoing of the whole clan.  She convinces Taro that his father needs to be humbled and that he needs to stake his claim more solidly on the castle, which leads to an argument and the father’s departure for his second son’s, Jiro’s, castle.  Jiro has followers who cajole him as well, barring his father’s entourage, but not his father himself, from his castle.  In anger, Hidetora is left to wander without a home.

Really, the seeds that are sown are not only what proves to be the vengaence of Taro’s wife, Lady Kaede, but the poisonous spoilage of Hidetora’s years and years of killing, cruelty, and harshness.  While wishing to hang his old age upon some laurels, to enjoy a hard-fought for peace, and to live his life out in some sort of mellowed happiness, all that Hidetora is truly left with is pure carnage, destruction, and death.  It’s an epic tragedy of grand, grand scale.

Kurosawa sets much of the action on the mountainous regions of Mt. Fuji, with thousands of extras clad in the color-specific flagged battle costumes signifying for which lord the soldiers battle.  But interestingly, in some ways, it comes not to matter.  Death comes for all, good and noble, pious, impious, vengeful, ruthless, everyone.  And it’s hard not to be impressed with the grand scheme played out on such grand scale.

There is much going on in the film, much too much to fully comment on here.  But watching it this time, I felt aware of what was perhaps a commentary on the Cold War or at least the destructive power of war, a contemporary vision of the mid-1980′s.  As well, there is Hidetora, whose age is similar to that of Kurosawa at the time the film was made, a perhaps personal character, a perspective on the futility of one’s life’s work, of coming to an age when all is supposedly behind one, and the sizing up of that is not perhaps what one would have hoped for.

While richly colorful, I found some of the color almost garish, while other aspects of it are most lush.  And the acting, particularly that of Hidetora and Lady Kaede is in strange, theatrical contrast to the acting of many of the other performers.  Hidetora wears a ton of make-up, projecting his intense mania as he is struck into madness by the tragedies befalling him and his family, and Lady Kaede, who at times wears a refined, unexpressive make-up, also lurches into moments of grand theatrics.  While these performances and styles reckon back to Noh theater, I am not enough of a scholar of Japanese theater to sort through why those two are the key figures to perform differently.

What is always fascinating in Kurosawa is his mixture of Western and Japanese traditions.  He often used Western texts from Shakespeare (Throne of Blood) to Dashiell Hammett (Yojimbo (1961)) as narrative inspiration for his Samuari and other films, he brought these themes upon a truly Japanese landscape and historically and culturally.  Perhaps this is partially why his popularity in Europe and America was so profound.

Ran fits appropriately at the end of a long list of great, telling, visionary films fitting well within his canon.  It was great to see it again, and to see it on the big screen, a screen large enough to appreciate the breadth and scope of his story and imagery.  I will be looking out for others of his films in this centenury and I recommend the experience.

Filed under Akira Kurosawa, Japan, Samurai, Theatrical

Godzilla’s Revenge

May 22, 2010 by 1 Comment

Godzilla's Revenge (1969) movie poster

(1969) dir. Ishirô Honda
viewed: 05/21/10

The kids wanted to watch another Godzilla movie.  Who was I to let them down?  We started watching Godzilla movies, which I grew up on, about 3-4 years ago with a mixed to positive range of response.  And, while it had been surprisingly an entire year since our last Godzilla movie (Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975)), I was glad to resume our foray into Japanese cinema (such as it is).

We’ve not been watching them in any particular order, though we’ve been working our way through the catalog of the original Shōwa series.  Actually, this film was my first consideration back when we first started watching these films.  I had always remembered liking this one as a kid, but in my modicum of research had seen that it is derided  by many fans of the series.  It’s the most kid-friendly or kid-oriented of the Godzilla films, an anomaly for sure, but when you think about guys wrestling in big rubber monster suits, you have to think that they are all pretty kid-oriented.

Godzilla’s Revenge, or as it is also known, All Monsters Attack or Minya, Son of Godzilla tells the story of a little boy growing up on the rough industrial side of Tokyo, a latchkey child with a rich imagination and a series of bullies.  He “dreams” himself into a trip to Monster Island, home of Godzilla, Minya, and many other monsters, where he meets up with Godzilla’s son who talks (!) (and who sounds quite a bit like Gumby’s sidekick Pokey).  Minya has a tormentor, too, the hyena-laughing Gabera (who shares a name with the dreaming Ichiro’s bully).  Like Ichiro, Minya is being taught the lesson of “fighting one’s own battles”.

And if this wasn’t enough oddball plotline, there are also two goofy bankrobbers who are hiding out among the rundown industrial buildings, who end up kidnapping Ichiro, too.  The whole thing gets a little Home Alone (1990).

Despite the fact that the English dubbing is perhaps a series-worst and the silliness quotient is so high, the film is actually kind of enjoyable.  The soundtrack is virtual surf rock, the effects are cheap but sort of trippy and surreal.  And the general lack of drama, lack of a big battle scene, fact that seemingly several sequences are actually replicating sequences from other Godzilla movies, the whole thing works pretty well for the kids.  It’s funny because they sort of recognize the silliness too, that none of the monster sequences are happening outside of Ichiro’s fantasies.

But the film is directed by Ishirô Honda, who directed the original Gojira (1954), as well as many of the other better films in the series. Actually, when I started off showing Godzilla movies to the kids, Clara was 3 and Felix was 5, so maybe this would have been a better choice at the time than
Son of Godzilla (1967), from which this film borrows footage. But you know, it’s kind of fun watching these films with them since they like them.

Filed under DVD, Godzilla, Japan, With the kids

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