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Gantz 2: Perfect Answer

The Plot

The Battle Continues in Gantz 2 Perfect Answer !

Masaru Kato (Kenichi Matsuyama)'s death changes Kei Kurono (Kazunari Ninomiya) 's view of life completely. He decides to keep fighting until he earns 100 points so that he can bring back Kato.

GANTZ calls back Ayukawa (Ayumi Ito) and other GANTZ alumni who'd left once after scoring 100 points. In the meantime Kurono works on getting 100 points. But before Kurono succeeds in resurrecting Kato, Kato unexpectedly turns up.

Another strange man (Takayuki Yamada) appears and he appears to be investigating GANTZ and the fighters while the fighters take on the most terrible enemy (Go Ayano). To complicate the situation, GANTZ starts acting up. GANTZ chooses the next target... this time it's not an alien but a human girl, Tae, who is in love with Kurono.

Some GANTZ members go after Tae to score points while Kurono tries to protect her. In turn, Tae tries to protect Kurono who fights for her. A love story between their characters blossoms and Kurono must stop his teammates from getting to Tae.

Each teammate has a different motive for fighting, whether to protect a loved one or to do what they think is right. Whatever their cause, they end up sacrificing something important... 

Go Ayano - Kurofuku Ichi

(Plot Outline taken from Gantz - Singapore & Malaysia Facebook Page) 

Coming Soon (18 Aug 2011)

Wasao | わさお [ Movie Review ] ★★

The Pitch

There's enough Japanese movies about dogs to identify it as a genre. From Hachikō to the recent Kinako: Police Dog Dream, it seemed that the Japanese hasn't run out of ideas in making a dog movie and the audience are still lapping it up. this review belongs to filmsblitz at blogspot

This time round, the focus is on a white Akita who became famous after a traveler's blog about him. Apparently Wasao (which apparently means furry in Japanese) was abandon as a puppy and he traveled on his own for a while. At the coastal town of Ajigasawa in Aomori Prefecture, he was rescued and  raised by the female owner of a grilled squid cafe. The blog post of this "cute & ugly dog" went viral and soon Wasao became the most famous Akita in Japan.

This Busa - Kawaii (Ugly - Cute) canine eventually became a World Heritage special ambassador and now there's a movie about him. I guess it's true that every dog has his day and now the review for Wasao the feature length movie. this review belongs to filmsblitz at blogspot

The Plot

In the peaceful town of Ajigasawa, the locals witness an unidentified animal, which some claim looked like a lion, whilst others describe its look as more like a bear. It was eating Farm crops and many raised concerns for their children’s safety. This led to a plan for a hunter to terminate it. 

Waiting for Something to happen

With much effort, Setsuko finally got the dog to start eating a little of what she offers him. However, the dog’s temperament puzzles her, he hardly lets anyone near him, and comes and goes as he please. But yet he always seems to cheer up the elderly and the junior high school students who are hard at training for a triathlon tournament. The dog also shows concern for the old dog that Setsuko had taken under her wing. Setsuko realizes that the Akita Inu dog that appeared before her, looked like a lion, and that worried her. She was afraid that it might get mistaken as the bear that’s ruining the farm crops and get shot.

Setsuko extends her love and care to every living thing, and Akira who loves dogs, but is unable to open up as a puppy had led to his mother’s hospitalization, as a result of an accident. 

(Plot Outline taken from Wasao Facebook Page)

The Perspective

After watching this movie, my hunch is that Wasao didn't charmed the Japanese with his dog tale. It was likely that he gained popularity simply because of his ugly cute appearance. Likewise for the movie, there's plenty of close up on the adorable furry creature and scenic shot of Ajigasawa but when it comes to crafting a dog movie out of Wasao's journey, there's not much substance there.

This movie is filled with non essential people and subplots that had nothing to do with Wasao's story. A farmer taking part in the triathlon event so that he could get married, a school girl organizing  her classmate to perform at the Nebutsu Festival while having a crush on her teacher and many more of such subplots that had nothing to do with the dog. These supporting characters and subplots just drag on and on till it felt like the movie title should be changed to The Town Folks of Ajigasawa and Wasao. It's hard to understand why don't they trim away the unnecessary characters and focus on Wasao's struggle instead. this review belongs to filmsblitz at blogspot

I am going to bite your neck off ... you ungrateful owner!

Even when it comes to the characters and plots that actually mattered to Wasao, it didn't do such a great job in establishing a connection with the audience. Akira the sympathetic boy who "abandon" Wasao was rather annoying.  Even though he is young and understandably worried for his mom, but the picture didn't really gave us a reason that this character deserved Wasao's love and dedication. Likewise for the bonding between Wasao and it's eventual owner, it could have branch out more than what was shown in this movie. this review belongs to filmsblitz at blogspot

Last but not least, the predictable finale where the boy, the bear and the dog finally met for the standoff. There's no need to do a research on it to know that it's made up for the movie. It's so far fetch and unbelievable that it became a joke to the heroic finale that the movie had been trying to build up. It just eye rolling bad to see who came out unscratched in this bear versus dog fight. this review belongs to filmsblitz at blogspot

What is so special about this Akita dog? I really can't tell from this movie. Beside looking adorable and huggable, there's nothing unique or extraordinary about his exploits. It might appear that the filmmaker knew about that fact and tried to cover it up with focusing on other unimportant characters and subplots. Resulting in a long deary affair seemed to have forgotten about the protagonist.

As a dog movie, it pale to comparison with Hachikō and was actually weaker than Kinako: Police Dog Dream (which is actually quite a weak dog movie).

Not Recommended.

Gantz | ガンツ [ Movie Review ] ★★★1/2

The Pitch

Gantz has been in publication as a Manga series since 2000 and is currently going on strong. This gory manga depicts a group of people who were plucked right before their death and given a mission to kill aliens with futuristic weaponry. Folks who had not read the manga and wondered about it's popularity could finally get a taste of Gantz with the two part movies adaption.

To sweeten the deal, this film stars Kazunari Ninomiya and Kenichi Matsuyama as the two protagonists of Gantz. Kazunari Ninomiya career in Japan ranges from being a singer, songwriter, actor and radio host. For movie fans and the rest of the world, he probably more well known for his performance as Private Saigo in Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima.

Kenichi Matsuyama on the other hand, has been making regular appearance in recent Japanese movies that were shown in Singapore. Movies such as the Death Note franchise (as the iconic L), Detroit Metal City (switching from Johannes Krauser II and Souichi Negishi), Kamui Gaiden (as the reluctant ninja Kamui), Kaiji the Ultimate Gambler (doing a supporting role) and the recent Norwegian Wood which was shown just a couple of weeks ago. With these two popular Japanese actors / idols fronting the adaption of a popular manga series, it's intriguing to see what Gantz the movie has to offer.

The Plot

Kei Kurono (Kazunari Ninomiya) and Masaru Kato (Kenichi Matsuyama) tried to help a man who had fallen onto a subway tracks and after saving the man, they were hit by the oncoming train. Instead of dying a gruesome death, they were surprise to find themselves intact and teleported into a Tokyo apartment with a strange looking black sphere at one end of the room. They soon realized that they were not alone. The others were equally bewildered and no one could give a concrete explanation on  how they got there and what's going on.

After sometime, the black sphere known as "Gantz" was activated and presented a weird mission to the people in the apartment. Gantz then opened up and to their surprise, there a bald naked man with a breathing apparatus  They also found suits and a range of weapons inside three racks that protruding from Gantz. Before they could figure out what's going on, they were teleported back out to a Tokyo suburb to commence their alien hunting mission.

The Perspective

As a newbie to the Gantz story, this movie was an entertaining introduction to the world of Gantz. The premise for Gantz was pure escapism and high octane adventure that does not shy away from gore. The concept of hunting aliens in a wide variety of forms with a range of futuristic weaponry would appeal to fans of gaming, manga and fantasy.

Perfect Distraction

Not forgetting the babelicious eye candy Kei Kishimoto (Natsuna Watanabe) who provides a nice distraction from all the alien hunting going on in Gantz.

What the movie didn't do that well was the characterization of the Kei Kurono and Masaru Kato. Both came across as whinny as they struggle with their respective issues. The whole issue with Kei Kurono's childhood dreams of being a hero and Masaru Kato's being overly worried about his brother just slow down the pace of the movie. Instead of being excited about their new powers and thinking of how to  survive the next mission, they spend their time mopping about with their past problems. Personally it just felt like the wrong genre to explore such personal issues.

But overall, Gantz was fun and a great introduction to the manga series. It might inspire one to pick up the manga to see what's missing from the movie adaptation. It also wet one's anticipation for the sequel Gantz Perfect Answer. Let's hope that Gantz does well in Singapore so that the distributor would bring in Gantz Perfect Answer.

Kei Kishimoto (Natsuna Watanabe) So Sexy and Kawaii that I am going to post her picture again!

SP : The Motion Picture | ＳＰ野望篇 [ Movie Review ] ★★

The Pitch

The SP here stands for Security Police and it centered around the trials and tribulation of a team of Japanese politicians bodyguards. SP first found life as a TV series (3rd Nov 2007 to 26th Jan 2008) and like many popular Japanese TV drama series these days, SP was made into 2 motion pictures (this being the first one and a second one that's likely to be heading to Singapore cinema eventually).

The most interesting aspect of this movie (for someone who have not caught the drama series) would be that this movie topped the Japanese Box Office for 3 weeks (from 30th Oct to 14th Nov 2010)* and the follow up movie SP: The Motion Picture II is currently at the top too ( 3 straight weeks from 12 Mar to 27th Mar 2011)*. It's intriguing to find out what the drawing power that this franchise got on the Japanese audience that make them come back for more.

(* Box Office Information from AsianMediaWiki.com )



The Plot

For the uninitiated, SP: The Motion Picture basically introduced a team of Japanese politician bodyguards. The focus here lies on the team leader, Soichiro Ogata (Shin'ichi Tsutsumi / Suspect X) and one of the member Kaoru Inoue (Junichi Okada). Inoue stood out from the rest with his special "ESP" abilities to remember stuff, detect traps and even premonition. Needless to say, as the protagonist, he would go above and beyond the call of duty.

The plot thickens when Secretary General Kunio Date (Teruyuki Kagawa / 20th Century Boys series) gathered a group of politicians from various departments for a meeting to create crisis that would unite the Japanese citizen. Among the group, Ogata been tasked to carry out the plan and attempted to recruit Inoue for the sinister cause.

It's not hard to figure out how would the hero react to such invitation. Before he got time to ponder more about Ogata's unexplained cause, an emergency occurred and his team had been tasked to protect another Secretary who was making his way to the Prime Minister house. Let's just say that it won't be an easy mission for the hero and his team mates.
  
The Perspective

As someone who going into this movie without any knowledge of what happened in the TV series, it's relatively easy to get up to speed. Although one might not know the significant of certain character that died in the TV series, it's easy to figure out the plot setup and characters' motivation.

This movie also focused on how the Security Police protects the various politicians from potential harms. But in a strange way, it did too much of "securing" for it's own good. The movie gets bogged down by one security mission after another. It's not only bland (just imagine following a security details around), it does nothing to advance the story and there were plenty of loopholes in their operations.

The most glaring loophole would be how the security team would choose to hand to hand combat when they have other form of weapons with them. It felt like a blatant attempt to show realistic take down that security forces might use. While the fight scenes look different from the usual exaggerated kungfu fight scenes, it felt that the security operation had been stupefied so that they can show the audience how they whack people with their bare hands.

Last but not least, Inoue was quite a boring and tedious character to follow. He got all these supernatural powers that makes him a super bodyguard. It's almost impossible to surprise him when he could see into the future or detect what's round the corner. But the power are wasted in a manner that even when he detects that something is wrong, he would usually react a moment too late. Kinda negated his special abilities most of the time and it makes one wonder why give him special powers in the first place when it doesn't do much for his character or the story.

As the first part of two movies, SP: The Motion Picture failed to entice me to catch the second movie. In fact, it felt like a telemovie that didn't deserve the cinematic treatment. It also felt like if it had remove the introduction arc (for newbies like me), the movie would probably have enough screen time to get to Secretary General Kunio Date's big sinister plan. Perhaps there's more in the TV series and folks who had watched that might appreciate this movie more but right now, it's doing nothing to interest me to the TV series or the 2nd movie.

Go Find a Psychic! | 曲がれ！スプーン [ Movie Review ] *** 1/2

Go find a psychic is literally about a lady quest for a real psychic. Yone Sakurai (Masami Nagasawa)  happened to work in a television program about people with psychic ability and most of them turned out to be fake wannabes seeking their 15 minutes of fame. While her colleagues are probably just concerned about program ratings, she is one individual with a strong conviction on the mysterious and unexplained phenomena.  Her boss used her strong conviction and sent her on a trip all over Japan to find a real psychic (or phenomenon).

Meanwhile, in a cafe, a group of individual with different psychic abilities gathered for a small private party. Unlike the fake wannabes, this group of people with real special capabilities want nothing to do with the media, specially the psychic program show that Yone Sakurai works for. Their party was crashed by a wannabe and the enthusiastic group of special folks unwittingly revealed their power to the wannabe.

While the special psychics are trying hard to protect their secrets, Yone Sakurai entered the cafe to interview this wannabe. To escalate events, one of psychic with X Ray vision discovers that there's a poisonous spider (from the previous wannabe) in her name card holder. In order to save her, the psychics took turns with their special abilities to remove the name card holder from her pocket.

That the whole crux of this movie. Will they be able to help her without revealing their secrets?

On the whole, Go Find a Psychic! has a Japanese Christmas telemovie / television series feel to it. The camera work, the events, the actors's performance and even the gags weren't spectacularly cinematic. However it brought up a good point on what people will do if they have special powers. It was also rather amusing to see how these psychics draw the line on what they would use their power for and the limits of their power.

Moreover it also instill the belief of holding onto one's faith no matter how strange they might be. That and the Santa gag made this movie seemed just right for the Christmas season.

Confessions 告白 [ Movie Review ] ****

Every once in a while, a truly disturbing movie comes our way and stayed etched in the minds long after the end credits roll off. Similar to Battle Royale, Confessions used an extreme scenario to highlight and reflect certain issues in our society (or at least perhaps in the Japanese society). It's tense, dark and unflinching movie that grip hold of you tightly right from the start. It also used an innovative flashbacks method to tell the story.  Last but not least, the beautiful cinematography creates just the right type of moody setting and it was nothing less than a visual treat.

But the most satisfying bit about Confessions would be how it dealt with the effective ways of punishing someone who is truly apathetic to his wrongdoing and almost everything else in the world.

Confessions started with a middle school teacher Yoko Moriguchi (Takako Matsu) and her rowdy students. She informed them that her teaching life is coming to an end as her four year old daughter had died from a pool accident. After doing some investigation, she had discovered that her daughter was murdered by two of her students. Identifying them only as student A and student B, Moriguchi revealed that even after learning the shocking truth, she won't be going to the police as due to their age, student A and student B won't be prosecuted by the criminal law. Through the teacher's detailed recounting of what had transpired, the class managed to guess the identity of Student A and B. In a eerily calm and collected manner, she ended her class by informing the class that among the packs of milk that the class had just drank, she had tainted two of them with blood containing HIV.

Usually, such unexpected and surprising revelation would be reserved till the end of a vengeance movie and used as a climax twist or punch to the revenge tale. But in Confessions, this is just an intense wrap up for the introduction arc.

The class started to dish out their brand of punishment on Student A and B. While Student A managed to endure the nightmarish bullying, Student B went crazy and stayed away from school. On the surface, it seemed that the two kids had received their punishment for their atrocities but as the story slowly revealed more shocking truth behind the initial revelation. From the confessions of the class rep, student A and B, we discovered their thought process and the actual motivation behind the horrible murder. It's just bone chilling to learn what the kids truly felt about the whole incident and they are so wrapped up in their own selfish thinkings.

Besides the dynamic tension between the teacher and the students, the film also explored the issues between a child and their mother. On one hand, it cover how the lack of motherly love could fractured a child's growth and on the other hand, it also show how smothering one child could be equally damaging. It's on the extreme bits but somehow these scenarios are heart wrenching to watch.

Beyond the Movie

• Confessions 告白 is Japan's candidate for the upcoming Oscar Best Foreign Language Film.
• Was Top of Japan Box Office for 4 weeks in a row.
• Confessions 告白 made it through the 1st Oscar Best Foreign Language Film nomination round. ( as of 20th Jan 2011)
• Confessions 告白 is now officially out of the race for Oscar Best Foreign Language Film (as of 26th Jan 2011)

• Confessions 告白 won 4 awards at the 34th Japan Academy (as of 18th Feb 2011)
• Picture of the Year: Kokuhaku
• Director of the Year: Tetsuya Nakashima
• Screenplay of the Year: Tetsuya Nakashima
• Outstanding Achievement in Film Editing: Yoshiyuki Koike

The Incite Mill - 7 Day Death Game | インシテミル ７日間のデス・ゲーム [ Movie Review ] **1/2

The premise for The Incite Mill sound like a blend of Battle Royale and Liar Game The Final Stage. Like Liar Game The Final Stage, this group of people stands to win a huge amount of easy money by following very simple instructions while being confined in a enclosed place. Similar to Battle Royale, they soon discovered that they have been duped into a treacherous survival game and they are each given a unique weapon to participate in this game. While having similar concepts, The Incite Mill was nowhere as controversial nor suspenseful. It's so ridden with loopholes and poor characterization that it's hard to stay engage with the plot and character.

It started with ten people from various walks of life taking part in a short term job in a remote complex that pays extremely well. The job requires them to be monitored 24 hours for 7 days in a psychological experiment. They are each given a room and few simple instructions. The first instruction would be to return to their room by 10pm and the second instruction would be by the 7th day or when there are only two surviving members left alive, the experiment will come to an end.

If a murder is committed, a member of the group could deduce who the killer is and with the support from the rest of the group, the killer will be put away. In a sick twist to incite the players into murderous behavior, the detective, the deceased and the "convicted" murderer will all get a bonus sum of money. They also realize that in their individual rooms, a different weapon is planted to aid them in this psychological experiment. The next day, they discovered a dead body at the corridor and their cushy job has turned into a horrifying job.

What went wrong for The Incite Mill?

Head Squeeze!

First of all, it didn't make it a convincing argument that this experiment would incite someone to actually murder another person. Money baits and dubious characters were thrown into the mix but the movie lack the screen time and effort to effectively draw out the fractured personality of a person that would behave in such way. Contrasting this movie with the movie Cube (which handle proximity paranoia well), the latter had the captives thrown into enclosed maze without giving them the reason why or how they will be able to get out. In this movie, the participants were aware that they were monitored and it will only be 7 days before they are re-release back to normal life. Would anyone resort to killing his or her fellow participant? It's just seemed so unlikely and the film did very little to validate the murderer's motivation.

The second problem with the show would be how the rules were forgotten as the movie progressed. For every murder, someone in the group was supposed to figure out who was the murderer with the rest voting on that deduction. But after the first murder, this deduction and judgment process was conveniently forgotten until the plot awkwardly requires it again. 
 
There are the twists that were added into the climatic finale which felt pointless and bland. Such as the live streaming of the murders which was last seen in Untraceable. The issue of taking pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others seemed clumsily inserted and does nothing to incite emotion from viewers.

As a whodunit thriller, The Incite Mill would work if the viewer would not question the flawed plot devices and simply accept the movie for what it is. In the midst of movies with similar themes that were released recently (Kaiji the Ultimate Gambler and Liar Game the Final Stage), this movie pale in comparison in deploying witty games that intrigue and challenge the viewers. It also failed to create the doomed atmosphere in movies like Battle Royale and Cube that will draw out the primitive instinct to survive. It's a pity because this movie had potential and was a page turner until climatic revelation which turned out to be rather disappointing.

Movie: ** 1/2