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"When will there be no more need for girls like us?"
Once again Mizoguchi Kenji showed the plight of “geishas” in The Woman in the Rumor. It starred Tanaka Kinuyo as the owner of a relatively high-end, low-end brothel and the mother of a daughter who resented the family business.Hatsuko has brought her daughter, Yukiko, home from Tokyo. After her boyfriend broke ties with her due to her mother’s business, Yukiko attempted suicide. At first Yukiko was hostile and cold toward her mother, the women, and the doctor who looked over the "geishas.” She came to fully realize how the money her mother spent on her education and living expenses was earned. The geishas weren’t morally bankrupt, rather girls from poverty-stricken farm families with few career opportunities. What Yukiko didn’t know was that the same doctor who had taken a romantic interest in her had also been romantically involved with her mother for some time.
Other than the problem with the doctor being an opportunistic jerk, a female character once again found herself in the unenviable position of being older than the man she was involved with. Tanaka was 11 years older than Nakamura Jakuemon IV (aka Otani Tomoemon) who was 11 years older than Kuga Yoshiko. Of course, the latter pairing was not the horrific societal hurdle that the former was. While Hatsuko had the audacity to fall in love with a younger man, her business was also not honorable enough for a penniless and ethically challenged doctor. Mizoguchi liked to show women suffering and poor Hatsuko’s ego took a merciless beating.
The geishas in the house were shown caring for each other even as they bemoaned their pitiful pay. Mizoguchi didn’t delve into the darker side of prostitution and the toll it took on a woman’s mind and body. He did, however, have a character lament the sad cycle of young girls entering the profession as others aged out, all for the pleasure of men. It also showed how few opportunities there were for a girl or woman to provide for herself and/or her family. This film primarily focused on Hatsuko and her relationship with her daughter. The rift between them could only be healed with Yukiko coming to understand her widowed mother’s position and feelings.
The Woman in the Rumor was the last film Tanaka would make with Mizoguchi, in part because he died a few later and in greater part because he tried to thwart her from becoming a director. This film ultimately worked for me as mother and daughter learned the valuable lesson, 'sisters before misters' or 'mothers and daughters before calculating doctors with wandering eyes and hands syndrome.'
"...most men hold questionable views."
1 June 2025
This film is also known as The Woman of Rumour
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Is it ever too late to become a good man?
The Scoundrels was director Hung Tzu Hsuan feature film debut. Starring Wu Kang Ren (formerly Chris Wu) and JC Lin it was a decent first film, though nothing groundbreaking and leaning more toward Korean crime films than Hong Kong.Rui (translated as Ray in the version I watched) tickets cars and clandestinely stashes GPS trackers on luxury vehicles to be stolen later for the gang he works for. His life took a wrong turn when he was a professional basketball player and attacked a fan during a game leaving the man in the hospital. Racked with debt from the incident and labeled a criminal he turned toward the unsavory way of making a living. While ticketing a car late at night he is kidnapped by the “Raincoat Robber” which leads to a deeper involvement with the dangerously enigmatic crook.
The Scoundrels wasn’t very deep though it did try to make a comment about society treating petty criminals and murderers the same, which kept people from reforming and starting over. Rui wasn’t a very sympathetic character nor was his background or personality expanded upon. Hot-headed, always spoiling for a fight, impulsive, and quick to place the blame on others for his actions, it was no surprise he ended up on the wrong side of the law. He was unable to envision or accept consequences which didn’t help people give him the benefit of the doubt. Wu Shun Wei aka The Raincoat Robber also lacked character depth but Wu Kang Ren managed to grant the baddie much needed charisma and an underlying menace. Rui and Wu had a ‘don’t turn your back on your bro’ bromance. The two female characters were blank canvases never filled in. Jack Kao played a veteran cop who had Rui tried, convicted, and executed in his mind before ever gathering all the evidence.
Hung made use of dim, cramped alleys and dilapidated stairwells for much of the settings. There were numerous brawls between Rui and the gang and Rui and Wu against the gang and finally the no holds barred fight between Rui and Wu foreshadowed in the first scene of the film. A few of the fights had dark humor in them though the fights became more brutal as the film went on. There was an element of Wylie Coyote as characters survived steep falls and bloody blows to the head. Double-crosses led to more double-crosses and more fights.
The Scoundrels was fast-paced which helped the viewer not have time to puzzle over plot holes and lack of character development. Overall, it was entertaining even if it needed narrative help.
30 May 2025
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Here is where I usually give a snippet of the plot. Even though the prolific Ni Kuang helped write the script, it lacked coherency. There were the usual Ming rebels, though Mang’s clueless Hsiao Hai didn’t seem to be in on their plotting. The rebels were pretty much forgotten at one point and the conflict then centered around two competing fighting styles. The Sleeping Lo Han style and the Buddha’s Fist were both taught by the same master, but the school split in two with the Lo Han students joining the Qings and the Buddha’s Fist crowd following the Mings. The Prince wants to wipe out all of the BF’s practitioners including his old classmate crazy monk San Lu.
The story was slow and boring for most of the film. The fights and training sequences weren’t great either. Finally, with about 30 minutes left in the film, the action, if not the story, picked up. Lung Fei and Hou Po Wei had a nice spear fight against the unarmed Mang Hoi. The Martial Arts Director of the film, Chin Yuet Sang, played the crazy monk. He had his own fight with Hwang Jang Lee before Mang Hoi tagged in. Mang was affable enough but didn’t have much screen presence. One of the more acrobatic fighters, Mang’s high flying was rather limited. I’m not sure why they would hire one of the best kickers, if not the best kicker, Hwang Jang Lee, and then not let him cut loose. The final fight was highly choreographed dance steps, faster than some others from the era, but still rather stilted. All in all, it was pretty disappointing.
The movie used many of the sets from Hell’s Windstaff. There was also a running gag about Hsiao eating any puppy or dog he ran across. The shaolin monks were petty and mean. Hsiao wasn’t very bright. Aside from Hwang Jang Lee’s sinister presence as the Big Bad, the film didn’t offer much. Only for fans of the actors, not the worst old kung fu movie by a long shot, but definitely forgettable.
25 May 2025
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Casanova Wong returns!
Tiger’s Trigger was a low budget, no actually low budget would be too high budget for this flick, spare change in the couch film. I knew within 30 seconds it was not going to be a great movie, but it starred Casanova Wong aka Wang Ho and that was enough for me to watch.A nameless teenage girl takes care of her dying mother in the hospital. Her phone’s alarm is set to go off when she needs to roll her mother over. Sharing the same room is an older man taking care of his wife suffering from dementia. The two rarely interact and the older man rarely speaks, that is until fate brings a gun into the girl’s hands. The Korean mafia is on the hunt for the gun and the diamonds hidden in it. As fate would have it, Viper, the one-eyed villain, turns out to be the nemesis of the elderly man nicknamed Sabretooth. And Sabretooth has no intention of letting the dirty cops and gangsters harm his underaged roommate.
Casanova Wong aka The Human Tornado worked in many old Hong Kong kung fu flicks. With his long gray ponytail he looked like he stepped out of one of those 1970s movies. He left acting in the 1990s with this film marking his first return in front of the camera. He acquitted himself well, especially with his fight against old kung fu film actor Won Jin. Wong was nearly 70 at the time of this film and Won around 60. The two old dudes showed they still had something left in the tank.
While I may have been cheerleading for the aged kung fu fighters, the story was a let down as well as the direction. This looked like a high school student might have filmed it on his cell phone. The hospital was completely empty except for the main characters. Though Casanova still had a nice screen presence, the bad guys overacted and the teenager wasn’t one of the stronger young Korean actors around.
Tiger’s Trigger was far from a great movie but it was great to see an old kung fu artist have the chance to grace the screen again and show he still had a few high flying kicks left. And he was totally rocking that silver ponytail.
21 May 2025
Trigger warning: CGI spewing blood, dismemberment, and close range gun shots
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"Do you love me?"
On Children was an omnibus of 5 long episodes or television movies, each self-contained with their own story and characters. Like creepy episodes of the Twilight Zone-fantasy or science fiction was involved in every story about children and their domineering mothers. There were different themes, but a predominant one was, “Be careful what you wish for.”Episode 1-“Mother’s remote” aka “I won’t disappoint Mom.”
Pei Wei is a better artist than student though he does try hard. His efforts and lack of perfection are not acceptable to his mother. He is about to learn the dark side of “Groundhog Day.”
Episode 2-“Child of the Cat” aka “You only want me to become what you wish to see.”
Guo Yan’s parents argue often over his inadequate test scores and beat him with the stick of discipline just as often. A box of cats and a violent girl at school open up a new dimension for improving said test scores, but of course, the trick comes with a price.
Episode 3: “The Last Day of Molly” aka “Who’s looking? Why do you care so much about them?”
Molly wants to be a writer, but her mother is focused on Molly becoming a doctor. When Molly commits suicide, her mother is introduced to a machine that can help her see Molly’s memories. This mother comes to realize she didn’t know her daughter at all.
Episode 4: “Peacock” aka “Giving birth to children is like an investment.”
Qiao Yi goes to an exclusive school populated by the super-rich. Her parents work numerous jobs to pay for her tuition. One day while eating lunch, the school’s caged peacock makes her an offer she can’t refuse.
Episode 5: “ADHD Is Necessary” aka “A person’s value shouldn’t be determined by a single test.”
In the future, women are inseminated with genetically engineered embryos. Yang is a superstar mom whose last child had been a gold medal student. Her current child, Ruo Wa, is struggling scholastically. In this world scholastic failure is met with permanent consequences.
In every episode, the mothers used emotional and physical punishment for children failing to live up to their standards. The primary goals for the children were to be obedient and to excel in school. The children were suffocated and their dreams crushed under their mothers’ heels. The cults of education and motherhood demanded perfection. Their children were their hope and their investments like stock market commodities. The mothers used their children as ladders and tools to enhance their reputations and/or lifestyles. The children were compared to others, called “useless”, with their class rankings determining their worth. They were often driven to desperate and irrevocable decisions. While the mothers were shown as unflinchingly driven and in some cases heartless, the fathers were often a softer place to land, with the exception of Guo Yan’s abusive father.
On Children was a tough watch. Watching kids barely given room to breathe much less have fun, controlled by selfish draconian mothers made me wonder if there would be more matricide attempts. But these kids often turned their anger and despair onto themselves. A common question was, “Do you love me?” A simple question that rarely had the answer that they or we would want to hear. On Children was well made, with overly long episodes, and quality acting for the most part. But not an easy binge. I did learn a valuable lesson though, if a talking peacock tries to make a deal with you, walk away, or maybe run.
15 May 2025
Trigger warnings: Suicides and suicide attempts, self-harm, and animal abuse.
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"Widows grow flowers"
The Widow aka Yamome is a short film that has won several film festival awards. The poster and the awards intrigued me. I thought there would be a cruel or vengeful twist to the short. Instead, I was left wondering if I'd missed something.Oohara Tokio plays Tanai Tomoko, a forty-year-old widow. She believes that widows can't be alone and need a man so she joins a dating site. The woman might want to find a hobby, make friends, or join a club. Instead, she meets Higuchi Satoshi who is 15 years her junior. He's handsome, charming, and has no problem letting her pay for their meals. Because Tanai is a bad drunk, she refrains from drinking on their dates. She buys him gifts and he suggests they move in together. Things take a downward turn from there.
Again, based on the poster, I was ready for the knives to come out. Instead I found the ending tepid at best. The short films it was up against, must not have been very strong. To quote Tanai, I wasn't angry or sad, just disappointed.
13 May 2025
Spoilery comments below---
The following comments are spoilery, if you are spoiler sensitive, please skip---
This short film was perplexing to me because Tanai never smiled and remained rigid through her dates. You would never know that she was serious enough to buy an apartment for them. Or gullible enough to hand over her various forms of identification to a man she'd only known for a few months. Higuchi spent their dinners talking about himself and taking phone calls---red flag warning signs. When Tanai realized she'd been had, she didn't get angry or sad. She wouldn't sue Higuchi because she didn't want him to hate her, after all, "Men will be men." For the love of Pete, that attitude was ridiculous and horribly outdated. She was 40, not 104. In the end, this came across as a Public Service Announcement warning widows about "commercial daters". I can only hope during the final scene when she did drink it meant she was going to give as well as she got to the next man and really cut loose.
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"Don't come home"
Farewell China was a 1990 film directed by Clara Law and filmed primarily in New York. The film showed the difficulty many illegal immigrants without a safety net of family or community suffer, especially when emigrating to one of the most expensive cities in the world.After years of trying, Li Hong receives her visa and travels to New York City ostensibly in order to study. Her husband, Nan Sheng stays in China with their baby son, Sansan. At first, Nan Sheng receives seven letters from Hong a month. The letters stop coming after she begs him to come home and he tells her tough it out and stay. Eventually Nan Sheng takes the dangerous illegal route to the states to find Hong. It doesn’t take long for him to discover the squalor and danger she lived in and the despair that riddled her life. With the help of Jane, a teenage Chinese American prostitute, Hong begins the arduous search for his wife.
The story of cultural identity and the dangers illegal immigrants faced, especially in 1990s New York City and the boroughs, was compelling. Arriving in a foreign land, with limited English skills, no money, and no connections was a recipe for disaster. However, Law lost me in the implementation of the elements. The over-the-top 15-year-old prostitute with a heart of gold who helped Nan Sheng did not hit as authentic. It was also disturbing when he worked as her pimp, “Chinese little girl. 15-years-old. Beautiful, clean, and sexy.” Nan Sheng stumbling across live sex shows and utter filth and overwhelming crime felt like a bad stereotype of the city. Although admittedly, 1990 was a peak year for crime. And people illegally in the country don’t go to the police for fear of deportation. The ending also let me down as it felt contrived and out of left field.
Aside from reservations I had about the storytelling, the acting was quite good. Tony Leung Ka Fai conveyed Nan Sheng’s longing, perseverance, and breaking points. The story of Maggie Cheung’s Li Hong was told primarily through flashbacks. Her character went from hopeful for a better life to the threshold of utter despair taking its toll on her sanity. Nan Sheng would come to understand how traumatic the words, “Don’t come home,” could be.
As much as I enjoyed Autumn Moon by Clara Law, I was unable to connect to Farewell China the same way. The very real horrors and sense of isolation and loss immigrants can feel was diminished by the melodramatic approach.
9 May 2025
Trigger warnings: Insects. Sexual content and full nudity, especially at a live sex show. Sex with an underage girl.
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A young woman watches as a couple move in next door. The new neighbors have no idea what her evenings consist of, if they did, they would turn around and speed away. Yet they, too, are hiding a gruesome secret. One night the attached horrors will collide.
“Female creature who flew into the night hunting for pregnant women…and their wombs…craving the one thing her own body could never produce. For her body feared by many was split in two.”
I had to do a little research to figure out what the intro was talking about and the hints in the film. This was an updated folktale about the manananggal, a usually female creature that fed on pregnant women and/or their fetuses. It could split in half at the waist, leaving its lower extremities behind while it hunted. In some stories it could sprout bat wings and this character did indeed have scars on her back and waist. The screen was split, with the manananggal on the left and the pregnant neighbor on the right. No words were spoken aloud, the music and the action telling their stories. Serrano did a great job of pacing the story so that the viewer could follow both halves as they played out. The music, while simple, also created the perfect mood as both halves’ horrors were revealed.
I found the theme for Dikit hard to follow at first. In fact, I went back and watched it again. As I watched I remembered that a woman is most susceptible to partner violence when she is pregnant. In real life pregnant women’s injuries and deaths are not caused by demons. Unlike some humans who are evil, there are monsters who can transform into heroes.
7 May 2025
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"If you're not good, we need mutual understanding"
I went into The Great Buddha+ blind thinking it might be about a spiritual journey. Uh, no. This film had numerous lewd jokes and comments and pretty much audio porn. It looked like a low budget art house movie filmed mostly in black and white. The title was not false advertising as there was a big brass Buddha at the center of unsavory events.Belly Button lives hand to mouth, eking out a living by collecting and selling recyclable materials and junk. Too poor to drink, he eats one meal a day consisting of food thrown out in the evenings by convenience stores. He is pretty much at the bottom rung of the social ladder if he’s on the ladder at all. Fortunately for him, he meets with Pickle every day at his friend’s night job guarding a factory that makes among other things Buddha statues. Belly Button orders the passive Pickle around, the only person he can tell what to do. Pickle’s boss, Kevin, isn’t nice but is also the object of their envy with his wealth, Mercedes, women, and powerful friends. When the tv breaks down in the office, a bored Belly Button suggests they watch the dashcam from the boss’ car. Turns out Kevin has a car sex fetish which provides hours of amusement for the down on their luck friends…until they see something they shouldn’t or at least wish they hadn’t.
The film hammered home that Belly Button and Pickle were poor and powerless, out of the reach of justice. When they died, if they were lucky, their chalk line would look like a man and not a circle. No one truly knew the other. Men like Kevin weren’t held accountable for their actions as the courts were run by and for the wealthy. The other oft used image was the dashcam. The only color in the film was through the eyes of the dashcam lens. The witness of even heavily edited dashcam recordings was the reality of the nightly news and life. The director provided narration sporadically through the film, sometimes for the better and sometimes as a spoiler of coming events. My biggest problem with the film was that many scenes dragged on for far too long and side characters who added little were often introduced.
The Great Buddha+ had interesting concepts and even inspired a few laughs. The messages overall were bleak. Pickle and Belly Button had come to the conclusion that the only way their lots in life could change would be for the worse. Fate had not been kind with the families they’d been born into. The titular brass Buddha observed all the dirty and sad goings on with a placid face. Sometimes a flower can bloom on a pile of trash, sometimes the flower just gets stepped on before it can bloom. The Buddha may have been hollow, but did karma get the last laugh?
1 May 2025
Trigger warnings: Partial nudity, sexual content, lewd comments
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"Dumbass"
Like a Dragon was based on a video game. I’m guessing the video game was written better than this drama. It had potential but couldn’t get out of its own clichéd way.Four teens being brought up by Kazama at his orphanage decide to break ties with him and rob a gambling den. Turns out it’s run by the yakuza. Kazuma and Nishika are allowed to work for the yakuza to pay off their debt while Miho and Yumi are sent to the hostess bar to work their debt off. Kazuma ends up in prison for 10 years. Upon his release he discovers that his made family is caught up in a mess that could lead to an all out gang war.
This drama bounced back and forth between 1995 and 2005 in every episode. When a drama overly relies on this technique, it usually means there’s not enough story and the writers are trying to build some sort of suspense. People familiar with the game may be able to fill in the gaping narrative holes. The characters were poorly written which did not help the actors. The acting ranged from good to painfully bad. Majima Goro is currently listed as a main character, if you are watching for him, you’ll be disappointed as his appearances were fleeting.
I’d hoped the drama would strengthen as the characters headed for the big showdown. Instead, the story felt more convoluted and the performances more forced. I suppose I should mention what I liked about the drama. Takeuchi Ryoma was very pretty to look at and had obviously worked out for the role of the Dragon. This drama could also win a world’s record for longest princess carry. If you are familiar with the game you’ll probably get more out of this drama than I did.
30 April 2025
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"Here the peace is preserved by hiding the truth"
Joint Security Area showcased how people are still people even when their ideologies clash. They enjoy talking, drawing, playing games, and can be both heroic and cowardly. Set along the DMZ it related how four men tried “to open the dam to reunification.”Swiss officer Sophie Jean arrives in South Korea to conduct a neutral investigation on an incident involving one South Korean soldier and three North Korean soldiers, two of which were killed. Warned that “a spark in a dry forest could burn the whole forest down,” she was told that the what wasn’t as important as the why. Sgt Lee is in custody stating that he was kidnapped and confessed to killing the soldiers during an escape. North Korean Sgt Oh gave a different story stating that the SK soldier attacked them. Sophie faced a network of conflicting eye witness accounts not seen since Rashomon.
The investigation scaffolding of the movie was the least interesting part of it, exasperated by heavily accented and stilted English speaking skills. It would not have been as big of a problem for me, except that the version I watched had no subtitles for the English, meaning I missed about half of what they said. It felt like the investigators purpose was to fill the viewer in on Korean history and the complications of working on the border.
What made this movie fascinating to watch was the slowly evolving illicit friendship between the two South Korean guards (Lee and Nam) and the North Korean guards (Oh and Jung). They shared gifts, gossip, and laughter. Ever present though was the tension between the two countries reminding them of how dangerous their shared time was. Song Kang Ho as Sgt. Oh gave a beautifully complex performance as the more experienced soldier who still possessed empathy. Lee Byung Hun’s Sgt. Lee was less mature and quicker to draw. With an overabundance of foreshadowing the writing was on the wall regarding the fate of the friends which made their time together all the more poignant.
The military scenes showed the lack of training some of the soldiers had. When Lee went off to relieve himself he either didn’t tell his squad or they didn’t do a head count as they retreated. There was also an awful lot of “battle rattle” where equipment wasn’t taped down properly to allow the troops to move more silently.
Joint Security Area highlighted how all men are brothers but also often enemies. The central part of the film sharing the men’s bromance was wonderfully comforting, which unfortunately made the fall all the more painful in the end.
27 April 2025
Trigger warning: Full frontal nudity of a male body in the morgue.
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"Our lives are the very definition of disaster"
Often the only way out is through, but in Exit, the only way out is---up! Two underachievers help save a birthday party from a toxic death by using their extracurricular skills. (Warning! a few climbing puns tumbled out while writing this)Yong Nam spends every morning hanging out on the monkey bars at the park strengthening his climbing skills. Unable to find a job, he’s a disappointment to himself and his family. He schedules his mother’s 70th birthday party nearly 2 hours away because the girl he had a crush on in college works there. Eui Joo may have a job but she carries most of the weight while also fending off her boss’ advances. The two ex-friends meet at the party during a rocky moment. Soon they will both put their climbing skills to the test when toxic gas is released in the city and they have to find a route to lead the people in the building to the roof.
Exit was entertaining if you didn’t look at the science of it too closely. There were crevasses in the narrative logic that hurt the story’s balance. I was afraid it would fall into a slapstick comedy but fortunately, most of the “comedy” took place in the early part of the movie. Jo Jung Suk and Im Yoon Ah worked well together, elevating the material. The climbing element gave a different twist to the urban disaster genre. At one point Yong Nam said he was going to be boulder and only interview in the tall buildings because they were rescued first, yet it was when he and Eui Joo harnessed their skills that they helped save many lives, including their own. Suffering from a harsh economic job landscape, the two proved that their lives were hardly useless and their rock-solid abilities came in handy. They also inspired a community of basement dwelling underachievers to use their unconventional hobby to light the way as the duo raced along the rooftops. Exit may not have scaled new heights, but there are moments when it will keep you on edge.
20 April 2025
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"Just as he wishes, I'll return as ashes"
Morning for the Osone Family was director Kinoshita Keisuke’s first film after the end of WWII. He had a lot to say about the disastrous and destructive Japanese war machine and the people crushed under its weight. The film rarely left the Osone’s home as the war played out in the household of the Osone family.The Osone deceased patriarch had been a professor and pacifist. The mother raised her three sons and daughter to be educated as the father had wished. Eldest son, Ichiro, writes articles for the paper, one of which lands him in jail. Taiji, an artist, is drafted. He would rather die for his art than the ambitions of the military. Daughter Yuko’s engagement to Minari Akira is called off by her military uncle who comes to live with them. The gung ho and corrupt colonel turns the household upside down forcing everyone to accept his patriotic criticisms as the war rages around them.
Sugimura Haruko gave a phenomenal performance as a mother powerless to stop the war and stop her sons from dying. I’d seen her in numerous Ozo films, but here she really shone as a loving mother who cared for her children and mourned them as the war machine took its toll on her little family. Director Kinoshita held nothing back in his criticisms of the war and most of his vile spewed forth via Sugimura. Ozawa Eitaro played the militant uncle who represented the worst abuses of the military. His plate was never empty, always enjoying the best of everything while the enlisted soldiers went hungry. He bragged how Taiji would be beaten into submission in order to become a soldier. He felt no remorse and no responsibility for the atrocities committed abroad and at home. If there is a rule to war it’s that young men die. It makes it more bearable when they know that they are dying for a greater cause and not for the unbridled ambitions of the elite. Fury over the unimaginable loss of life and the needless suffering so many endured erupted often quietly onto the screen.
Clocking in at under 90 minutes with nearly all of the scenes set in the Osone house, the atmosphere became claustrophobic with air raid sirens blaring and the colonel filling the rooms with his hot air. Mother and daughter contributed to the war effort and to keeping the family going even as the war took so much from them. From Christmas 1943 until Christmas 1945, it was a long dark night before morning would break on the Osone family returning their hope for a better day.
14 April 2025
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River of time
River was a quirky time loop film centered at an inn on the scenic Kibune River. The guests and workers are forced to face their own emotional loops and discover how to resolve an actual time loop that occurs every two minutes.Waitress Mikoto and clerk Kohachi realize they are having a conversation for the second time. Within two minutes Mikoto is transported back to the river’s edge. The situation is repeated for all of the guests and workers wherever they might be. Together they seek to find the cause and breadth of the time loop. As the affected people begin to despair, tempers fray and secrets come to light.
I enjoyed this revved up Groundhog’s Day where everyone was in on the situation. I did pity the actors as many of the repetitious scenes involved the characters running upstairs, not an easy task for the women in kimonos. There was a continuity issue of the changing weather. One moment it was green and sunny, the next there were several inches/cm of snow and ice on all of the surfaces and then back to greenery. The camera work and acting weren’t very advanced, but not overly distracting. Thankfully, the story moved forward even if time did not. Many of the characters were stuck in their lives and afraid to make decisions or share feelings. The repeated two minutes gave them time to think about their obstacles and relationships, helping them to resolve their problems. And for one chef, the chance to act out his revenge fantasy. That might come back to bite him when the clocks started up again.
10 April 2025
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"I'm not sci-fi, I'm non-fiction!"
Who knew the base of Mount Fuji was a Hot Spot for alien and paranormal activity? In a seemingly quiet town, four middle-aged school friends had their boring lives given a tiny shot of excitement when they made the acquaintance of an unassuming alien working at the local hotel.Kiyomi works at the Lake Hotel and one night discovers there’s more to her co-worker than meets the eye. Unable to keep a secret she fills her friends in on Takahashi’s alter ego. Before long the 54-year-old alien is being asked to do trivial and even illegal tasks for the women. Somehow, he always manages to thwart crimes and do good regardless of the random requests. When the hotel and the town itself are in danger, it will take not only Takahashi, but nearly a village of women to right the wrongs being committed.
I enjoyed the laid-back alien tale with some of the other interesting reveals. Takahashi showed that aliens could be heroic and kind, stubborn, grumpy, and prideful---just like humans. While I liked the small town vibes and inane excitement related to specimen cups and volleyballs, there were times the women’s behavior troubled me. Kiyomi catered to an older guest at the hotel hoping to be put into his will. She also promised to keep Takahashi’s secret but took every opportunity to share it. She was unwilling to switch shifts with him so that he could rejuvenate after doing a good deed because it would have mildly inconvenienced her. The women could be terribly self-absorbed when Takahashi shared his hidden pain or when he risked being exposed or arrested for them. On the positive side, the women eased the alien’s loneliness even if he had to call them on their rude behavior at times.
The drama had an episodic feel to it as each episode had a problem to be solved with the overarching theme of the importance of the hotel and friendship regardless of family heredity. The humor was gentle and subtle. As they grew more accustomed to each other, the women became less oblivious and more in tuned to not only Takahashi but the world around them. They also discovered that their small town might be home to more than one unusual resident.
9 April 2025
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