rje1

What other of her work do you like? Love and Other Cults was good. Hikari Genji-kun was stupid and a waste of her talent. Pension Love is Pink was OK. I'm still looking forward to In This Corner of the World.

Hard to imagine what sort of person this movie would appeal to. It's stuffed with names and places, stereotyped ultra-masculine soldier types, and long boring discussions about military strategy that would only make sense if you have a detailed knowledge of Korean history and geography. The goodies are distinguished by being inscrutable; the baddies by being vicious and cruel. The good guys are briliiant; the bad guys are cunning.
At least I finished Roaring Currents. This one I gave up half way through.

A strange performance, full of non-verbal and verbal non-sequiturs. Despite both ladies having previous same-sex relationship experience, they're oddly awkward with each other. The writer chose to put one of them in a wheelchair, and yet doesn't seem interested in exploring the consequences of this other than in a general disabled-person cliche sense. How does she get onto the bed etc? How does it affect their lovemaking? (They do make love on screen).

The FL despite getting up to various kinky things on a regular basis with five separate sex partners, is sad and lonely, like all the characters in this drama, who remain unfulfilled sexually and romantically. Incongruously, or perhaps it's congruous in Japanese culture, her manner is virginal and girlish, especially when it comes to any chance of romance with her work colleague. Despite the blurb suggesting she enjoys this active sexual life, in fact it's clear that for her it's only really in pursuit of a loving husband.

Superb drama, a tale of family trauma and redemption over decades, ably presented by the actors and the make-up artists, in the setting of rakugo, traditional story-telling. The live-action and the anime version are both great versions of the original manga. The subtitles from drama addicts are highly informative.

Do they even make cheese in Thailand? All power to them if they're starting. I would have thought the climate would be too tropical. These girls are going to be busy.

There were english hardsubs on the files had about five years ago. I'm sorry I don't have them any more, just a couple of scenes I excerpted. So if you keep looking, you'll find them somewhere.

You might think a movie about the creation of an alphabet, with quite a lot of discussion about linguistic matters, would appeal only to nerds, but this film was a delight. There are many moments of dry humour, some great drama, and even an constrained but sweet romance. It's a fine demonstration of how great ideas are formed: by throwing away the strictures of tradition, starting from scratch and basic principles, with sharp minds creating and debating to bring up the best ideas. Most of the time it's men butting heads, either the power-jealous traditionalists versus the innovators (not just intellectual but social), or the would-be rivals who bond over their quest for the most efficient idea. Of course the new alphabet is seen as empowering women, because men have always sought to prevent women from obtaining education, and this parallels the traditional phonetic script used by women in China. There's a thread of Korean national pride, against the Chinese and Japanese who each have persecuted Korea, but they are deservedly proud in the case of their alphabet which is, as far as I can see, the best in the world, in stark contrast to the Chinese and Japanese writing systems which are the most cumbersome.

Well, that's one of the most depressing plot summaries I've ever seen.

This movie charts the history of Josee's encounter with Tsuneo, and near the end she reviews this journey from a childhood of darkness, to the now in which she has just enjoyed unspecified erotic delights with Tsuneo in an out-of-town love hotel. The darkness at the beginning results from the ignorance, fear and disgust of the populace towards disabled people, and the shaming and shameful care of her grandmother. We're never really given any understanding of Tsuneo's decision to start a relationship with Josee, nor at the end to leave her. While he is the catalyst that changes her life to one of independence and dignity, she has the internal resources from the outset, and the welfare system has always been available. Her childlike delight in discovering the outside world at last enchants him for a while, but he doesn't have the courage to face his family and fully commit himself to a life with her. It appears that she outgrows him, and he does not grow in himself to keep up, instead returning the petty past girlfriend who we know is a lesser person in every way than Josee.

Now I'm going to watch the anime for comparison. I suspect the sexiness will be downplayed.

Asian funerals are such bafflingly convoluted and protracted rituals as to inspire several movies and dramas e.g. the Taiwanese "Little Big Women". This slice-of-life movie, mostly in Taiwanese, reminded me of "A Boy Named Flora A", except that the drama of the central character, was simply about the deceased's adult daughter fondly missing her father, nothing extraordinary. While the living mourners obediently perform their ritual functions under the preremptory instructions of the priest, and secretly expressing their doubts and scepticism to each other, there are several hilarious comic moments, but none of the raunchiness and drama of say, Itami Juzo's "The Funeral".

The world has more than enough videos that glamourize serial killers, and try to seduce us into voyeurism of terrified and suffering females, typically young and scantily clad. This series' claim to fame is its setting in the world of manga publishing, which we learn quite a lot about along the way. And so it could take its place with less violent series such as Juhan Shuttai and Shirobako. The usual crime plot techniques occur: there is someone behind the apparent perpetrator, a good character turns out to be bad. This one has an ending that is twee and unbelievable.

Kim Ki-duk's movies are allegories rather than real stories about real people. This one starts plausibly with a young man who stays in vacated houses, in return doing a bit of cleaning and repair work, but later on, the film spins off into pure fantasy. Part of the allegory is that the two main characters don't speak a word of dialogue to each other.

This movie plays with levels of reality, setting them up them subverting them. We are watching a troupe of young actors rehearsing a play. Normally when we watch a movie, we see actors acting characters. In this movie, we see actors acting characters who are actors, who are acting as characters. Or is this a reality movie in which real actors are just playing themselves? In the movie, the director tells the actors to use their own names. The screen goes letterbox to show we are in the play within the play. Then the main character, kokoro, breaks the fourth wall and talks to us. Later, the producer tells the actors there are not enough ticket sales to go ahead with performances. In the background, a rapper with a guitarist, like a Greek chorus, comment on this action.
Unfortunately with all these games, there wasn't enough story or characterization to keep my interest.

We're shown from the outset that the ML is a lazy and low-status worker at a television news studio, who gets a tip and pursues it in the most irresponsible way, by posting his half-baked ideas on social media, by recording interviews without consent and then ineffectively anonymising them, by not checking the consistency of his theories and information. This leaves the rest of the movie for us to find out if he gets away with it. When the murderer is finally apprehended, the motive is banal (if I understood correctly), hardly deserving of the drama that preceded it (and the suffering it caused the victim and others).

The story assembles several character's different viewpoints of the same series of events (harking back to the famous Rashomon movie), playing off the capricious and opinionated range of views espoused by various social media posters. The screen often features the scrolling social media posts with their writers' voice overs, but I suspect even native Japanese readers would be struggling to keep up. I think the writing was just there to create the setting, rather than to be actually read.

Fully of the usual high school cliches (I've already listed them elsewhere), the usual eccentric teacher cliches, the plot climaxes relying on long-winded motivational speeches full of the usual platitudes and backed by swelling music in case the words fail to move us.

I can't get this one to show up in a search on my custom list, no matter what combination of words I use. Sometimes the search on mydramalist doesn't work. Sometimes it's impossible to find a drama by using search, even though it can be found by other routes (e.g. actor lists).

This slice-of-life is so laid-back that it feels improvised (even the dramatic scenes are quickly played down). I only watched this b/c I like Sairi Itoh's process (although she has been on some dumb series), but she doesn't have much to work with here.

The taiga dramas should suit you, if you're still interested. As you'll see, there are many of them, good production values, and they have 50 x 40min episodes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiga_drama
Many of them are available at avistaz, if you're a member.

Has the feel of being written and acted by high school students, making the best of a low budget (e.g. when the hero is supposedly riding a horse, the camera never goes below his waist i.e. we hear but never see the horse). The humour relies on setting up a mythic and epic context, then repeatedly demolishing the mood by chucking in modern references. If you like that sort of thing.