Behold Takashi Miike's Dead Body

I've long been lamenting the fact that Japanese director Takashi Miike's unyielding output is so overwhelming that it's futile business, keeping up here in the West where only one out of like every ten of his movies makes their way over. He's got 124 credits on his resume since 1991, which works out to be about three and a half projects (be they movies or T.V. or short films) every single year. He's like Rainer Werner Fassbinder, only alive. Also as as aside I also find it exciting that his next two projects are a Japanese version of the Bad Lietenant movies starring the gorgeous Shun Oguri...

... which is already in the can, and then, filming right now apparently, is a new horror movie starring Charli XCX! That's absolutely wild. But also that's not why we're here -- we're here because in a weird coincidence I ended up watching two Takashi Miike movies this past weekend without meaning to, and I wanted to direct you to one of them. The first one many of you have probably already seen before -- that was 2003's J-horror classic One Missed Call, which I watched because our pal Stacie Ponder of Final Girl fame had just talked it on the podcast The Evolution of Horror. That movie needs no talking up from me; it's a well-known blast. The second movie, though, that one I'd pre-ordered a blu-ray of ages ago and randomly pulled off my pile of movies to watch yesterday morning without even realizing it was a Miike movie until the end credits. 

That movie was 2014's Over Your Dead Body, which just got a gorgeous release from the fine folks at 88 Films (although it's a Region B disc so only consider buying it if you've got a region-free blu-ray player;  I can't speak to the quality of the U.S. blu-ray but that exists as well). Amazingly though I had never heard of this film when it came out, nor in the decade since then, and I'm genuinely bummed about that because I would've been singing its praises all these many years. It immediately became a top-tier Miike fave. Twisty and intelligent and sticky and meta as hell, it reminded me of everything from Kwaidan to Wes Craven's New Nightmare to Synecdoche New York and Drive My Car -- I thought it was a total stunner. 

The film tells the tale of a theatrical company practicing their upcoming stage version of Yotsuya Kaidan, aka the most famous and influential Japanese ghost story of them all. A good majority of the film takes place inside the warehouse-like theater, with the actors on the stage often mingling with the behind-the-scenes technicians -- the film keeps switching between us watching the play being performed and their performances being filmed like a movie, so the audience disappears -- Miike keeps blurring slash erasing the lines between what's real and what's fake in gorgeously disorienting ways. (In that way it reminded me of the purposeful artifice of his wackadoo gay western Sukiyaki Western Django from 2007, which always felt more like a spin on Querelle than it did the Django in its title). 

Anyway all of that's before you even get into the ways the actors' lives are intertwining with the story they're telling. If you're unaware Yotsuya Kaidan tells the story of a married samurai who wants to ditch his wife for a richer younger girl, and he gets some diabolical assitance in so doing thanks to his prospective in-laws, who're only too happy to poison the old wife so they can have a samurai for a son-in-law. Well as the actors are reenacting this story on the stage the leading man, who's partnered with his leading lady in real life, starts having an affair with his wife's stand-in. And let's just say the stand-in makes Nomi in Showgirls and Eve in All About Eve look like the pictures of sanity.

Calling this Miike's All About Eve is very much on point, though. One of my favorite moments in the film comes early on, when during a break one of the male actors admits to one of the female actors that he wishes that they could all live inside of the play -- pointedly this immediately follows them staging scenes where women are being treated like whores and chattel, abused and berated. The woman, a little stunned, says she's uhhh not so keen on that specific idea thank you very much. But that moment really gets to the film's thesis, I think -- it's about Japanese men (or you know, all straight men) romanticizing the patriarchy where they once had all the power; indeed the movie extends that to why stories like Yotsuya Kaidan keep getting told over and over and over again. It's about a neverending ritualization of the fantasy of abuse.

Of course Yotsuya Kaidan isn't that simple, given it's a ghost story where the wronged woman is able to enact some vengeance, and the ways in which Miike twists his meta narrative to his will are pretty delightful. And I don't want to spoil much more on it than I have already, so I'll stop here -- all I say is seek this movie out if you've never seen it. It's definitely a slow-burn and one of Miike's more subtle works... although using the word "subtle" given the number of decapitations on display does make me chuckle. Takashi Miike being subtle doesn't mean there won't be a ton of blood-spray!

Chain Reactions in 250 Words or Less

Anybody smart enough to sit Karyn Kusama down in a chair and have the Jennifer's Body / The Invitation director talk about horror movies is ace in my book. And cinematic documentarian Alexandre O. Philippe has now done it twice -- first in the terrific Lynch/Oz doc (where she was the stand-out) and now in Chain Reactions, which is about the towering legacy of Tobe Hooper's horror masterpiece The Texas Chain Saw Massacre here in the 50th year since its making. (For the record Kusama was also a talking head in Queer for Fear. Bryan Fuller's perfect docu-series.) 

Kusama is once again brilliant to listen to here, but it turns out that everybody Philippe assembled for this film is top notch and, even better, all of them are coming at the movie from totally different directions. Patton Oswalt's the fanboy, the great Alexandra Heller-Nicholas's the critic, Stephen King was Hooper's friend, and Takashi Miike is... Takashi fucking Miike! (Turns out he's an incredibly thoughtful man for being such a maniac.) Fifty years on it's damned near impossible to find new things to say about a film as discussed & dissected as TCM has been, but the terrific Chain Reactions does a bang-up job doing just that. And Philippe's very much got a very specific thing going on with these essay movies, but this is truly his best one to date. I look forward to whatever blast of nastiness finds itself under his microscope next.

Chain Reactions is screening as part of the "Scary Movies" series 

here in NYC this weekend. Check the entire line-up right here.

Miike's Lumberjack Movie

I long, long ago gave up trying to keep up with Japanese director Takashi Miike's output -- he directs like twenty-seven movies a year and only one of them every third year gets any release here in the U.S. and it was too frustrating to keep trying. But because of my usual typical standard ignorance, sometimes a happy surprise happens, and today is just such a day! Takashi's 2023 serial killer movie Lumberjack the Monster is right now on Netflix! You can watch it right here! This is literally the first time I've even heard of this movie so bear with me (thx to here for the heads-up) -- the movie is about a psychopathic lawyer hunting a serial killer; basically two nutjobs out for each other's blood. Typical Miike! Here is the trailer:

The Devil with the Long Black Hair

Even though I got this press release a few days ago I'd been holding out on writing the post until I could have a page on Film Forum's website to link you to, but my patience has eradicated itself -- I can no longer not trumpet their upcoming "Japanese Horror" series, which is abso-fucking-lutely monumental in my eyes. From March 1st-14th they will be screening 25 of the greatest Japanese Horror movies ever made -- everything from old-school classics like Onibaba and Kwaidan to classic kaiju movies like the original Godzilla and Mothra films (although sidenote, especially to the programmers out there: I wish somebody would screen some lesser appreciated kaiju movies -- give me some Gamera movies; heck even some of Millennium-era Godzilla movies!) and then...

... all the way up through the J-Horror classics like Ringu and Pulse. And nineteen more besides those mentioned titles! Audition! The Face of Another! Throne of Blood! Hausu! Ichi the Killer! The list goes on and on and I kind of want to spend March 1st through 14th inside Film Forum now. If you're here in New York you've got no excuses -- go see one (or twenty-five) of these movies and I promise you, you will not leave disappointed. There are a couple I've never seen before (I have been holding off on A Page of Madness for some reason -- maybe this was that reason!) but all of the ones I have seen all rule hardcore. 

Anyway like I said at the start I don't have a link to where you can buy tickets yet but keep your eyes on Film Forum's website and it'll probably appear later this month. For now I'll put the entire press release, which includes the entire line-up and a tentative schedule, here after the jump...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Ichi the Killer (2001)

Ichi: Listen, when you're giving pain to someone, don't think about the pain that person is feeling. Just concentrate on how good it feels to be causing someone pain. That's the best thing you can do for a true masochist!

A happy 63 to director Takashi Miike today!

Good Morning, World

Can't say that I expected a shirtless gym selfie from Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano to pop up in my Instagram timeline yesterday but wowee wow wow am I glad to be proven a dope. If you're trying to place him Asano has made plenty of U.S. movies over the years -- he was in the first three Thor movies -- but he'll always be Ichi the Killer (the titular maniac of Takashi Miike's 2001 splatter-piece) to me. Anyway he usually just posts his art (which I actually really like!) on his Insta, so this was a surprise treat. 

It's That Sweet Fantasia Time Yet Again!

Hard to believe it's already the start of August, right? On the one hand I'm happy about that because I wish nothing more than the total and complete annihilation of the summer season every year, and August, while wretched, is at least the ass-end of it. On the other hand I'm sad that time's flying by because death, sweet death, is hurtling forward. But on the third hand I'm thrilled it's August because August every year means it's time for the grand Fantasia International Film Festival! 

Based out of Montreal (and celebrating its 25th edition here in 2021) we here at MNPP have been covering the fest for four years now from a distance -- maybe one year I'll attend in person, I've always wanted to see Montreal, but 2021 is obviously not the one. But I always see several surprising and wonderful genre films thanks to them every year; they do ace stuff. This year's festival begins this Thursday August 5th, and runs for three whole weeks, until the 25th -- you can check their full line-up at this link, but it's a whole lot and so I'm going to highlight some stuff for you. Because you're here and you trust my opinion, right? (That was your first mistake.) 

Some of these I'll be reviewing in the weeks ahead, some of these I have already seen and reviewed at previous fests, and some of these I probably won't get the chance to see but really really really want to -- they all sound like good news to me, is the point.

20 Films You Should See at Fantasia 2021

The Night House -- I'm supposed to see this later this month as it's out in actual theaters on August 20th, but this chiller starring the ever-great Rebecca Hall has gotten a lot of great notices since it premiered at Sundance way back in 2020. Rebecca Hall! Yes, please.

Alien on Stage -- I already saw this tremendously entertaining documentary earlier this year at SXSW and I reviewed it right here -- a chest-burstingly feel-good crowd-pleaser if ever there was one it tells the story of a group of small-town Brits who decide to adapt Ridley Scott's classic horror flick Alien for the stage and whose sudden viral success far outpaces their modest means. I adore this movie.

Strawberry Mansion -- I saw this at Sundance (reviewed it right here) and it won't be everybody's cuppa - it's hella quirky in that Michel Gondry sort of lo-fi way - but I found its endlessly delightful and weird in ways I still haven't gotten out of my head.  

The Sadness -- I don't recall Fantasia ever slapping trigger warnings on their horror flicks before, but this Taiwanese zombie flick comes with several and that's good enough for me! You can't trigger the already dead inside! (In all seriousness this movie is deeply fucked up -- more to come soon.)

Great Yokai War Guardians -- It's Takashi Miike! Of course I wanna see this one! The Closing Night film, this is the sequel to Miike's 2006 flick about adorable war demons and the kiddies who love them -- I haven't seen the original one since 2006 and should probably revisit it before diving in here, I guess. But assume craziness.

We're All Going to the World's Fair -- Another one I saw at Sundance, but I never got around to reviewing it -- that's not due to it being anything less than fascinating though, and I haven't stopped thinking about this one all year. And it's got a terrific lead performance from newcomer Anna Cobb, who's already been scooped up to co-star in Luca Guadagnino's new flick with Timmy! 

The Feast -- Another super super duper movie I saw at SXSW, I reviewed the deeply dark horror flick The Feast right here. Here's a whiff of what Is aid about it at the time:

"... an unsettling and hypnotic little parable about the haves and the have-nots and what one will do to the other and the other right back to have what they had, want, and rightly or un-rightly demand. It's brim with weirdos and secrets bubbling up from beneath the black surface and the diseases of cordoned-off eccentricities left to rot and fester in their own heady stew, delicious au jus..."

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes -- A clever and quirky time-travel comedy from Japan where the characters get trapped in a two-minute-ahead time-loop of sorts. This is great brain-teasing fun.

The Last Thing Mary Saw -- A period horror flick that stars Isabelle Fuhrman and Rory Culkin; they had me at Fuhrmann!

The Righteous -- I'll just admit up front that I want to see this one entirely based on the fact that I have a desperate crush on its writer-director-star Mark O'Brien (see why here), who you oughta recognize from the show Halt & Catch Fire or the horror flick Ready or Not. But sometimes crushes are enough! They lead us into places we might not go otherwise! That said this is an "occult horror film" so I'd be going to this place anyway. It also stars Henry Czerny, seen above, who already co-starred with O'Brien in Ready or Not. And we dig him too.

Catch the Fair One -- This flick rightly won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at Tribeca earlier this summer; I didn't write it up but it's a barn-burner of a thriller with a stand-out turn from its leading lady Kali Reis, who plays an ex-boxer whose sister goes missing -- you have heard that plot description a million times but this movie goes to unexpected places!

King Car -- More to come soon on this wacko Brazilian flick but this one was a very happy surprise! It's about a young man who can talk to cars, and shit gets real fucking weird real fucking fast. It's kind of like Bacurau meets Jumbo, the recent movie that had Portrait of a Lady star Noémie Merlant falling in love with a carnival ride, and that's all I'll say about that.

Cryptozoo -- Speaking of real weird I've been telling y'all y'all need to see Dash Snow's newest nutso animation ever since Sundance (I posted the trailer right here a few weeks back) and here's a chance! Otherwise it's out here in theaters in the US on August 20th, but I'm not sure about streaming. I would try to describe this movie but I don't see any positive in me trying to do that. It's one of a kind.

Broadcast Signal Intrusion -- This was one I really wanted to see at SXSW but missed due to an error on their platform -- cut to me falling to my knees and screaming "Nooo!" a la Darth Vader. But Fantasia came through! More on it soon, but it's a surreal little nightmare starring the lovely Harry Shum Jr -- think Blow Out meets, I don't know, The Poughkeepsie Tapes.

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched-- This fantabulous three-plus-hour documentary about the films of Folk Horror screened at SXSW as well; here is my review. Be prepared to keep notes, because it's a glorious and knowledgeable film class all its own. I can't wait to own this so I can skim through it at will and remind myself of the thousand titles it told me about for the very first time!

Wild Men -- I felt bad about not getting around to review this one when I saw it at Tribeca; a dark Danish comedy about a middle-aged dude trying to find himself in nature only to get caught up in a Coenesque crime-caper I really loved it.

Brain Freeze -- The opening night film, this zombie flick from France has some clever twists on the genre and some good class commentary -- Uncle George Romero would be proud. Oh and a main character in this gruesome zombie movie is a baby!

Tombs of the Blind Dead -- Fantasia always screens some restorations of classic flicks and I'd somehow never seen any of Armando De Ossorio's undead-Templar-Knights quadrilogy of 70s/80s films out of Portugal until I got this chance, and I'm already hooked. This is the first of the four films, restored gloriously by the folks at Synapse Films -- I hope they do all four movies!

Mad God -- A full-length stop-motion horror flick from the Phil Tippet, the special-effects genius behind the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and the big bugs in Starship Troopers? You think I'm not all up in this sucker's business? He's been working on this for thirty years! And here's how Fantasia delightfully describes this one:

"... a Dantean descent into seething theological outrage, its multitude of fascinating monstrosities, an uncanny carnival in the tradition of Hieronymus Bosch, a perpetual-motion machine of biomechanical malevolence..."

The Deep House -- This is one I probably won't be able to see here because as far as I can tell they're only screening it in person in Montreal, but man oh man am I sad about that -- it's the new flick from Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury, the filmmakers behind the 2007 French Extremity classic Inside (as well as the flick Kandisha that hit Shudder earlier this month which I spoke briefly about here.). But most importantly it's about a Haunted House at the bottom of a lake! I love that idea so much.

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There are literally dozens and dozens more movies showing at Fantasia, so I say go check out this line-up here. I couldn't even make a small dent in all of the awesomeness. I didn't even delve into all of the short films; hell I didn't even mention how they've got the new Suicide Squad movie, for goodness' sake. Fantasia rules. And please stay tuned over the next few weeks as the fest runs for reviews from yours truly.

I Like Miike

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The films of the Coens brothers are rich and complicated ones, but you nevertheless have got an idea in your head if I tell you that something is Coens-ish. There's a comic-violence caper-gone-wrong feel that you're feeling, right? Well in the past week I've seen a pair of movies that felt that feel too and decided to twist it up in their own complicated ways, ones that the Coens themselves haven't come up with yet, and here's the poster and the trailer for one of them. It's Takashi Miike's First Love, which is playing TIFF very soon and which will then open in NYC & LA on September 27th. 

First Love stars Masataka Kubota (who previously worked with Miike on the great 13 Assassins) as a down on his luck boxer who gets sucked via a pretty girl (Sakurako Konishi) into an underworld crime scheme involving lots of brightly colored characters and yes, stop me if you've heard this plot before but no, no, you have never seen this plot quite like this before, believe you me. It's Miike at his madcap-iest. Anyway I'll save all this for when I review the movie -- just watch the trailer for now!

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Audition (1999)

Yasuhisa: Happy people cannot act!

One of the many incredible movies celebrating its 20th anniversary this year is Takashi Miike's hella fucked up flick here, although what release date you choose to go by can shuffle that anniversary around as it had an extremely delayed release, playing festivals for a couple years before getting any proper US drop in 2001. Such things happen with movies this small and disturbing -- word's gotta snowball -- and Miike, who'd been working about a decade at that point, wasn't yet an international name. He sure was after, though. 

Anyway I somehow totally spaced on this in February but Arrow put out a special edition of this flick onto blu-ray then and it looks loaded with gore-some goodies, and even better the Metrograph movie house here in NYC is screening the 2K restoration of the film this week, all week, starting on Wednesday! I haven't actually sat down and watched this in maybe a decade so this will be a delicious holiday treat, escaping the sickening heat and humidity for a whole different kinda sick. 

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Pic of the Day

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I usually don't post much about Cannes since I'm always bitter about not going, so three posts in the last week is unusual stuff. Cherish it! The line-up for the "Directors Fortnight" side-bar, which screens films out of competition alongside the regular festival, has been announced and there are several exciting titles, most exciting among them being the premiere of Robert Eggers' follow-up to The Witch called The Lighthouse with Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe playing isolated Nova Scotian lighthouse keepers facing down some monsters (I think) at the start of the 20th century. (See our previous post here.) 

Other movies premiering -- something called First Love by Takashi Miike (on which I can find exactly zero information -- it's not even on his IMDb page yet) and Armie Hammer's buggy freak-out Wounds (which screened at Sundance earlier this year), as well as Luca Guadagnino's short film called The Staggering Girl with Julianne Moore (also Mia Goth & KiKi Layne & Kyle MacLachlan & Alba Rohrwacher) that he made for Valentino (the fashion brand) -- we told you about it previously here. That'll be a fancy party!
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Immortal Landline & the City of West Columbus

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I have gotten a little bit behind on movie reviews so here are some quick thoughts on five films that I don't have it in me to write long thoughts on. They are in order from Best to Worst for no real reason whatsoever except my own personal kicks.

Columbus -- I wish somebody had let me know beforehand that this movie was both a love letter to the mid-century modernist architecture of Columbus, Indiana - you can read a great primer as to why Columbus has so much killer architecture right here - and a love letter to John Cho's butt in and out of khakis. Those are like all of my favorite things in one place! In all seriousness this movie is a gorgeously simple meditation on the intermingling of public and private spaces (which okay is a fancy way of saying "butts and belfries") - that is just to say that it would be hard not to fall in love with someone who stands under Eero Saarinen with you and too feels the holy spirit. 

Ingrid Goes West -- While I still managed to post each and every trailer for this film before it came out (because every trailer gave us a little more of Billy Magnussen in his little short shorts) I still wasn't sold on it by those same trailers; it seemed like it was going to be a one-joke movie at the expense of social media, and in case you haven't noticed... I like social media. So color me face-slapped that this movie actually pushes deeper into the dark recesses of its themes, of mental health and modern disconnection, and that Aubrey Plaza is straight up super in it. I mean I wasn't surprised that Aubrey's great - she's always great, in her way.

But Ingrid really lets her root around in her already somewhat pigeonholed image like Jim Carrey did with The Cable Guy or Adam Sandler did with Punch-drunk Love and find curious and strange facets to that image that we haven't gotten to see before. She was up to the task. And this ain't a one-woman show either - Magnussen manages to spin his fuckable lunkhead image into nasty new territory himself, while O'Shea Jackson Jr. is a thousand watt charm goofball and Elisabeth Olsen is fiercely funny with her every avocado-toasted line delivery. This is a good movie!

Landline -- Jenny Slate remains winningly adorable (her snort is halfway to becoming Marilyn's coo, trademark wise) and she's surrounded by very fine folks on all sides (it was especially lovely to see Finn Wittrock play an actual human being for a change, which American Horror Story has yet to cast him as) but at a certain point Landline just begins to feel like an excuse to string together a bunch of mid-90s references. Watch people go to rent videotapes! Watch people listen to World Music on headphones at the record store! Chokers and barrettes, oh my! I mean they got the details perfect - I felt like I was transported to High School at times - but all that stuff subsumed the story, which felt like rote stuff, and got sitcommier by the second. I guess all the abortion stuff really sharpened the edges of Obvious Child - Landline needed something like that. More abortion, I say!

Blade of the Immortal -- I have watched two movies in the past couple of weeks that felt so excruciatingly long that I began to wonder if I might drop dead and my bones disintegrate into ash before the final credits roll, and this is one of them. There is no reason for this movie, which has loudly been sold as Takashi Miike's 100th Film - to be just under two and a half hours long; the only thing I can think of is that Miike has clearly made some sort of deal with the devil that he's got to churn out one million minutes of movie before he turns 60 or he will lose him immortal soul. That's got to be it. But hey at least I got a fucking sword out of it!

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets -- This is the second movie that felt so excruciatingly long that I began to wonder if I might drop dead and my bones disintegrate into ash before the final credits roll.

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More like Valerian and the Movie of a Thousand Minutes amirite

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) November 5, 2017

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In Valerian's defense Cara Delevingne at least comes out of it not looking like this whole "acting thing" is as grave an error on her part as it looked coming out of Suicide Squad - she's actually pretty charming here. Which helps one surf somewhat gently, for awhile, across the endless, endless wastes of this loudly clanging pile of space debris. But only for awhile. The effects look good?

Is That a Sword In My Pocket

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I am now the proud owner of an honest to goodness SWORD SIGNED BY TAKASHI MIIKE - thanks to @theorocknazz and @gofooji and @bladeoftheimmortalfilm for this awesome thing! #bladeoftheimmortal #takashimiike

A post shared by Jason Adams (@jasonaadams) on Nov 9, 2017 at 8:39am PST

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Takashi Miike has a new movie out on demand right this very minute - it's called Blade of the Immortal and it's his 100th movie (he's such a maniac) and it's a fantasy samurai epic and I'm sure you can picture what that means in the hands of Takashi. Anyway on a lark I entered a contest yesterday and somehow I won a real fucking sword, as you see above. It's signed by Miike, which is cool! I've loved Miike for nigh 20 years, ever since Audition broke my brain in '99.

That said I mean I've never really thought of myself as a "murdering weapon" sort of person, but here we are. Let's hope it turns out better than My Son My Son What Have Ye Done. (In all seriousness I have every intention of mounting this sword on my wall and creeping people out more than usual, so yay me.) Anyway I haven't gotten the chance to watch Blade of the Immortal myself yet but I totally will this weekend, presumably while caressing my real fucking sword. Here's the trailer:

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10 Off My Head - Siri Says 2004

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After the long, long, long run of the New York Film Festival (though there are still a couple more reviews to come!) I'm trying to get myself back in step with the regularly scheduled blogging, and since we haven't had the time to do one of these in a few weeks I figured this would be a good step in the correct direction for that. In case you don't recall this is the series where I ask my phone to pick a number between 1 and 100 and then I choose my five favorite movies from the year that corresponds with that number. 

And well we've had a first -- this morning Siri picked the number 4. This is the first time we've had a number lower than 10 chosen, given me two choices from Cinema's History to choose from. But as badly as I'd love to choose from such hits as Nervy Nat Kisses the Bride and A Nigger in the Woodpile (yes these are real films, and no I haven't seen either of them) I'm going to go ahead and pick my favorite Movies of 2004 instead of 1904, cuz duh. And since it's such a recent year we're going to pick 10 movies instead of 5, cuz duh.

My 10 Favorite Movies of 2004

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

(dir. Michel Gondry)

-- released on March 19 2004 --

Birth

(dir. Jonathan Glazer)

-- released on October 29 2004)

Three... Extremes

 (dir. Fruit Chan, Takashi Miike, 

and Park Chan-wook)

-- released on August 20 2004 --

The Incredibles

(dir. Brad Bird)

-- released on November 5 2004 --

Shaun of the Dead

(dir. Edgar Wright)

-- released on September 24 2004 --

Enduring Love

(dir. Roger Michell)

-- released on November 26 2004 --

Bad Education

(dir. Pedro Almodovar)

 -- released on February 11 2004 --

Mean Girls

(dir. Mark Waters)

-- released on April 30 2004)

I Heart Huckabees

(dir. David O. Russell)

-- released on October 22 2004 --

Mysterious Skin

(dir. Gregg Araki)

-- released on June 24 -- 

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Runners-up: Palindromes (dir. Todd Solondz), Primer (dir. Shane Carruth), Tarnation (dir.  Jonathan Caouette ), Dead Birds (dir. Alex Turner), Sideways (dir. Alexander Payne), Kill Bill 2 (dir. Quentin Tarantino), 13 Going on 30 (dir. Gary Winick)...
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... The House of Flying Daggers (dir. Zhang Yimou), Team America: World Police (dir. Trey Parker), Dawn of the Dead (dir. Zack Snyder), Kinsey (dir. Bill Condon), Spider-man 2 (dir. Sam Raimi), Undertow (dir. David Gordon Green)

What are your favorite movies of 2004?

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Audition (1999)

Asami: Words create lies. 

Pain can be trusted. 

In the 25 years that Takashi Miike has been making movies he has made one hundred of them, according to IMDb. And while math might not be my strong suit I am fairly certain that works out to a whole helluva lot of work -- four fucking projects every fucking year. That is insane. While Audition was the first time his movie-making traveled far and wide it wasn't the last - the problem just became the impossibility of keeping up. I doubt he even has time to keep up and see everything he makes. 

This decade brought the great 13 Assassins (my review) and the equally great Lesson of the Evil (my review) but otherwise I haven't seen... oh wait, I did see Yakuza Apocalypse, I forgot about that one! See what I mean? Impossible. Anyway my point is I couldn't even begin to make a comprehensive list of what you need to see from his output because even as a person who tries I've barely put a dent in it. But here are five titles, besides his masterpiece Audition, that I remember fondly.

Lesson of the Evil (2012) -- Okay I just mentioned it but seriously I wish more people had caught this horror comedy that would be sold to a US studio for a remake as "American Psycho meets To Sir, With Love" -- not that any US studio would bite onto a sexy (hello Hideaki Itô!) dark comedy about school violence. Which is our loss! Heathers would probably never get made today either.

"Imprint" from Masters of Horror (2006) -- a bit of a cheat since it's an episode from a TV show but it was so far beyond what most everyone else delivered for Showtime's horror series that they wouldn't even air it, and it earned that distinction, and then some.

Gozu (2003) -- I have only seen this movie (his ode to his own master, Mr. David Lynch) once and it was probably not long after it came out so it's been over a dozen years but I reference it all the time. If you've seen it you can probably guess which part I am refericing, but then you're probably wondering what the hell is wrong with me that I live a life that I'd reference such a thing all the time... a high life, y'all. A high life.

The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001) -- His gore-soaked sunshine musical must be seen to be believed, but you probably still won't believe it even after you've seen it. Belongs a spot in the pantheon alongside Peter Jackson's Meet the Feebles (although what pantheon these two movies stand in ya got me)

Dead or Alive (1999) -- I wasn't sure whether to give this fifth spot to Ichi the Killer or to Visitor Q but truth be told I've only watched Ichi in fits and spurts (emphasis on spurts) because I always find it too disturbing to keep up with, and I don't remember enough of Visitor Q to really warrant singing of its praises, although I know it's very fondly thought of by most Miike fans. So let's go with Dead or Alive, (although I'm not sure which of the trilogy I'm remembering; they've bled together at this point) which has what is probably the most insane fight scene I had ever seen up until that point. It stuck. 

Thanks for the memories (nightmares)

and happy birthday, Takashi!

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