Tokyo Tribe

Shion Sono can, in the case of Love Exposure, make a 4 hour movie feel like a 2 hour movie and in the case of Tokyo Tribe make a two hour movie feel like a four hour movie. A strange showdown in Tokyo between warring crews is a freaking absurd mix between the Warriors, 1970's yakuza flicks, and an entire history of hip hop videos. The beats are tight, the visuals mind-blowing, the whole thing is like a crazy hallucination that is actually closer to way the real world operates than we admit. The set it is filmed on is obviously fake like the rain that hits it, the acting is absurd, the plot simple, but executed however the hell he wants. What is Shion Sono trying to say??? I think everyone that watches Tokyo Tribe at one point has to ask the question they know they shouldn't. I see, hear, and feel this movie. It does drag at times, since they're defiantly rapping almost every line of dialogue. Something about this film makes it the most progressive, subversive, pure cinema yet to be made on such a large scale. It's inaccessible, but mindless. It's mindful and welcoming. Crazy, insane, but completely lucid the entire time. I think it's genius. I think this guy Shion Sono is a genius. Should I admit that again? Oh I guess I already did on his last film.

Insane rap musical about warring gangs in Tokyo. This grows to be a lot of fun, but I had to get over a lot of annoyances before I could get into it. First and foremost, I had to get into the music itself. It's certainly not great hip-hop, and, at first, I found it kind of lame. As the film progressed, I don't know if the music got better or I just accepted it as it was, but I started to kind of like it. Second, the plot is a huge mess. I certainly wouldn't recommend you go it hoping for a clear plot, because you're not going to get one. It's just kind of your standard yakuza turf war stuff, with a good gang and a bad gang and a bunch of other, lesser gangs. Then there's something with a runaway princess or something that never quite gels into a coherent story. What you will find is a ton of cool bits scattered throughout, augmented by weird and wild costume and production design. The action is also very good. Sono continues to be a flawed director, but he's clearly one of the most interesting people working today.

Sion Sono seems to be entering a new phase in his career that is just incredible. With 6 films set to be released in 2015 alone, and putting the insanity of Why Don't You Play In Hell and Tokyo Tribe into consideration, I think it's safe to say that Sion Sono is the new Takashi Miike. Only better since Sono actually writes his owns movies.

If you are asking "where can he go after doing Why Don't You Play In Hell?", the answer is Tokyo Tribe. The movie is an instant cult classic and one of the most ambitiously original films of his career that I doubt any other director could pull off. He dubs it as "the worlds first battle rap musical", and it definitely is. Over 90% of the dialog is rapped. Most of the shots are in long masterful takes. While it's not as gory as Why Don't You Play In Hell, the action is nearly non stop and absolutely mind blowing. The sets in this film are truly a site to behold. He said at TIFF that he employed a lot of students to make them. The all around visual style of this film is just unreal. The only film I could compare this to would be Sogo Ishii's Burst City. Both are musicals that chronicle Japanese music scenes of the time with a very loose plot connecting it all together. Like Burst City, it's not about the plot, it's about the visual and musical experience. Sion Sono took a risk that most film directors of his calibre wouldn't even dare and he pulled it off masterfully. Love Exposure will always be his supreme masterpiece, but I can safely say that I rank Tokyo Tribe among his best films, and i've nearly seem them all.

Some people who hate hip hop may hate this movie. I myself am a major hip hop nerd but I don't see that as bias, If anything It made me more concerned before watching but wow. This movie rules and is the best musical in ages and the only good hip hop musical ever produced.

Neva Eva Die

Even more offbeat and outlandish than 'Why Don't You Play in Hell?', this follow-up feature from Sion Sono is a rap musical about feuding gangs, set in contemporary Japan. While unquestionably a bizarre mesh of genres, the project works magnificently thanks to the energy and imagination that Sono brings to every frame. The sets and costumes are a wonder to behold with heavy doses of neon lights, human statue furniture, walls made of red balloons... there is even a gun with a mobile phone built into it and a van with chandeliers attached to the side mirrors! The minimal special effects and spirited choreography are pretty good too and while the violence is nowhere near as brutal or memorable as in 'Play in Hell', it is an experience all the same. Attempting to nut out of finer details of the plot is a little tricky here. There are a heap of key characters, very few of whom are developed in any depth, and side plots including a missing daughter and a mystical quest delivered via hologram crop up without ever being properly resolved. Never to mind, what can be deciphered here is enticing on its own and the film includes some neat messages too regarding how easy it is to pitch gangs against one another and the very petty reasons that some men have for starting (turf or other) wars. There is a fair bit of dark comedy in the mix too and the overall movie is so outrageous and willfully uncanny that its entertainment value is hard to deny as long as one is prepared to forgo the tropes of traditional narratives and indulge in something a little more 'out there'.

If you wanna know what this movie is about, think of 'The Warriors' only as a manga comic or think of 'West Side Story' only as a Japanese rap opera. Think of it as an amalgam of the two, only as if the story was instead conceived during a fever dream, pumped full of crack cocaine, overdosing on metamphetamine, before then getting totally blown out of proportion.

It's like Asian Snoop Dog and Far East Satan had a child that through pondering the value of big dicks, accepts conversion to Christianity by Feminist Jiu-Jitsu-Buddha. It's a Menippean satire that based on the holy principles of hip hop invents its own reality, then cuts it into pieces with the help of samurai swords, gattling guns, and razor blade ventilators, before letting it rise again by the power of bass-laden words from the Battle Rap Bible.

I dare say: if you haven't seen it, you have never seen anything like it!