obsidian-8

After Samurai Fiction this is another attempt at pushing a classical Japanese movie genre in the new century. Even the bad guy from the before mentioned movie has a cameo with what seemed to be the same character. Without getting in the story too deep, it's quite complex and with my limited understanding of Japanese I couldn't catch every twist of it. But it was great fun all the same. It delivers fast editing, new style martial arts and a sound track of electronic and guitars that fits very well the fast paced action-sequences. I hope to see a subtitled version someday so I'd understand a little more of what's going on and why, but I strongly recommend it, if only for the looks of it.

Although the epic measures of his previous work can't be matched (and maybe he wants it that way), Miyazaki's new Sen is an equal beautiful movie to look at. It's a kind of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" story that can only be executed in Japanese animation. The character design is wonderful as ever and now that it's not of that grim undertone that Mononoke had, it's full of strange characters doing funny things (or vice-versa). And some of them are cute as might be. Furthermore all the while (2 hours and 20 minutes) there's no singing or disturbingly silly behaviour on any part. So let's hope to see this movie in an adequate way in the west as well for it's not your usual for-the-kids-summer-animated-feature. But, then again, no one would have expected this, right?

Now, this is a party movie at its best. You get Yakuza zombies and all sorts of asian movie fighting (gunplay, swordsplay and hand to hand combat) all presented in a very stylish way. Add the best posing since Pulp Fiction and nice fitting music and your time will not be wasted. If you're not afraid to see some blood that is.