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My wife went back to Japan over Christmas and, as usual, returned with a suitcase full of video cassettes that her parents and friends had recorded for her. Amongst the tapes this time was a series of TV shows called Train Man which, so I'm told, is a spin-off series from this film. I didn't watch the tapes because they were sans English subtitles, but my wife explained the plot to me which sounded marginally interesting.

My wife enjoyed the tapes enough that she ordered this film on DVD and we sat down to watch it last night.

Oh dear - not my kind of film at all. I guess it can best be described as a romantic comedy, but there was precious little comedy to be seen. The romance was of the type I associate with Japanese TV - schmaltzy, twee and hopelessly overwrought. The acting was nothing special - in fact, I found the Train Man character himself to be particularly unbelievable and his hammy mannerisms to be deeply irritating.

Overall I find it difficult to recommend this film - it's just a below average TV show stretched out to an hour and forty minutes.

I've waited 24 hours before reviewing The Sun in the hope that a day to reflect might produce some kind of insight into what I saw - unfortunately, that hasn't happened, so you're stuck with the same thoughts that I had yesterday.

If you're looking for some enlightenment into what goes through the mind of a god soon to be demoted to a mere mortal in the face of a crushing national defeat, you won't find much to help you out in The Sun. Unless you're one of those people who believes that those thoughts would have something to do with crabs.

So, what do you get in return for a ticket? The film itself is very dark - and by that I mean that there's very little light. Shot almost exclusively indoors with very little additional lighting the result is an effect that would be interesting in a single photograph, but becomes tiresome over the course of 110 minutes. Yes, it builds atmosphere, but it just became irritating to me.

Issei Ogata as Hirohito is very good, but his inability to keep his mouth closed and immobile when he's not speaking seems to be an embellishment too far (unless the real Hirohito actually did this). Most of the Japanese actors are excellent, in fact.

Robert Dawson as MacArthur is terrible - calling him wooden would be to slander actual wood.

The soundtrack is quite bizarre but, for the most part, works well to create a background tension which the script can't quite manage. If you've ever wondered what a segment of Wagner's Ring Cycle would sound like juxtaposed against the beat of a radio's heterodyne, this could be your film. Sometimes the only sound is the ticking of the clock - which is probably intentional again but ....

I realise that I'm not building a very good case for going to see this film, but the truth of the matter is that, as a whole, I found that I couldn't help myself from watching despite its flaws.

Watching this film is an interesting experience, but it will probably only appeal to you if you enjoy something that's quite challenging to sit through and you can forgive a script that ignores what could be interesting directions in favour of exploring the mundane.

I wasn't able to find the time to see Oldboy at the cinema despite the overwhelming praise it received on release, so I had to wait until today to see the DVD.

Looking at the voting results here the split between the usual "love it" or "hate it" responses are even more marked than usual and I've been looking forward to the DVD release so that I could make up my own mind. I'm a little disappointed to admit that I neither love or hate Oldboy.

Oldboy is not a bad film, but it didn't bowl me over as I'd been hoping - maybe the months of anticipation meant that my hopes were always going to be dashed.

The main problem with this movie is that it's just not very well explained. OK, that can be expected in the beginning where we are all as confused as Dae-su Oh, but too much of Oldboy is played out without the audience having much of an idea about what they're seeing.

The explanation, when it arrives after a brief period of simplistic detective work, is something of a disappointment and, frankly, seems fairly trivial compared to the effort expended on exacting revenge for it. Dae-su Oh had forgotten the incident himself, and I really couldn't blame him.

Overall, definitely worth watching for the great atmosphere and some nice set pieces, but a little underwhelming in the final analysis.