Sabi otoko sabi onna

This is an anthology film, with four short stories told by four different directors. In the first, Chiharu (Nanami Sakaruba) leads a trio of cheerleaders whose mission in life is to cheer up those in need, an avocation that leads to unintended consequences. In "Boy? Meets Girl" shy Muratsubaki (Aoi Nakamura) is ignored by everyone until his friend Kato, an aspiring make-up artist, gives him a makeover and dresses him as a girl; as "Muri," suddenly the shy boy is the belle of the camera club, and the girl of his dreams wants Muri to be her model. Third up is a story about the customer from hell, a woman (Japanese TV star Tomochika) who makes the power company representative come to her home to reconnect her power, which was turned off when she didn't pay her bill on time, and one thing leads to another....And finally, "The House Full of 'Abandoned' Businessmen" is what the title says – a woman (Kyoko Koizumi) who used to bring home stray cats starts bringing home stray recently-fired businessmen, feeding them and giving them a place to spend their days while not telling their families that they've lost their jobs.

These stories are all different, and very funny in their own quirky ways. Nothing terrifically life-changing here, but a rollicking 91 minutes of fun, and another bit of filmic proof of how odd Japanese sub-cultures can be. Quite enjoyable.

I d watched several of these Japanese combo movies, but never appealed me to a point that I fell that I am watching a great thing; the perception is more like a cinema students projects or "demos". Not from the same pen and director came these four pieces that particularly have that odd Japanese stuff floating in the air; however, lack of that comedy intended. Short stories that do not have anything in common except the "sabi" thing in all the characters. First one is really poor with robotic gags that are no funny at all; the type of stuff that could work in silent cinema era do not expect to cut right now in modern times. The third one is the only story that really works; could be wrote by R Bradbury. The color; the panning, shots, etc are very good in all the stories. Y. Tamachika plays a good acting with her partner in the third story.

A trilogy of directors and films assorted together on one catalogue reference. The big surprise here is the follow-up movie from the Director of Survival Style 5+; Gen Sekiguchi and this SOMEHOW being his only follow-up movie since!

He's started making advertisements and this is really sad as I adored Survival Style 5+ but it just bombed in the box-office!

I'm ever so grateful for the team at Third Window Films for allowing me this unique opportunity to see these movies together! How Gen Sekiguchi is not asked to do more movies is really sad for me as he is indeed a special talent in my eyes!

I adored that there was two male and two female directors shown. I loved the short pieces and the quirkyness of the movies. Sure it was not ground-breaking but it was fun and very original and entertaining with morality values and other aspects.

The love stories between characters were incredibly sweet and I loved the character development in all of the segments. It is hard to rate these movies and they were very low-budget titles. I will give a strong 7/10.