Wu Yong
28Jan12
Father Christmas!
Seppuku, repressed homosexuality and Bowie make for an interesting, if overlong and slightly confusing, work by post-Ai No Corrida Oshima.
This film is overly preachy, the acting and dialogue are often needlessly dramatic, but I always enjoy this film. It has a great visual style, the preachy-ness and drama are effective, and the soundtrack alone deserves a few stars.
Too much boredom. Horrible script, worst acting, uninteresting cinematography. All bad.
so sorry about Ryuichi Sakamoto's acting here. but he had paid off that with magnificent soundtrack. three stars for the scriptwriting and other film details. add one stars for its music. merry kurimasu, Mr. Lawrence. haik!
One eye blue, one eye brown. You can tell he wants to break out in song the whole time.
The soundtrack by Ryuichi Sakamoto is one of the best film soundtracks I have ever heard. The dream-like quality of the music is a really interesting contrast to the intensity of the movie. The most beautiful version of the Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence theme is on the album "1996" by Sakamoto; when the theme is played on the piano it really makes you realize what an exceptional piece of music it is.
as beautiful as the trio version is, I prefer his solo piano performance of it. It really is an exceptional piece.
An exciting use of texture and symmetry, but with some questionable acting and musical contrast. A truely great film I'll watch over and over again.
I happened to read a review of this before seeing it which said that it suffered from the disparity of acting styles between the Japanese and the Brits, but I can't agree. The acting styles fit their characters. David Bowie is probably the least impressive, but even he has moments and he's never terrible. Tom Conti is awesome, he and Takeshi made the movie. There are some interesting lighting choices on display.
This is one of the oddest trailers I think I've ever seen. Clearly made before the "art of the trailer" was refined, it manages to show a lot of the film without giving you much of an idea of the plot or making you want to see it. Ignore the trailer and find the film!