ASTRO BOY (2009) - looking good, but...

ASTRO BOY
(2009, Hong Kong/USA/Japan co-production)

If only the script had been as good as the animation...

This beloved Japanese manga character became popular in the US when it was one of the first anime series shown on TV, back in the 1960s. Two further series were made in 1980 and 2003 and released in English language versions, but this high-budget feature film attempted to push the character as franchise material, though no sequel is happening. While it was a hit in China, it wasn't in the US... or even Japan.

The origin story of Astro hasn't been changed too drastically, retaining the tragic death of Professor Tenma's son, and the scientist's attempt to create a robot to replace him. But not just any robot. Tenma packs the it with enough 'defence systems' to remain safe from any foreseeable harm. But when Astro is activated and begins to realise his potential, the government want to use him as a weapon, or destroy him for being a potential threat.

During the power struggle over Astro's future, he escapes and runs away to live down below on the Earth's surface. Not in the beautiful floating city where robots do all the dirty work, but the trash-covered remnants of the Earth's surface...

This is a familiar premise, but clumsily outlined with a wordy, patronising prologue, rather than the elegant introduction of Pixar's recent Wall-E.


The futuristic city where Astro Boy lives was always re-imagined for each new anime series. Here the intricate pastel architecture, the designs of the giant robots and police pursuit vehicles are startling at times. The character animation and motion is dynamic and very high quality, as are the blistering action scenes.

The emotional dilemmas that Astro has to face as he finds a new place in the world are also quite tough for a children's film. The relationship with his father is far from the usual depiction of a single parent, and realistically, touchingly performed by Nicolas Cage. Cora (Kristen Bell), the tough girl he befriends, is rather a stock character, reminding me of Penny Robinson from the Lost In Space remake of 1998, though she's likeable enough.

Bill Nighy doesn't cope with voiceover acting at all well, but thankfully his character isn't in there for long. Donald Sutherland is also put in the shade by Nicolas Cage's vocal performance, as a one-note villain who tells us what he wants near the start and keeps on repeating his dastardly schemes if we'd forgotten.

The main drawback with the film were the secondary 'good' mechanical characters. The robot society in Astro Boy are the crux of the manga - future humanity's relationship with sentient robots. Many of Tezuma's original stories dealt with stories of an integrated automated workforce seriously enough to rival and predate subplots in Spielberg's A.I. (2004). This new Astro Boy includes an arena where robots fight each other to destruction, taken from the stories, echoed in A.I..

Apart from the snazzy-looking 'evil' ones, the robots aren't dealt with seriously at all, but as comedy relief. One dimensional characters with poorly underwritten gags that reduce many scenes to the level of tiny tot TV. Bizarrely, these comedy reliefs are part of a robot liberation front, a non-important subplot trading on jokes about powerless grass roots political groups. It's the wrong era for satire like this and feeble humour. Without them, this would be a much stronger film for all ages.

This new Astro Boy movie is available in the UK and US on DVD and blu-ray.

THE GREEN SLIME... finally on widescreen DVD!

THE GREEN SLIME
(1968, Japan/USA/Australia)

Greeeen Sliiiiiiiiime!

There was something of a geek-frenzy when this debuted on DVD last year, so I'm sure you know about this already. But I couldn't not have Green Slime somewhere on these pages.

A one-eyed, tentacled monstrosity unafraid of a spaceman's raygun. Even as a black and white photo in A Pictorial History of Horror Movies, this was already one of my favourite movie monsters. But it was twenty years before I saw it in action on a Turner movie channel. It's been another fifteen years before this widescreen DVD release from Warner Archive. I think they've been surprised at quite how popular the response has been to this nutty monster movie, proving there's gold in them thar archives...


The story predates several familiar sci-fi action films. A space probe lands on a distant asteroid and unwittingly picks up a parasite that multiplies tribble-like when the probe docks in Earth orbit with a military space station, (the flimsy-looking Gamma 3). As the aliens' number increases, the space soldiers have to fight this bizarre deadly menace both inside and outside the satellite station...


The Green Slime begins by scampering through the plot of Armageddon (1998) in under thirty minutes - with a desperate mission to save Earth by landing on the asteroid to plant explosives.


The story then morphs into Alien as one of the demolition crew unwittingly picks up a strange slimy lifeform. It then shifts into Aliens as the soldiers have to tackle the multiplying threat in their orbiting base.


Originally an adult-only 'X' certificate in the UK, there's little here that would scare the average Doctor Who fan, but its generous with bloody make-up jobs and close-up electrocutions. It's the super-serious acting when faced with rubber monsters and furious pacing helps make this so enjoyable.


The aliens' blood is dangerous, as are their electric tentacles, but these monsters often look far less threatening than their publicity photos as they casually stomp around.


The tempo of the soundtrack rarely accelerates beyond weird space atmospherics - a fast-paced action theme would really have helped the frantic (and bizarre) outer space battle. The most memorable music is of course the blistering acid rock theme, belting out the immortal chorus "Greeeeeen Sliiiiiime".


This was an unusual Japanese/American hybrid production, with a solely western cast (the only Japanese actors are inside the monster suits). Richard Jaeckel (Grizzly) and Robert Horton are a treat to watch, butting heads over Luciana Paluzzi (Thunderball) who has little to do besides add a ton of glamour. While Jaeckal adds gutsy realism to his heroics, Robert Horton plays an incredibly bullish commander, consistently and unpleasantly pulling rank.


With no Japanese actors, and substandard model work (the space rockets, satellites and launchpad all look tiny), there's really little to betray that this was filmed in Japan. Made by Toei Studios, the director was no less than the Kinji Fukasaku - the genius who gave us Battle Royale (2000).


The Green Slime has been available widescreen on laserdisc and DVD in Japan, but the Japanese version was 15 minutes shorter than the US, Japan opting to prune back the dialogue scenes to keep the action moving. Added to this, the Japanese home video releases didn't have English subtitles or language tracks, despite totally being filmed in English.

Released at the end of 2010, the new Warner Archive DVD (pictured at the top) is special for being digitally remastered, and for making the 2.35 widescreen of the US cut finally available. For years, The Green Slime has been seen on TV (and VHS) as a cramped 1.33 pan-and-scan version, making the space battle climax a confusing mess. Well, even more of a confusing mess.

I'm still a little nervous about shelling out full price for a DVD-R. Hopefully Warner Archive's best-sellers will eventually get normal factory-pressed DVD releases. Maybe even special editions? But for now, I'm just thankful it's been remastered, and I had the chance to see it properly.

If the trailer doesn't make you want to see it, you're already slimed...

A new way to watch new Japanese horror films

I like to plug movies rather than companies, but this brand new label is specialising in recent Japanese cinema, including horror films. I'm still a big fan of J-horror and it was always frustrating to hear about new films coming out in Japan, only to have to wait four or five years for a US or UK distributor to release it on DVD with the all-important English subtitles.

Japan Flix have the potential to be faster in making translated J-horror films available, and have some from 2009. Their label may also signpost the future of home viewing - the films will initially only be available to either watch online, or buy from iTunes in HD. An American firm, they hope to expand into the UK.


What immediately caught my eye was the debut of the latest in the Tomie series, Tomie vs Tomie (reviewed here) (made in 2007, also called Tomie x Tomie) which hasn't been available in the US before. It's on Japan flix here. While low-budget, it's one of the better sequels. It's not good news that Robogeisha director Noboru Iguchi is hoping to make the next Tomie instalment.




Japan Flix also have two new horror films directed by Koji Shiraishi, who last year caused controversy when his extreme Grotesque was banned in the UK. When usually his horror films are the typically spooky Ring-like urban legends, like Noroi: The Curse and Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman (reviewed here).


In the same vein are his two Teke Teke films, both available with Japan Flix. Shiraishi playing it safe with schoolgirls, urban legends, and a shot-on-video Tomie/Grudge vibe. The creepy killer creature scuttling around in the dark is effective, but the witless Scooby duo on its trail (above) make the detective work hard-going, even for a short film. Japan may still have a hundred urban legends, but it may have run out of inventive ones.


This tale is bloodier than most, the creature enjoys cutting its victims in half. I'm still interested in where the story goes next in Teke Teke 2.

Trailers for all their films are on the Japan Flix website.

KARAOKE TERROR (2003) - from the author of AUDITION

KARAOKE TERROR
(2003, Japan, Shôwa kayô daizenshû)

I think he got the point...

This darkly humorous satire of suburban Japan grabs the viewer quickly and stays intriguing to the end. A sunnier, small scale Fight Club, with singing. I shouldn't really try to categorise the unique story, but I certainly enjoyed it. Knowing nothing about Karaoke Terror was a good way to go in...


For the first few minutes I thought I was going to get another Linda Linda Linda, as a group of slackers performed some very bad karaoke in matching costumes, wearing bowler hats that seemed to reference A Clockwork Orange.

But the story soon kicks off when one of their group randomly murders a middle-aged woman on the outskirts of Tokyo. It's nasty, but with just a little too much gushing blood to be totally serious.


It turns out that the victim's friends are also fans of karaoke, and not above resorting to bloody vengeance, if they can track him down before the police do.

It was a while before I figured out this was in fact a satire. Problem being I wasn't getting all the humour. The story of the escalating battle between the middle-aged divorcees and the young slackers isn't quite as important as the contrast between the two sides, their attitudes, lifestyles, and just as importantly, their tastes in music.


This is based on a novel by the author Ryo Murikami, no stranger to controversy as he exposes attitudes lurking in the big cities. He also wrote the infamous Audition, which notably excludes any humorous streak.

The story still gripped me, and while I enjoyed the characters and the brilliant cast, I was very aware of repeatedly missing the point of the choices of music and many cultural references.


Each actor in the ensemble cast carves their own very clear characters. The women are just as immoral as the men, while justifying their crimes in different ways. I only knew the intriguing Ryuhei Matsuda from Nightmare Detective, Otakus In Love and Gohatto. A more experienced actor than the rest of the guys' group, he still modestly blended in completely here.

While looking like modern Japan, this presents a gallery of skewed and surreal characters, like Twin Peaks with an agenda.


Karaoke Terror is available on DVD from Synapse Films in the US (see cover art at top). It includes extensive liner notes with a guide to the 60s pop songs featured in the film, a trailer and a good 20 minute 'making of' feature.


This English-subbed trailer includes some major spoilers...

SHINJUKU INCIDENT (2009) - Jackie Chan, hard man

SHINJUKU INCIDENT
(2009, Hong Kong)

Jackie Chan proving he can act up a storm

I love the films that Jackie Chan makes in Hong Kong. The last I saw was his belated 2004 entry into the phenomenal Police Story series. Many of his Chinese action movies are legendary, with life-risking stunts and an inventive mastery of martial arts. His direction and imagination in comedy action has been compared to the work of Buster Keaton, one of the few film-makers who also included the ambitious staging of stuntwork into his stories.

But the other brand of Jackie Chan film is something less than phenomenal. His Hollywood films focus more on his imperfect English and are obsessed with him being Chinese. The restrictions on risky stuntwork in Hollywood, plus his advancing years, have prevented him from doing most of his own stunts, severely restricting his talents.


Thinking about it, the last Hollywood film I saw Jackie Chan in was The Cannonball Run II (1984), during his first attempt to break into the American market. Since then, I’ve not been at all tempted by his English-speaking films, mostly comedy or children’s films.

Even in his recent Hong Kong movies, he’s been doing far fewer stunts and more acting. But in his own country, he has no problem being accepted in more serious roles. This is a more interesting side to his talents, best showcased in the new Shinjuku Incident in which he gives his best performance yet.


A world away from Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon, this is a tough drama about a sensitive subject, illegal Chinese immigrants trying to work in Japan. The film opens with a spectacular image of a shipwreck and a beach swarming with exhausted survivors. A farmer nick-named Steelhead (Chan) makes his way to Tokyo to join his brother (Daniel Wu). He’s left North-East China to try and find his girlfriend.

But as he tries to find work in Japan, he discovers that crime is easier than the dirty work offered to ‘illegals’. Through flashbacks we see his former life in China, which really doesn’t look that bad. The film presents financial gain as the motivation for his friends and family trying their luck in Japan. But this doesn’t fully explain why so many would repeatedly risk their lives just to be able to afford the latest luxury goods? Is the story avoiding telling the truth about why some Chinese ran away from China?


But Jackie isn’t like the others, he’s not in it for the money. The first half of the film tells a convincing story, with Chan giving an excellent and underplayed performance. It’s also fascinating to see him play an ordinary man who doesn’t know how to fight when he gets into a physical confrontation. I thought this was a cleverly played angle for someone so famous for their fighting skills.

The story takes a rather forced turn as his new friends, in this home from home, take on Japanese organised crime! It turns into a faint echo of The Godfather, right down to the brutal violence. It can’t hope to compete with such a classic, though the unusual setting carries it along. There’s more action and cinematic drama in this second half, but it’s rather rushed, with a noticeable leap in the narrative that hints that the film may once have been even longer.


While Steelhead’s motivations were easy to understand early on, his increasingly complex situation makes it much harder for us to sympathise. It’s hard to feel any compassion during his power struggle in the world of organised crime, however noble his reasons.

This is no less believable than many modern thrillers, in that they forfeit logic for intrigue, but the opening story of immigrants in Japan felt interesting enough. I’d have liked to see it played out logically, comparing the quality of life in China with Japan.


The use of Tokyo as a backdrop, and the mix of Japanese and Chinese actors must have been an ambitious undertaking, but it's entirely successful and fascinating to watch.

As a violent gangster tale in an unusual setting, with Jackie Chan showing just what he’s capable of as an actor, this is worth seeing. It's out in the UK on DVD and Blu-Ray from Cine Asia.

Here's a trailer...

GEGEGE NO KITARO: NIPPON BAKURETSU (2008) - Kitaro's first feature-length anime

GEGEGE NO KITARO: NIPPON BAKURETSU

(2008, Japan)

The first ever feature-length animated Kitaro movie, released as part of the anime series' 40th anniversary, was almost lost among the many other Gegege No Kitaro productions in 2008. There was the second live-action film, the weekly anime series, as well as an OVA mini-series.

Nippon Bakuretsu, (roughly translated as Japan Erupts!) is animated in the same style as the 2007-2009 TV series, featuring all the regular characters and indeed, as many different yokai monsters as they could possibly cram in.

The story begins as usual with a spooky local disturbance, as a schoolgirl is harassed by some scary mirror demons (alarming silvery CGI claws), trying to pull her through to another dimension. Her home life is not untroubled as she has trouble pleasing her extremely strict mother.

Luckily she knows where to find Kitaro's post box and calls on the ghost boy to defend her from the mirror demons. But that's not the end of her problems at school or at home, because she's unwittingly involved in a demonic plot that threatens the entire nation of Japan with destruction that not even Enma, the Lord of the Underworld, can prevent...

The film is quite episodic, with three distinct 'chapters', almost like gaming levels, with foes that keep getting tougher. The final 'boss' that Kitaro faces is the largest yokai monster I've ever seen!

While the animation effects and creature designs are impressive, it all still looks like the TV series with an expanded budget. There's still spectacle and dynamic action that the live-action feature films lacked, I just wouldn't volunteer it as an example of a typical modern Japanese anime feature.

While the latest series has been moodier and scarier than its predecessors, the film shows Kitaro taking more of a beating than usual, with several scenes that would upset his youngest fans. A couple of the lizard monsters were also quite sexual in appearance, another departure from the family-friendly series. I'm not saying this is anything as strong as Legend of the Overfiend, but at one point a flurry of tentacles, teeth and one-eyed monsters did remind me of it...

Gegege No Kitaro: Nihon Bakuretsu is out on DVD and Blu-Ray in Japan, but also on a far cheaper Taiwanese DVD, but none of these have English subtitles. The Taiwan DVD is a good-looking 16:9 anamorphic image, with optional Chinese audio and subtitling.

For more about the many TV and movie incarnations of Gegege No Kitaro, here's my extensive overview.


Lastly, here's a Japanese trailer for the movie on YouTube...

JU-ON: WHITE GHOST, JU-ON: BLACK GHOST (2009) - a homage to video horror

JU-ON: WHITE GHOST

(2009, Japan, Shiroi Roujo)

JU-ON: BLACK GHOST

(2009, Japan, Kuroi Shoujo)

Two new films for the tenth anniversary of the Grudge saga...

For me, Takashi Shimizu's Japanese Grudge movies provided more scares than the Ring movies. Even the first two shot-on-video films, commonly referred to as Ju-on: the Curse 1 and 2, were creepy as hell. Together with the US remakes, the various different incarnations of The Grudge are easily confused - I laid it all out here.
The story began as a mystery centred on a suburban house. Everyone who visited the house was scared to death - if they left the house before they died, their own homes would become similarly cursed. As the story leapt forwards and backwards in time, following different visitors and their families, a picture emerged of the original events that sparked off the curse, as well as tracking how far it had spread.

Shot in an actual house in the suburbs of Tokyo, Takashi Shimizu's first four films turned everyday surroundings into nightmares. The attic, the landing, windows, cupboards and stairs all became terrifying locations for full-on scary, haunting, gory terror.

Last year, to mark the tenth anniversary of the 'series', two more Ju-on films appeared, produced the same way as the first two, by shooting cheaply on location and on video. With two different directors, the video-look distances these from Shimizu's current movie series. He's still promising a third Grudge movie for Japan, not to be confused with the American The Grudge 3, which wasn't directed by Shimizu. Not confusing at all.



Ju-on: White Ghost and Black Ghost unfold like the classic Ju-ons, with the narratives shifting back and forth in time, changing with each cut-to-black chapter break. But these new stories aren't closely linked to the old ones. There's a completely new house and I was disappointed that (almost) none of the regular characters appear to link it all back to the original 'grudge'.

In White Ghost, the jumpy scares kick in quickly after a shaky (camerawork) start. But it tries too hard and too often to make us jump, resulting in a series of hit and miss scares. The new 'face' of the grudge verges on the humorous because she keeps popping up repeatedly... and carrying a basketball. Basketballs have never been scary, still aren't.




Other distractions include the Christmas setting which has zero bearing on the story. It doesn't help that the characters put candles on their Christmas cake and blow them out as if making a birthday wish. Why? Now I'm used to characters in horror movies acting illogically, but several of the characters' motivations are quite puzzling. It's especially hard to believe any couple would start French-kissing just after one of them has puked!

Thematically, the method of the Ju-on curse also seems to have shifted, from ghosts killing people, to people killing people, with some unwelcome hints of incestuous paedophilia thrown in.




Black Ghost is a continuation, but is less intricately cross-connected with White Ghost the way all the previous films intertwined their characters' lives... and deaths. This is scarier, better shot and better paced, but also strays further from the Ju-on mythos into Tomie territory, with the problems of corpse disposal, a mysterious foetal cyst, and even the classic Tomie signature image - the head in the bag!




This new pair isn't essential to the series and indeed lacks many of the core ingredients. I really miss the link back to the original house - and having Kayako lurking in the attic... But it's an interesting experiment, recalling the look, and viciousness, of the earliest chapters of the saga, (as well as some of the J-horrors that first followed Ring, back when shooting on video was far more common and obvious).

But the lack of quality of performance, creepy pace and intricate structure makes it regrettable that Shimizu isn't writing and directing. So I'll continue to look forward to his third Japanese Grudge movie.




Although released separately in Japan, these are wisely being sold as a double-bill on DVD in the UK, as both films last barely an hour.


Here's a spoilery, subtitled trailer on YouTube...

ROBOGEISHA (2009) - not quite a cult classic

ROBOGEISHA

(2009, Japan)

This should have been a winner...

Cross the polite, subservient world of Japanese geisha with the high-tech armaments of Robocop and this is what you get. Two wannabe geishas turned robot assassins, recruited into an army of… even more robot assassins, all working for an evil mastermind who wants to… well, you’ll have to watch to find out.

But I can’t quite explain it. This movie is packed with everything that I usually enjoy in a movie: killer robots, unnecessary gore, hidden weapons, girls with guns… even a giant monster. Admittedly the fantastic trailer had raised my expectations, but the movie didn’t deliver any more entertainment. I was a little wary because I hadn't enjoyed Machine Girl, and had skipped over Tokyo Gore Police completely. All three films are from the same production team.

I was also cautious because these are Japanese films that have been made specifically for a US audience. Presumably that meant more women in bikinis, no sex, loads of knives and guns, and plenty of blood. All perfectly understandable elements for the exploitation genre, but I think RoboGeisha misjudges what passes for American humour.

It’s good to treat this amount of cartoon violence with humour, but it’s mostly a Japanese sense of humour which really doesn’t translate. I appreciated the excessive number of weapons springing out of every item of clothing and bodily orifice, but that's all in the trailer. The overkill of a long, slow-motion gun battle is also very dull if every gunshot is a CGI flash, and every bullet-hit is a CGI blood splatter.


When FX make-up is used, it’s impressive, like the throwing stars in the face (above). There’s also some Savini-style blood-letting. I just wish they’d used these physical effects more, with one exception. ‘The samurai sword in the ass’ is too realistic and downright nasty to be funny (it’s in the trailer).

The constant switching between practical FX and computer wounds is very distracting. RoboGeisha has plenty of weapons, but many have no visible effect, meaning there's no threat. Even when the effect was just to have a little steam rising from someone’s acid-scarred face, why superimpose it later when they could have just blown some smoke up her shirt?


When there isn’t fighting, there’s drama. Mainly the rivalry between the two sisters, which is rather an unimaginative relationship, but well-acted. Both lead actresses are also good at comedy, but a cartoon tale of mayhem has no room for lengthy scenes of dialogue. This overplotting lengthens RoboGeisha to over 100 minutes, way too long for such a silly idea. It also takes the first half of the film to bring us up to speed with RoboGeisha’s origin.

This isn’t nearly as bad a let down as MegaShark vs Giant Octopus, with it’s similarly promising bonkers trailer. RoboGeisha delivers what it promises, but with too much repetition, too much plot and not enough laughs…

RoboGeisha is out on DVD and Blu-Ray in the UK, from CineAsia Extreme.

Here's the trailer...

THE NANKING MASSACRE - two films to remind us

Why do I do this to myself? First I watch two intensely depressing dramatic recreations of war atrocities, intense enough to haunt me for days. Then I decide to review them, challenging my love of Japan with these accounts of atrocious conduct by their armed forces.

In 1937, when Japan was invading China, its armies conquered the (then) capital city of Nanking. The Japanese army then began killing the prisoners of war, then the civilians, to strike a psychological blow to the rest of China. Knowing full well that they were breaking international conventions of war, they disguised the massacre from the rest of the world.

These are two very different films about the siege, serving two audiences: one is obviously intended for 'international cinema', the other (possibly unintentionally) is 'exploitation'.

Though they're tough viewing, knowing that these events actually happened, I wanted to learn more about the depths that the Japanese army sank to. While I admire Japanese culture, pop and otherwise, I've mainly been learning about their history from their viewpoint. But after visiting several of Japan's neighbouring countries and reading their news sites, I became increasingly aware of 'old wounds' and lasting hostilities.

While the US and Europe are hyper-conscious of the history of Nazi Germany, we mainly remember wartime Japan for Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. In China, Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines, Japan was regarded the same way we saw Germany. Indeed, the scale of Japanese war crimes and the variety of atrocities rivals Nazi Germany.

So I'm having trouble joining the dots between their peace-loving society of today and the extremes of their wartime mindset. How can a country change so quickly and so completely? I guess the answer is closer to home - my own country has much to answer for in it's conduct abroad, both recently and historically.

I'm not going to boycott Japanese culture for the crimes of the past, but I'm not going to ignore history either. When I first heard of the 'Rape of Nanking', I naively assumed it happened centuries ago in more barbaric times. To find that it was only last century showed up a large gap in my historical knowledge.

BLACK SUN: THE NANKING MASSACRE,
MEN BEHIND THE SUN 4
(1994, Hong Kong, Hei tai yang: Nan Jing da tu sha)

Relentless gory propaganda

This is a weird film that would need much more research to determine what the film-makers were trying to do, if I was at all impressed by it. The director, T F Mou, denies it's an exploitation film, and the size of the budget seems to lift the project out of that genre. But it's an endless diary of gory re-enactments of war atrocities, with little story or drama, and a near absence of continuing characters. The Japanese soldiers storm around the city, killing and raping. The commanders take pleasure in trying out various methods of execution, from machine-gun to samurai sword.

It looks like a wartime propaganda film, but it was made 1994. I'm almost guessing it was intended to pressure the Japanese government on outstanding issues - maybe compensation, apologies, selective history books? The other likely result was to incite outrage amongst Chinese audiences.

Compare this blunt approach to any modern American movie about the Nazis. One moment in Black Sun made me remember a silent movie where Eric Von Stroheim throws a baby out of a high window. The scene looked comical: a swift but lazy cinematic shorthand to make you hate the character in seconds, and tell you what to think about all German commanders.

While City of Life and Death shows only one Japanese leader orchestrating the destruction of the city, Black Sun takes pains to name and shame many different commanders and their personal roles in the killing. This is perhaps another clue to the movie's intentions.

After a while, the many shock moments reminded me of the climax to Soldier Blue, but in contrast with it's involving characters, storyline and complex portrayal of the invaders as well as the invaded (Soldier Blue himself is shocked by his own sides' misconduct). The Japanese soldiers of Black Sun are portrayed with a uniform hive mentality. It also doesn't help that the Japanese soldiers all look very Chinese. Only the commanders look as if they're played by Japanese actors. Lazily and inaccurately, the soldiers of both sides talk in Chinese.

I expected this to be far more cheaply made than it is. It looks largely authentic, uses a lot of extras and some extensive locations. The most spectacular scene illustrates how the Japanese burned the bodies of civilians before dumping them in the river. They could then claim that they'd only killed soldiers. The scale of the fire of hundreds of bodies along a riverbank rivals the inferno at the end of Apocalypse Now.

But if there's any doubt that what we're being shown happened, the catalogue of atrocities is verified onscreen, by cross-cutting with actual photographs and filmed footage. The power and importance of these images was not lost on the Japanese army who made every effort to destroy any incriminating material that left Nanking at the time, and they burnt any such evidence of their own when the war was lost.

There's no doubt that all this and worse actually happened, but without any emotional involvement and a clumsy, one-sided approach, it's a far less powerful and informative film than it should have been.

I watched the US region 1 DVD, which fills in much of the historical context with an informative old documentary episode of Frank Capra's Why We Fight as a DVD extra.





In the UK, it's purely been sold as exploitation, check out the crass DVD cover, which somehow borders on comedy, using a poorly staged publicity shot of one of the film's most infamous scenes. Contrast that with the US DVD cover that uses an actual archive photograph.

This is actually the fourth in a series of films, called Men Behind the Sun, which I won't be investigating any further. The first film in the series has an important subject, the horrifying human experiments of Camp 731, but the inclusion of animal cruelty and mondo footage (using an actual corpse for one scene) means I'll avoid it. However, the story of Camp 731 has one hell of conspiracy storyline and I'd like to learn more about it.

Black Sun is a bizarre experience - as it abandons so many movie conventions - that it's fairly silly to compare it to the professionally and artfully produced City of Life and Death. But I have.

CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH
(2009, China/Hong Kong, Nanjing! Nanjing!)

An involving man-made disaster

This major new film, shot in black and white, is still being premiered round the world. It's also about the Nanking during the Japanese siege.

While Black Sun throws out plenty of factual context in captions and voiceovers, this has no such introduction and relies on small badly-written postcards to set up a little historical background. Black Sun also portrayed the Chinese, soldiers and civilians alike, as totally defeated. This begins with the army still defending itself, albeit with guerrilla tactics. It also sets up storylines with soldiers from both armies, one Japanese soldier being just as traumatised.


The success of the film is the emotional involvement with the characters, focussing on the family of the Chinese translator to John Rabe - a German envoy famous for his attempts to protect the civilians against impossible odds.

Unlike Black Sun, if anyone gets hurt, raped, slaughtered, the impact is devastating. There's a dreadful scene that's basically a point of view experience of being herded into a mass slaughter.


After the threat of counterforce has been systematically eradicated, the invading army are rewarded with 'comfort women', Japanese prostitutes rationed out to the soldiers. But as the siege wears on, the supply of women starts taking Chinese 'volunteers'. The widescale use of civilian women for sex lends an awful, literal meaning to 'the rape of Nanking'.

While the Japanese use of unnecessary force was meant to terrify the rest of China, it instead unified the regions of the massive country into an unbeatable foe.

The inclusion of a sympathetic portrayal of a Japanese soldier has drawn criticism from Chinese critics, complaining that the tone of the film wasn't harsh enough on the Japanese. Perhaps they would have preferred a less-sensitive, less balanced film, like Black Sun perhaps?


I'd recommend City of Life and Death as a beautifully made and observed film on a harrowing subject.

It had a limited cinema release in the UK and there'll be a DVD and Blu-Ray release in August. I watched a Chinese DVD, which may be slightly censored (missing some violence). The subtitles didn't translate all the onscreen signs and nameplates.

The excellent WildGrounds site has an article comparing City of Life and Death to actual (and upsetting) photos from the siege.