Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Tsukimonogatari is the first part of Monogatari’s final season. Saying “you should watch an earlier
series first” may seem like redundant advice but as Monogatari labels its seasons with titles rather than numbers first
time viewers may be unaware that they are watching the final part of a story.
If you chose to start with Tsukimonogatari
you should still to be able to follow what happens and the questions that the
series mulls over are such that anyone can appreciate them.

In Tsukimonogatari series
protagonist Koyomi Araragi discovers that he has utilised his
ability to temporarily turn into a vampire so many times that the change has
become permanent. He isn’t quite a vampire yet but vampirism has become the new
norm for his body and it is slowly changing to adjust.

The series focuses on his reaction to this news, how he comes to terms
with it and what it means for the future.

Tsukimonogatari makes
this change its primary focus. The plot and pacing both give Koyomi enough time
to discover what is going on to him, to understand why it is happening, and to
come to terms with it. First time viewers may not understand the full
circumstances that make up the context for what Koyomi is going through but the
writing expresses his plight in a way that is universal. The consequences of
Koyomi’s actions have caught up with him and he spends Tsukimonogatari processing that.

The time that Tsukimonogatari
spends on contemplation is not always a strength however. There is a lot of talking
and each conversation is played out in full. At its best this means that ideas
are given the space they deserve, at its worst it means that dialogue can get
very, very repetitive. A good example of this coming from when Koyomi discovers
that he is a vampire. He does so by noticing that he fails to cast a reflection
on a mirror in his bathroom. Rather than merely say “I have no
reflection” or something similar he somehow manages to spout over three
lines on how he does not have a reflection. This tendency towards being verbose
is occasionally shared by the other characters, almost to the point where it feels
like we are being treated to a philosophy lecture.

Thankfully such sections are not indicative of the whole experience. Tsukimonogatari is the sort of series
that is great for long time fans of a show. It reflects on what has come before
and is something of a breather before what is to come. Despite its placement in
Monogatari the themes and plot points
are accessible enough for newer viewers and will hopefully encourage them to
check out earlier seasons of Monogatari.
It is a thoughtful anime and worth watching.

TSUKIMONOGATARI / CERT: 15 / DIRECTORS: AKIYUKI SHINBO, TOMOYUKI ITAMURA / SCREENWRITERS:
KIZAWA YUKITO, NAKAMOTO MUNEMASA/ STARRING: KAMIYA HIROSHI, HAYAMI SAORI, SAITO
CHIWA, SAKAMOTO MAAYA
 

“Half man… half ant… all terror!” That’s the tagline not to Joe Dante’s Matinee but to Mant!, the schlocky film-within-a-film produced by John Goodman’s cigar-chomping Lawrence Woolsey. Woolsey’s films may be far from masterpieces, but he likes to put on a good show, and for the screening of Mant! in Key West, Florida, he’s pulling out all the stops, including hiring a man dressed as the eponymous ant monster to spook viewers and installing electric shock devices in the chairs, not to mention his ‘rumble-rama’ which will simulate the film’s nuclear explosion. The problem is, this is October 1962, and not far away from Key West, the Cuban Missile Crisis is threatening to tear the world apart – which Woolsey sees as an opportunity to draw on his audience’s fears.

It’s not Woolsey, however, but Simon Fenton’s Gene who’s the protagonist. Gene’s dad is on one of the submarines near Cuba and so the fear is very personal for him; a fear he tries to get away from through his love of horror movies. Following Gene and his friends in the build-up to the Mant! screening, and then the show itself as it goes as out of control as you’d expect, Matinee is a fast-paced and very funny farce, with broad, daft humour aimed at a family audience. Though its plot threads intertwine nicely, Charlie Haas’ script does throw in one heightened side character too many, meaning that the love story between Gene and his date Sandra (Lisa Jakub) doesn’t get time to develop.

It’s also a film filled with nostalgia; just as recent Netflix hit Stranger Things saw the Duffer Brothers pastiche the sci-fi films they loved as kids, this is Joe Dante paying tribute to his favourite childhood movies, albeit through comedy rather than straight-up imitation. And though John Goodman’s long monologues on the magic of cinema can get a little bit too much, the warmth of Dante’s affection for this genre shines through in the upbeat tone, particularly when we get to see scenes from Mant!. It perfectly tears apart the tropes of that genre, from the shrieking women to the patronising scientist: “now he’ll grow at an accelerated – or speeded up – rate”. Even better, the whole sixteen-minute Mant! is included as an extra on this Blu-ray.

And that’s worth watching, because Mant! is a hilarious and entertaining watch made with charm and affection – just like Matinee. It’s not perfect, but it’s perhaps Dante’s most personal film and definitely an underacknowledged gem. This new Blu-ray release comes courtesy of Arrow, who’ve done as good a job as ever, so now would be a great time to add Matinee to your collection.

Special Features: Mant! / Making-of / On-set Footage / Discussion with Joe Dante / Deleted Scenes / Trailer

MATINEE / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: JOE DANTE / SCREENPLAY: CHARLES S. HAAS / STARRING: JOHN GOODMAN, SIMON FENTON, CATHY MORIARTY / RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 12TH

In these days of advanced communication, GPS and satellites, it’s hard to remember that there was a time when a plane getting stranded in the middle of nowhere was such a fear it became part of popular culture. There were a couple of real horror stories of planes downed in WWII in remote parts. The vine covered Hellcat with a skeleton in the cockpit became a common trope right up to the ‘70s. The desert-crash had particularly gripped the public conscious after a perfectly preserved B-24 bomber, The Lady be Good, was found in the Libyan Desert in 1958, 15 years after it had been assumed to have ditched in the sea. It was another two years before they found the remains of the crew who walked miles before the desert claimed them. The fate of The Lady be Good inspired several stories including Elleston Trevor’s 1964 novel, The Flight of the Phoenix, and its subsequent movie adaptation. It’s a lot harder to get lost nowadays so you can’t make movies like this anymore and for the purposes of this paragraph please ignore the fact it was re-made in 2004.

A cargo plane full of A-list and Z-list actors gets caught in a sandstorm and one of its two engines is knocked out. The experienced but aging pilot (James Stewart) puts them down with only a few casualties amongst the Z-listers but the plane is going nowhere. The alcoholic co-pilot (Richard Attenborough) failed to make sure the radio was working and no-one knows they’re there. With the nearest oasis over a hundred miles away (if they could even find it), they’re screwed. There’s character conflict, a doomed attempt at getting away, but sooner or later they’re going to have to listen to the world’s most German German (Hardy Krüger – the go-to German in 1965), a passenger who, as luck would have it, is an aircraft designer. He reckons there’s enough left of the plane to build a new one and fly to safety. Is he mad? Well they’ve got nothing to lose…

Phoenix is an undoubted classic. It’s been called an engineer’s film (and the resultant “Phoenix” is both impressive and believable) but things like this are always going to be about the characters so it’s nice to see the heavyweights in good form. A few are a bit underdeveloped (surprisingly, George Kennedy and Ian Bannen) but there’s a wonderfully difficult relationship between a British army officer (Peter Finch) and his sergeant (Ronald Fraser in career-best form). The over-bearing officer thinks his sergeant is the salt of earth but that feeling is not reciprocated. Subject of which, this is a movie that boasts some of the most memorable moments on celluloid. The officer marching off to find that oasis: will he just walk in a big circle? Of course he does and guess who finds him. The “twist” scene: utterly brilliant but we’re not going to ruin it. And the engine-starting climax is quite possibly the tensest scene in cinema.

It’s nearly perfect and it’s definitely essential.

Special Features: Interview with film historian Sheldon Hall / Trailer / Booklet

THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX (1965) / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: ROBERT ALDRICH / SCREENPLAY: LUKAS HELLER / STARRING: JAMES STEWART, RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH, HARDY KRÜGER, PETER FINCH, ERNEST BORGNINE, IAN BANNEN, RONALD FRASER, CHRISTIAN MARQUAND, DAN DURYEA, GEORGE KENNEDY / RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 12TH

The thing about superhero movies nowadays is that even the good ones can falter due to the influx of the sub-genre tiring out an audience. Point is, they need to do something different, brave, ballsy or unique to thrive and while the Marvel Studios machine has a reputation for setting the standard for both quality and quantity, there is no doubt that the formula is getting familiar. Third act syndrome, world building sub-plots, smirky cool heroes, etc. We know the drill and after the overstuffed and uninvolving Age of Ultron, there were a few fears that Marvel’s approach may start to get stale and too much. Well, suffice to say, they were listening because Civil War, much like The Winter Soldier, is Marvel going darker and more thematic but not at the expense of fun. 

Civil War centres on a rift in the Avengers team, as Tony “Iron Man” Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Steve “Captain America” Rodgers (Chris Evans) are at loggerheads when the government wants the Avengers to be reigned in, due to their reckless ways. Stark believes they need keeping in check but Cap believes that the only way to guarantee the safety of the world is to rely on themselves. These opposing views are soon worsened by the increasingly hostile tensions surrounding these heroes and soon it becomes a sheer battle of attrition among the world’s mightiest protagonists. Obviously there is more to it than this but for the sake of those few who have yet to see this film, we are being as general as possible regarding plot – character we can be a bit more detailed with (the trailers certainly have).

Despite fears that the MCU may become too tangled, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely’s startling screenplay gives literally everyone a part to play in a film that is less about heroes clobbering each other, than it is about the consequences of war. The whole film delivers engaging action sequences (the Lagos battle, central airport scene, closing fight) of course but never needs to pad out the film with them, instead the action is all underpinned by a very prevalent message of how one man with vengeance in his heart can bring down the world’s greatest powers and about how the collateral damages of warfare can often be the most important and tragic losses of all. For the first time in Marvel’s history, the stakes feel high, the consequences are revealed and the emotive climax has us all guessing as to what might happen.

Some may feel the film cops out on going as far as it can but by the end of the film, for any lightness, we feel as though the MCU has been irreparably altered and that things may never be the same again. Evans and Downer Jr. have become these heroes and their performances anchor the script’s emotive punches, while Sebastian Stan gets chance to develop his character of Bucky “The Winter Soldier” Barnes even further and becomes crucial to the twisty and compelling narrative. Add to this the copious amounts of well placed characters, with Johansson’s Black Widow being the conflicted soldier unsure of whether to by her duty or her heart and Daniel Brühl’s convention avoiding villain, being the brilliant master manipulator, who brings down gods driven by determination and a thirst for revenge. 

We could go on for days about the cast list here but the condensed version is all play a part in this puzzle from Elizabeth Olsen’s (far better handled than last time) Scarlett Witch and Paul Bettany’s more relevant Vision to Chadwick Boseman’s cooler than ice debut as Black Panther, to even Frank Grillo’s brief turn as Crossbones (who is the fuse for the main narrative). And as for a certain web-slinger, well lets just say Tom Holland has already showed us why we should be excited for Spidey’s Homecoming next year.

Civil War is near to perfect comic book entertainment, because it not only picks up on arcs from the source material but also regularly walks its own cinematic path. Instilled with contemporary ideology and large scaled entertainment, the Russo’s have shown their caliber at balancing a huge amount of material and helming not only a coherent picture but also an exciting one. The hype has been huge and it is not hard to see why, for Civil War changes the formula of Marvel Studios, creating a movie that is at once exciting and alarming, as it has much to say about the fractured world we live in and how it can even bring down the mightiest and strongest among us. An awesome achievement that has terrific action, engrossing drama and too many good performances to list in a single review, this genre is booming and blooming.

Special Features: Extended Scenes, Featurettes, Gag Reel, Directors Commentary, Sneak Peek

CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR / CERT: 12A / DIRECTORS: ANTHONY RUSSO, JOE RUSSO / SCREENPLAY: CHRISTOPHER MARKUS, STEPHEN MCFEELY / STARRING: CHRIS EVANS, ROBERT DOWNEY JR., SCARLETT JOHANSSON, CHADWICK BOSEMAN, SEBASTIAN STAN, ELIZABETH OLSEN, DANIEL BRÜHL / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Expected Rating: 9/10 

Actual Rating:

Ever since the blue-rinse brigade got their kits off for the W.I. in Calendar Girls, there’s been a surfeit of screen projects featuring misbehaving pensioners, from ITV’s Off Their Rockers to the new Ab Fab movie; Pens Behaving Badly, let’s call them. Here it’s a bowling green and its associated clubhouse that need saving, and the old folk who want to keep it hit upon the idea of robbing banks to raise the funds they need.

Golden Years is the screenwriting debut (albeit alongside two other writers, including director John Miller) of TV’s Nick Knowles, he of the plaster of Paris hair and the over-rehearsed presenting style. Sadly this is more DIY SOS than it is Perfection.

Bernard Hill and Virginia McKenna are Arthur and Martha (a level of humour that is present throughout), whose friend is being badly treated in a retirement home and whose pension fund suddenly runs out when its primary contributor goes belly-up. Arthur’s plan to rob a bank in order to buy the land upon which the bowling club resides founders on his indecision, until a golden goose lays its egg in his shopping trolley – and after an incident in the garden shed (bar for some saucy stories, about as blue as the film gets) Martha decides she’s up for some “Thelma and Lacey” too. A tour of National Trust properties in the Bristol area in the ‘Alf-a’s new caravan eventually involves our protagonists’ circle of friends, including demure Brian (Davis) and camp Royston (Callow, having shameless fun with the part). But the inexplicable original robbery brings a perplexed Sid (Armstrong; wife: Nancy) into Arthur’s orbit, and from there on in it’s a question of whether the bowling club will be sold on or saved at the eleventh hour. You can probably guess which.

This is pretty gentle stuff, the 15 certificate belying a complete lack of violence or cuss words, and while the pace itself is similarly moderate, the film’s attractively ambulatory nature comes at the expense of much in the way of character development or ambiguity. Arthur begins the film quiet and proud, and ends it the same way – and between times we don’t really get to learn anything else about him. The same is true for the rest of the cast, Knowles and Miller preferring to throw in a handful of “funny” where growth and depth should be. It’s a formula that has proven successful in the past often enough, and an undemanding afternoon audience will no doubt lap this up once it becomes a television fixture, but next to ostensibly similar films like, say The Parole Officer, Golden Years has very little in the way of personality. The odd emotionally engaging moment aside, there’s just about enough going on to hold your attention but nothing to really pique it.

Special Features: About the Film, Audience, The Cast, The Director

GOLDEN YEARS (GRAND THEFT OAP) / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: JOHN MILLER / SCREENPLAY: JOHN MILLER, NICK KNOWLES, JEREMY SHELDON / STARRING: BERNARD HILL, VIRGINIA McKENNA, SUE JOHNSTON, PHIL DAVIS, BRAD MOORE, MARK WILLIAMS, UNA STUBBS, SIMON CALLOW, ALUN ARMSTRONG / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Paul Madvig (Brian Donlevy) is a man with a lot of enemies. Chief among them is Nick Varna (Joseph Calleia), a sophisticated hoodlum who is pulling every possible string to destroy Madvig’s political career and implicate him in the murder of playboy Taylor Henry, son of one of the most powerful men in the city and brother of the beautiful Janet (Veronica Lake). Janet believes Madvig is the killer, and uses his fascination with her to find out more. The other woman in Madvig’s life, Opal, also happens to be his sister. She was romantically involved with Tracey until Madvig warned her off, and she’s convinced that he is the killer too. Madvig really isn’t having much luck with the dames.

In fact, the only friend Madvig seems to have is Ed Beaumont (Alan Ladd), and that’s strained as well, not least because Beaumont is also feeling a definite connection with Janet. But after he turns down Varna’s offer to frame his friend, Beaumont finds himself on the receiving end of two very nasty thugs, an encounter he only narrowly manages to survive. Still, with the evidence mounting against him and an indictment about to send him to jail, Madvig’s luck seems to be running out. Only Ed can save him, but it’s going to take some tricky manoeuvres and a tense showdown with Varna and his murderous henchman. And then there’s the not-so-small-matter of Janet to deal with.

Based on a story by Dashiell Hammett, The Glass Key has been adapted several times (including a radio version, also starring Ladd, which is included as a nice extra on this Blu-ray). Compared to the rich symphonies of the better known noirs – The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, even The Blue Dahlia (which also paired Ladd with Lake) – this plays in a fairly minor key, but it’s not without its moments: the sparring (sometimes literally) between Donlevy and Ladd is entertaining, and Lake does well as an underwritten femme fatale. The fact that every character is a stereotype, from the two-fisted leading men, the gloating bad guy, and the women who really don’t have much to do except pout, sob or cast flirtatious glances in Ladd’s direction, coupled with the fact that the plot itself has the psychological complexity of a rice cracker, doesn’t diminish any of the fun.

This is terrific escapism, and it looks great in this new Blu-ray edition. In fact, between this entry and Arrow’s recent Fritz Lang gem Hangmen Also Die, fans of Brian Donlevy are having a real treat. If you’ve only seen him play Professor Quatermass in the Hammer movies, or caught him in the brilliantly bad How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, these films are genuine eye-openers.

Special Features: Audio commentary / Visual essay / Gallery / Theatrical trailer

THE GLASS KEY / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: STUART HEISLER / SCREENPLAY: JONATHAN LATIMER / STARRING: BRIAN DONLEVY, VERONICA LAKE, ALAN LADD, JOSEPH CALLEIA / RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 19TH

A mismatched
bunch of would-be rookie astronauts are holed-up in an underground bunker
facility to test their ability to endure potentially agonising periods of deep
space-travel isolation. Locked away for 400 days (hence the title) the
fractured foursome soon find their psychological and physiological conditions
deteriorating – and then there’s the little matter of the thunderous and
ominous rumbling of the ground around them and their sudden loss of communication
with the outside world.

Some movies wear
their tiny budgets on their sleeves like badges of honour. “Look what we can do
with almost no money,” they seem to cry as they get on with the tricky business
of telling an interesting story with the sort of cash which probably wouldn’t
cover Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible
fresh sock budget. Others – like 400 Days
–can’t help highlighting the aching penury of their production by struggling to
tell a halfway decent story. That, in essence, is what we have here; a movie
which just about keeps its head above the waterline  until about the halfway mark when it sinks
like a stone as it loses track of what it’s trying to do and the story it’s
trying to tell.

Our heroes are
stereotypes one and all; Brandon Routh is the thoughtful-but-manly Captain
Theo, coping with breaking up with the group’s medic Emily McTier (Lotz), Ben
Feldman is the sensitive, nervy Bug and Dane Cook is the brash, punchy Cole.
They’re all cooped up in a painfully-cramped simulation environment – here’s
that low budget on show again – which seems to consist of one kitchen area, a
medical bay with one bed and a few cramped crewrooms. The gym contains one
exercise bike stuck in the corner of a corridor. Suggestions that the film is
aiming for a Spartan, minimalist approach are shafted by other painfully
underfunded sequences; a press conference before the quartet enter their
underground tomb involves a handful  of
extras sitting on chairs in a field.

But the first
half of the film just about keeps up our interest as we get to know the dramatis personae  and get to grips with their relationships and
their clichéd backstories. Their psychological collapse is well-handled and the
mystery of what’s happened in the outside world is initially intriguing until
the group decide to venture out of their sanctuary to find a windswept, barren
environment. Turns out the moon has been hit by an asteroid and the world is
enveloped by a swirling dust cloud. Then they meet some survivors in a nearby
shanty town and here the film loses its way completely as it wanders towards a
frustratingly ambiguous ending which asks a lot of questions but never comes
close to offering any answers.

Slight and
cheap-looking, 400 Days might have
passed muster as an episode of a sci-fi anthology series (if such a thing still
existed) but it’s thin gruel for a cinema audience and barely worth the 90
minutes invested in watching it, let alone the 400 days across which it
purports to tell its wholly-unmemorable story.

400 DAYS / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: MATT OSTERMAN / STARRING: BRANDON ROUTH, DANE COOK, CAITY LOTZ, BEN FELDMAN, GRANT
BOWLER / DATE OF RELEASE: OUT NOW

There’s a very healthy renaissance in the Italian crime genre happening right now, and it seems to be headed up by one man: director Stefano Sollima. From the series of Romanzo Criminale and Gomorrah to this film, Suburra (also going to become a series, and the first original Netflix production from Italy, in 2017), he’s been putting the criminal underbelly of Italy on display to the world in some detail. In Ancient Rome, Suburra was the criminal district of the city, but this film finds a modern Rome where everywhere is corrupt and anything can be bought. It’s set over a week in 2011 leading up to ‘the Apocalypse’, as crime boss Samurai is charged by the key Mafia families to do whatever is needed to make the plan for Ostia, a kind of new Las Vegas on the waterfront, into a reality. A cast of corrupt politicians, hookers, gangsters and sleazy fixers populate the story. Their various strands start to be brought together when slimy parliamentary minister Malgradi’s penchant for debauchery kicks off a chain of events that will destroy everyone’s dreams.

Suburra is a complex film with numerous threads to follow. Whilst this might suggest an affinity to genre greats like The Godfather or The Sopranos, as with Gomorrah, it’s an entirely different approach. These are not redeemable people, and Sollima and his writers are not seeking to humanise them or romanticise their world. Instead there’s a palpable outrage at the arrogance and hubris of the characters, and the greed that drives them all. Suburra is a dense, violent, brutal story and no one comes out of it without having been tainted by the corruption that pervades throughout, not even the clergy. There’s no honour to be found here. It’s not a pleasant film by any stretch, as everyone in it is pretty much a terrible human being, so if you need a protagonist to identify with you’ll really struggle. If that makes it seem like this is a heavy story to spend time in, it is, but most importantly, like the best dramas, it’s compelling stuff and deftly done. There’s nothing new in Suburra – you’ll find similar themes to Coppola’s classic, Scorsese’s gangster movies and any number of mob and corruption tales – but Sollima weaves everything together well enough that this doesn’t really matter.

For such a cynical film with a consuming darkness at it’s core, it’s worth pointing out Suburra as presented by cinematographer Paolo Carnera is beautifully shot, the eternal city a vibrant character. Rome is also a grim, neon-lit, rain-soaked nightmare, as the ‘Apocalypse’ referred to as the film opens seems to become an almost biblical one as the world the characters know collapses around them. It’s blessed, too, with a great score by the French electro group M83. If you’re a fan of any of the aforementioned titles, especially Sollima’s previous work, then Suburra is definitely one to seek out. You’ve just got to be prepared to wallow with the worst of humanity for a couple of hours.

SUBURRA / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: STEFANO SOLLIMA / SCREENPLAY: SANDRO PETRAGLIA, STEFANO RULLI, GIANCARLO DE CATALDO, CARLO BONINI / STARRING: PIERFRANCESCO FAVINO, GRETA SCARANO, JEAN-HUGUES ANGLADE, ELIO GERMANO, GUILIA GORIETTI / RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 5TH
 

Sweet Bean masterfully evokes emotions through three different
generations that evolves around the delicious japanese delicacy, dorayaki, a
sweet pancake treat. Director, Naomi Kawase, tugs at the heart strings whilst
serving up a plate full of pancake porn, thus creating something sweet that
will sit heavy in your heart.

Starring Masatoshi Nagese as Sentaro,
a lonely manager of a small dorayaki shop with little custom. The most
customers Sentaro sees are the kids after school who make fun of his dorayaki
for being mediocre. One of the kids, Wakana (Kyara Uchida), is interested in
the job vacancy for the shop despite the little custom it gets. Wakana has
competition however, Tokue (Kirin Kiki), a senior citizen who seems very
interested in making the red bean paste for Sentaro’s pancakes. Sentaro is
reluctant to hire Tokue due to her age and crippled hands, but Tokue’s
determination perseveres and when Sentaro tastes her recipe he can’t say no.
There is something genuine about all these characters as they all share
something that darkens them yet they come together to make something beautiful.

Making the sweet bean paste, known as
an, is a very lengthy process and just to emphasize this Kawase makes this
scene over drawn and mostly shoots with long takes and little cutting, like a
bad cooking show. It’s a beautiful scene however and can be much appreciated if
you enjoy watching the process of making something. The dynamics between
Sentaro and Tokue is enough to entertain you, they both carry an air of
mystique and warmth. It is also very satisfying to see the outcome of all this
hard work and see the small dorayaki shop thrive for the first time in this
film.

Of course this idyllic situation does
not last very long when Tokue’s secret is revealed. It’s a tear jerker to be
sure and it drastically changes the tone of the film. It becomes a tormenting
reflection on each of the character’s past and present. Kawase may have
prolonged this a little too much and though the film is wonderfully shot with
beautiful settings, there isn’t quite enough plot to stimulate the viewer. The
actor’s ability to draw us in by conveying strong and real emotions in the most
subtle way is what really carry’s the film. We want to know where these characters
are going to end up and Kawase manages to convey this with a wonderful air of
grace in the final scene.

With food and emotions going hand in
hand, Sweet Bean is definitely up there in the good foodie movies. It’s
delicate like most of Kawase’s films though it is also straight forward and
more accessible than her previous, if a little long drawn with the mixture of
art-house and story. If you can’t be warmed by Tokue’s passion for making
Doriyaki you’ll at least be craving them.

SWEET BEAN / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY:
NAOMI KAWASE / STARRING: KIRIN KIKI, MASATOSHI NAGESE, KYARA UCHIDA / BASED ON
THE NOVEL BY DURIAN SUKEGAWA / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW