January 13, 2005

'OK, Let's Go!'

Last night, Cinecultist attended the second film screened by the Asian Cinevision as a part of their continuing Asian and Asian American film showcase at the Cinema Village of the 2003 Japanese film, The Hunter and the Hunted. If all of the films are going to be of the caliber displayed in Izuru Narushima work, you can expect to see CC there every month without fail.

The title sounds like it could be for some sort of thriller or action drama, but instead it's a whimsical, heart-felt comedy with a few dramatic elements — one of our favorite kinds of foreign films. There's a cute kid, an awkward romance, a deepening professional friendship, a noble father, a sincere childhood flashback and some bubbly montage in the Japanese spring time. If only it were possible to plug in these elements to any film, and like circuits on a breaker, make the whole thing spring to light. No, we know there's much more art to it than that, thanks to the subtle art in Narushima's direction.

A word also on Kôji Yakusho, who stars as Jin the noble father and detective who is the hunter to Akira Emoto's Neko who is the hunted first class thief. This man knows how to act! He's fabulous. We loved him in The Eel (1997) [rent it, you won't be sorry] and we're heard wonderful things about his performance in the original Shall We Dance. Imdb says he's going to be in the adaptation of Memoirs of a Geisha, which also stars Gong Li, Ken Watanabe, Ziyi Zhang and Michelle Yeoh. Sounds like it's going to be a sweet cast, now we're really excited to see it released.

Posted by karen at January 13, 2005 9:04 AM