Swallowtail Butterfly (スワロウテイル-1996)

Starring:
Hiroshi Mikami - Feihong
Chara - Glico
Ayumi Ito - Ageha
Yosuke Eguchi - Ryou Ryanki
Andy Hui Chi -On - Maofuu
Atsuro Watabe - Ran
Tomoko Yamaguchi - Shenmei
Nene Otsuka - Reiko
Kaori Momoi - Suzukino
Yoriko Douguchi - Hoshino
Mickey Curtis - Doctor
Tetsu Watanabe - Yakuza boss
Tadanobu Asano - Customer in club
Ken Enomoto - Voice work
Kent Frick
Kahori Fujii - Yuriko
Akio Jo
Sumie Kamogawa
Toshiyuki Kitami
Kenji Kohashi - Hoan
Shiek Mahmud-Bey - Arrow
Kae Minami
Ken Mitsuishi
Ryuushi Mizukami
Chris Peppler
Rolly
Toshiya Sakai
Sansei Shiomi
Keiichi Suzuki
Tomorowo Taguchi
Siro Takehatsu
Hua Rong Weng
Hajime Yamazaki

An industrial section of Japan got the name of Yentown as many immigrants come to make money and hope to go home rich. A small group of people in Yentown try to work together to survive, there is a girl named Ageha who has no family, Glico the hooker, Fei Hong a poor immigrant from Shanghai, Arrow an ex boxer from the US and Ren the mysterious guy who seems to know too much about guns. Fortune shines upon them when they find a cassette that we'll get them rich but along with money trouble will always follow.


This movie was off the scale over-my-head, under-my-feet. I was so confused.

First off, this movie was spoken in English, Japanese, and Chinese. It got so confusing. The English spoken, most of it anyway that was not spoken by an English speaker, was robotic and not fluid.

Second, the script, well.......the story was just wrong! It made no sense in my head. It was just stupid.

Third, well...there is no third. The actors were fine and dandy. Surprised to see a few that our now aged looking so young. I had to cut back a few times to look them up to make sure that the person speaking was really the person that was said to be the actor. Asano Tadanobu was more of a mere glance.

This movie wasn't great, in fact, I think I wasted a good two hours for nothing.

All About Lily Chou-Chou (Riri Shushu no subete, リリイ・シュシュのすべて-2001)

Starring:
Hayato Ichihara - Yûichi Hasumi
Shugo Oshinari - Shusuke Hoshino
Ayumi Ito - Yôko Kuno
Takao Osawa - Tabito Takao
Miwako Ichikawa - Shimabukuro
Izumi Inamori - Izumi Hoshino
Yu Aoi - Shiori Tsuda
Kazusa Matsuda - Sumika Kanzaki
Ryo Katsuji - Terawaki Shioske
Takako Baba - School girl
Yuki Ito - Kamino
Tomohiro Kaku - Yuichi's friend
Hideyuki Kasahara - Kyota Shimizu
Yoji Tanaka - Teacher

All About Lily Chou-Chou follows two childhood friends, Shusuke Hoshino and Yuichi Hasumi, from the end of their junior high school run until the beginning of high school. The film has a discontinuous storyline, starting midway through the story, just after high school begins, then flashes back to junior high and summer vacation, and then skips back to the present.
In junior high, Hoshino was the best student in school, but was picked on by his classmates. He was skilled at kendo, and had a good-looking young mom. Yuichi, on the other hand, was a quieter boy who fell in love with the music of the odd musician Lily Chou-Chou. During a group trip to Okinawa, Hoshino had a traumatic near-death experience and his personality changed from good-natured to dangerous and manipulative. In high school, he takes his place as class bully and shows his newfound power by ruining the lives of his classmates. An alternative voice, that of the character Shiori Tsuda, attributes Hoshino's personality change to divorce and family ruin; this matches several scenes connecting the decline of Yuichi - who has had to change his name - to divorce.

Yuichi, the confused and shy former friend of Hoshino, finds himself sucked into his now-tormentor's gang. He is ridiculed and coerced into doing Hoshino's dirty work, and finds solace only in the ethereal music Lily Chou-Chou makes. Things become far worse for everyone when Yuichi is assigned to supervising Shiori Tsuda, whom Hoshino has blackmailed into enjo kōsai, and another girl is raped by Hoshino's lackeys after unwittingly offending the school's girl gang. The whole quagmire comes to a head when Yuichi heads to Tokyo to see a Lily Chou-Chou concert, and encounters the last person he thought would be there.

The story of Hoshino and Yuichi is paralleled by messages posted to a Lily Chou-Chou Internet message board. It is left up to the viewer to figure out which characters in the story are posting under what names.

Hmm? How do I describe this movie? Let's see. This movie was an artistic film. Very moving and visually stimulating. The cinematography was eye catching with the soulfull music that added depth to one perception of pain and suffering.

This movie in no way was what I thought it would turn out. No heroine, no hero. Antagonists galore. This movie didn't bring joy. It didn't bring tears. This movie in a way was like that of Hoshino nearly drowning. You feel yourself being sucked in the undertow and you can't seem to find a way to swim to shore. This is how I felt. The movie in everyway, to me, felt like this.

I didn't feel connected to Yuichi but to Hoshino. At first, at the beginning, you despise him for being the bully but in the end, well.......I felt saddened for him and by him. I felt his despair and for some reason just wanted to wrap my arms around him and say "It's okay."

There will be some who hate this movie and some who'll relate immediately to it. I don't know why but I felt both.

Oshinari Shugo

Last Quarter (Kagen no tsuki -2004)

Starring:
Chiaki Kuriyama ... Mizuki Mochizuki
Hiroki Narimiya ... Tomoki Anzai
Tomoka Kurokawa ... Hotaru Shiraishi
Motoki Ochiai ... Masaki Miura
Simon Britton ... Evil Eye Bassist
Ayumi Ito ... Sayaka Kamijo
Takanori Jinnai
Reika Kirishima
Maki Meguro
Anna Nakagawa ... Sayaka's mother
Ken Ogata ... Doujima
Nao Omori
Hideto Takarai ... Adam (as Hyde)
Yasuko Tomita
Tsuyoshi Ujiki

Last QuarterOn the night of her 19th birthday, Mizuki (Chiaki Kuriyama) is celebrating in style at a club with her boyfriend Tomoki (Hiroki Narimiya). Their blissful scene is ruined by a friend who reveals that she has been sleeping with the habitually promiscuous Tomoki, which shocks Mizuki profoundly. After the suicide of her mother and her difficulty adjusting to her father's remarriage, he was the only person in the world that she felt she could rely on. Utterly dejected, she flees into the night and stumbles upon a dilapidated estate bathed in the ethereal glow of the moon in its last quarter. Drifting on the still air is a strangely familiar melody being played on a guitar, emanating from somewhere inside the mansion. She follows the music inside to a darkened room and a mysterious young man named Adam (HYDE). He claims to have written the song especially for her even though she has never met him before. Feeling an inexplicably strong bond to this charismatic stranger, Mizuki returns home and collects her belongings in order to begin a new life with him but is involved in an accident. Suddenly she finds herself back at the gates of the mansion, unable to leave its precincts, and with no memory of what has happened or who she is.

Hotaru (Tomoka Kurokawa), an inquisitive young girl recently discharged from hospital, is searching for her runaway cat, followed by her reticent school friend Miura (Tomoki Ochiai). They enter the overgrown grounds of a deserted manor and hear piano music coming from within, enticing Hotaru to venture inside where she discovers a solitary young woman suffering from amnesia who claims to be awaiting the return of someone called Adam. When Miura enters the room, they are astounded to find that this girl can only be seen by Hotaru and is prevented by some strange force from leaving the mansion. Together they try to discover her identity and unravel the mystery surrounding her, and gradually come to the realization that it is all somehow connected to the tragic past of a family who once lived in the mansion, a rare phase of the moon that occurs only once every 19 years, and an enigmatic musician by the name of Adam...



This was the most bizarre love story ever! BUT....totally different in every way. I wasn't sure this story was even going to work. First, we all know how I feel about infidelity. Tomoki cheated on Mitzuki with her best friend, Aya. Second, it was creepy-ish. I'm not big on horrors. Thankfully this wasn't a horror movie, at all. Third, two of the characters were "goth" like. Nothing against Gothic genre, but that's not my "cup'a tea".

Instead, this movie became a eerie mystery. A girl suspended in the "middle" world. Not dead or alive. One girl, who just happened to have an accident the same night as the girl who is suspended-like, can see her.

Feeling guilty, and just realizing he had made the most biggest mistake of his life, Tomoki eventually realizes that Mitsuki's spirit has been taken over by another and helps the goth-like teens figure out how and why this has happened. I loved the story.

This was the first movie that I've witnessed Hyde's acting capabilities. I have to say he fit Adam to a "T". His ethereal freakiness was perfect as the haunting ghost of the mansion. And might I add that I will be youtubing him after I finish this review because I love jrock and haven't quite really heard him sing with the exception of the theme song to this movie and it was quite good.

Hyde


Narimiya Hiroki