Saw
"Nobody Knows" (Dare mo shiranai) early Saturday evening. Hirokazu Koreeda is gaining a reputation on the art house circuit - saw his
" After Life" (Wandafuru raifu) a couple of years ago , but IMHO the guy is a stiff - strong for about thirty minutes, and then , in both films he just holds the story in almost suspended animation - s-l-o-w, so fackin slow - with nothing new happening . . most reviewers loved both of these films - but I was fighting to stay awake.
The new film,
Nobody Knows, is about four little kids in Tokyo who are abandoned by their mother. Trust me, hilarity does not ensue, nor does much of anything else . . i love Japanese culture, but this film had me yawning most of the time.
The earlier film,
Afterlife, was about preparing dead people for the repetitive nature of eternity - in other words - there is a warehouse dormintory full of very ordinary folk who are dead and waiting to be assigned the best moment of their life, to be repeated over and over for eternity - not half as interesting as it sounds.
The past few, well considered and chosen movies I've gone to see have been mostly disappointing - the only really wonderful film I've seen for a while is
"Sideways" - Paul Giamatti is an amazing character actor - maybe you caught him in
American Splendor (2003) as Harvey Pekar -
Sideways had better win an Oscar
See it if you haven't already. Cheers!
