Day: July 26, 2013

LFM Reviews Bushido Man @ The 2013 Fantasia International Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Toramaru is like the Anthony Bourdain of martial arts. Before challenging a rival, he first eats what they eat. There is some wisdom to that approach, but there is considerably more mayhem to be found in Takanori Tsujimoto’s Bushido Man, which screens tomorrow during the 2013 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Gensai, the sensei of the Cosmic Way school of holistic martial arts, has sent his number one student forth into the world to challenge seven specialized masters and hopefully claim their ancient scrolls of secret wisdom. Things must have gone relatively well, since Toramaru has returned to tell his tales to his appreciative teacher. Based on the details of his prep meal, Gensai is able to guess the identity of the master to be challenged.

While Bushido probably cost less to produce than dinner for one at Nobu, action director Kensuke Sonomura stages some epic mano-a-mano showdowns. Sonomura himself starts things off briskly as Yuan Jian, the Chinese kung fu master and Kazuki Tsujimoto makes quite a memorable Zatōichi surrogate as the blind swordsman Muso. Yet the honor-stoked adrenaline reaches its purest, highest point when Masanori Mimoto appears as Eiji Mimoto, the Yakuza dagger master. To his credit, Tsujimoto also has a good sense of fair play, allowing Miki Mizuno to rack up an impressive body count as the pragmatic arms-dealing femme fatale, M.

From "Bushido Man."

Bushido is all about fighting, periodically taking timeout for some goofball humor. If you’re looking for narrative logic here, just don’t. In one scene, Toramaru strolls through the sunny streets of contemporary Tokyo, yet the next moment he is trudging through the scarred wasteland of a post-apocalyptic Yokohama. It does really matter, though. Everything in Bushido is there to facilitate the food and fighting.

Held together by Mitsuki Koga’s action cred and straight man persona, Bushido Man delivers the goods for martial arts-samurai-yakuza movie fans. It nicely demonstrates how a scrappy low budget action production can overcome its budget constraints with energy and a clever concept. Recommended for established genre fans, it screens tomorrow (7/27) at the Imperial Theatre as part of this year’s Fantasia Festival in Montreal.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on July 26th, 2013 at 12:41pm.

LFM Reviews After School Midnighters @ The 2013 Fantasia International Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. The Scooby gang has nothing on these three little girls. They will absolutely terrorize the supernatural beings haunting St. Claire’s Academy. Sugar & Spice massively trumps the things that go bump in the night throughout Hitoshi Takekiyo’s animated feature After School Midnighters, which screens tomorrow as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

While touring their prospective new elementary school, Mako, Miko, and Mitsuko take a detour into the soon to be dismantled science room, where they basically have at the poor visible anatomy dummy. However, after night falls, the uncanny dummy stalks the halls of St. Claire’s as the fearsome Louis Thomas Jerome Kunstlijk.

Rather put out by the treatment he received from the terrible trio, Kunstlijk sends out a pack of gun-toting Mafioso rabbits to lure the girls back to St. Claire’s. Of course, both he and the bunnies will get more than they bargained for.

Despite Kunstlijk’s efforts to scare the willies out of them, the innocent motor-mouthed Mako and the entitled elitist Miko are too absorbed in their own little worlds to fully appreciate the situation, whereas Mitsuko, the goth girl, is basically down with it all. The girls are so unfazed, Kunstlijk’s skeleton crony, “Goth,” tries to recruit them for a supernatural scheme to save the science lab, sending them careening about St. Claire’s like pinballs. Nevertheless, Kunstlijk still has a hard time letting things go.

Midnighters is so off the charts frenetic, it must be the product of a creative team consuming nothing but Red Bulls and Pixie Stix. Sure, there is plenty of “girl power” in Midnighters, like the Power Puff Girls hopped up on amphetamines. Frankly, by computer animation standards, Takekiyo’s characters have quite a bit of personality. Yet it is hard to judge how appropriate the film is for younger viewers. Many of the supernatural elements are surprisingly sinister looking, but they only make the three girls giggle with glee.

Chocked full of goofy humor and strange little macabre details, there is never a quiet moment in Midnighters. You really have to admire the sheer manic inspiration of Takekiyo and screenwriter Yōichi Komori. Beyond breakneck, their hyper pacing allows no time for logic to ever kick in. Recommended for anyone up for a cheerful descent into bedlam, After School Midnighters screens this Saturday (7/27) at the Imperial Theatre as the 2013 Fantasia Festival continues in Montreal.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on July 26th, 2013 at 12:39pm.