Enormously entertaining, stylish, and cool 90s riff on 60s Japanese noir, with killer black and white cinematography. They do such a good job of recreating the look of something like BRANDED TO KILL or A COLT IS MY PORT that you start expecting Joe Shishido to show up, and then, briefly, he does!
I wish Yaguchi was better known in the west, he's so singular and kind of a genius. He makes these charming mainstream crowdpleaser comedies, and yet infuses them both with live-action Looney Toons energy and an elegant visual sense that makes me think of people like Tati. Plus, so many jokes come from creative camera placement or the reveal of new information on the edit -- stuff like that is almost completely absent in western comedies these days (not that…
How I imagine the producers pitched this to Villeneuve:
VILLENEUVE: I dunno, this seems sort of hopeful and uplifting. I prefer dark stories about serial killers and drug runners. I don't really see why you came to me, to be honest.
PRODUCERS: Did we mention there's a giant spider creature thing?
VILLENEUVE: I'M IN.
(This joke for the thirty people who saw ENEMY).
Pretty fucking great. Peele confirms he's got the goods. The UNBREAKABLE to GET OUT's 6th SENSE, this is a darker, less crowd-pleasing, weirder film than Peele's breakout. It's also scarier, funnier, and in many ways better, stuffed to the brim with memorable nightmare imagery. Plus, it has the benefit of a showstopping performance from Lupita Nyong'o -- the best horror lead performance since Toni Collette in HEREDITARY.
It's true that the ideas aren't as cleanly presented as they were in…
