Brilliant and touching

Absolutely the worst movie.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

If you're old enough to remember this movie, you'll recall the wild thrill we all felt when it exploded onto cinema screens in a riotous burst of muted tones, squirting blood, and cute Japanese schoolgirls in short-skirted uniforms.The year is 2xxx. The Japanese government is fed up with young people and their bullshit. A new policy is implemented to address the problems exacerbated by these irresponsible little scrotes, and it receives universal public support. The rules are simple: 42 kids enter, only one kid leaves. Some social commentators have argued that the same policy could be used to address the plague of parasitic, self-entitled millennials that currently blights Western society. I, for one, would strongly favour such a proposal.This entire film is carried on the broad shoulders of Takeshi Kitano, a hardboiled movie veteran who needs no introduction here. If you enjoy him in Battle Royale, you'll love him even more in the Autoreiji trilogy (go and watch it right now!)I rate Battle Royale: Extended Version at 23.31 on the Haglee Scale, which works out as a blood-soaked 7/10 (with just a hint of sexy schoolgirl thighs) on IMDB.

A movie which many see as a predecessor to the hunger games, and proves to be an awesome film. Unlike The Hunger games, this movie feels real and the characters to me were a lot more relatable. The fact that they are just some random school kids in Japan that are going on a class trip, unknowingly being taken to a game of nightmares, makes it all the more shocking.I did not get what I expected. I thought it was gonna be an enjoyable, gory, japanese action movie. Never did I think that I'd feel as I did for the characters and be affected in such an emotional fashion. The blend between teenage drama, things like bullying & social roles and the realisation and action of what was happening makes it both exciting and hard to watch at the same time. One after one you get to know who they are, what they're doing and why. It's easy for people to remenisce to they're own high school days and imagine being put in a position like this with your own class. In many ways the idea in itself is shocking and disturbing enough for you to be compelled in a way that movies often don't achieve. Battle Royale is filled with great acting, awesome fight scenes and emotional moments. Every scene gives the perfect mix of teenage life, love and the shocking moments their dreams and futures get crushed.

There is one point which makes this movie valuable, which is that it first puts on screen the Battle Royale idea from the novel that has since reached huge popularity in both movies (Hunger Games) and computer games. The current world top selling on-line multiplayer game (PUBG) is a Battle Royale derivative. Point is, the points will go to the author of the novel, not the movie.I managed to finish this movie without calling it quits in the middle, which happens with many bad movies. But there was nothing there worth seeing. All the ideas are completely unrealistic, badly acted and badly directed soap opera cliches. The utter lack of realism is nauseating, which of course might satisfy a manga fan who would likely "artistically" appreciate the images and so on, but for me that sort of stuff is unreadable and pretentious waste of time and penny. I mean, if you are mentally 4 years old, you'd likely like this kind of stuff; it is a children's story but just in a violent setting. The other nauseating thing is the borrowing of every single cliche of a classical piece in movie history (like Bach's Air) and playing it loudly and constantly in the background. Yes, if you are hit with a stick long enough to lose any concept of sense of style or artistic taste, what will probably be left is like a first time experience of hearing these pieces that have been endlessly overused in every single exploitation piece of crap movie in the West for decades and decades.Then again, the movie eeriely reminded of Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, which is a similar unrealistic "commercial-like" depiction of a fascist reality where young men are drafted to a completely unrealistically violent war. This movie happens to be made 2 years before the publication of the novel. I recently tried to rewatch Starship Troopers but I couldn't, it is simply a nauseating, not because of the violence but because of it is trying to justify the lack of realism with an out-of-this-world story of a dystopian society that bears no realism to it. I dig so many dystopian movies, just not a dystopia where the government "punishes" random kids with random violence utilizing techniques from concentration camps. If there's something wrong in the Japanese society and this depiction hits on some contemporary social issue, I am sure this sort of unrealistic fantasy makes no effort to intellectually address it, and I believe exactly that is the point of indulging yourself into a fantasy instead of trying to actually be critical of your society.

A class are transported to an island and its then disclosed that they have to kill each other with the last person left standing the winner.Brutal (as you'd expect) but also witty, humane and strangely poignant in places. This film is brilliantly acted, directed with style and is beautiful to look. Murder and deception has never looked so good. In fact the 'killing for sport' theme reminded me of one of my favourite films, Turkey Shoot.And thats all I'm going to say. To say anything more would ruin the film completely. See it.