Touches You

Simply A Masterpiece

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

TAKESHIS' I have been thinking about what exactly the apostrophe in the title is doing.An apostrophe is used to indicate the omission of a letter or letters from a word, the possessive case, or the plurals of numbers, letters, and abbreviations. To have a plural of "Takeshi", you just add an "s". To show that Takeshi owns something, you would simply write "Takeshi's thing". Therefore, the title "Takeshis'" would be the possessive of the plural "Takeshis".Perhaps the title isn't (incorrectly) denoting a plural, but actually means that this film belongs to "more than one Takeshi"? It belongs to all of Takeshi's personas, and characters. It COULD just be another example of misuse of the poor apostrophe, but maybe Takeshi studied hard at school, and has dedicated this self-parody to himself, and his own multiplicity.That being said, he reportably not all of the Takeshis are happy, as one was reportably quoted as saying: "Today I saw the film again and it's terrible. 'Who the hell made this?' I thought to myself. I set out to make a strange, groundbreaking film, and I think it succeeds, but it feels like I made a car that was so fast I couldn't drive it and fell out. If I win the Grand Prix, it must mean I'm nearing death, so I don't need it. This period is over. Next time I'm going to make an orthodox film in the style of the masters and then maybe I'll win." I think he was being too hard on himself (himselves?), but perhaps it never ends for an artists such as him (them?).OK, enough with the plural jokes, and they probably only amuse me anyway. I just finished watching the film. It had been sitting on my shelf for a while, and I needed to relax after a frustrating mêlée in Half-Life 2 (Nova Prospekt!). I had intentionally read as little as I could about this film beforehand, and I had almost no idea what to expect when the film began. However, I instantly knew that I was watching a Takeshi Kitano film - the unmistakable style of the director completely permeates this film. Besides, there was a big blue "K" at the start.This film is like some kind of flushing out of Kitano's creative musings. It is surreal and dreamlike, free form, and has some fantastic images and compositions. The film is almost totally devoid of complex narrative, and is instead experimental and perhaps introspective for the director. Perhaps this is what his dreams are like, and if he means what he said above, maybe this film is the end of an era - the final digestive process before moving on to the next creative banquet.I truly respect Kitano for his bold creativity in film. He seems to attack it as he does his painting. He creates for himself, and I am sure whatever his next project is, it will be unmistakably his own.

As almost every fan of Kitano Takeshi knows when the noted actor/director/writer stars in a film he uses his stage name Beat Takeshi from his days of manzai performance with his partner Beat Kiyoshi, hence The Two Beats, and when he directs he goes by his full name Kitano Takeshi. In his book Beat Takeshi vs. Takeshi Kitano Casio Abe states that Beat Takeshi and Kitano Takeshi are two distinct personalities of the same being. Beat Takeshi is the persona Kitano uses for vacuous television entertainment for a mass audience while Kitano Takeshi is a creator obsessed with death, especially his own, as can be seen in his films in which his character commits suicide. While Dolls is often considered his most ostentatious and self-indulgent films, Takeshis' might soon take its take in the minds of critics because obviously, as the title suggests, the film entirely focuses on the miasma created by the bifurcated personality of Kitano.The film opens with Beat Takeshi losing a mahjong match to a yakuza boss who asks Beat Takeshi to put his son in one of his films. As he exits the building, a woman, Kishimoto Kayako who played Beat Takeshi's wife in Kikujiro and Hanabi, who works for the yakuza tosses a glass of water on him demanding that he pay back the money he owes her. Bemused by this situation, Beat Takeshi and his girlfriend, Kyono Kotomi, and manager, Osugi Ren, make their way to a television studio where Beat is working on another yakuza film set in Okinawa. (Sonatine anyone?) He bemoans the life of being an actor: the same thing day after day and receiving flowers at the end of a shoot. However, this day he meets a man in clown makeup who bears a striking resemblance to himself. A struggling actor named Kitano with beach bottle blond hair. Of course Kitano is a big fan of Beat's work and asks Beat for an autograph. It is at this point that the film starts to become a bit odd.As Kitano, not Beat Takeshi, makes his way home, a girl, who adores Beat Takeshi, gives him a gift thinking that he is Beat. Kitano then encounters Beat's girlfriend who is instead now his loose neighbor instead of a sharply dressed woman and a yakuza, Terajima Susumu, who had played his fellow clown in the studio. The bizarreness continues with the yakuza boss and his son being the patrons of a noodle shop and Osugi Ren being a cab driver. I'm not even touching on some scenes which include "The Hard Laborer's Song" performed by the female Miwa Akihiro who appeared in the Mishima Yukio Fukasaku Kinji film Black Lizard in 1965.It seems that with this film Kitano is trying to split his personality once again. While already the distinct personalities of Beat Takeshi and Kitano Takeshi, it seems that he is trying to split off from his stereotype as a director of yakuza films. Sonatine and Hanabi are both victims of Kitano's sardonic wit and while there are some scenes more outlandish than those that appear in Getting Any?, they have more of a frightening effect than a humorous one. While I found this film to be entertaining overall, the bizarreness of it was almost too much at some points. However, one could also take this as a sign that this films requires repeated viewings. Definitely one for Kitano fans, but for those who have yet to view a Kitano film, this is probably the worst place to start.

The story's simple enough. Two men, both called Takeshi, live in Tokyo. One is a well-known actor and one is an actor-wannabe who works in a convenience store. The two Takeshis are being played by the director of the movie Takeshi Kitano. It may sound a bit like "Being John Malcovich" but goes far beyond that.Sure, the movie isn't for everyone but it's definitely interesting and at parts very visual and imaginative. It's without any doubt the most extreme Meta-movie I ever seen. When a movie has many layers you usually describe it as a "deep" movie. Takeshis has an enormous amount of layers but most of them are paper thin, if not shallow. In the beginning you try to keep track of whether you're watching a dream or one of the two Takeshis reality. It turns out to be a futile task, especially after one caterpillar-scene too many (You'll know it when you see it). Do remember that this is not "Memento". It's not really meant to make sense. OK, I've always been allergic to the popular urge to over-explain everything in movies but Takeshis might be a bit too far in the other extreme. A heady cocktail of randomness and logical short circuits but not more than most people experience under a good nights sleep, which is what this movie is all about. Dreams and dreams within dreams. Please, watch Takeshis with an open mind. You either regard it as an aged directors milestone after a long and creative odyssey of ups and downs, much like Fellinis "8 ½", or you can look at it as an overstressed actors brain fart after too many crazy TV-shows and gangster movies. It's a bumpy ride, it may be a bit too long, weird and garish but you might have a few laughs and at least you have something to talk about afterward. A bit like a theme-park then, isn't it?

I wasn't too keen on this film. While the overall plot is intriguing, with the 'real' Takeshi Kitano contrasting a 'look-alike' Takeshi Kitano with some interesting plot points, sequences and a story that is actually well-acted and entertaining, the style of this film took me for a loop.Some sequences became fantasy sequences, but this wasn't realized until after the fact. Hence, this left me second guessing the truthfullness of the narrative as I was watching. The second guessing feeling, I think, held me back from fully engrossing myself in this as I started to question the story-teller and what I was seeing on the screen. When the movie ended, while the majority of these jumps in time or possibility were explained, I still had some uncertainty about what had actually happened. This feeling of not really knowing what I saw left me feeling very uncertain, and slightly confused. Somehow, I prefer movies that are relatively straightforward -- at least by the end of the story.On the plus side, strong acting overall which viewers will find enjoyable. Seeing one actor play two strongly contrasting characters so well is indeed rewarding in itself. For that alone, I would recommend checking this out.