Perfectly adorable
... View Moreone of my absolute favorites!
... View MoreExcellent, a Must See
... View MoreExcellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.
... View MoreThe box bills TOKYO ZOMBIE as the Japanese SHAUN OF THE DEAD, but sadly that turns out not to be the case. This is a very low budget, entirely offbeat Japanese comedy, that's more interested in the sport of jujitsu than actual zombies. In fact, the zombies themselves turn out to be a mere plot device, a background for the central storyline which is about the friendship between two demented buddies.It starts off on a fairly good footing, reminding you of some of the classic Japanese zombie films like JUNK and VERSUS, which all seemed to be filled with loads of chaotic energy and incident. Sadly, as the storyline progresses at a very slow pace indeed, you realise that TOKYO ZOMBIE just doesn't know what kind of film it wants to be. The zombies are dull and the storyline is silly, going nowhere and offering little of the surreal humour I'd expected to see.It all falls apart for me around the halfway mark, where there's a gap of five years, because the second half just isn't as interesting as the first. The whole idea of the satirical gameshow is just a flop from the beginning and the film concludes with a whimper rather than a bang. The characters are an acquired taste to say the least and the production values are low; I usually like offbeat Japanese fare but not this time. I didn't laugh once.
... View More"Tokyo Zombie" is exactly what you would expect from a zombie movie from Japan; being cheesy, Japanese people painted ashen-gray, and an overall exaggeration of everything.The story in "Tokyo Zombie" was actually alright. We follow the two very odd, both in appearance and personality, friends Fujio (played by Tadanobu Asano) and Mitsuo (played by Shô Aikawa), working at a fire-extinguisher factory. The people of Tokyo are burying their trash and their dead at Black Fuji, a black mountain of garbage. Toxic waste starts to reanimate the dead buried there, and the zombies start shambling stiffly about, looking for human flesh to devour. And soon after, Tokyo is in a lot of trouble...The acting in this movie was as you'd expect, adequate and silly. Lots of overacting here and the zombies were just hilarious. You need to approach this movie with no sense of an actual serious zombie movie. This is a zombie comedy spoof, and it have so many elements that seen to be making fun of a lot of Romero's movies. So think of a Japanese version of an extreme version of "Shaun of the Dead", then you will have a rough idea of what "Tokyo Zombie" is like."Tokyo Zombie" is extreme in so many ways, but it works out well enough, because it is extreme in a hilarious way. I believe that "Tokyo Zombie" is either a movie that you will love or hate, I don't see any in-between here. I found "Tokyo Zombie" to be a fun movie to watch, it was a nice spoof of a zombie movie, in the way that only the Japanese can manage to bolster up.
... View MoreTwo Japanese friends accidentally kill their boss and dump his remains in Black Fuji, a mountain/landfill hybrid. This leads to poor results when the chemicals of the landfill mix with the corpse (and many other corpses) to give rise to a zombie infestation in Tokyo.This is a pretty bizarre film. Two men fight zombies with jujitsu. Not swords, not guns, but face-smashing jujitsu. One of them has a 'fro haircut while the other is bald. It's just an odd pairing. The film has been called the Japanese "Shaun of the Dead". I see it. I think it's a stretch, but I see it. Comparisons to other recent Japanese films, such as "Machine Girl", seem more appropriate -- there's a similar style of dark humor and violence coupled with cheesy CGI.There's also an attempt to connect this to "Ichi the Killer". Don't be fooled by that. "Ichi", along with essentially all the work of Miike, is better than this film. "Q", "Audition", and others just put "Tokyo Zombie" to shame. Perhaps it has the same writer, but the fact this film was based off a manga is evident and infuses a humor that doesn't play as well in live action.This film's biggest flaw is a lack of zombies. Sure, we have plenty of zombies, but there still seems to be a shortage -- there are periods of up to ten minutes without zombie action. These scenes are often filled with sentimental blather. Maybe in the original language this comes off better, but I had little interest in hearing people talk sentimentally to each other.Typically I watch films while drinking, but due to a cold I was not drinking during this one. That is unfortunate. While this movie was above average, it would have been even better with alcohol. The humor is lame at some points, and is either a cultural thing or just plain dumb. I'm uncertain. But all I know is that parts that were clearly meant to be funny fell flat for me.If you like "Machine Girl", I'd say give this one a chance. Perhaps even if you liked "Shaun of the Dead", though the connection is slight. A double feature with this film and a stronger Japanese film, such as "Battle Royale", would make for a good evening. Show this one first, of course. It's decent but by no means a headliner.
... View MoreFrom the first minute to the end of the credits, this movie is a zombie movie lover's fantasy. Imagine crossing Shaun of the Dead and Kung Fu Hustle and you'll have a small idea of what kind of movie you're in for when you watch Tokyo Zombie.I scour the world of film to find movies that stand out to me as being worthy of owning. I'm very picky when it comes to movies, and I've seen many films that fall into the "zombie" category which end up being nothing short of wasted time in my life once I reach the ending. I am a fan of Shaun of the Dead simply because it not only is a comedy, but it mocks the entire genre of horror movies and zombie flicks. Tokyo Zombie is much the same in the way that you try to open your mind to it and wonder how long it will be before you can accept it's another zombie movie, before you realize that you're laughing hysterically aloud at flying heads and spurting blood.Don't think that you've EVER seen effects like these before. The movie opens to two men practicing Ju-Jitsu, one of them, Micchan (whom believes he has cancer after he forces his doctor to tell him that's what it is after the doc insists it's just a stomach ulcer) and he dedicates his life to helping his friend, Fujio, learn Ju-Jitsu, so once zombies start sprouting from the graves, why not practice on them?The two men accidentally kill their boss, Ujimoto, and decide to bury his body on Black Fuji, a big mountain of ash which there are apparently hundreds of people burying things from satellite dishes to refrigerators to, in a funny scene, the mother of a wimp-like guy who's up to her head and yelling at the young guy's girl who is threatening him with loss of sex if he doesn't bury his mom, but well she's up to her head in the ash and the girl gets tired of hearing this woman's rantings so she punts the woman's head and it flies off the mountain at about 50 miles per hour screaming at her son "Darrrliiinnnnnggggggg!!!!" in Japanese as it flies off to the horizon. I pretty much lost it at that point, laughing hysterically at the comedy of it all. Usually in a movie like this you'll get a 5-10 min break before there's more humor, but no, they keep it going with a school teacher burying the body of one of his male students who he had killed while apparently spanking in school... Well, he was also the teacher of Fujio, and he'd spanked him quite a bit before in the past so Fujio goes down to him and beats the crap out of him with a shovel, and it's pretty funny how he does it. The teacher, you'd think, dies then, but no he gets up a few minutes later to find his pants missing, but is happy to see a young woman come out of the ground who's eyeing his exposed penis with a hungry smile, so he decides to let her enjoy it, and she does, with zombie-like abandon... Immediately following this, the two Ju-Jitsu buddies drive over the wandering body of the boy who's mother's head was booted off into the sunset because they're arguing as to whether or not the teacher had his way with Fujio in the past or not.All of this happens within the first 15 minutes of the movie, well by 14 minutes and 11 seconds to be exact. The movie's script is well done, the acting is quite nice, the graphics and especially the zombies are very well done. I, personally, will end up recommending this movie to many of my friends, and I'm sure that it will become one of my new favorites in not only Asian cinema, but also in the realm of true horror-comedy.If you have the chance to see this movie, don't pass on it, I'm sure you'll enjoy watching it, none of the scenes are over-the-top, and none of the acting seems forced. It's a well-balanced flick which I will keep in my mind's database of A+ movies and I'm sure I'll reference it whenever I try to explain how some Asian movies are well worth watching.I hope this review and my comments have helped you make your decision about this movie.
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