lateen

A great slow movie about a guy coming back to his hometown and reflecting on what’s changed. I feel like most of the mainland China films I’ve seen are all very similar in pacing. Which is nice, I enjoy slow movies. I think this movie would make a great diptych with Taipei Story since they both have a guy coming back to a changed place.

This also continues the same theme I talked about in my Eva 3.0+1.0 log of not being able to change who you are, which I see a lot in East Asian movies. Maybe I should keep a tally of when I see it.

Much more drama focused compared to Itami’s previous 2 films. I found the style more subtle and was more so found in the editing. Its a little disappointing since I did go in with the expectation that things were going to be similar to The Funeral or Tampopo, but that expectation was entirely manufactured by me so I really shouldn’t.

Knowing the prestige of Katsuhiro Otomo this was a little disappointing. The premise of a yakuza man getting mad at tenants that don’t understand him is good and funny, but I don’t feel like it was worked through very well. He mostly does the same stuff, just waiting on the tenants to react. I think it would’ve worked better for him to try weirder things, and the tenants still not giving a shit. I found it kinda slow to a fault, I felt like nothing was happening for half the movie and I didn’t really feel like the movie was taking advantage of that well enough. The ending was cute though.

Lots of really annoying Hollywood-isms. Random quips that come out of no where, adding nothing. The first ~20 minutes could’ve easily been cut, its entirely exposition and is all reexplained later. There will be these brief 1-second flashbacks to something that was already shown in the movie, which I find pretty insulting. I didn’t fall asleep you don’t need to add a blinking red sign to say THIS IS THE PART WHERE THIS THING PAYS OFF.

Before watching this I would’ve answered yes to the question “Do you consider yourself a movie guy?”. But after watching and thinking a bit I don’t think I would. If I were to have watched every theatrically screened movie ever, I would most definitely dislike more movies than like. I’d think a ‘movie guy’ would end up liking significantly more than me. My definition has changed from “a movie guy is a person who likes movies” to “a movie guy is a person who likes movies for the sake of them being movies”. I think a lot of the ‘great’ American directors that talk about how much they “want to create a great film experience” are just making movies for the sake of being movies. I feel like that’s soulless. I want to watch a movie made for the sake of being art.

Normally when I watch a movie that is similar to another I’m not all that bothered. Assuming it was by different filmmakers. When a director makes a movie, then basically makes the same movie again I feel sort of let down which is how I feel with Unlucky Monkey. Its very similar to Dangan Runner, although a little more refined in style, but also more basic. The other SABU movies I’ve seen all have lots of similarities, but they all do something different that doesn’t make me feel swindled.

Also one of the actors is literally Giancarlo Esposito but Japanese

In my log for Taipei Story I mentioned how the movie continues the theme I don’t see in a lot of Western media of homesickness for adolescence. Sure, there’s Western coming-of-age stories that end with a “After we all go to college will we still visit during summer?”, but there’s something more to it that I couldn’t really put my finger on with East Asian media. Now, after watching 5 more months of movies I think I have a better idea of it.

It isn’t really a homesickness for older times, I think its deeper than that. I get the feeling that the East Asian outlook on things is that after awhile you get sort of /stuck/ at some point, and you can’t really change as a person, almost to a painful degree. That point is usually somewhere at the end of adolescence. When you’re a kid you get to do whatever, trying to experience all that life has to offer before you become a boring adult with a job, with a personality that reflects what you experienced as a kid.

Different East Asian media explore this very differently, too. Taipei Story was about people reconnecting, realizing they’re different people now. In the Heat of the Sun was about kids being as carefree as they could, to their detriment. Tampopo was a bit different, having a man who messed something up once and didn’t believe he could try it again. Gundam, Ideon, and Dougram (and MANY other mecha shows, I’m sure) all have kids have their innocence stolen from them by war.

Evangelion however, takes a different approach. Yes, you may believe that you can’t change who you are and you may be happy with it, but you CAN change. It’s painful, and you may end up destroying the majority of the world’s population, but you CAN do it. Evangelion has a more ‘complete’ picture of this pain, but that doesn’t mean its approach is better or anything, it’s simply a different approach.

Evangelion of course isn’t the only story that I’ve seen use this approach. Ping Pong the Animation is also very similar, for example. While I’m writing this I’ve just thought of the only piece of Western media that I think gets close to what I’ve been talking about: season 1 of True Detective. I’m not sure to what degree though, I’d have to rewatch it.

After I’ve experience certain media, I get a sort of pause after watching it. Very few things I’ve read or watched do this, but Evangelion is one of them. The only thing that I experience that is similar is when I’ve been hanging out with friends for a long time, then the day after I’ll feel a similar pause. The only way I think I can describe it is a certain melancholy, its very reflective. I’m not really evaluating the movie at all during this pause, and I’m not even really evaluating myself or the movies affect on me. I’m just letting the movie sit with me in a way that’s more profound than other movies normally would.

I have other thoughts more specific to the movie itself, but I don’t feel its right to write about it. I feel like it wouldn’t work well with the previous paragraph.

With Shark Skin Man, the characters were up front from the beginning about being themselves. But with this movie things take a bit longer, and the characters have to keep interacting with each other to reveal more of their… ahem… character. I feel like I keep comparing Katsuhito Ishii’s stuff to Shark Skin Man a little too much, but I think its fine considering how much of his stuff I’ve seen and how stylistically written it was. Despite that difference Party 7 still manages to have Ishii’s character writing I’m finding myself enamored with.

The opening animation hit me like a freight train, making me baffled by what was going to happen for the next 90 minutes. Despite taking place in basically two (2) rooms, I still think the movie delivered on what the opening showed. I enjoyed the weird comedy and people getting angry at each other for the smallest things, and I thought the ending was cute.

The first time I watched this was in my freshmen year of college. Stuck with a roommate I hated, movies were one of my few respites. On Fridays he would go out drinking and other frat bs, which meant I had a pretty consistent quiet ~5 hours to myself every week. I didn’t really know what to expect other than stop-motion animation so I was awestruck by the beautifully disgusting world unfolding before me.

When I went to watch this again, I was in a very bad point emotionally feeling like I didn’t have I place to call home. I didn’t want to watch something comforting or normal, it would feel patronizing. I knew I felt like shit, and was only going to feel like shit for the foreseeable future, so the only thing that felt appropriate was something grotesque. Instead of continuing to feel like shit, watching MAD GOD comforted me and I felt better. Looking back to when I first watched this, I remember feeling a similar sense of comfort, but I probably didn’t realize it since I was also happy to not have to listen to my roommate. I still don’t know why this movie is comforting, it isn’t exactly cathartic, it’s different from that. I might never know, and I’m ok with that.

A lot of directorial debuts will either be pretty safe, or end up feeling stylistically unrefined, this movie didn’t feel that safe, but SABU still managed to pull off the style. Its not as bonkers as what SABU would do with Monday, but it still feels like a SABU film. I’m also noticing a pattern that SABU likes dead characters continuing to be relevant to the story. It’s cool that it’s so prevalent through what I’ve watched of his. The plot is very much intentionally driven by coincidence, but I didn’t feel like it happened too much to be annoying.

An annoying thing about SABU’s work is that so few of them have modern releases. Your choices are either: bad DVD rip, or (sometimes) terrible web quality streaming. I would pay an arm and a leg to get Blu-ray releases of this stuff, but the demons (Netflix) that have ruined movies don’t want me to.

Its very slow to start with the fan-service for the Yamato, which I didn’t like all that much. In the first Star Trek movie they did a similar thing, but there they did some closeups of the Enterprise, showing it off in ways you wouldn’t have seen in the show. But with Yamato I didn’t feel they made effective use of it, it just felt like stuff I’d seen before.

The crew solves basically every problem with the Wave Motion Gun, which is opposite of the show— where they fire it like three (3) times. The crew seems to magically know what the next option is most of the time, which gets a little annoying. You’re in an alien spaceship, how do you know this room is the power core without asking the robot that DOES magically know everything?

Its 2 ¹⁄₂ hours long, which is pretty crazy for anime standards, but it really should’ve been trimmed down. I would’ve rather the time spent making an extra hour be put into making the plot less shakey. I saw online that the reason they made the 2nd TV show was due to a disliking of the ending, but I actually kinda liked it. Overall its really not that great, but its fun to root for the Yamato.

Something interesting I’ve heard about Leiji’s works is that the stories get repeated over and over, which is considered a feature. Story-wise this movie is very similar to the original show, but it does enough new that I don’t feel like I’ve already seen it. I’ll be excited to go through Leiji’s next stories.

INVOKED ESSENTIALISM: https://lateen.org/txt/movie/2026-06-05/

The original show had these pretty weird concepts for how the science fiction stuff worked, which they would explain with the characters slowly figuring things out, but it never felt too overbearing. Like they would theorize why a certain thing happened but they would move on pretty quickly—probably due to the 22 minute run time. But with a full 90 minutes to explore everything, I feel they ended up explain a little too much. Let me fill in the gaps!

The show would occasionally have episodes with some pretty gorey moments, but this movie has lots throughout.

INVOKED ESSENTIALISM: https://lateen.org/txt/movie/2026-06-05/

Just like with my Eva 1.0 rewatch log I also took forever to write this. This time I’m not exactly sure why. With the previous one I hadn’t committed to writing a log for every movie, but with this the only thing I can think of is that I’ve been stressed out lately. Because of that I’ll do a much more boring log and not get too deep.

With this movie they still follow the general arc of the show but they deviate enough from it making it more interesting than what 1.0 did. Shinji is as a character is much more active and actually gets stuff done (which will work well for him I’m sure). This felt much more overt with its theming, almost reaching Hollywood levels—but it didn’t get insulting (like with Hollywood). The ending felt a little forced at times much like the ending to this movie l

Again like Trava, cool sci-fi concepts and great characters, I feel like all of them could have their own movies. If you like anime you just will like this movie. 7 years of production made some of the most beautiful hand-drawn animation I’ve ever seen.

When I look at people’s reviews of this I see them complaining about the writing saying the characters are shallow. Huh? Did I watch the same movie? I really should stop reading reviews, especially for anime.

ANIME EXTRAVAGANZA: https://lateen.org/txt/movie/2026-05-23

I’ve committed a grave sin by watching this. My big plan is to watch Gundam (and anime as a whole) in (mostly) release order. So far I’ve only seen the original 1979 Gundam, so by jumping ahead 43 years I’ve already broken that rule. There was a couple things that referenced stuff in the franchise’s 4 decades of history, but I wanted to give a good show for my friends and introduce Gundam so I can subject them to more movies if I want to.

Compared to the episode the plot was much more ‘epic’ which is to be expected, its a movie. The new content not found in the show felt very non-obtrusive. The warships (water, not space) and new mobile suits felt pretty in character for the original show, so it was nice they didn’t inject any crazy new stuff.

Amuro’s voice actor sounds exactly the same as from the show, despite it being >40 years. I liked the contrast between Amuro living on the island to the Zeons doing their murder shenanigans. There was lots of fan service when the Gundam finally got into action, it was bordering on too much but I thought it was fine since Amuro had been going so long without the Gundam.

I really don’t get why they added Sleggar to the movie. I don’t think he was introduced at that point in the series, but I can get over that. Plot-wise he doesn’t really add anything that can’t be fulfilled by other characters, so it just felt like they added him in because he was a character people wanted to see again. Kai was much more silly than I remember him being in the show, but I fucking hate Kai and I want him to rot in hell so I don’t care.

Something I didn’t really like about the film was how at the end for the big battle they just add a couple antics with the children and people no longer fighting, that felt too disruptive and dare I say makes for… bad pacing? (audible gasp). I said it. I said the thing. I’ve never really liked when people mention pacing in talking about movies. I feel like they don’t understand what it means. When I watch a movie that I thought had fine pacing, and I hear someone say it had bad pacing I get very skeptical. A lot of times I feel like when people mention bad pacing they just mean they got bored when watching the movie, and at that point I don’t care about their opinion. Either stop looking at your phone so much or reevaluate your relationship with art, you’ll probably enjoy things more.

After the children’s shenanigans they just… walk over to see the Gundam fight the Zeon, which I don’t think makes much sense.

ANIME EXTRAVAGANZA: https://lateen.org/txt/movie/2026-05-23

A kinda average story that’s elevated by some amazing characters. I feel like every character in this could have their own movie, that’s how great they are. However, the only character that felt pretty flat was the main guy, he just feels like a normal yakuza character. Which sucks… cause he’s the main character. Has that WOAH WE’RE IN THE 90s/00s feel, but its kinda toned down which is nice.

There are some random abstract stuff thrown around that felt very… raw? Its Katsuhito Ishii’s 2nd movie so I’ll give him a break. Maybe it’ll make more sense as I watch more of his stuff and get a better feel for his style.

When I was first introduced to Tampopo, I was asking for movie recommendations so I looked it up and saw that it was listed as a comedy. I mentioned to the person who recommended it that I wasn’t really in the mood for a comedy, but they said it isn’t really a comedy. It’s about food. After watching it I wouldn’t agree that it’s ABOUT food, I’d say it was about humanity, told through the pseudo-genre of food.

I would say a similar thing for this movie. It’s listed as a comedy, but it isn’t one. It’s about a funeral. Err.. I mean.. It’s about humanity, told through the pseudo-genre of funerals.

It’s quite Japanese and I feel like there were some things that I missed from not knowing the culture. It’s not as overt as Tampopo—there’s no funeral equivalent of having sex involved with food—but it still has the Juzo Itami flavor I fell in love with.

Such a ridiculously good movie. I couldn’t stop smiling while watching it. Not just because of the enthusiasm of Goro and the Gang helping out Tampopo, but from the all the stories showing the beauty of the human connection. I want to be surrounded by people who are this genuine, and be able to reciprocate. If you walked up to me, and told me that by some magical coincidoink that the next movie that I watched would be my last, and I didn’t get to watch another for the rest of my life, I would choose this movie. I don’t think I could’ve written this log when I first watched it. So I’m glad I’ve grown to the point where I’m comfortable talking about this.

For a thriller movie its good to make sure the viewer doesn’t exactly know where you’re gonna go next. This movie does that fine, but I felt like it kind of left behind the opening premise of the movie in the process. Did the first half of the movie really matter plot wise? It matters for the characters of course, but it feels like an afterthought. This could be intentional, with the movie using it to say that the character doesn’t care about what happened anymore, but like… that’s too wasteful.

Its a Park Chan-wook movie so of course its got good editing, cinematography, the whole 27 feet.

Absurdly violent with real animal cruelty. Its no wonder this got banned and had to be recut. But after stomaching that, the movie will go from the quality you’d expect from a Hong Kong New Wave film, to bordering on b-movie level plot intermittently. It was pretty succinct with its messaging, but then it did a “ok we’re going to repeat that just to make sure you understand what we’re saying” kind of ending, which was a little annoying.

I usually get some ice cream at the half-way point in a movie, but after the first 10 minutes I decided not to. I’m glad I did.