Takashi Miike

[astrozombie]

What's everyone's thoughts on Takashi Miike (director of Audition, Ichi the Killer, 13 Assassins, Happiness of the Katakuris etc.) here? I have been going through my DVD collection lately and have been rewatching all of my DVDs of his.

Amongst them were "Full Metal Yakuza", an amazing straight-to-video cheapie about a cowardly yakuza member who is gunned down, taken to a lab and made into a cyborg, giving him Robocop-esque strengths and abilities (though alot more entertaining here). This leads him onto a very violent path of revenge.

"Fudoh: The New Generation", I have seen quite alot of Takashi Miike films, about twenty odd (he's directed 90 films since 1991), I find this to be my favourite. Very fun action-packed yakuza movie about a young yakuza street gang consisting of Japanese high school students. The typical tales of betrayal, revenge, bloodshed, however mixed with black humour and some unforgettable scenes including a man being assassinated via a dart shot from a strippers fanny.

Other ones I watched were "Ichi the Killer", a classic everyone has seen, "Shinjuku Triad Society", a brilliant cop vs. yakuza movie, "Rainy Dog" amazing western style yakuza movie, second part of the Black Society Trilogy, "Bird People of China", an incredible drama film, very different to usual style, one of the best road movies I've ever seen.

I think that here we should discuss the films and more importantly the lesser seen straight-to-video cheapies of Takashi Miike, 

[BlodwynPig]

I have enjoyed all of his stuff that I have seen, more or less - not seen any of the cheapo stuff though. i like the diversity and dark comedy aspects of the films (Audition even has its comic moments).

What are the cheapies like? Are they noticeably bad or do they still have the trademark Miike direction?

[Paaaaul]

Does he have distinct direction?
All his films have largely similar sensibilities, but I don't think I would know just from watching that, say, Happiness of The Katakuris was directed by the same guy who directed Audition.
I think he's a very flexible director who can change his style depending on the film in hand.

[BlodwynPig]

Does he have distinct direction?
All his films have largely similar sensibilities, but I don't think I would know just from watching that, say, Happiness of The Katakuris was directed by the same guy who directed Audition.
I think he's a very flexible director who can change his style depending on the film in hand.

Ah yes, I meant the humour/pathos - but you are right, they are distinct entities in themselves.

[Glebe]

The only Miike film I've seen is Zatoichi, which I enjoyed... he was wonderful in Battle Royale.

[Big Jack McBastard]

My brother is proper into him, as a result I've seen most of his stuff to date, quite quite mental and a wide variety of mentalness at that. Must remember to get hold of the his other titles as they're always well worth a watch.

[lipsink]

I've been meaning to get back into watching his stuff and I have the final Dead Or Alive film from Lovefilm at home waiting to be watched. My favourites were Gozu for how Lynch/Kafka-esque it is (but it also has Miike's distinct sense of insanity throughout), Visitor Q, and Happiness of the Katakuris. I also loved Full Metal Yakuza , Fudoh: The New Generation and his Masters Of Horror episode. And Ichi, Audition, DOA obviously. Oh, and his Three...Extremes segment 'Box' was right good too.

I remember not making it far through Sukiyaki Western Django and switching it off as it was a bit shit.

Will have to watch 13 Assassins as that seems to have got good reviews. Are Family and MPD Psycho worth watching, does anyone know?

[astrozombie]

Will have to watch 13 Assassins as that seems to have got good reviews. Are Family and MPD Psycho worth watching, does anyone know?

MPD Psycho is very good I thought. It isn't perfect but is still an entertaining body horror TV series, it's 6 episodes all 70 minutes long each.  Family is also good, quite slow but both volumes had a good build up to a crazy Miike ending, Family was a micro budget straight-to-video film made in 1994, so it's still him getting to grips with his style early on into his busy career.

And to answer BlodwynPig's question regarding what his straight-to-video cheapies are like, there are alot of gems in there such as "Fudoh: The New Generation", "Full Metal Yakuza", "Osaku Tough Guys", "Deadly Outlaw Rekka", "Blues Harp" etc. are all fantastic examples of his work for v-cinema.

Takashi Miike since 1991 has made about 90 films, he makes at least 5 or 6 films a year, in 1999 he directed 10. So of course you are going to get some dodgy ones, ones I never enjoyed were "Agitator" which I found to be quite dull, "Silver", a wrestling themed film which again was just too long-winded and a slog to get through, "Sukiyaki Western: Django", "Izo", "Andromedia" are also ones I was never too fond of.

[Obel]

The only Miike film I've seen is Zatoichi, which I enjoyed... he was wonderful in Battle Royale.

Not sure if this a joke.. but you're mixing up Miike with Takeshi Kitano

[alan nagsworth]

Dead Or Alive was pretty great, but Dead Or Alive 2 is absolutely sensational. It's no more heavy on the violence than any other thriller, and as per usual with Miike, one of the prevalent themes in the film is brotherly love, specifically the familial connection felt between two or more gang members. It slowly evolves from a standard crime drama into a very beautiful and meaningful story. I found it to be charming and very much rewatchable, definitely one of my favourites from Miike. Not seen the third one yet, though.

Miike is easily my favourite filmmaker. His methods and his endlessly subversive attitude are just so compelling to me. For instance, his use of CGI in films is great. He deliberately uses cheaper methods to exemplify the cheapness of CGI and creates something very comic book-esque out of it. Ichi The Killer is a key example, where Ichi slices that guy clean in half down the middle. It becomes the most grotesque slapstick imaginable and to the right kind of twisted mind, it's more amusing than it is disturbing. In the aforementioned DOA2, there's a scene where it's pissing it down with CGI rain and the actors aren't even wet. I loved that. He really doesn't seem to give a fuck, and never lets anything compromise his artistic vision. He puts out more films a year than anyone else around and they range from comedy to horror to drama to a blistering merge of all three and more.

I was never completely won over by The Happiness Of The Katakuris since I had already seen the Korean interpretation The Quiet Family (which really is wonderful, and I'd recommend it highly) but nearly much everything else I've seen by him has had a very positive impact on me. More popular nominations are Ichi The Killer, Visitor Q, Audition and the Dead Or Alive series.

Gozu is most likely the best 'shocking' title by Miike, in my opinion. The comedy moments are outrageous (in the opening scene, a Yakuza member who has lost his mind becomes paranoid that a dog outside the restaurant in which the gang has convened has been trained to kill Yakuza, so he walks outside and pummels the dog to death, much to the severe shock and dismay of his fellow gang members) and the sex and violence is some of the most well-orchestrated outside of being deliberately artistic in the way Audition is. The film is full of mystery and becomes increasingly profound as it goes on, until it reaches the extremely philosophical and altogether disturbing finale.

The Bird People In China, as I've said a few times here already, is an absolutely fucking brilliant film. Very much a straight-laced drama about the first/third world cultural divide with extremely little of the surreal antics of Miike's other work, it's sometimes humorous but mostly very deep and beautiful. The first time I saw it I honestly wept like a baby at the end. Sublime piece of work. I wrote an Amazon review on the film, actually, if anyone fancies a read: http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/RVHJD1Z8R2OQ7/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

Another really underrated title of his is the superhero flick Zebraman, with a lead role played by yer man Sho Aikawa from the Dead Or Alive films. Again, it's really not all that much of a violent film, instead focusing on a somewhat surreal and charming tale of a man who was obsessed with a shortlived superhero show as a child, and then goes on to realise that it's his destiny to become the real-life personification of his hero, to save the world before it's too late. He forms a lovely relationship with a child whom he finds is also one of the very few fans of the show, and the whole thing is just a heap of fun to watch. There was a sequel released two years back but I'm yet to see it.

Are Family and MPD Psycho worth watching, does anyone know?

I've got the MPD Psycho series on DVD and never got around to watching them all, but I saw the first two and didn't think it was all that bad. Can't really give you more of an assessment than that, sorry!

Did you really think his Masters Of Horror film was good? I fucking hated it, man. Another film eagerly touted to me by my boss 'if you like weird stuff and I know you like Miike' but honestly, I found it to be repellant. Deliberate attempts to shock the Western audience instead of actually being creative (the worst Asian American actors imaginable throwing fetuses in a river and getting bamboo rammed up their fingernails and pissing all over the floor)... I know the sort of shock horror Miike has to offer and to a casual observer, calling this film tasteless might seem hypocritical but it really just made me feel extremely sick without provoking any sort of lasting emotion whatsoever. Come on, Billy Drago, seriously? One of the worst performances I have ever seen!

[astrozombie]

I was never completely won over by The Happiness Of The Katakuris since I had already seen the Korean interpretation The Quiet Family (which really is wonderful, and I'd recommend it highly) but nearly much everything else I've seen by him has had a very positive impact on me. More popular nominations are Ichi The Killer, Visitor Q, Audition and the Dead Or Alive series.

I was never really a fan of Happiness of the Katakuris when I first saw it, but then one day I was at a friends house and someone put it on the telly and on a second viewing I found it to be amazing and have since watched it dozens of times. I think it is as you mentioned, Miike merging together three of his favoured genres, comedy, drama, horror together blended with some musical numbers and I find the result to be amazing. It has a real uplifting truthful ending.

I really liked the fact that Miike did a remake of a film as serious and dramatic as The Quiet Family (which I too found to be brilliant) and chose to just go all out daft with it and still managed to make something with such heart.

[Noodle Lizard]

I've liked every film of his I've seen (so that's Audition, Ichi The Killer, Visitor Q, Thirteen Assassins and Box).  Oh and that Masters Of Horror episode which, despite the questionable acting and extremely daft "reveal" towards the end, was sort of alright.

[Dark Sky]

(Audition even has its comic moments).

Your use of the word "even" kinda supports my theory that Audition is badly marketed in the UK.  It has this reputation for being such an intense, terrifying, sadistic horror film.  Before I watched it I had no knowledge of and no-one had ever mentioned to me the core concept behind Audition: that it very deliberately starts out as a romantic comedy which then turns into an extreme horror film.  Which is, of course, genius! 

Does he have distinct direction?
All his films have largely similar sensibilities, but I don't think I would know just from watching that, say, Happiness of The Katakuris was directed by the same guy who directed Audition.
I think he's a very flexible director who can change his style depending on the film in hand.

I kinda feel the reverse and always lump Audition and Katakuris together simply because they're both hybrid genre films, which is a stylistic technique I associate mainly with Miike.  Audition lulls you in with its gentle comedy, romantic plot, lurid pink credits and sickly sweet music before gradually adding more and more elements of extreme horror, whereas Katakuris is a massive kaleidoscopic mish mash of practically all story genres thrown into a cauldron.  But the general concept shares that simularity, which fascinates me!

[alan nagsworth]

What really blows me away with Miike is how flawlessly those transitions from genre to genre are executed, whether they slowly transform or just happily flit between several styles. Audition works so well like that, when the woman first appears there's just something about her that gives you a faint flicker of unrest and the line slowly blurs from there. The light-hearted foolishness of the audition scheme slowly turns into a very obvious mistake, and from there some deadly serious lessons are taught.

I love hearing that a film is fucked up and then still having my expectations blown out of the water, and I think Miike has pretty much excelled in that field with every film I've seen.

[Dark Sky]

He's definitely an extraordinary filmmaker, but I would say it's more for his entire body of work than for any individual film.  I do have a lot of respect for Miike but I just find it hard to really love any of his films.  I think there's something appealing about how quickly he makes them, how a lot of them are pretty low budget but just make use of extraordinary ideas.

His distinctive dancing between what's funny and what's disturbing is always entertaining...and horrific.  Last film I saw by him was Visitor Q, which begins with a father paying his daughter to have sex with him, then degenerates into a disturbingly hilarious farce full of family abuse, necrophilia, and far more lactation than I ever hoped to see in my life.  I don't think Visitor Q is a particularly good film, and I wouldn't even recommend it to someone who'd never seen a film by him before.  Yet at the same time it's so quintessentially Miike.

[Glebe]

Not sure if this a joke.. but you're mixing up Miike with Takeshi Kitano

Arghhh... yes I am. I wish it was a joke. *blushes*

[SteveDave]

I used to enjoy saying his name like I was calling for someone called Mike but elongating the "i"

The fun I had.

[Paaaaul]

I love rubbish thread bumps!!!