I Saw The Greatest Movie Ever Made...

[Neil Dnuma]

Oh, by the way, had anyone else thought of making a game of this BR concept after watching the movie?

Countless games are already pretty close to that concept... In fact BR depicts a generation influenced by that, among the references to career pressure and obviously the media. So creating a game out of that is sortof missing the point. Almost like being inspired to create a TV-show like that.

I thought the movie was good, technically brilliant at times and with a good clear premise. But in Japanese cinema I prefer the old masters; Ozu, Mizoguchi, Kobayashi, Naruse, Teshigahara, Shindo, Kurosawa. Films like Kwaidan, Onibaba or Ugetsu Monogatari deals with terror in a lot more subtle, creepy and ultimately haunting way. To me.

[LimpingFish]

Yay! Lot's of juicy opinions and ideas in this thread.

ProgZ: We have indeed discussed and lamented the current state of Hollywood and we also share an affinity for cinema of the transmundane variety.

To clarify: When labeling the content of a movie as "what they can get away with" immediately, to my mind, dismisses such content as artistically superfluous to the story being told. Gore is gore, yes, and ninety percent of the time it is indeed superfluous, but in a movie such as Audition it think it is justified. As I've said in my previous post, I believe the parallels drawn from Asami's torture of Shigeharu; Extreme feminist revenge, a physical manifestation of rejection, punishment for his blind quest for the Perfect Woman (which can be seen as insult to all "real" women, I suppose), etc, gives the scene something above the usual cinematic gorgasm.

This is the exception I took with your comment, and nothing more.

Audition is a scary movie, as The Wicker Man is scary, or Witchfinder General. With the exception of Ringu, most J-Horror is as effective as most big-budget Hollywood horror. That is to say, not very.

Ringu succeeds because of two things. The palpable sense of dread the persists throughout the first half of the movie, and the closing scene of Reiko's planned sacrifice of her father to save her son. Sadako crawling out of the TV is a brilliantly executed scene, but the final scene trumps it for sheer chills.

Battle Royale achieves something similar in the scene in which two lovestruck students decide that rather than to be forced to kill their classmates, and utimately each other, they will simply plummet over a cliff, hand in hand, to their doom. The lighthouse massacre, a simple case of mistaken identity, which ends with the instigator screaming her apologies through tears as she is forced to gun down those around her, holds equal power.

It's rare for films to hold such power for me, and I increasingly find that western cinema lacks similar experiences.

Japanese society/culture/state of mind could be the defining factor into it creators ability to tap into these feelings/fears/insecurities on a cinematic level.

[Postmodern_Boy]

I mean, even if you shoot a kid once even to their legs/stomach, don't they fall and pass over?

what i have heard from police officers and soldiers leads me to believe that people always passing out instantly after being shot is a hollywood myth.Ã, 

Japanese society/culture/state of mind could be the defining factor into it creators ability to tap into these feelings/fears/insecurities on a cinematic level.

I think it has less to do with the culture and state of mind enhancing art and more to do with what the film industry in different countries think will sell to the general public.Ã,  American movie companies seem more interested in pushing a consistent product that sells in a predictable amount, So they are less likly to take chances with unique movies or something that might be considered politically incorrect.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The Wicker Man is scary

You're not talking about the remake I hope.  Watch the original with Christopher Lee if you want a more cerebral and better thought out movie.

Erenan, Videodrome was really blah overall, I don't recommend it.  Most Cronenberg films are blah, though.  I'm not sure what your tastes are as far as horror goes, though, so I can't really recommend anything.

[Stupot]

Battle Royale is also one of my favourite films af all time.
The is one drawback though... It's not long enough... I don't think they should have made a two hour movie, It should have been a TV Series.Ã,  There are 42 kids and not enough time in the two hours to show all of their deaths without it looking a bit far-fetched.

Not that I'm bad-mouthing the film, It's beautiful, but Imagine if we had more time to get to know the characters and have some more flashbacks (like L O S T where the flasbacks are as important as normal-time).Ã,  In the mangas, and in the novel each of the kids has a history and none of them are easy sterotypes,Ã,  they all have backgrounds that have shaped them and eventually their fates are decided by the types of people they have become, and it is such a very important part of the BR mythology that when I watched the film (which I did after having read the manga) I could help but think most of it was missing.

[LimpingFish]

The Wicker Man is scary

You're not talking about the remake I hope.  Watch the original with Christopher Lee if you want a more cerebral and better thought out movie.

The remake?!? It's a truly diseased mind that could find entertainment within that festering pile of nonsense.

The original is cinematic gold, and the remake is just more proof that modern filmmakers should leave well enough alone.

Edward Woodward's performance alone is worth the price of admission, and it's one of those films that really disturbs on a primal level. Lord Summerisle's sing-song turns the finale even more mind-blowingly creepy than Sergeant Howie's fate alone. Classic.

If anybody attempts to remake Witchfinder General (The Conquerer Worm), I'll claw my eyes out.

Not that anyone will.

As for Cronenberg, I agree with ProgZ, though Shivers (They Came From Within) posseses a degree of perverse entertainment.

From the early 80's onwards, though, Cronenberg is pretty much...meh.

[Erenan]

Well, I haven't really developed any particular taste in Horror at the present moment because I've seen so few Horror films. Pretty much just Audition, and then a few films that aren't really horrific, such as What Lies Beneath, the Ring, a couple Child's Play movies, and some of M. Night Shyamalan's films. So I'm really sort of looking to sample different horror films. At any rate, one of the reasons I want to see Videodrome is because I'm interested in the basic premise, as well as a more general interest in the effects of media on the human mind without respect to content (though of course I don't know how much of that idea is actually in the film). The other reason is because the title simply stuck in my mind when Helm mentioned it during that long discussion about censorship, ratings, and content disclaimers.

[Postmodern_Boy]

videodrome was the most memorable Cronenberg movie for me.

[esper]

Battle Royale achieves something similar in the scene in which two lovestruck students decide that rather than to be forced to kill their classmates, and utimately each other, they will simply plummet over a cliff, hand in hand, to their doom. The lighthouse massacre, a simple case of mistaken identity, which ends with the instigator screaming her apologies through tears as she is forced to gun down those around her, holds equal power.

Damn movie. Reading that turned me all emo...

[SmootH]

I find it hard to believe that anyone can argue that Battle Royale is the greatest movie ever made.   Battle Royale is nothing more than a bloody slasher flick with slick editing.

I watched the film around Xmas time mostly because I had received it as a gift.  I was also told that it was original, a little thought provoking and had a bit of violence to lighten things up a bit. 

Well, I know not to trust my brother about anything. 

To me, this film is a combination of three ideas: Lord of the Flies (kids trapped on an island, duking it out), the short story "The Lottery" (the whole lottery selection system and the innate evil in all men/women) and any B-rated slasher movie (for the outright violence and brief sexuality). 

For those who haven't seen it - send a class of delinquents to an island, have them kill each other and let the last one go free (which is about as much as one can expect from a blood-and-guts type film).  Add a crazy teacher-turned-militant, picture Magneto but instead of mutants vs humans it's adults vs kids, who is broadcasting this whole ordeal to show the world that kids are like adults that haven't grown up yet or learned what life is about.  Finally, throw in a love/redemption story, a couple of computer hackers, a Mexican standoff, and there you have it, a recipe for a blockbuster, right?

I'll accept the plot; it's not bad, just not ground breaking. 

This is where everything goes to hell in a hand basket. 

Sure, a whole class of delinquents is gone, but you're letting the most coldhearted and ruthless one go.  Come on.  In one of the first scenes, you see a girl that is totally messed up from having to kill all her friends.  That's the goal of the program?

If they really wanted to reduce delinquency, they'd round up delinquents and send them to the island rather than send some randomly selected group of kids.  It would illustrate their point more clearly, rather than have a bunch of nerds being filleted because they don't know how to operate a firearm.  “But you want and need a hero to cheer for” is probably what you're thinking.  Okay, that's fine.  But it's more interesting to see a person redeem themselves and become a hero rather than see them learn nothing and remain stagnant.   Plus, all the really innocent people, ie "good guys", die even before the game begins.  Why not just line all the students and execute them in front of their school, why do the whole dance of kidnapping and bringing them to an island, if the real goal is to kill everyone. 

There are also marshals killing the students who either won't fight or anyone in their path for that matter.  The marshals add an unnecessary layer; the kids don't care about the marshals.  Conceivably, it would be hard to kill anyone, but placed in a life or death situation, much harder to kill a friend than a stranger.   

There are a bunch more flubs plot wise but this post is already huge. 

Honestly, I don't understand why there was so much hype about this flick, it's a disposable bloodbath.  It's got Beat Takeshi but not his eye behind the camera which would have helped.  There are some fun scenes like when the fat guy gets speared in the gut - I laughed.  Poisoned spaghetti! Ha! And when the slutty girl does her little “seduce the boy with the gun” act â€" I have to admit she was good at it.  But otherwise, blah.

[esper]

From the back cover of my copy of the movie:

"At the dawn of the new millenium, Japan is in a state of near-collapse. Unemployment is at an all-time high, and violence amongst the nation's youth is spiralling out of control. With school children boycotting their lessons and physically abusing their teachers, a beleaguered and near-defeated government decides to introduce a radical new measure: The Millenium Educational Reform Act. Overseen by their former teacher, Kitano, and requiring that a randomly-chosen class be taken to a deserted island and forced to fight each other to the death, the Act dictates that only one pupil be allowed to survive. He or she will return, not as a victor, but as the ultimate proof of the lengths to which the government is prepared to go to quell the tide of juvenile delinquency."

Honestly, I'm not going to tell you your opinion is wrong, because no one's opinion is wrong. However, your facts are wrong... Battle Royale is not a pointless bloodbath. As I've said already, several times in fact, it shows violence for what it really is... a very terrible thing. The idea of putting the kids on the island forced to fight to the death simply puts the idea "violence is bad" on the table and then improves on it infinitely by showing the absolute worst conditions. If American school kids could watch this movie at an early age, before any of our stupid American movies get first chance to put the preconceived notion in their head that killing is somehow cool and glorified, they would never, ever touch a weapon in their lives. Note that Japan has an incredibly low crime rate.

I can understand that maybe you didn't like it, but don't sit there and try to tell me it's a pointless bloodbath. I know pointless bloodbath, because it's the only thing Hollywood has been throwing at me since I was a kid. Don't try to tell me that a movie has no redeeming value when it made a grown man who didn't even shed a tear when his own father passed away cry like a baby the whole time through. I feel sorry that you have the idea that just because a movie is violent means its pointless. It's kinda like those people who say nudity is bad and then turn around and say we're all made in God's image...

EDIT: By the way... I can hardly accept your opinion if you're going to say "it's a disposable bloodbath" and then turn around and say "I laughed when the fat kid got speared in the gut." You hypocrite. So, what you're essentially saying is that the fat kid was just as "disposable" as the movie? That's Yoshio, whom I mentioned in an earlier post. He was fat, and unpopular, and when he was told what was happening knew that everyone would gun straight for him, being the easiest target. He snapped when the time came to make the decision to continue being a pacifist and be hunted down and murdered or to take the one little bit of luck that his life had ever thrown his way... a good weapon... and survive. And, as Limping Fish mentioned, the "poisoned spaghetti" was one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the film, albeit a little overstylized.

[LimpingFish]

The one simple message in the film is that coporal discipline doesn't work. The fact that the boy and girl who escape the island, murder her parents (for two reasons I believe: One, so that they can run away together, and two, as revenge against an adult society that would allow the treatment of it's children in such a way), tells us that using corporal discipline/punishment to "control" a nation's youth will only breed resentment and, ultimately, hatred.

I not going to argue over plot holes, as no story would sacrifice the power of it's message just so everything will line-up razor-edge straight.

Nor am I blindly defending BR, as I mulled over these plot discrepancies when I first saw the movie. I just don't think they detract from the movies statement.

[Erenan]

If American school kids could watch this movie at an early age, before any of our stupid American movies get first chance to put the preconceived notion in their head that killing is somehow cool and glorified, they would never, ever touch a weapon in their lives. Note that Japan has an incredibly low crime rate.

I'm not so sure it's that simple. The movies our kids watch are not the only influences on their behavior. Not by a long shot. There are centuries and centuries of history that have created the very different cultures of the U.S. and Japan. American children and Japanese children are as they are for many more reasons than the nature of their entertainment. However, I do believe that the nature of the entertainment is both a reflection of and an influence on the culture.

[lo_res_man]

I am not to much into horrer, so much of it seems to be to no perpose, just "lets see what wacked out thing we can do next" type stuff. I do love soulful anime, like Ghost in the Shell combined great action with a wonderful selection of philosiphical questions. I did like "phone booth"  And I laughed my self silly in most of the "scary movies" The old silent berrymore jeckle and hyde movie is remarkibly compelling.

[Andail]

Esper, sadly I can't share your optimism. You can't expect that a movie which features the "downside"- the terrible consequences - of violence will "teach" children not to be violent, and in this respect I highly doubt that Battle Royal can act as an example, something to learn from.

If anything, any sort of violence shown on TV or wherever will create a sort of tolerance, and render its viewers more blunt about their perception of violence. A young kid will have a limited ability to appreciate whether one sort of violence is labelled "wrong" and another isn't; at the end of the day the violence has just made him more used to all the blood, more insecure, more familiar with scenes of death and suffering etc.
I believe it's primarily the treshold of fear and angst that causes violent acts (like school shootings etc) and not the failure to understand their consequences.

So, I must disagree with how you conclude that second paragraph...it's not all about glorifying versus demonising; it's more a matter of the sheer quantity we expose ourselves to.

[esper]

I'll actually have to concede to that. I mean, I certainly wouldn't show it to my kids, until at least they were MUCH older, and then only if I was sure they would enjoy it, not as some kind of tool. But, nevertheless, I know if I had seen this movie when I was younger, it would have taken the place of "Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind" as my influence to be a pacifist. However, now that I have seen it, I wonder... could the scene that moved me so much in Nausicaa, where Lord Yupa stops Nausicaa from avenging her father with his own blood, really have mattered to me if I were put in the same situation as these students? Battle Royale made me reconsider exactly what it is I'm capable of.

I've always thought that I'm incapable of cheating on my spouse, and I've always been very faithful even to the girlfriends I had in junior high school. But what happens if I'm put in the position, like in Indecent Proposal, where I'm offered a million dollars to do just that? Or if I'm threatened with my life? Battle Royale made me realize just how frail human beings are in several ways, not the least of which is our perception of who we really are.

[Plastic_Worm]

Okay okay, a long post to sift through and respond to it all. I've glanced at each post briefly, seeing what pops into my mind, so I'll try and post this in a orderly fashion.

First off, I can relate to your emotions on a movie being so good and you were so moved. There is always one movie that hits directly home (or even a few), you just have to find it. For me it was Dellamorte Dellamore, I've watched that film atleast 15 times and it just gets better each time. As I've never watched Battle Royal, I won't comment on the direct movie but moreso the opinions stated in the posts.

To me, lots of Asian Horror that doesn't fall into CATIII falls short for me. The only Asian "horror" movies I liked were Untold Story and Naked Blood. Untold was the most horrific in character and the little kid slaughter, but Naked Blood was just pretty gross (an odd). I hate lots of the psychological horror movies, mostly because they have this pretentious attitude by trying to bring a message. When I watch movies, I want them to hit a base instict and trying to cast an illusion over this just makes me angry.

I feel movies that try to have a large conscious message take away from a lot of the actual film and makes them over-rated (apparently IMHO). I see gore movies not because of the underlying social commentary, but because of the gore. Gore is an art and I dont find it sadistic to watch it. Half because you are disgusted and amazed at the same time. Movies like Dead Next Door, Riki-Oh, Redneck Zombies, They Don't Cut the Grass Anymore all  have pretty much simple reasons for existing, showing gore. Sure the B-acting is just a plus and the story is for laughs, but when it comes right down to all reactions are base and none are better than the other. So that point has been made.

Next, the point on Audition, I had to touch on. I was  hearing how all "gory" and "sadisitic" it was. I watched it expecting so much, and wow was I proved wrong. It was boring, the story was stupid, and overall the gore was pretty minimal. While I am a "gorehound" I can appreciate a good story with relatable characters, but this one was just stupid. On the other hand, calling it a step up from snuff is no where close. August Underground's is more like snuff (hell, if it was real it would be), but that movie is simply stupid because its just a bunch of idiot kids who think they are "pushing limits" by taking the most sadistic thing they can think of and blatantly showing it.

Next, about Hostel and american films, the whole point of Hostel was a revenge film. While it wasn't the best, it got the point home. You were meant to feel impowered at the end and adrenaline pumping through your veins with a smug smile of satisfaction. It could have been better, but it did what it was meant to do.


In summation, movies should touch on a basic level, whatever it is trying to achieve. I don't like much of this philosophical or social commentary being the main purpose of a music. Dellamorte Dellamore has a lot of that, but when it comes right down to it, I saw it first because of the zombies. Later, I realized how subtle these things were and how to appreciate it, it wasn't right in your face. It has a nice layered effect, so many things can come from it.

Oh, and Tarantino doesn't push limits, here merely steals them.