Zatoichi (dir. Takeshi Kitano, 2003). The Zatoichi series was the longest-running and most perennially popular chanbara or period sword-film of the sixties and seventies, beginning in 1962 and running for some 27 installments, in which the itinerant blind masseur of the title uses his mastery of the cane sword on behalf of the common people he meets on his travels through late Edo-era Japan against brutal yakuza clans and corrupt feudal officials. The series populist appeal was what made it unique, then in the theater and now on video, so it was natural that someone, in this case Takeshi Kitano, whose stock is high both in the Japanese entertainment industry and among Western fans of Asian film, would try to revive the character. However, in spite of his success with the public at home and among festivalgoers, I wish I liked this film more. The script is very good; Zatoichi's cleanup of a rural town torn apart by rival clans of yakuza is very much in the tradition of the series, but Kitano as Zatoichi is a lot less approachable than Shintaro Katsu, who played the character in the series. The blind masseur was a mix of crafty peasant and lone outsider, played with more than a dash of self-deprecating humor, an everyman who just happened to be very good with a sword, while Kitano plays him more as a swordsman who happens to be a blind masseur, a shift in emphasis which makes all the difference. It's the supporting cast here, and some good, well-placed bits of slapstick, that makes up for Kitano's lack of likability, and the closing finale, a festival dance that combines Western-style tap dance, also helps warm up the film a little. And while it might be a tossup as to whether this film's CGI-enhanced violence or the pressurized blood-sprays of yesteryear were more realistic, the CGI here sticks out like a sore thumb. Avoid the optional English soundtrack on Miramax's DVD presentation and stick with the Japanese with subtitles: the pseudo-Japanese accents are embarrassingly lame.
Juliet of the Spirits (Giulietta degli Spiriti, dir. Federico Fellini, 1965). Fellini's first color feature was not a success financially or critically on its release, but has showed staying power over the years since. Fellini's wife Giulietta Masina plays the wife of a philandering Mario Pisu coming to terms with her failing marriage, encountering spirits of the departed, and tempted by the decadent playmates of her hedonistic neighbor (Sandra Milo). As is so often the case with Fellini, autobiography is a strong element: both Fellini and his wife shared an interest in the paranormal, and Federico was a womanizer. Complicating things was the centrality of Masina's character in the film, the script's candidness about the state of the Fellini's marriage, and Federico's insistence that Masina "play herself" in the film. Well, she wasn't playing herself; she was playing herself as her husband imagined she should be, and doing so in a maddeningly passive way to boot. Still and all, Juliet of the Spirits is an impressive, extravagantly gorgeous film to watch, and Masina plays "herself" with a quiet inner strength notwithstanding her husband's stacking of the deck.
The Trip (dir. Roger Corman, 1967). Corman might not have invented "psychsploitation," (Vincent Price having injected himself with LSD in 1959's The Tingler), but this film, scripted by Jack Nicholson, certainly helped to establish psychedelia in the movies. The title pretty much says it: TV-commercial director Peter Fonda takes LSD for the first time and then spends the rest of this hour-and-twenty-minute feature tripping his brains out. Corman was seriously intrigued by the drug culture emerging at this time, took LSD himself as part of his research, and maintains a consistent neutrality on the subject, neither unquestioningly championing LSD nor unquestioningly condemning it. American International did not find this balanced position good enough and added a preface to the film that warned of the dangers of drugs, as well as a shattered-glass optical printing effect over the closing freeze-frame of Fonda's face. Of course there is no real way to capture the subjective experience of hallucinogens on film, but in trying to evoke it for the uninitiated Corman made use of the panoply of visual effects seen hitherto in rock clubs and in the West Coast underground film scene -- op-art and oil-and-water projections, mutiple exposures, diffusing filters and fragmenting lenses, combined with flash-editing and post-production optical printing -- more or less taking out the patent on the psychedelic style used in numerous films to follow.
