Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Micitype Pretty Good

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

federovsky There are several fine ideas here: that a shocking, arbitrary incident can taint you in the eyes of yourself and society; that a whole swathe of your life can be spent in a sepia daze; and that a colourful epiphany can release you. This is entirely a concept film buoyed up by these ideas.A successful effort? Not really. It is shot in a bleached pinkish wash which either gives it an ultra-cool arty look - or a corny Adobe Premiere filter look - and the gimmick may well account for the film's length - a lot of shots were probably included that would normally have been ditched for being too dull.The 3 1/2 hours length was designed to let it slowly seep into you. Problem was, it had made all its points, done all its seepage, in the first half hour and I'm not sure if the extra three hours added anything at all except the opportunity for you to build up a catalogue of peeves.Aoyama loves the device of showing you something you can't make head or tail of until some time later when it is explained. It's important not to be too obvious in a film, but this trick, done repeatedly, can make it hard work. On top of that, many of the silent, almost motionless scenes we are shown seem interchangeable with almost anything of our own choice. There are far too many arbitrary, meaningless scenes.And the psychology is frail. I didn't feel the traumatic near-death incident at the beginning (a bus-jacking) was anywhere near enough to make two children stop speaking and turn someone into an improbable serial killer. So I didn't have essential sympathy for the characters and that was fatal. Being so determined to be arty, the film didn't allow us to get to know them properly - no close ups, only an impassive wide angle that physically alienates. There were also periods, especially in the early part of the film where I had trouble telling one character from another as scenes switched erratically between two families.And one final thing I hated: a character had an annoying hacking cough for much of the film - I was furious when it finally turned out that there was no significance to it at all. Possibly the actor really did have a bad cough so they built it in.Basicaly dull, and including some big mistakes (like the ultra-wide format), I only give it a special-mention certificate for being different.

CountZero313 There is an excellent 100-minute film in Eureka, but this monster is an exercise in tedium that will appeal only to a particular niche of film buffs. Other reviewers point out that this is mainly a visual experience, with movie tributes to the likes of Hou Hsiao-Hsien for the anoraks to delight in spotting. But nobody seems able to tell me WHY it is so long. There is one scene where the bus pulls out of a diner's car park, and drives up the road that extends into the distance, over the hill and out of sight. Fixed camera wide shot, no cuts. It takes 2 minutes 40 seconds - why? We know where the bus is going, and the frame is not particularly interesting to look at. Maybe there is a deeper meaning to such anti-editing statements that I am missing, but it looks like Aoyama just couldn't be bothered cutting the thing properly. Two stars for the cinematography.

VideoKidVsTheVoid A film beyond film; the rarest transfusion of worlds – a step thru the rift of definition, into the realms of the sublime. Poetry of the unknown chasms of existence – perfect reflections of the ghost and its flight. A journey, a search, beyond incidents, externalizations, time and space; emotions striving to hold on, to decode something of the abstraction of consciousness; of reality; of life (both on the basic primordial level and on the modern plateau). Aoyama has achieved a transcendtion of form, function, media, matter and expression; as if all the years of brooding had channeled into these three hours and forty minutes.A deal no doubt must have been struck with time and space themselves; to allow themselves to be exposed and laid bare before the camera – to be carved out of each other and shaped and molded by human hands; sculptures made of moments and distance. Claustrophobia with the known universe. Movement coerced into a go-between, relaying messages from the outer rims.Intensity is felt with every frame; the intensity of ambiguousness – the intensity of simply living thru time, at existing at the hands of the confusion of existence. Characters sift thru a war of existence. The individual; the self contained star drifting thru space, and the rootless feeling permeating the universe are here held open and dissected as if the individual's confinement were a show of fireworks. Isolation comes as natural drift, as if expected as wind thru the leaves of a tree, never forced or romanticized. Communication is reborn, and language held at bay; its deceiving tendrils plucked from their hold within the brain. The irrational is once again confronted face to face instead of by way of masked handshake in the dark. Open spaces and landscapes externalize the internal scope; playing out a disenchanted dream of reality. Roads, buildings, yards, construction sites, parking lots, fields, sky; all seem to drip with answers beyond their forms. They remain still, but hold the longing out with both hands; one step away from the void.The world has been caught, stripped to the bone; rendered poignant in sepiatone colored fever-(day)dreams (surely here, and to a fishier degree in von Trier's The Element Of Crime (1984), now proved to be the color of at least some part of heaven). Modernity has been deflated, time and space orchestrated, society has been shown limbless, history has retreated to the wastelands, and man is man as he has always been. Aoyama has pierced the skin; broken thru to the inner chambers. The surface has been dissolved and only the hopeful depths remain.

ButaNiShinju A poverty of ideas on almost every level is what characterises this film. The stylishness of the cinematography and the very competent acting of Yakusho Koji cannot mask this fact over 3.5 hrs. Even those with an ardent interest in post-traumatic stress disorder will find it hard to bear.