Wednesday, March 18, 2009

SOME JAPANESE FANTASY GHOST FILMS

This is my comment in Peter Nellhaus’ blog:
http://www.coffeecoffeeandmorecoffee.com/archives/2009/03/crouching_tiger.html

You wrote that “Nothing I saw would have made me predict that Takita would even be a nominee.”

I totally agree with you. I haven’t seen DEPARTURES, but I think WHEN THE LAST SWORD IS DRAWN (2003, A-) is just a good film, but not an outstanding one. I like some ideas in ASHURA (2005, B-) and THE YIN YANG MASTER (2001, Yojiro Takita, B), but they are not as exciting as I wish they would be.

I nearly forgot everything about ASHURA after I had seen it. I had already forgotten about the devil girl with the ball before I read your review. I think FEARDOTCOM (2002, William Malone, C) also has the devil girl with the ball, but the film is extremely bad.

I think KOKKURI (1997, Takahisa Zeze, A+) also has the ghost of a little girl and a haunted ball in the film, but maybe KOKKURI is not related to KILL BABY, KILL, because the ghost girl and the haunted ball may not appear together. (I saw this film many years ago, so I can’t remember its details.) I just checked its information in IMDB, and it says that the haunted ball in KOKKURI refers to THE CHANGELING (1980, Peter Medak, A-).

Though I don’t like ASHURA, I still like some fantasy ghost films from Japan, such as KITARO AND THE MILLENNIUM CURSE (2008, Katsuhide Motoki, A+/A), KITARO (2007, Katsuhide Motoki, A), and DORORO (2007, Akihiko Shiota, A-).

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