“Better than all the other man out together” a dancer tells the title character in Tokyo Drifter and the following year Seijun Suzuki pushed the idea to dark comic heights in a nightmare of macho posturing exploding in violence. It is like Welles’ The Trial had gone wild on phallic imagery.

You'll be missed man. You managed to bring style, craftsmanship, and a passion for your work to an assembly line and you did it whilst making some of the weirdest, and stylish films out there. Thanks for the movies, and thanks for inspiration.

Seijun Suzuki, 1923-2017

Over the top is definitely one word for this movie. I enjoyed it and thought it was fun and entertaining and also pretty funny, but I can see why Suzuki was fired by the studio after making this.

"Suzuki's films were incomprehensible, that they did not make any money and that Suzuki might as well give up his career as a director as he would not be making films for any other companies.” Yeah, it’s somewhat true, they are kind of all over the place (I’ve only seen this and Tokyo Drifter) and they probably DIDNT make enough money.

But hey, they’re a lot of fun and deserve more recognition.

Filmstruck Free Trial movie #21
(I got a free trial of Filmstruck and I’m trying to watch and review as many movies as possible before the trial runs out)

This movie is like Jean Luc-Godard mixed anime and the purest cocaine in the world.

Bonkers in a way that I want to immediately watch it again. The editing in this thing is something else entirely.

Acho que os filmes do Suzuki deveriam ser medidos não por frames, mas em ideias por segundo.

I watched this with some friends and we were all confused as to what was happening.
The only good things are: the score is interesting, it's got some good shot composition. Everything else seems like a fever dream of a 6 year old that likes Bruce Lee and rice.

If you decide to watch this, here's a drinking game to make it more interesting.
Take a shot everytime there's rice mentioned or shown.
Take a shot everytime the Gogo looking girl tries to look intimidating.
Take a shot everytime there's an unnecessary music cue.
Take a shot everytime there's a pan.
I'll let you add your own rules. Have fun and drink responsibly.

🍚🍚🍚🤤🤤🤤

[sometime during the 60s]
The French: hey everyone, here's the new wave, where we turn cinema inside-out
The Japanese: hold our sake

Summer Movie Challenge: Day 38
"I have to become No. 1(hitman) !"
starts playing with a baloon

I don't fucking know man. Other people seem to enjoy it.
I love the style, I love the look, I love the locations everything else... ehhh
I watched this with friends and we were all so confused out of our minds. I'm glad it was only 90 minutes and it was somewhat entertaining out of its sheer insanity at times. Maybe I just don't understand it but I can at least admire the craft.

Also you can make some great drinking games out of this so there's that.

Absolute inane nonsense duct taped together with pleasing aesthetics and not much else. Has nothing to offer you that you can't get from a film with some actual depth to it. I think it says enough that it was shot in less than four weeks, edited in a day, and filmed for the equivalent of $200,000 in today's dollars. To quote one of the entities that passes for a character in the movie:

"My dream is to die."