Popular reviews

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  Review by Edgar Cochran ✝️ ★★★★★ 2

  "The public are worse than babies. Worse than dogs. Because they don't think. They work like slaves, and get drunk at night. TV, radio, movies, games. They have no time to think. That's where we come in. We'll fill their empty heads with our message: "Delicious caramel, World Caramel! World! World!"

  There is nothing I can add of greater or equal value to the description of the film beyond the opening quote describing the repulsive, hypocritical and sickening mentality of modern corporativism which found its roots in capitalism and evolved through the selfish logic of firm "utility maximization", but despite claims I have seen against the film, the least thing Mazumura's denunciation against the internal structure of companies and external…

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  Review by Slig001 ★★★½

  Moral values come up against American capitalism in Yasuzo Masumura's biting corporate satire, as rival advertising executives seek to win the public's imagination in order to sell the most caramel. Giants and Toys is a snappy fast paced drama that makes its points loud and clear while dipping into the absurd. The corporate world is depicted as dog eat dog - sales at the forefront of everything, no concern for any of the people involved and the customers just a commodity to be fought over. The narrative concerns themes still very relevant today - globalisation, the falseness of advertising and the power of the media among more. The narrative is split between obsessive corporate planning and a focus on a…

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★½

  Tashlinesque satire. So bitter, yet so colorful. Giants & Toys is so inventive the anger sometimes feel submerged on all the bright surfaces. As often with Masumura post-war Japanese society is ready to cannibalize itself.

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  Review by ratbastard ★★★★

  Rival confectionery companies (‘World’, ‘Giant’ and ‘Apollo’) compete over their respective caramel sales. The head of marketing for World hires a modest, working class girl named ‘Kyoko’ to represent their brand. Kyoko becomes a popular star, and begins to lean away from the rigid corporate requirements imposed upon her. Meanwhile, corporate espionage sets in and the stresses take their toll.

  A ferociously sharp and inventive corporate satire from Yasuzô Masumura. A study of cut-throat corporate ethics, competition, sabotage, sacrifice, ambition, exploitation, possessiveness, self-destruction, over-work, and commercialism / media hype - highlighting the savagery of competition, the effects of ‘failure’, and the underlying pointlessness of it all. Masumura taking jabs at executive culture and practices - revealing the depths at which…

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  Review by Lencho of the Apes ★★★½

  Visionary satire. The bright yellows and reds, enamel and plastic textures, make people say 'Tashlin' for this one, but these beyond-driven office drones remind me a lot more of Billy Wilder in his salaryman comedies. Regardless, neither Tashlin or Wilder nor anyone else in 1958 was anticipating an end-stage capitalism where the flow of commodities and revenue could be figured as a river of blood; there's a quiet apocalypse lurking under the surface of this movie of the sort that wouldn't be rendered more explicitly on film for another 10 years. (Weekend, maybe, or another example that's evading my memory.)

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  Review by sakana1 ★★★★

  Giants and Toys is a perky, beautiful, ferociously angry satire about the costs of unrestrained capitalism and consumer culture, which demand that "no matter how meaningless or inhuman the work, you do it or you starve."

  Centered on an increasingly cutthroat competition between three candy companies for the caramel market — a competition so public that newspapers cover its every development — director Yasuzō Masumura's film explores self-destruction on both large and and small scales. No one can see past the next day; the next line on the balance sheet; the next point on the graph of sales, a blindness which leads to increasingly unhinged commitment to terrible decisions, alternately throwing money at them (More spacemen! MORE!) and taking all…

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  Review by Tao A ★★½ 6

  As it turned out capitalism in 1958 was already late stage. Who would’ve thought.

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  Review by Justin Decloux ★★★½

  "Fool! We must sell candy! We must win!"

  Colourful and stylish, but in desperate need of some laughs. The satire is acidic, but without a reason to care which company wins the caramel sales war, it makes getting to the end a bit of a drag. I understand that's the point - that killing yourself for "MORE SALES!" is a stupid endeavour - but a dash of Tashlin-esque comedy would have made it go down easier.

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  Review by hiruko ★★★½ 2

  Cutthroat shenanigans between the advertising departments of rival candy makers. And the rise of an unlikely model with rotten teeth. A colorful satire that pairs well with Masumura’s Black Test Car. The simplicity of its core concept with the dueling plot lines gets repetitive after a few, but it’s still an enjoyable visual feast.

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  Review by Sally Jane Black

  The themes of this film hit all the right marks, and the bright palette of the film had that 50s/60s feel to it that makes me nostalgic for things I wasn't alive to see. And the music was some sweet late 50s pop.

  I also enjoyed the rivalry of the companies, a distinctly capitalistic story that I liked despite myself. It made me realize how rare it seems today for people to root for competing companies. Either they're all owned by the same people now, or the competition is so cutthroat and behind-the-scenes that we never get to buy into it.

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  Review by V. Lepistö ★★★★★

  "Japan is America!"

  Perfect satire! This still belongs to Masumura's colorful 50s period with its Sirk-esque melodramas and clever satires. Ending with "smile warmly", the film shows that it is still more topical than ever and that it basically continues all the time even when the film itself is over. Subject of this study are corporations and its workers who are ready to sacrifice their own happiness, grotesque commercialism and competition, shallow do-it-yourself stars and of course us, the idiotic audience who is ready to take everything we are offered if it's wrapped nicely enough.

  Its imagery is so grinning that almost every frame bursts me into laughter. Take for example the wonderful scene where WORLD company is thinking about…

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  Review by Jaime Rebanal ★★★★★

  Another Yasuzo Masumura masterpiece. But from the few of his films that I'd seen, this one feels like it's maybe the most vicious. It's the most vicious as Masumura shows that he's a filmmaker who's taking no punches when it comes to tackling the impact of modern-day corporatism. Of course, with the time in which Giants and Toys came out, Masumura's film is one that captures the essence of postwar corporatism and how the government tries to utilize this in order to keep an economy going strong long after the repercussions have been well-established by the way people continually suffer as a result of unfettered corporatism.

  It's also maybe the most frightening indictment of such. One moment you can't help…