The blurred line between what is real, and what is not. A theme explored in movies such as: Repulsion, Belle de Jour, Triangle and Black Swan. A film aspect that's never been a favorite of mine. However, I found the outlier. Perfect Blue hooked me from the opening, and I was on the edge of my seat until the final credits rolled. 

Perfect Blue is batshit crazy in an eat your heart out Darren Aronofsky type of way. It's the movie Black Swan only wished it could be. It's simply a badass flick with a lot of social commentary on the media, fame and internet usage for dummies circa 1997. At least in my mind it is.

Part Giallo. (Fun…

Film #100 of Make me watch your favourite.
Recommended by James Haves.

After having seen most of Kon's filmography now, I can only conclude he was one of the most gifted storytellers to ever work in film.

Perfect Blue is yet another intriguing and powerful exploration of the human psyche, this time in the guise of a complex thriller. Kon weaves a tale around a superbly written female protagonist that not only serves as a vessel for some social commentary about Japanese teen pop culture but also as our eyes and ears into a young girl's faltering mind as pressure, expectations and self doubt take over her world.

The layered and complex narrative bobs and weaves through reality and fantasy…

There has been a fair amount of talk on my activity stream recently about the work of the late Satoshi Kon, so ahead of watching some of his films I decided to revisit the one film of his that I have seen, albeit about 12 years ago now.

In fact, my first viewing of Perfect Blue was done towards the end of a major anime craze of mine, when I was just starting to tire of the genre as a whole. I was pretty taken aback by this film. No giant tentacle cocks. No stupid big tears appearing besides characters' faces when they're perplexed by something. No ridiculously overdone ultra-violence. This can't be right?

To me, it seemed like a…

- perfect blue? More like perfect MOVIE amirite????

- seriously this might have been the scariest and the most disorientating film I've ever seen in my entire life.

I'm not even joking this film fucked me up. For the first 8 minutes after the credits ended I was still basically crying and hyperventilating. If you don't believe me I have proof I recorded the entire thing.

- there's just something about this movie that triggered this Primal Fear that I have literally only felt in a horrible fever dreams.

It's the closest representation of a fever nightmare I have ever seen.

- and I'll be honest I was not expecting any of it. The last movie I saw by this…

Satoshi Kon was a fucking genius and the world is a drastically lesser place for losing him. This was his first feature film and it still stands as my favorite. Perfect Blue is an intense psychological horror-thriller that dips into Lynchian visual motifs to tell the story of a tormented young woman who quits being a pop idol to become an actress, only to find that someone is extremely displeased with her choices and is bound to make her life pure misery. Is she a psychotic murderer? Is she truly the innocent? Are any of us?
The film dives head first into how the idol and acting industry in Japan treats its talent and the very disturbing realities of the…