Films That I Have Seen in 2017...

Here be some of the moving images that I saw in 2017 that were newly made and released. It's fair to say 2017 was no vintage wine. Largely because a year is a metaphysical concept that cannot be a wine...or even a decent Cheddar. 

But these are the ones that I thought best of these there twelve months...or so...

Always remember: Opinions can vary.

In some sort of order, starting with...

Bamseom Pirates Seoul Inferno

Director: Yoon-suk Jung
South Korea 

Documentary look at punk duo Bamseom Pirates and their album "Seoul Inferno" - as the title suggests. Music, larking about, "political" lyrics, court cases, questioning of their motivations musically...An at times comedic, at times serious political look at South Korean youth and their "relationship" with their neighbours in the North.

The Death of Stalin

Director: Armando Iannucci 
UK/France 

Iannucci-san and friends take their political comedy away from modern-day UK/US politics to Twentieth Century Russian naughtiness following the demise of some famous figure. Joshing and bants galore alongside the dark side of politics to make one laugh and consider. 

Vegalta: Soccer, Tsunami and the Hope of a Nation

Director: Douglas Hurcombe and Geoff Trodd 
UK 

Combining two of my great passions: Japanese culture and Gary Lineker; alongside one of my loathes: mass death caused by a natural disaster, "Vegalta" takes its name from the Sendai football team who rose up the J-League standings in the wake of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake. Fans and local residents affected take a look at how the team's success gave them some brief hope after such a huge loss.   

Noise

Director: Yusaku Matsumoto
Japan 

First time director takes a look at youth and motivation in the backdrop of the Akihabara Massacre of 2008. Generational differences create pressures on the youth of the day, creating the potential for a snap-point. Noisy and bleak, "Noise" offers a voice to the little man.  

Junk Head

Director: Takahide Hori
Japan 

Stop-go. Stop-go. That old animation technique is making a comeback. Don't take the plot too seriously with this one; more enjoy the ride around as a human's mind is transplanted into a mishmash robot hopelessly wandering the strange underworld of botched clones. Inventive, if a little mad, this one feels straight out of the Nineties. 

Love and Other Cults

Director: Eiji Uchida
Japan 

Uchida-san's second collaboration with the good folk at Third Window Films. Ai is well mental a one and gets herself caught up in all kinds of wacky cults, gangs, sex scams, nuclear families in an attempt to find herself. The message is: slowing down a bit is a good way to help you find a bit of peace of mind...and then you get off the bus. 


...and those from 2016 with delayed release in the UK that I pretended to first view in 2017...

After the Storm

Director: Kore-eda Hirokazu
Japan

Kore-eda-san's annual festival tourist delivers a nice enough journey about a private detective unable to leave his ex-wife behind. Perhaps a little too comfortable, but with enough realism to keep you interested, this maintains Kore-eda's position as the better Japan person director still churning 'em out with regularity.

Kills on Wheels

Director: Atilla Till
Hungary

Three disabled killers fool Budapest's drug dealers with their unassuming status, though the English title gives little away as to the additional depth offered below the surface. A coming-of-age piece more than a violent action thriller. 

Harmonium

Director: Koji Fukada
Japan

Tadanobu Asano playing some sort of strange person moving into a family home and invading every aspect of their lives with some sort of sinister motive? Can you come round next Tuesday, Asano-san? You can't escape it, can you?! Nice film...but not nice in that way.

The Long Excuse

Director: Miwa Nishikawa
Japan

Sachio's wife's death in a car crash unveils the car crash that is his life in Miwa Nishikawa's well-paced and developed film. It gets inside its characters' heads, as one would hope a film would do. As your life gets worse, so will your hair. 

Destruction Babies

Director: Tetsuya Mariko
Japan

Remember little Akira from "Nobody Knows"? Well, he's grown-up now and likes hitting people in the face. A film that will perhaps annoy many, the realism in the fighting and harsh comment on the surrounding violence of society leaves its mark at least. That Yuya character deserves a slap, hey?!


That makes a nice round total of 11...A football team of films...in the way that Luton Town are scoring lots of goals in the fourth tier of English football...

After the Storm

While not yet proving to be quite as prolific as the great masters Ozu, Mizoguchi and Naruse at their most busy, there is becoming something routine about another year and another trip to Cannes for perhaps Japan's best current working director, Kore-eda Hirokazu. There is a clear progression from his bleakly haunting first three films, 'Maborosi', 'After Life' and 'Distance' to a more routine playground of 'shomin-geki' (lower-middle class family drama), moving from more complex ennui to a more mainstream exploration of various unusual family scenarios.

'After the Storm', the most recent lover he took with him to southern France, certainly feels like a follow-on from his previous works 'Still Walking' and 'Kiseki'. Here, the family get-together of 'Still Walking' is replaced by the impromptu night-in to weather the storm, with Kirin Kiki and Hiroshi Abe reprising their roles as mother and prodigal son; and 'Kiseki's' Koichi is replaced by Abe's Ryota: a grown man who can't move on from his divorce from his wife and son, Kyoko and Shingo. With the cast also featuring other now established Kore-eda 'family' members, in the form of Lili Franky and Yoko Maki, this could all start to feel a little too familiar. Though he would not be the first great director to embrace this approach.

Suitably unshaven, Ryota is a recent divorcee, struggling to come to terms with his new position. A former novelist, enjoying some minor success with his novel 'The Empty Table' fifteen years previous, he now finds himself working as a private detective, betraying the trust of both his boss and untrustworthy clients; gambling heavily, living alone. Not only losing his wife and son, he has lost the respect of others, and even himself. His ex-wife can't rely on him to pay child support; his sister believes he is only after their mother's meagre funds; and his boss knows he is moonlighting behind his back. The only ones showing any positivity towards him are his mother, in the form of witty banter about how useless he has become, much like his father; his work colleague, Kento, who begrudgingly lends him money to gamble away; and his son, whose indifference to him is as good as he can get.

His attempts to win Kyoko and Shingo back, in his sly, underhand manner, therefore, are never going to work. By purposefully taking Shingo to his mother's small apartment as a typhoon approaches , he hopes to lure Kyoko to spend the night as a family with his deceit, unable to grasp that it is acts such as this that pushed her away in the first place. He is a man above his station, and in pursuing his second novel, that everyone can see will never happen, turns down lucrative offers to write more mainstream manga, as he believes it compromises his artistic integrity which died long ago.

His profession now to watch others, Ryota has become completely unaware of himself and the impact of his actions on those around him. Playing the victim, he is never the bad guy. Comparisons are often made to his father, harking to Kore-eda's previous title 'Like Father, Like Son'. Kyoko can see the future she would be offered with Ryota, in the form of her former mother-in-law's cramped apartment where she is forced to spend the night: As an elderly woman, left alone and near penniless by her husband's rash actions. Whereas Ryota can only see the past.

Eventually realising that he is only deceiving himself (urgh, I just wrote that!), as the storm passes and the fresh morning awakes, he starts to come to terms with this. This may all seem quite obvious and light, wondering if Kore-eda has lost a bit of spark, getting too comfortable in his work. And indeed, you may wish for a more dark perspective as in his earlier days. But the realism holds, and the wit of the script raises a smile. The cast perform their roles in a way that is believable, avoiding soap opera clichés and social stereotypes; and the stark soundtrack steers it away from melodrama.

Yes, this is more of the same, but in the same way that Ozu remade his own 'Late Spring' with 'An Autumn Afternoon'. The formula is working, and with enough bite to keep it away from the daytime TV nicety, ensuring that the familial isn't too familiar just yet.