MOVIE DAY – WEDNESDAY
Wednesday, March 28, 2007 by Michael Wong
Ah yesh, it has been a while that i could'nt made it to any of these shows during that time frame cos.. I’m WORKING... giving to exceptance of which when I'm on hol/MC/EL. Haha~
Heres' some of the Screen shot taken in the movie.
Beautiful Scenery
Year: 2004
Director: Nobuhiro Doi
Cast: Yuko Takeuchi, Shido Nakamura,
Synopsis: A well-told romance about a woman returning from the grave to visit her husband and her six-year-old son. The film requires the viewer to suspend their disbelief to be sure, but not necessarily in terms of its far-out premise. Even so, Be With You is a terrific little film.
Review: Unlike most traditional romances, Be With You offers up an intriguing, possibly supernatural premise - a deceased love returning from beyond the grave. It may sound like a pitch for a horror movie, but Nobuhiro Doi's masterfully told romance is anything but scary. A box office hit in
Spoiler : The finale involving Takumi reading Mio's diary and discovering the truth about their early days may seem tacked-on to some viewers, especially after the emotional climax of Mio's departure, but personally, I found the extended sequence gave the film a deeper meaning and proved crucial to understanding exactly what was happening in the narrative as a whole. As such, if you simply accept the fact that these two people were very much in love, then Be With You should be the kind of film that should have you reaching for the tissue box more than once. Even though I didn't totally buy into their romance, even I found myself moved by this beautiful, emotionally-charged film.
YESH, another movie to introduce you all is….
SWING GIRLS!!
Year: 2004
Director: Shinobu Yaguichi
Producer: Shoji Masui, Chihiro Kameyama, Yoshishige Shimatani, Ryuichi Mori, Daisuke Sekiguchi, Shintaro Horikawa
Writer: Shinobu Yaguichi, Junko Yaguichi
Cast: Juri Ueno, Yuta Hiraoka, Shihori Kanjiya, Yuika Motokariya, Yukari Toyoshima, Miho Shiraishi, Naoto Takenaka, Fumiyo Kohinata, Eriko Watanabe, Mutsuko Sakura, Kei Tani, Hana Kino, Naomi Nishida, Masaaki Takarai
Synopsis: Though totally inconsequential and occasionally manufactured, Swing Girls is delightful stuff that entertains without insulting. The story may seem undeveloped and even inconclusive, but director Shinobu Yaguichi and company hit all the right notes. If you loosen up and swing, this movie will reward you.
Review: From the makers of Shall We Dance and Waterboys comes Swing Girls, a feel-good comedy about a bunch of girls who form a group to perform big band jazz. That's it. Forget big emotional clinches, family issues, or even any real teen romance; this is a movie about girls who play the sax, trombone, trumpet, and assorted other instruments that you might remember from high school. Very little else happens in Swing Girls besides the girls picking up the instruments and learning how to play them. Most of the girls are types, some are barely glimpsed, and yet everyone bands together to perform some inspirational jazz in a loaded "battle of the bands" finale. Does this sound like a good movie? Well, formula be damned, it is a good movie!
Swing Girls is a true story. Kind of. The film was based on an actual girls' jazz band, but the official press for Swing Girls explains that the young actresses actually played their own instruments, and all were complete novices when filming began, just like the characters they play. It's always charming to watch a bunch of nobodies go from zero to hero, and the fact that this happened in the film AND behind the scenes is enough to make the film's faults fall neatly by the wayside. Swing Girls possesses simplistic narrative devices and less tension than a snail race, yet the whole manages to entertain and charm on the purest of levels—such that the film's lack of closure seems to be delivering a message.
Basically, it doesn't matter if you win, lose, lie, cheat, attain love, or measure up to your seemingly-superior peers. All you need to do is swing, and that's enough. By the time the girls are able to perform in front of all their peers, it doesn't even matter if they were perfect, because the simple fact that they did it is more than enough. The Swing Girls themselves may not hit all the right notes, but this movie does.
I guess good movies are hard to come by these days. Most appears to be just above the average. Agree?