Tag Archives: Takayuki Yamada

JAPAN CUTS — THE MOLE SONG: UNDERCOVER AGENT REIJI

THE MOLE SONG

Reiji Kikukawa (Toma Ikuta) goes undercover in Takashi Miike’s way-over-the-top yakuza flick THE MOLE SONG

THE MOLE SONG: UNDERCOVER AGENT REIJI (MOGURA NO UTA SENNYU SOUSAKAN REIJI) (Takashi Miike, 2013)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Thursday, July 10, 6:00
Festival runs July 10-20
212-715-1258
www.subwaycinema.com
www.japansociety.org

Multigenre master and cult legend Takashi Miike kicks off the annual Japan Cuts: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema with the U.S. premiere of his wild and wacky yakuza comedy-thriller, The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji. Adapted from Noboru Takahashi’s popular manga series Mogura no Uta, the film stars Toma Ikuta (Hanazakari no Kimitachi e) as Reiji Kikukawa, a goofy but dedicated virgin cop (think a Japanese Dudley Do-Right) who is fired by Chief Sakami (Mitsuru Fukikoshi) so he can go undercover with the dangerous Sukiya-kai gang and ultimately capture its leader, Shuho Todoroki (Koichi Iwaki). Dressed in flashy clothes and sporting a ridiculous cockatoo-like mop of red hair, Reiji is soon taken under the wing of drug-hating made man and butterfly enthusiast Masaya Hiura (Shinichi Tsutsumi), aka “Crazy Papillon”; doing fierce battle with the short, bald, diamond-toothed, cat-loving Itsei Nekozawa (Takashi Okamura) from the rival Hachinosu-kai clan; cozying up to blonde MDMA dealer Shun Tsukihara (Takayuki Yamada); and being hunted down by tattoo-covered motorcycle-riding assassin Kenta Kurokawa (Yusuke Kamiji). All the while, Reiji keeps bumping into fellow cop and potential love interest Junna Wakagi (Riisa Naka), usually at the most inopportune of moments.

Written by Kankuro Kudo — who wrote Miike’s Zebraman films and wrote and directed another Japan Cuts selection, Maruyama, the Middle Schooler — The Mole Song has fun going way over the top, from Yuji Hayashida’s splendid production design to Nobuyasu Kita’s stellar cinematography to the actors themselves, who must have had quite a hard time trying to keep a straight face so much of the time. Miike, who references such previous cult classics of his as Ichi the Killer and Audition, does veer off course as he tries to figure out how to end the film, as the laughs start coming fewer and farther between, and the relationship between Reiji and Junna turns into more of an afterthought, but The Mole Song is still a blast, filled with zany surprises and unpredictable plot twists. A copresentation with the fourteenth annual New York Asian Film Festival, The Mole is screening July 10 at 6:00 at Japan Society.

NYAFF 2011 / JAPAN CUTS — MILOCRORZE: A LOVE STORY

Yoshimasa Ishibashi’s wild and wacky MILOCRORZE will open the tenth annual New York Asian Film Festival on July 1 and screen at Japan Cuts on July 10

MILOCRORZE: A LOVE STORY (Yoshimasa Ishibashi, 2011)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Friday, July 1, $13, 9:00
Series runs July 1-14, ten-film pass $99
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Sunday, July 10, $12, 8:00
Series runs July 7-22, five-film pass $50
212-875-5601 / 212-715-1258
www.filmlinc.com
www.subwaycinemanews.com
www.japansociety.org/japancuts

The North American premiere of the wild and wacky, genre-iffic Milocrorze: A Love Story kicks off the tenth anniversary of New York City’s most exciting annual film series, the New York Asian Film Festival, running July 1-14 at Lincoln Center. Melding Michel Gondry with Quentin Tarantino and Takashi Miike filtered through Max Ophüls’s La Ronde and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie, longtime commercial, video, and television director Yoshimasa Ishibashi makes his feature-film cinematic debut with this highly stylized three-part tale of love and romance. In the first section, seven-year-old salaryman Ovreneli Vreneligare, wearing one of the most charming costumes and hairstyles ever put on celluloid, falls in love with the beautiful, and adult, Milocrorze (Maiko) in a candy-coated fantasyland of lush colors and dreamlike sets. That bittersweet tale leads into the second part, in which bizarre youth counselor Besson Kumagi (Takayuki Yamada) abusively screams relationship advice to lonely boys over the phone, then breaks out into self-celebratory dance numbers with a couple of hot babes, a sort of Japanese version of Andy Kaufman’s Tony Clifton character. That story segues into the violent, vengeful mini-epic of rogue samurai Tamon (Yamada again), who starts out as a simple man who falls in love with Yuri the flower girl (Ann Ishibashi) but is soon trying to rescue her from a high-priced gambling and prostitution ring. Ishibashi then circles back to Milocrorze and Ovreneli Vreneligare (Yamada yet again, in his third role) years later for the tender finale. Milocrorze is a vastly entertaining, wonderfully absurd, and utterly ridiculous (and we mean that in a good way) exercise in multiple genres from the endlessly inventive Ishibashi. The samurai section goes on way too long, but otherwise this is a rousing success from start to finish, even when it is making absolutely no sense, which is very often. Milocrorze is the opening-night selection of NYAFF 2011, and both Ishibashi and Yamada will be at Lincoln Center on July 1 to participate in a postscreening Q&A; prior to the screening, Yamada will receive the Star Asia Rising Star Award. The film is being presented in conjunction with Japan Cuts: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema, screening at Japan Society on July 10, followed by a Q&A with Ishibashi. Keep watching twi-ny for more reviews of select films from our two favorite film festivals of the year.