good god are other seijun suzuki movies as good as 'branded to kill'?

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I have Tokyo Drifter and one other one in my Netflix queue, so I guess I'll see, but are they? Because I just watched Branded to Kill last night and, jesus. I mean, hallucinatory. Crazy. I can't think of another movie I've seen recently -- and I've seen a lot of good movies recently -- where past a point I had no earthly idea what was going to happen next, and then what happened next always blew my brain apart. There are so many individual genius sequences in there, and they all kind of pile on top of each other. Goddam. I've heard about him for a while, but I guess I didn't really know wtf he was up to.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 16 September 2005 05:51 (twenty years ago)

(thinking about it 24 hours later, I'm going over to netflix and upgrading my rating from 4 to 5 stars)

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 16 September 2005 05:51 (twenty years ago)

(Youth of the Beast, that's the other one in my queue)

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 16 September 2005 05:53 (twenty years ago)

What are you doing WAITING to watch Tokyo Drifter? WATCH IT NOW. And if you ever see anything like his blue suit on sale, put us down for a couple.

― Neil Kulkarni, Friday, 16 September 2005 10:33 (twenty years ago)

I'v watched maybe around 20 of Suzuki's movies, and believe me - you won't miss with any of them! Try Pistol Opera (sequel to Branded To Kill) and his first studio movie Gate Of Flesh for the beginning... Tokyo Drifter is THE MASTERPIECE!

― christcomplex, Friday, 16 September 2005 14:26 (twenty years ago)

Branded to Kill is utterly great -- picked it up several years back and Sean from SF (who's doing well, last I checked) and I had a good time watching it and playing 'spot the moments where Tarantino bugged out.' That said I really need to get Tokyo Drifter (yes, Neil, I'll get to it) and this sequel that's mentioned, hmmm...

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 16 September 2005 14:40 (twenty years ago)

Tokyo Drifter and Youth of the Beast are both 10X better than Branded to Kill IMHO. The color composition!

― DR. FRANK EINSTEIN PHD (cprek), Friday, 16 September 2005 14:52 (twenty years ago)

The answer is YES! I've liked everything of his I've seen other than Pistol Opera which was kind of eh. I still like Kinji Fukasaku better though.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 16 September 2005 15:19 (twenty years ago)

"I still like Kinji Fukasaku better though"

it's not the same thing - Suzuki made surealistic yakuza eiga and therefore was kicked out from Nikkatsu as crazy experimentalist. Fukasaku made straight-down dirty yakuza eiga... I like them both very much, but I think you just can't compare them that easy...

― gedorrah@, Friday, 16 September 2005 16:07 (twenty years ago)

The answer is YES!

Awright then. Up to the top of the queue they go!

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 16 September 2005 16:09 (twenty years ago)

Some of Kinji's stuff is pretty surreal and some of Seijun's are pretty down and dirty, but I guess I can see your point. Either way if someone liked Suzuki's stuff I wouldn't say it would be a great stretch to recommend Fukasaku's 60s flicks.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 16 September 2005 16:12 (twenty years ago)

The only Fukasaku I've seen is Battle Royale, but I have The Yakuza Papers series also lined up at Netflix.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 16 September 2005 16:43 (twenty years ago)

Yay! I loved The Yakuza Papers. For some reason I have been unable to convince anyone else to watch it.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 16 September 2005 17:01 (twenty years ago)

I saw one that is apparently very hard to get a hold of at the Japan Society that was really good called something like Car 23- Die Bastard Die or Laugh Bastard Laugh. Maybe there was an all-girl band in it, like in the Tarantino movie? I remember one great scene of a guy standing in a circle of flames, in the middle of a burning nightclub, doing one of those hearty/diabolical movie laughs.

― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 16 September 2005 17:06 (twenty years ago)

Cops Vs Thugs was a brilliant yakuza eiga... Fukasaku at his peak. Not to mention Graveyard Of Honor (although I like Takashi Miike's remake more...)

― yakuza, Saturday, 17 September 2005 16:26 (twenty years ago)

one year passes...

i watched princess raccoon last night (thx netflix) -- CRAZY. i haven't seen pistol opera yet so i didn't know what to expect from late-period suzuki but whoa. brothers grimm + mgm musicals + japanese folktales + mtv + god knows what all...beautiful to look at, utterly MAD. (all that and zhang ziyi too.) reminded me a little of guy maddin, but warmer than maddin usually gets. completely giddy. possibly a half-hour too long, it's hard to sustain that level of whimsy, but still pretty great.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 19 January 2007 16:28 (nineteen years ago)

eight years pass...

NYC retro

https://www.filmlinc.org/series/action-and-anarchy-the-films-of-seijun-suzuki/#films

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 5 November 2015 21:41 (ten years ago)

Pinkerton:

http://artforum.com/film/id=55994

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 8 November 2015 17:02 (ten years ago)

five months pass...

jfc "A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness" was so fucking bizarre, and it was hard to tell which parts of it were like actually Suzuki's own craziness and which were just conventions of 1970's Japanese cinema that just read as v strange to the unacquainted

― sexy dander (Stevie D(eux)), Tuesday, 19 April 2016 19:46 (nine years ago)

four years pass...

Trying to remember one, I think it’s his, maybe three hours long, about a tubercular artist type whose girlfriend agrees to follow him to his doom in written form which missive he proclaims a “Love Letter,” which is sometimes the English title of the film, although I can’t seem to find it, there is another more popular Japanese film by that name.

― Dog Heavy Manners (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 3 January 2021 16:51 (five years ago)

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