Gran Turismo (2023)

Aka Gran Turismo: A True Story. There’s no future in racing. Following a pitch by marketing executive Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom), Nismo, the motorsport division of Japanese car manufacturer Nissan establishes the GT (Gran Turismo) Academy to recruit skilled players of the racing simulator Gran Turismo and turn them into real racing drivers. Danny recruits former driver-turned-mechanic Jack Salter (David Harbour) to train the players. Jack is initially hesitant but accepts after tiring of the arrogance of his team’s driver, Nicholas Capa (Josha Stradowski ). Meanwhile in Cardiff, Wales, teenager Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe) a university dropout, clothes shop employee and gamer is an avid player of the racing simulator and wants to become a racing driver despite the disapproval of his former footballer father Steve (Djimon Hounsou). His mother Lesley (Geri Haliwell Horner) suggests he return to college to study engineering and get into the racing business that way. Jann discovers he is eligible for a qualification race to join the GT Academy after setting a time record for a particular track. The night before his race, Jann is invited by his brother Coby (Daniel Puig) to a party and they take their father’s care. Jann flirts with a young woman named Audrey (Maeve Courtier-Lilley) whom he fancies. The gathering breaks up when police arrive and Jann initiates a pursuit after driving away when their friends are pulled over. The brothers escape but are caught returning by their father. Jann offers to take the blame for Coby if he admits that he is the better driver. Jann is brought to his father’s place of employment the following day in an attempt to be taught a life lesson but leaves early to partake in the qualifying race, which he wins, earning a place in GT Academy. At the academy camp, Jack puts the competitors through their paces in various tests, through which ten competitors are narrowed down to five. During one of the tests, Jann crashes with Jack in the car and claims that the brakes were glazed. This is later proven correct by analysts, to Jack’s surprise. The remaining five compete in a final race to determine who will represent Nissan. Jann narrowly wins the race against American competitor Matty Davis (Darren Barnet) but Danny insists Matty should be chosen as the representative due to his better commercial viability but Jann is selected at Jack’s insistence. Jann is told that if he finishes at least fourth in any one of a series of qualifying races, he will earn a professional licence and contract with Nissan. He finishes last in his first professional race at the Red Bull Ring in Austria after Nicholas taps him into a spin. Despite gradually improving over the next few races, he does not finish the penultimate race in Spain. He travels to Dubai for his last qualifying race during which Nicholas takes a corner too fast and crashes. Despite the debris from this crash cracking his windshield, Jann achieves a fourth-place finish and earns his FIA licence. He then travels to Tokyo with Danny and Jack to sign his contract and uses his signing bonus to fly Audrey to Tokyo as they start a relationship. Jann’s first race after signing is at the Nurburgring. He starts the race well and maintains a high position until the front of his car lifts into the air at the Flugplatz corner, hitting a barrier and launching into a crowded spectator area. Jann is airlifted to the Nürburgring Medical Center and is informed while in hospital that a spectator was killed in the crash, to his horror. When Jann is reluctant to return to racing and blames himself for the spectator’s death, Jack returns him to the Nürburgring. He reveals that he was involved in a fatal accident at the 24 Hours of Le Mans which led to a fellow driver dying and subsequently Jack’s retirement from driving. An inquiry clears Jann of any wrongdoing but professional sentiment turns against sim drivers. In response, Danny decides that a sim driver team needs to compete at Le Mans and finish on the podium to prove their viability. Danny enlists Matty and fellow GT Academy participant Antonio Cruz (Pepe Barroso) to make up the three-driver team alongside Jann … It’s like he suddenly remembered he was a racing driver. For petrolheads and gamers alike, this alternative sports biopic based on a true story written by Jason Hall and Zach Baylin has a lot to offer – a dream job for a kid whose life is dedicated to a simulation of it in the video game created by Kazanori Yamauchi, played here by Takehiro Hira. After a half hour setup, in which our hero is supposedly the offspring of the world’s least likely couple, he comes into the purview of a nasty looking man who’s hiding his own hurt under a cloak of viciousness. You’ve got instincts that can’t be taught. As the narrative demands, the key relationship here is of course with mentor Salter, the tough but decent father figure that Jann lacks at home and who of course is concealing the tragedy that led to his own retirement (perhaps the internet didn’t work a decade ago so Jann has to wait until the 70th minute for Salter to tell him). A wonderful running joke is Jann’s need to listen to MOR music to keep his nerves in check – while he has Enya and Kenny G in his ears, Salter is playing Black Sabbath on an old school Walkman: that leads to a change in song choice at the crucial moment on the race track. The other strand is the idea that learning how to drive on a simulator video game is not a bad thing (what else …) even if there are no real bumps on this road that can’t be straightened out. Anyone looking for a deep and meaningful discussion of the existential or actual gap between reality and simulation may look elsewhere – or find that this constitutes proof that there is no difference whatsoever. Of course this is all predicated on the fairy tale model, nowadays that means transposing things from self-imposed lockdown life to doing things for real and so it is – oh joy! – that Jann finally races at Le Mans, the ultimate proof of racing prowess. A colourful, splashy tale with so much great coverage by cinematographer Jacques Jouffret blended with game visuals that even a conservative storyline and the questionable use of a real-life tragedy can’t help but entertain once this gets wheels under it. The real Mardenborough performs as his avatar’s stunt double, fact fans. Directed by Neill Blomkamp. Somewhere out in the world there’s a kid who’s faster than all these arseholes

Lost Girls & Love Hotels (2020)

Will you take me to a love hotel? Margaret (Alexandra Daddario) is an expatriate American working in Tokyo, Japan at a Japanese flight academy during the day teaching prospective flight attendants how to pronounce English. She spends her nights getting drunk with fellow expatriates Ines (Carice van Houten) and Liam (Andrew Rothney) and seeks out submissive sexual encounters with random men in the city’s numerous love hotels where people can rent rooms for a couple of hours of sex. Her nightly misadventures cause her to show up to work in a daze and dishevelled, drawing the concern of her instructor Nakamura (Misuzu Kanno). One day, Margaret crosses paths with a Yakuza enforcer named Kazu (Takehiro Hira) and the two begin a relationship. Margaret is at first taken aback by Kazu’s revelation that he is about to get married, but she gives into him when he admits that his marriage is more out of duty than love. Margaret confides to Kazu that she does not have a family and that she came to Japan to be alone. Sometimes being alone is not about other people. On the day of graduation for Margaret’s students at the flight academy, Kazu asks Margaret to spend the entire day with him in Kyoto. Initially reluctant, Margaret agrees when he says he will not get another day and they take the train. He brings her to the Kiyomizu-dera temple and shows her the “Buddha’s womb”, a stone illuminated at the end of a pitch-black tunnel. Kazu explains the symbolism of being reborn reaching the stone and brought Margaret there hoping to help her let go of her trauma, but Margaret seems unaffected. On the train ride back to Tokyo, Kazu leaves the train while Margaret is asleep, leaving her despondent and desperate to find him when she wakes up. She finds that she has been let go from her job and replaced for skipping graduation. She spirals down further when Ines reveals to her that she is leaving Japan. Following numerous thankless sexual encounters, Margaret finally spots Kazu with his family by chance one day and follows him into a love hotel. Kazu reprimands Margaret for following him, telling her nothing can happen between them. When Margaret insists that she loves him, they have sex one more time before he sends her away, leaving him saddened and conflicted. When Margaret returns to her apartment to find an eviction notice, she desperately takes a job as a bar hostess for drunken businessmen … All those days that came and went, little did I know that it was life. The setting if not the precise set-up is familiar: we are reminded of Hiroshima, mon amour, Lost in Translation and even those William Holden films Love is a Many Splendored Thing and The World of Suzie Wong but this is the low-income, low-rent subsistence version of expat life. After the tragic romance we are then catapulted into being reminded of real-life culture clash casualties like Lucie Blackman, the English victim of a serial killer after an easy slide into something akin to prostitution as a ‘bar hostess’: the penultimate scene-sequence shocks, when we suddenly remember the opening scene and what triggers this cascade of recollections in flashback. This adaptation by Catherine Hanrahan of her own 2006 novel skirts and limns all of the above – the seductive anonymity of brief drunken one-night stands, of nobody knowing who you are or why you’re here, of guilt-free emotionless encounters. Until. Until. Love. Yet it’s love with belts and S&M and it’s the only way Margaret can be turned on. The seen-it-all world weariness of Ines, the sweet need for romance in Liam, the principled violence of Kazu, the conscience of Nakamura, all stand as polarising dynamics in Margaret’s world which lurches from one unknown to another until she and Kazu change each other. I want to know your mind.Their epigrams and aphorisms contain a world of knowledge gained from pain. The shocking violence of the conclusion is offscreen. That’s of a piece with the concealment running both their lives, including this relationship. Daddario is fine as the protagonist – it’s an exposing performance in an expertly constructed psychological thriller masquerading as a romance. Hira is most persuasive as the man who must make a sacrifice, in his own way. They are both reborn as a consequence of meeting each other. It’s a fascinating tale. Directed by William Olsson. Every time you look you remember what you’ve done

First Love (2019)

Aka  初恋/Hepburn/Hatsukoi. It’s all I can do. One night in Tokyo, a self-confident young boxer Leo (Masataka Kubota) who was abandoned as a child and Monica aka Yuri (Sakurako Konishi) a prostitute hallucinating her late father for want of a fix get caught up in a drug-smuggling plot involving organised crime, corrupt cops and an enraged female assassin Julie (Becky) out to avenge the murder of her boyfriend who may or may be betraying his bosses. Kase (Shota Sometani) is desperate to ascend the ranks and kill whoever crosses his path to help his ambition but is plotting a scam with corrupt cop Otomo (Nao Omori) while the gang has to take on the Chinese but are unaware Otomo has infiltrated their ranks … I’m out to kill! Everybody let’s kill! A typically energetic, funny crime thriller from Japanese auteur Takeshi Miike, with an abundance of identity confusion, revenge, astonishing and surreal violence, savage humour and romance. The kind of film where the line Trust in Japanese cars is delivered with utter seriousness. Quite literally a blast from start to finish with bristling action, beautiful night scenes in neon-lit Tokyo captured by Nobuyashu Kita and brilliantly handled action. Written by Masaru Nakamura and produced by Jeremy Thomas. Still things to do before I die

You Only Live Twice (1967)

Bad news from outer space. When an American space capsule is supposedly swallowed by a Russian spaceship it’s an international incident. James Bond has apparently been killed in Hong Kong but he is ‘resurrected’ following his own funeral and sent undercover to Japan to find out who is behind the political aggression and the owner of the mysterious spacecraft. However while Russia and the US blame each other and Japan is under suspiion, he discovers with the assistance of his Japanese opposite number Tiger Tanaka (Tetsuro Tanba) that SPECTRE is responsible for this attempt to start World War III and uncovers a trail that leads to the mysterious Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasence) whose evil empire is run from the centre of a volcano … Now that you’re dead our old friends will perhaps pay a little less attention to you than before. The one where Bond turns Japanese and trains as a ninja. A carnival of implausibilities that has the benefit of some gorgeous Japanese locations, stylish direction by Lewis Gilbert and introducing cat-loving megalomaniac Blofeld in the form of Pleasence, who we only glimpse over his shoulder as he strokes his pussycat before the big reveal. What an amazing villain! And how ripe for parody! Roald Dahl’s screenplay may throw out most of Ian Fleming’s novel (there is ‘additional story material’ by Harold Jack Bloom) but he does something clever – he takes the title seriously and has the second half begin exactly as the first, replacing a US with a Soviet rocket and doing a Screenplay 101 with the differing outcome second time around. The Cold War/space race theme might remind you of a certain Dr Strangelove. There are some good media jibes – If you’re going to force me to watch television I’m going to need a smoke, says James before aiming his cigarette at the enemy; astonishing production design by Ken Adam; and very resourceful sidekicks in Aki (Akika Wakabayashi) and Kissy Suzuki (Mie Hama); as well as the series’ first German Bond girl, Karin Dor, aka Miss Crime, due to the number of thrillers she starred in. Sadly it doesn’t save her here. This is gorgeously shot by Freddie Young and the restoration is impeccable. The John Barry and Leslie Bricusse theme song is performed by Nancy Sinatra. For a European you are very cultivated! 

Walk, Don’t Run (1966)

You remind me of myself a few years ago. Quite a few years ago. When British industrialist Sir William Rutland (Cary Grant) arrives days early for a meeting in Tokyo he doesn’t realise that due to the housing shortage throughout the 1964 Summer Olympics there’s nowhere to stay and even Julius Haversack (John Standing) at the British Embassy can’t be of assistance. He answers a small ad for an apartment share and when he arrives at the destination he finds British girl Christine Easton (Samantha Eggar) in a tiny place and she has a strict timetable to which Rutland must adhere. When he sublets to homeless American Olympic athlete Steve Davis (Jim Hutton) Christine has to put up with it because she’s already spent Rutland’s share of the rent. Then Rutland disagrees with her plans to marry Haversack and plays Cupid, while both he and Christine try to find out what sport Davis is competing in and resort to taking a cab and finding themselves in the middle of a race-walk … You’ve gone too far. And if you’ve any sense of decency you will leave. In the morning. A remake of the 1943 movie The More the Merrier, this is relocated from wartime Washington to the Tokyo Olympics and has neither the biting wit of the original screenplay by Sol Saks (and an uncredited Garson Kanin) nor the firm direction of George Stevens but is quite pleasant fluff although Eggar lacks comedy chops. There are some good moments – when Hutton is suspected of being a spy;  when the father of Eggar’s friend Aiko (Miiko Taka) is confused by the various relationships and mistakenly hands Grant a fertility symbol: Grant turns around to Standing, declaring I think we’re engaged, reminding us of his ad lib in Bringing Up Baby, I just went gay all of a sudden.  And given that it’s Grant’s final film it’s amusing to hear him humming the themes from both Charade and An Affair to Remember while he’s doing his shtick in Eggar’s tiny kitchen, thematically resonant as well as self-referential. There’s a nice bit at Aiko’s house when the TV is screening a Jimmy Stewart western – dubbed! Imagine a movie without his inimitable voice and in Japanese! Written by Robert Russell and Frank Ross and directed by Charles Walters with a score by Quincy Jones who co-wrote the songs Stay With Me and Happy Feet with singer Peggy Lee. He’s an Englishman, isn’t he?

Hiroshima, mon amour (1959)

Does the night never end in Hiroshima? The conversation between a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) and a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) in Hiroshima 15 years after the end of World War II. The couple were adulterous lovers overnight and now are friends talking, trusting each other with intimate stores. They recount, over the course of many hours, previous romances and life experiences. The two intertwine their stories about the past with pondering the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb dropped on the city… Novelist Marguerite Duras’ collaboration with debut feature director Alain Resnais is an epic of love and war, a simply structured idea that revels in the complexity of its uniqueness, the erotic conjoined with the political, in which human flesh becomes covered in the residue of disaster as the couple struggle to understand the past. Hiroshima can never be Nevers in France and the chasm of memory between the lovers is intractable in this brief encounter dictated by history and a need for understanding. An astonishing, transformative film, a properly modern cinematic work as radical now as it was in 1960. With a soundtrack by Georges Delerue and Giovanni Fusco. Hiroshima, c’est ton nom

The Games (1970)

How will it end?/I’ll get to the top./How will you know?  American Scott Reynolds (Ryan O’Neal), Briton Harry Hayes (Michael Crawford), a Czech Army man Pavel Vendek (Charles Aznavour) and an Australian Aborigine Sunny Pintubi (Athol Compton) train for the Rome Olympics marathon and their paths cross at various international meets before the big event which ends up taking place in gruelling heat … That boy’s gonna be our Silver Cloud. Starring Ryan O’Neal, with a screenplay by Erich Segal and a score by Francis Lai. It’s got to be Love Story, right? And yet, wrong. For Michael Winner helmed this paean to distance running and endurance before that classic and this adaptation of a novel by Hugh Atkinson sadly fails to entirely rise to the momentous occasion amid evident effort. Presumably a budgetary problem prevented better cinematography and editing – so much of what could have been a beautiful travelogue looks dreary because a lot is shot in England.  Issues of personal relationships, nationality and race (!) rear their heads, as one might expect. Crawford is the central character – a milkman with an unbelievable running time and he’s fairly unbelievable in the part (his later TV gurning as Frank Spencer is hinted at) but the other roles are more satellites to his story.  However it’s interesting that O’Neal’s character is a Yalie with a heart problem! (See above).  The mentoring relationships are central to the narrative and it’s Crawford’s with the inimitable tough-as-old-boots Stanley Baker that works best although Jeremy Kemp’s with Compton’s is fascinating, given the issues involved. The actual race is quite thrilling and the outcome is hugely satisfying. The crowds are mostly cardboard cut-outs, believe it or not.  Nice to see the real Kent Smith, Sam Elliott and Leigh Taylor-Young (Mrs O’Neal, as an uncredited co-ed) in the cast.  There’s an interesting sidebar about TV coverage and how US scheduling influences sporting events. Notable for a Lai-Hal Shaper song From Denver to LA performed by one Elton John who became famous later that year and had the record (s)quashed. Isn’t the poster rather cool? You run against yourself

Driven (2001)

He’s a younger, better you. Jimmy Bly (Kip Pardue) is an up-and-coming young star of the open-wheel circuit known as Champ Car, but he’s slipping in the rankings as the championships loom. Under pressure from his promoter brother Demille (Robert Sean Leonard) and wheelchair-bound team owner Carl Henry (Burt Reynolds), Jimmy is given a mentor – Joe Tanto (Stallone), a legendary former CART racer whose career and marriage to Cathy (Gina Gershon) were destroyed by a tragic accident. Joe has to earn the rookie’s trust, while attempting a career comeback following years of retirement, dealing with persistent reporter Lucretia Clan (Stacy Edwards), and seeing Cathy, now married to rival racer Memo Moreno (Cristian de la Fuente). Meanwhile, Jimmy is pursuing Sophia (model Estella Warren), the girlfriend of top driver Beau Brandenburg (Til Schweiger) and there’s a journalist (Stacy Edwards) following everyone around the place in search of a scoop for her season-long coverage … Fans of Formula One racing will have spotted Stallone lurking in the team areas in the late 90s, attempting to get top-secret information for a biography of Ayrton Senna, killed while driving for Williams in 1994. He abandoned that idea when he got nowhere and decided to go his own way in an action drama set in Champ Car, albeit with guest spots from some of my own sporting heroes (Jacques Villeneuve! Juan Pablo Montoya!). As an F1 nut (or petrolhead) there is nothing more exciting on this good earth than watching a live race:  this consigns the danger into a raft of effects and no matter how impressive they cannot compete with the real thing. There are also some geographical issues:  for F1 fans the great races are the European classics at Monaco, Monza and Spa.  This was shot at Long Beach, Chicago, Florida, Canada and Japan. Stallone is of course starring in this Renny Harlin-directed epic, with real-life NASCAR enthusiast Burt Reynolds co-starring, (but in a wheelchair, recalling F1 team owner Frank Williams) and in a nod to his own epic lifestsyle, he comments of the journalist pursuing them, She’s doing an exposé on male dominance in sports. More of this ironic dialogue would have enhanced the fast-cutting and action sequences which don’t dwell on the ever-present danger of death in a tangle of metal – here the outcomes from a crash are minimised to a broken ankle. It’s never going to get to the root of what makes drivers do what they do despite the tagline What Drives You? but there’s a nice sense of jeopardy, coming to terms with the past and some terrific racing – even a completely implausible episode through night-time traffic in Chicago. As if! That’s movies for ya. The best motor racing movie is still Grand Prix;  and the best film about Senna would take devastating form in the titular documentary. Stallone wrote the screenplay from an original story by Jan Skrentny &  Neal Tabchnick. Glad you stuck around

Isle of Dogs (2018)

I used to sleep on a lamb’s wool beanbag next to an electric space heater. That’s my territory, I’m an ‘indoor’ dog.  By executive decree all the canine pets of Megasaki City are exiled to a vast garbage-dump called Trash Island following an outbreak of flu. 12-year-old Atari (Koyu Rankin) sets off alone in a miniature Junior-Turbo Prop and flies across the river in search of his bodyguard-dog, Spots (Liev Schreiber). There, with the assistance of a pack of newly-found mongrel friends led by Chief (Bryan Cranston) and including Rex (Edward Norton), Boss (Bill Murray), King (Bob Balaban), he begins an epic journey that will decide the fate and future of the entire Prefecture…  I wish somebody spoke his language. The films of Wes Anderson have a signature – a look and tone that is unmistakable:  flat, square and symmetrical compositions filled with collectibles adorning an arch and ironic narrative with an amusing bittersweet undertow. The term ‘quirky’ is often used in reviews. His high point has been The Grand Budapest Hotel, a live-action comic drama that used ingenious tropes to express deeply felt ideological and emotional issues: Ralph Fiennes was rightly recognised for his performance in the lead (and should have won the Academy Award); The Royal Tenenbaums has become a definitive NYC movie, often referenced in fashion. He works with a repertory of actors who are now as well known for their association with him over the past two decades as for their other work:  he makes them hip, they lend him gravitas. He alternates these outings with animation/stop-motion effects-led films of which this is one and it’s probably his least appealing – with ineffectual dry humour, a grey palette and fairly expressionless humans (Japanese, and rather blank) turning what should have been a feather-light confection into a dreary one hundred minutes. The wry expressivity of the voice actors is lost in uncompelling characterisations that come off as flat as the drawings. The linguistic jokes are put in an occasional set of (obviously droll) sub-titles so small they are hard to read. It feels like there’s nothing at stake although it’s life and death and there’s a family reunion at hand. A quest narrative needs to have jeopardy but it’s stilted and gives little to the viewer. The best thing about this is the title. Say it a few times and you understand what this is actually about. It’s a shame but, you know, nobody died. Anderson’s screenplay is from a story by himself & Roman Coppola & Jason Schwartzman and Kunichi Nomura. Narrated by Courtney B. Vance.

Isao Takahata 10/29/1935-04/05/2018

The death has taken place of Isao Takahata, the co-founder of legendary Japanese anime Studio Ghibli. He was 82.  Probably most acclaimed for Grave of the Fireflies, he was instrumental in bringing the artform to a global audience. He began working in the field at the Toei Studio in 1959 and eventually teamed up with arch rival Hayao Miyazaki in 1985 to make hugely influential and serious-minded films like the ecological story Pom Poko. This multi-talented auteur was a writer, producer and director (but not an animator).  His tendency towards realism balanced Ghibli’s more fantasy-oriented material, focussing on the quotidian and normal activities, bringing his literary education to bear on the world of the comic book and elevating its ambitions in the process. Rest in peace.