Rental Family (2025)

This film was clearly filmed in Japan and most of the actors were Japanese, but the dialogue seemed wrong at times for Japan and the culture was altered to fit the sensibilities of western audiences.
One thing that was quite odd, is the characters all called each other by their first names, even in the office, which is not the way Japanese people call each other in nearly any situation.  There are plenty of cases where people in Japan doesn't even know their colleagues first name, as it is never used outside of the home.

Obviously this was made to be an entertaining film, and deviated greatly from the concept of "renting" people.  While services exist to rent people in Japan to accompany them to dinner or such, this film stretched the concept to have the people pretend to be family members and outright lie.  Such services do not exist in Japan.

And I found it prosperous that an employee would reveal to a client that she was merely a paid actor, which would definitely damage the reputation of her company, something Japanese people hold in extremely high regard.

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)

While I just watched this film recently, I read the novel well over a decade ago, maybe even two.  Even though I studied the history and culture of Japan, while reading the novel I came across a few things that I thought were insightful into the world of geisha, though there were quite a few things that seemed a bit off.  Still, it was a very entertaining story, and an incredible novel.

One other thing that is really irking, is the insistence on having Asian characters with blue or non-brown eyes.  Eye color often comes up in various films and stories, but it is a color that NEVER occurs in Asian people.  Writers dwell on the uniqueness of eye color, as if says something special about the character, but it is nothing that any person has any control over, and after first notice is soon forgotten.  The only time I am not irked with it is in Big Trouble in Little China, which was largely a fantasy film.

Watching the film, the film gave me the constant feeling of "this is not Japan"  While the sets and building seemed reminiscent of Japan, something was off and there none of the famous landmarks of Kyoto were shown, where the story was set and where I lived for several years, with the exception of two, one of which was the red "tori" gates of Fushinirari. The other was a small river, with buildings built up against the rivers edge.

It was definitely an odd choice to have the three main actresses be extremely famous Chinese actresses, all of whom I had seen in many other Chinese films.  With the exception of Michelle Yeoh, who is from Malaysia, I had never heard either of the other two actresses speak in English.  Checking after watching the film, it said that their dialogue had to be pieced together from several takes, as their pronunciation was often off and difficult to understand.

The biggest problem is the film doesn't give the impression of having Japanese culture.  It is clearly what westerners think Japan and Geisha are.  The actresses acted and reacted in the way that western women would.  It made for intense scenes, but didn't really make for a great film.

One other very odd thing was that when one of the characters made an offering at a temple, when the shook the rope, inside of the rattling sound that the "bell" makes they replaced the sound with that of the huge temple bell, which is certainly over 2 meters in height.

Secondhand Hearts (2017)

    I really was only interested in this film as the trailer showed the characters being in the Kansai region of Japan, and I recall from seeing the trailer that they were in both Kyoto and Nara. I think they may have shown Osaka even more briefly. But as it turns out, the scenes of Japan were pretty much completely covered in the trailer, with the exception of an unremarkable scene that was set in the airport and one scene that was set in Miyajima in Hiroshima.  That is where the large red gates that are set in the water are, and are often shown in travel pictures of Japan. There was also a scene set in a hotel supposedly in Japan, with floor to ceiling windows, but I think it was unlikely that those scenes were filmed in Japan as nothing to identify the surrounding area as Japan was visible from the windows. Also, such a hotel would be prohibitively expensive. They never even hinted at what Emily did for work, which was her reason for being in Japan, but I what kind of work she would be doing to cover the cost of such an expensive hotel. 

    The films story was somewhat intriguing, as it set up the main character in a love triangle. Though the ending resolution was quite unsatisfactory. I thought they would come up with some out of the blue solution to their love triangle, but in the end, the resolution lacked any real punch.

Ticket to Paradise (2022)

The only reason I had any interest in this film is it is set in Bali. This, as I expected, turned out to be a huge disappointment. The only scene in the whole film that may have been flimed in Bali, was when they went to Tanah Lot. Other than that, the film appears to be shot entirely in Australia. This is a hollywood ideal of Bali / a tropical island, with nothing but nature, no infrastrcuture. Once again, Hollywood has created an idealize view of a tropical paradise, and picked and choosed parts of the culutre, which is extremely sparse in this film. While the subtitles listed the characters as speaking in Balinese, I highly doubt they were speaking in Balinese, but were more likely speaking in Indonesian, as I recognized a few words, when they were speaking. Scenes of the landscape and temples were basically nonexistant, along with the culture, as the didn't show any Balinese dance nor any gamelan music, and only a slight bit of the trasitional clothing. While they did show the groom getting his teeth filed down, and this is a cultural practice, I thought this was done when Balinese people were much younger, an not releated to getting married in anyway. Also, while they had a great opportunity for the white bride to dress up in traditional Balinese wedding attire, they choose instead to have her wear a western wedding dress, which while appropreate for a wedding in Hawaii, would be consider highly inapprorate for a Balinese wedding. And while the main actor who played the Balinese groom, was actually half Indonesian, and a few other actors were actually Indonesian, the majority of the actors were of other Asian races. And it appears that none of the actors were actually Balinese. Nearly all of those actors spoke perfect English, without any Indonesaian, or Balinese accent, once again sanitizing a potential internatioanl experience for American audiences. After watching the film, I was suprised that Billy Lourd was in the film. I didn't recognize her, but I am not that familar with her, and she did appear like that she was in her 30s in the film, and perhaps a little bit too old for this role. Actually, I wasn't really aware of her when she appeared in the Star Wars sequels, thought I do hope the daughter of Carrie Fisher has a prosperous career. This film is merely a vehilce for George Clooney and Julia Roberts, with all the other characters being minor background characters, including Bali itself. Julia Roberts is past her prime, and I don't know of any film she has made since Pretty Woman that I would even consider worth watching. I think she has just been riding out the sucess of that film, to keep her career going, and I don't know of anyone who is a big fan of her work, especailly anyone who is male. You would do much better watching the Road to Bali (1952), if you want even the smallest taste of the real beauty and culture of Bali.

Cats Don't Dance (1997)

This is one I have wanted to watch for a while. It came out just after Toy Story, which I think signaled a new age of animation, as it was made with computer graphics, and led the way for a large number of computer animated films to follow and even some of which still used the look of handdrawn films. Prior to that, and with hand drawn animated films becoming a ratity, due to the amount labor needed to produce them and of course cost, there were much fewer animated films being released. That being said, I think this film was created with the help of computer animation, but I am not sure. So, I really an interested an any animated film made before the realese of Toy Story, and while this was realease just after, it still was unknown to me, and it took a while to track it down, as I don't think it is well known, nor has it been given a lot of publicity. The film has quite a notble cast, at least to me, due to my being aware of them from other shows, such as Scott Bakula and René Auberjonois both of whom I know of from Star Trek (and Scott from Quantum Leap) and as far as I know have never voiced characters in an animated film before. I was impressed that Scott Bakula did his own singing parts, as most of the other voice actors in this film did not, and I don't ever recall hearing of Scott Bakula signing in any other film. Don Knotts also lends his voice to character, though I would have nearly not noticed, if I hadn't seen his name assocated with the film before watching it. John Rhys-Davies also voices a character. I know him from playing Sala in the first and third Indiana Jones film, and from Flash Gordon, but I haven't seen him in anything else I can recall. The film was directed by Mark Dindal, who worked on a number of Disney asnimate featurs, before going on to direct The Emperor's New Groove and Chicken Little. The film was okay, but the story didn't really stand out, nor were any of the songs all that remarkable. It was interesting, as it was set in the 1930's and featured a large number of cameos of actors from that era, much like the old Looney Tunes also did, though those actors were current at the time those were created.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

Unfortunately, this is just a nostaligic trip. It has all the elements from the original film, mixed in in ways that usually don't make any sense. The film cannot stand on it's own, and I find it hard to beleive that anyone who has never seen the original film nor is familairy to the franchise would get anything out of this film. As has happneed with may other sequel/reboot films, the creators of the new film seem to have seen all the elements of the original film, and included them in this film, but it's just a pale imation of the original. Didn't they even know the original film was a comedy? Always good to see Paul Rudd in any film, even so, this film didn't stand a ghost of a chance. My questions is, how do they expect to continue the franchise? How are these kids supposed to run a business busting ghosts? Their age alone makes this completely ridiculous, and not in a good way.

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

The plot of this film doesn't make a hole lot of sense, and it is quite contrived, but I can accept that, as they wanted to have a (flimsy) excuse to get all three of the actors together who played in the previous Spiderman films. It was merely a nostagic trip, bringing back six or so of the villians from the previous films. But the whole plot didn't make a lot of sense, and it made Dr Starnge look grossly incompetant and careless. The problem with the film is that it has no rewatchability. There weren't any great scenes that you would want to go back to and reawatch. This is the way with all films for at least the last decade (I am talking to you Star Wars sequels), in that they don't have great scenes, where as in older films, they would have multiple scenes that you wanted to watch over and over again. While that, and bring back most of the villans (What, no James Franco or Topher Grace - well Venom was completely wasted in that film...) Was this just a lame attempt to justify bringing back the villinas they killed off in the previous films? Take a lesson from the original Superman films (but not too much of a note), but not the Batman films (you don't have to kill off your villians at the end of each film). And as for Superman, you didn't really need to have Lex Luthor in 3 of the four films, as Gene Hackman plays a lousy Lex Luthor, but still the films he appeared in were better than the third film, even though the villian in that film wasn't too bad, and the evil computer did give a lot of kids nightmares. I still cannot understand why Zendaya is gettign roels in movies. She was slightly better in theilf film that the previous Spider-man film. But she shows nearly no reaction or emoiton. Okay, I get it. She wasin Shake in UP (TV) on Disney, and I know that many kids loved that show, mosstly for Bella Thore, who doesn't seem to be doing much these days, except screwing (not litterally) followers on OnlyFans.