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As Good As It Gets

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Tokyo! is different things to different people. Everyone that sees the movie will see each foreigners artistic portrayal of different aspects of Tokyo living and life in a very different manner.I wont go into each scene detail, enough people have done that here. What I will say is I've lived in Tokyo for some time and each segment struck a chord in me in one way or another.If you have never been to Tokyo, or even to Japan, each segment might confuse you for various reasons.I will say that each segment truly did capture a very different aspect of Tokyo and Japanese life in a way that I've yet to see in any other movie about modern Tokyo.The only thing I will say about each short was that the ending for all seemed lacking, unfulfilled, and as if there should have been more there at the end. However, even with *my own personal feelings* of the endings being lacking, that in itself also caught its own part of Tokyo as well.In my opinion, its definitely a movie for those of us who enjoy or experienced Tokyo, or Japanese lifestyles, in one way or another.However, it was absolutely not what I was expecting at all from this movie!

"Tokyo!" is a three-way with Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, and Joon-ho Bong, re-inventing Japans great city as modern fairy tales. Three fantasies of alienation, form into the most unique, original, and entertaining film of the year so far. Gondry is up first with an adaption from a comic book by Gabrielle Bell "Cecil & Jordan in NewYork"(surprised was I, cus its one of my favorite stories by her, I did a presentation on it and everything) here retitled as "Interior Design". The two collaborated on the screen play, and it shows in a return to form, from his last good natured but slightly flat, "Be Kind Rewind". The story is of a couple who move to Tokyo, to screen an experimental film. The director is the boyfriend, and his girlfriend is his editor, transport, and support, though he claims she lacks ambition. They are looking for an apartment, and staying with a friend in a one room apartment. The boyfriend finds a job, the girlfriend looks for an apartment, job, and place to fit in becoming more marginalized all the time, until she begins to transform into...someone useful. Shades of "The Bedsitting Room" can be found here, but Gondry's trademark visual style is in full effect, featuring some amazing special effects, and fun set designs. It asks, Is it more important to be defined by what one loves, or what one does? Caravax's segment, called "Merde" is about a creature, like an overgrown Leprechaun, who crawls up from the sewer and begins accosting random people on the streets, eating flowers and money, licking and shoving anything and anyone who crosses his path, all to the theme of the original Godzilla. Needless to say he becomes an overnight celebrity(in Japan Sada Abe became a celebrity after murdering and removing the genitals of her lover, she played herself in plays about her life after she got out of prison, and this was before WW1. Nowadays the people photograph their monsters with camera phones). The creatures rampages turn violent, in one thrilling and especially horrific scene, and he is arrested and put on trial. The reason this is the weakest of the three, is because the creature speaks a gibberish language, and during an interrogation scene, we have about five minutes of gibberish talk, not translated til the following scene, its not really funny or dramatic, just kinda tiresome and awkward like a Monty Python skit dragged out too long. Its easy to point to terrorism and racism as the grand theme here, "he's linked to Al Queda and the Aum Cult", etc, but misanthropy in general works just as well, and is in keeping with the alienation that courses through all of the stories. Denis Lavent's performance is the best in the film, he manages to make the most inhuman character real, somewhere between Gollum and a homeless paranoid schizophrenic. It's similar to an early Gondry short film actually, where Michel takes a s*%t in a public restroom and David Cross in a turd suit follows him around claiming to be his son and shouting racial slurs at passerby's, til he eventually outgrows his s%&t cocoon and emerges from it in full Nazi uniform to Gondry's dismay. On the note of rampaging monsters, the final film is from Joon-ho bong, director of "The Host", called "Shaking Tokyo" about a hermit or hikikomori as they are a called in the land of the rising sun. A man has not left his house in ten years, having only human contact in weekly visits from a pizza man, whom he never looks in the face, has his delicate life jostled when an earthquake renders an attractive pizza-girl unconscious, and he is forced into direct contact. Eventually he resolves to leave his house to find her again, only to discover, or for us to discover the world is not as we remember it. Its an painfully funny but true idea (like Mike Judge's Idiocracy), that in the future, the final frontier of a technological society will become actual face to face interactions between human beings. Any of these stories would feel at home in an issue of Mome or a Haruki Marukami book of short stories, they are vibrant, whimsical, modern fantasy, that are almost so universal in their simplicity they could be told anywhere. The movie could take place in any city really, with some tweaking, but the stories do resonate specially with Tokyo. Its the best thing I've seen in a theater this year, I was smiling continuously throughout. Its 2 hours, but it goes by like lightning. Some of the stories may seem slight at first, so entertaining, it cant but be meaningless. But this ain't the case, each director brings something unique to the table, like another under-seen triptych of recent, the Atlanta made horror film "The Signal", "Tokyo!'s" directors feel like a band, jamming together more than separate artists trying to upstage each other, like in something like "Paris Je'Taime". Funny, charming, dynamic, strange, sincere, absurd, movie making. A place of robots, amphibious mutants, monstrous trolls, magical transformations, and to quote Merde "eyes which look like a woman's sex". Two Frenchmen and a Korean, re-invent Japan the city which upgrades itself more than any other, and we are all the better for it. What a strange bright future we live in.

Greetings again from the darkness. Three odd shorts merged together because of their Tokyo locations. Normally I am not a fan of the segmented, multi-director approach. The best that come to mind are Paris je'Taime and New York Stories. Tokyo is not at that level.The always interesting Michel Gondry (yes, he's French) has the best segment. Interior Design provides two story lines ... the fine line between generosity (helping a friend) and taking advantage of that friend; and the loneliness of losing one's self in a relationship. Gondry works wonders in a short time and I absolutely loved the chair as a metaphor.The second segment comes from another Frenchman, Leos Carax. By far the weakest and least accessible, Merde is about our facing the fear of an unknown terror. We are startled in the beginning as we are introduced to Merde, but the story falls apart after he is incarcerated.Korean Joon-ho Bong (The Host) presents Shaking Tokyo in the third segment. Dealing with a totally reclusive and obsessive character who, after 10 years, makes his first contact with another person and is captivated. There is some comedy here but also commentary on the need to connect.Overall, some interesting shorts, but don't expect any tie to the three stories ... other than the fascinating title city.

When you watch a 3 in 1 movie like this, you run the risk of liking one story and not liking the other but TOKYO! overall is a trippy ride into three movie watching experience unlike you've ever seen before. You may not enjoy every one of them but... it will impress you. A great collaboration but ends up with the big question of 'what's the purpose of all this?' You're going to try to connect the theme for one with theme for the other because each movie does a good job of making you feel like they're separate entity when they're actually one big metaphorical imaginative trinity.If I had to choose, I'd say the first two segments are my favorite. Michel Gondry's INTERIOR DESIGN is sad but in a really creative way. Gondry has been known to possess the ability to surprise us with weird visuals that compliment the characters and the story itself and INTERIOR DESIGN isn't far from that either. The two leads are looking for apartment and you get to see some of the most interesting spaces, and just like some of those spaces, the female character feels useless like she has no purpose at all, the boyfriend's accusation of her not having an ambition just makes things worse.I like how the story implies that even the most supposedly useless thing around like a chair could be so useful.There's a part where the woman slowly turns into a chair and it is absolutely downright amazing for a movie like this to have such great visual effects. Whatever Gondry was smoking, it sure as hell worked.The second movie, MERDE, by director Leos Carax, is quite possibly the funniest of all the the three. The story of the sewage monster man with his own language will shock you and crack you up at the same time. I don't recommend eating while watching this cause some of you might throw up at the sight of his filthy look. It's got enough humor and weirdness that will keep you curious as to what this is all about. Very entertaining especially the odd twist at the execution scene.But it's also a lesson in tolerance and understanding one another.The third movie, SHAKING TOKYO, directed by Bong Joon-Ho, is probably my least favorite one but it doesn't mean it couldn't hold his own ground. It's still a very original take on OCD, loneliness and the desperate attempt to connect. The actor who plays the man who isolates himself gives an outstanding performance without having to do much at all because it all works on his inner monologue. Will fear of uncertainties keep people locked up inside or is the only way to fight is to simply live without worry? I like how the movie plays with excessive light to illustrate discomfort that comes with taking chances in great lengths just to live again.TOKYO! is a masterpiece that doesn't beg for any reward, it simply wants to prove that film-making can be a simple as this and still be artful, profound, and entertaining all at once. And no matter how much we try to deny it, the fact remains.. people matter.--Rama's SCREEN--