About | The Tokyo Post

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Tokyo is big. Its place in the world, even bigger.

The Tokyo Post is an online news lab based – you guessed it – in Japan. As a crew of journalists, bloggers, and photographers in Tokyo with a passion for new ways of delivering the news, we’ve bonded together under one goal – to create a great Japan-focused online news site for about the price of a fine haircut. And hopefully learn something in the process.

We write news on Japan and we curate news from other sources we think are great. We’ll experiment with maps and data, photography and video. There’s no office and no printing press, no whiteboards and no J. Jonah Jamieson. With a virtual IRC newsroom, we aspire to find a story, cover it, and send it out to the world within minutes. It’s unconventional, but exciting. Call it an experiment. But as with any experiment we’ll screw up from time to time, but always with the best of intentions. We’re learning too, and we’d love your criticism so we can get better.

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Once Upon a Time in Mexico: Ballad of the skeletons

Originally published in The Muse.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico is the coolest movie since Pulp Fiction. It isn’t the best, but it’s the coolest. It has a feel to it unlike any other, and everything about it sets it apart from other movies that try too hard. This movie is a freewheeling impulse that pays off big time. It’s unforgettably fun, but still has an important statement about Mexican society.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico is the end to Robert Rodriguez’s Mariachi Trilogy. It started in 1992 with El Mariachi, a movie about a wandering guitarist who gets mistaken for an assassin. Next came Desperado in 1995, which had a similar story, but more deaths, explosions, and audience members.

Now, in the third movie of the series, the mariachi (Antonio Banderas) is back. He’s been hired by a C.I.A. agent (Johnny Depp) to kill a criminal planning to overthrow the government – the same criminal who killed the mariachi’s wife and daughter. Along the way he runs into tough guys who try to stop him, but they’re taken out in a series of ultra-stylish gunfights.

Sure, the story’s a mess. There’s some garbled stuff about a drug cartel led by a badass (Willem Dafoe), who’s chased by a retired F.B.I. agent (Ruben Blades). There’s also something involving a female double agent. They may seem extraneous, but these subplots are necessary. They take the mariachi story and turn it into the grand epic Rodriguez intended this movie to be. Also, they reflect the themes of the main plot: duty and revenge cross over in bloodshed.

The figure who ties the entire movie together is Johnny Depp. He hires the mariachi, he sets the F.B.I. after the cartel, and he’s banging the double agent. He’s the maestro behind this symphony of destruction, and as always, he’s perfect. I’ve never seen a bad turn from Johnny Depp. He’s strong, but subtle, funny, but never dumb. He’s a physical actor who will affect different postures, gaits, or anything for his role. He can reinvent himself endlessly and still steal the movie. He may be the greatest actor working in America and he’s never even been nominated for an Oscar.

Beyond his skills, Johnny Depp is also one of the coolest actors in the world, and he only adds to the coolness of the movie. Though really, from the beginning, this movie was a recipe for cool: It has a classic character in the mariachi, the man with a guitar case full of guns. Its supporting cast has actors like Mickey Rourke and Cheech Marin. The female lead is Salma Hayek, who possesses more raw sexuality than any other actress. It’s directed by Rodriguez, who couldn’t make an unstylish movie if he tried. Its dialogue is stilted, but smooth. For God’s sake, the very idea came from a conversation with Quentin Tarantino.

The movie’s chock-full of incredible scenes, like Banderas and Hayek, manacled together, escaping a hotel by swinging from ledge to ledge. There are tracking shots with blood spurting onto the camera’s lens. There’s even graphic reconstructive surgery by a Mengele-like doctor. But more than all that, there’s something deeper going on.

Mexico is a poor nation, among the poorest in the world. Its people are poverty-stricken, and the white men in the movie see them as inferior. Johnny Depp has condescending lines like “Are you a Mexican, or a Mexi-can’t.” By some people’s view, many Mexicans can already be called dead – living in body, but with nothing to live for.

So, Rodriguez set the third act against the Mexican Day of the Dead festival. A parade marches down the street with skeletons erected on posts. Locals have painted their faces like the Grim Reaper – black eyes and lips against a ghostly white skin. Then a riot starts, but the Mexicans fight – they have little to live for beyond the festival, and they’ll be damned if they let it be ruined. They may be down, but they aren’t out.

The final battles take place on this holiday. The mariachi and the Mexican F.B.I. agent each get their man. Johnny Depp, the American, does not. In this way, the movie functions as a battle cry for Mexican liberation. The final shot of Antonio Banderas walking towards the camera, Mexican flag draped around him as a sash, shows unbridled patriotism.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico is a feat, a movie that’s so bursting with exuberance you can’t help but feel exhilarated. Robert Rodriguez has never been better. It’s fun, flashy, warm, and triumphant. And it’s so empowering it made me wish I were from south of the border.

Jeepers Creepers 2: Jeepers sleepers

Originally published in The Muse.

More than most other genres, horror movies are a niche market. Those who like them, like them a lot, and those who don’t, couldn’t care less. Jeepers Creepers 2 is blatantly a horror movie, but in this case, even fans of the genre will probably be disappointed.

The story starts with a boy hanging scarecrows in a cornfield. He notices one of the scarecrows watching him, and then he’s running for his life, pursued by the Creeper, a monster who looks like the twisted lovechild of Freddy Krueger and Batman. The opening subtitles explain that once every 23 years, the Creeper gets a little peckish and goes on a 23-day feeding frenzy. Tomorrow’s the last day.

Then, of course, a busload of teenagers comes rumbling down the road and breaks down right in Creeper country. The adults order everyone off the bus – that is, until they start getting eaten. Then the young’uns take charge, particularly Scott (Eric Nenninger), the bigoted athlete who can’t listen to others’ opinions. Rounding out the herd are the practical and nerdy equipment manager, the weird girl who has visions, Scott’s empowered cheerleader girlfriend, and his arch-rival who, of course, happens to be black. Add a half-dozen other stock characters with no personality – but if you’ve seen a horror movie before, you probably knew all of that.

The real interest, if there is any, is in who will get killed, and how gory or inventive it will be. Sadly, it’s neither: the gore is kept to a minimum – at least for something with an R rating – and any killing is conventional horror movie stuff. A single decapitation is kind of amusing, but even that isn’t especially well done. All in all, nothing about the movie stands out in the least – it’s like I’d seen it all before.

The biggest selling point is the monster, and admittedly, the Creeper is a good one. Even if he’s little more than an amalgam of other classic villains, he has potential. What keeps him from being really captivating is his motivation: he’s just hungry. What makes a monster truly stand out is the ability to sympathize with it. Hannibal Lecter is a charismatic genius who’s a little confused about his diet. Halloween’s Michael Myers is psychotically disturbed, but not necessarily evil. Even in Jaws, the shark is only obeying its nature. They’re a collection of characters that just go about things the wrong way. Unlike them, the Creeper is a beast – at one point, he sits atop the bus, licking the window maniacally, trying to be horrible. As visually striking as it is, it just doesn’t cut it.

Another problem is that the movie tries to be funny; that’s fine – horror-comedies can be great (Dead Alive, Army of Darkness), but, in this case, it was distracting. Just as some sort of tension might be building, someone will crack a joke and it will all fall to pieces. Part of this might have been accidental – the dialogue is unbelievably bad (“There wouldn’t be a girl stupid enough in this day and age to kill herself sucking on cancer sticks, would there?”) – but at least a few times it was obvious enough to be there on purpose. When Scream came out, parodying horror conventions within a horror movie was fresh and interesting – now it’s cliché.

Jeepers Creepers 2 is the kind of movie that really bothers me. It’s a poorly strung together creepshow aimed at kids who don’t know better. It’s trying to cash in by ripping off original, interesting, and great horror films like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream. And it gets wide distribution and publicity, and makes lots of money. Meanwhile, May, a great movie that bridges the gap between horror and comedy unlike anything I’ve ever seen, is barely distributed. It’s a wonderful movie that any fan of horror – or movies in general – should see. Jeepers Creepers 2 isn’t even fun to laugh at.

I, Robot: Get your hands off me, you damned dirty robot

Originally published in The Muse.

For a movie that so longs for a simpler, more Luddite-friendly time, it’s difficult to watch I, Robot indulge itself so openly in computer graphics and special effects. It’s like a bank robber who spanks his kid for stealing a Snickers; it’s Jeffrey Dahmer saying red meat will kill you. And that’s what fundamentally hurts this otherwise fun summer action flick.

As the credits say, I, Robot is “suggested by” the first short-story collection from sci-fi author/theorist Isaac Asimov. Asimovonline.com explains the few similarities between the book and the movie, including the character of Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan), the title, and the famed three laws of robotics.

Roughly, the three laws say: 1) a robot cannot harm a human, or let one be harmed through inaction. 2) A robot must obey humans’ commands, unless that conflicts with the first law. And, 3) a robot must protect itself, unless doing so counteracts the other two laws. Fair enough.

But wait! There’s a dead inventor in the lobby of U.S. Robotics, and his holographic suicide note cryptically implies that something is amok. In comes Detective Spooner (Will Smith), a robot-hating tough guy who still makes time for his grandma. He searches the premises and stumbles across a robot: it’s a brand new model – the NS-5 – set to distribute next week. It’s part of the giant corporation’s plan to put a robot in every home. Except this particular one, Sonny, is malfunctioning and has turned violent.

What follows is a conventional detective story that has Spooner trying to find the real killer of Lanning, and uncovering a secret plot about robots taking over the world; note how Asimov’s laws are out the window. In truth, the end is a bit different, but it still largely dismisses the author’s intention. Movies needn’t always stay close to the source material – in fact, most good adaptations are liberal reinventions of the original – but by ignoring the three laws the movie goes exactly against what Asimov was saying. He was tired of robot stories that had the creations turn against the creator. The movie works its way around the laws while still loosely adhering to them, but it still chainsaws against the grain of Asimov’s work.

Though really, that’s mostly forgivable. I’m not an Asimov fan, so I don’t really care. I am, however, a fan of director Alex Proyas, who made the wonderful Dark City and The Crow. He has a knack for telling pseudo-philosophical sci-fi stories that stay entertaining, and I, Robot is no exception. Yes, it’s a cookie-cutter action flick, complete with trendy bullet-time shtick and John Woo-style gunplay, but it rarely bores and it does raise some questions about what makes us human. When does a machine become autonomous enough to accept responsibility for murder? Where does truth lie, in the facts or in the interpretation?

With all of its questions and its firmly held attitude that life was better before everything was automated, the movie’s technique doesn’t jive. Practically every shot has some computer-tinkering. How can we take a movie seriously that doesn’t practice what it preaches? In its longing for an earlier time, I, Robot made me long for a time when Will Smith wasn’t an action star but just a skinny kid from Philly whose parents just didn’t understand.

The movie is nothing great, but I’ll confess a soft-spot for any movie with a giant hologram waxing Nietzschean over a field of iMac-looking droids. It’s a personal bias, and one that’s not to everyone’s taste. I, Robot is far from being the best of its genre, but it’s low on sci-fi technojargon and high on escapist fun. Asimov purists might be appalled, but when it comes down to it, anyone who enjoys the movie could beat up an Asimov fan any day.

Garden State: Everything is alright

Originally published in The Muse.

Everyone is constantly told they have problems. Doctors, parents, and the media try to influence us one way, and succeed in making us feel like shit. Garden State, the directorial debut from Scrubs star Zach Braff, may cloak itself as a too-hop indie romance, and it is; but it’s also a movie that knows the troubles of aimless post-college kids, and how they’re crippled into thinking they’re worse off than they are.

Beyond writing and directing, Braff also stars as Andrew Largeman, an actor-turned-waiter who hasn’t been home in nine years, but who heads back to New Jersey for his mother’s funeral. While there, he meets up with old friends and other cases of arrested development he left behind long ago. His family life is mangled from an accident that happened as a child, his professional life involves being chewed out by models for taking too long with the martinis, and his personal life is confined to a desolate one-room squat in the bowels of Los Angeles with nothing but a bed and a telephone.

While home, he meets Sam (Natalie Portman), a sweetheart of the Annie Hall set but with the Valley girl cranked to 11, who causes Largeman to re-evaluate his life. She never directly comes out and orders him around though; there are few moments of heavy-handed exposition, which is part of the movie’s endless good-natured charm.

Some viewers will understand Largeman’s life better than others. I grew up in a pleasant suburban neighborhood with walking trails and swing-sets, just like hundreds of other kids. As the years carried on and we all grew up, I watched classmates become drug-addled washouts, high-school dropouts, or completely neurotic sociopaths. Granted, lots didn’t, but for kids with such a carefree lifestyle, too many did. It’s a product of suburban lives of privilege, where kids have nothing better to do than pop pills and angst out. Judging from Garden State, New Jersey suffers the same phenomenon as Newfoundland.

Braff’s little story is about that lifestyle, and how Largeman tries to make the transition into the adult world of responsibility, love, success, and sobriety. Where other movies about that childhood darkly look at the junkie fallout and aftermath, such as 2002’s The Rules of Attraction, Garden State holds much more optimism. It believes in change; Largeman is no longer content to idly down a flask behind the bleachers to get away from his father’s lectures and sarcastic digs. He leaves his antidepressants at home, and once he’s off them, he realizes the world is full of sensation and his neuroses can’t be helped by chemicals. The drugs don’t work, they just make him worse.

The directing style is straight from the MTV generation, but it fits since the characters are too. Ultra-fast forward is used a little too much, but it’s clear Braff has a strong visual sense. He repeats one specific camera shot throughout the movie: Largeman stands against a flat background looking directly into the camera with equal space all around him. At first I thought it narcissistic, with Braff loving himself so much he couldn’t help but constantly have this mirror-style image. But as the story progressed, I realized it was more about the self-consciousness and neuroticism that his lifestyle had caused him. Carrying this shot through the movie shows how Largeman remains inside his own circular thought processes until the very end, when a wonderful tracking shot brings it all into perspective for him.

This movie is called a rip-off of The Graduate, but it’s more accurate to call it an update. Both stories feature the post-collegiate drifter, but a Benjamin Braddock could never exist nowadays – he was a product of 1960s myth and psychology. In a Dr. Phil world, that kind of existential brooding gets you mocked on national TV. It’s now en vogue to believe in self-empowerment; people have to accept ownership of their lives and enforce change. Garden State is about getting out of your own self-conscious skull and stopping to question why you actually hate yourself. The title isn’t just about Jersey, it’s about finding the garden state in your mind.

Dark Blue: A city on fire

Originally published in The Muse.

“This is the LAPD. We’re the most hated cops in all the free world. My own mama’s ashamed of me. She tells everybody I’m a drug dealer.”

– Carter, Rush Hour

Dark Blue continues the most recent tradition of police movies like Training Day and Narc — a rookie cop is partnered with a tough, morally bankrupt veteran who ushers the new guy into a world of street thugs, crooked law enforcement, and shaky digital camerawork. However, as routine as it might feel at times, it’s still quite a surprise.

I’m not talking about the storyline, or the characters, or even the naturalistic “street”-style of photography that director Ron Shelton employs – neither of them are all that impressive. What’s shocking about Dark Blue is the level of ethical agony the characters go through, and the questions it raises about justice.

The movie is set in 1991 Los Angeles, during the Rodney King hearing. Detectives Perry (Kurt Russell) and Keough (Scott Speedman) are supporting their fellow officers, but working outside of it, tracking down the men who murdered four people during convenience store robbery. Following him around like a puppy, Keough watches Perry play detective: he collects evidence and beats information out of the South Central hoods who frequent the area. Meanwhile, Chief Van Meter (Brendon Gleeson) shows up at the house of the killers, taking the money from his flunkies and trying to cover his own ass.

Perry’s no dummy, and is well aware who’s behind the killing; Van Meter was his daddy’s partner, and together they kept LA safe through the 60s by killing criminals in the street. The fact that Perry is alive is thanks to the dodgy police tactics they used, so what right does he have to criticize them?

So when Van Meter tells Perry to drop the manhunt on the real thugs, and hands him a binder of other suspects fitting the profile, Perry backs down.

The whole point of Dark Blue was to call police theory into question. Why get rid of techniques that work, like the chokehold, but freak out when cops use the force they’re allowed? Is it better to play things by the book and get arrest warrants and risk acquittal, or shoot a child-rapist dead in his backyard? The movie doesn’t have all the answers, because there aren’t any. If you follow the legal system, the criminals will get off – the punishments are light in relation to the crimes. But if you use street justice, you still have to deal with the act of killing a man.

And if the theme is moral ambiguity, no setting works better than the LA Riots. Racial tension was at its peak. If four white cops can freely beat a man to the brink of death simply for being an African-American, then there is no sense of justice. Why not riot? Nothing matters.

When the verdict comes over the radio in Dark Blue, everyone knows what’s going to happen – the city will burn. The riot scenes are the best parts of the movie and are instantly unforgettable. Dust and smoke crowds the street, filling the screen in a brown-out. Rioters topple cars in the street, loot houses, bash anything that moves in their moral outrage. Perry chases people through South Central, but keeps getting blocked off by guys stealing sofas, or barricades of men with clubs. Someone sends a barbeque through his car door. Another man gets a cinderblock whipped at his head. It’s an incredibly violent, incredibly cool land of confusion.

Even though I had problems with the movie itself, it’s intent alone is enough for me to be glad it was made. A movie like this rarely gets made in America, not even within the indie scene. It’s message is too strong, and too risqué to be widely accepted. It’s a philosophical debate impersonating a cop movie.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind: Clooney’s gone loony

Originally published in The Muse.

George Clooney is one of the most recognizable stars in the world, and one of the most likeable. He’s next in the line of Clark Gable and Cary Grant — the dashing and funny gentleman with charisma dripping out his ears. In his new movie, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Clooney is as charming as ever, except this time, he’s behind the camera.

Confessions is based on the “unauthorized autobiography” of TV producer Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell). Barris is the man behind such 70s staples as The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game, but his biggest hit was as host of The Gong Show.

Well, The Gong Show was his biggest TV hit. According to the movie, Barris was also responsible for the deaths of 33 people while employed as an assassin for the CIA.

Sound a little strange? Maybe that’s because screenwriter Charlie Kaufman is behind the script. The Charlie Kaufman who wrote Adaptation. and Being John Malkovich. The Charlie Kaufman who I described, in my review from two weeks ago, as being “out of his freakin’ mind.”

But this time, Kaufman has little to do with the weirdness. Everything about being a CIA operative comes straight from Barris’ book. It is true? Barris seems to think so, or at least doesn’t care if he fictionalizes his entire life. It doesn’t matter so much anyway, because this is still a fascinating, if flawed, movie, regardless of the facts.

Told in flashback as Chuck sits in a mangy motel writing his story, the movie flows through his life: he begins working at NBC as a page, and makes his way further and further up the ladder until he’s producing shows. One night he meets his love interest, Penny (Drew Barrymore), and while they aren’t really “together” throughout the movie, she always remains a major force in his life.

Then one night, after being pounded in a bar fight, he’s recruited by the government, and uses his job as chaperone of The Dating Game to hunt down spies in exotic date locations like Helsinki and West Berlin. What the fuck?

As awkwardly interesting as the plot is, the way it’s done is even more so. This movie has more style in one frame than just about anything else being made today. Clooney is having a ball, casting his friends in cameos, and experimenting liberally with camera tricks. He didn’t need to make a movie, he wanted to, and that gives him a certain amount of freedom. If it’s a commercial flop, who gives a rat’s ass?

The cinematography is nutty. In some very long takes, Clooney has his characters pop up in different places, in different costumes. One shot has the camera zoom in on Chuck’s eyes while in his house, and when it zooms out, he’s talking to his boss in his office. It seemingly defies the laws of physics. But regardless of how good it’s done, the style sometimes calls too much attention to itself, and takes away from the story. There’s so much cool stuff happening that before you can process one thing, another incredible thing has happened. It’s awesomeness overkill.

If you’ve ever seen Clooney interviewed, you know he’s funny, and his sense of humour comes through in Confessions more clearly than ever. But, it’s such a confusing sense of humor. A lot of the time, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be laughing or not. Forget whether I was supposed to — I wasn’t sure if I found it funny. I laughed at a soldier being hit in the throat by his superior, but I also spent a lot of time with my brow furrowed, scratching my head.

Lots of people won’t like this, for lots of reasons: too weird, too silly, too painfully visual — not funny enough, not serious enough, not whatever. People were walking out all over the place on Saturday night. That’s really a shame, because had they sat back and relaxed a little, they might have gotten a kick out of some of it. I’m not sure if I really liked it, but I definitely appreciated it.

If he keeps taking chances like this, and tones it down a little, George Clooney is going to be a great director. He’s already crafting a style all his own, but right now it’s a little muddled and a little forced. Through all the impossible tracking shots, and fun trick photography, the best part of the movie is just seeing Chuck let loose and dance during a taping of The Gong Show. It’s the simplest scene in the movie — and also the best. It’d be nice for Clooney to know that.