What film got you hooked?

A continuing feature that asks prominent cinephiles "What film got you hooked on Japanese cinema?"


Sonatine by Todd Brown

The first film to really hook me on Japanese film? Well, there were others before this – assorted kaiju pictures caught on City TV’s Not So Great Movies weekends as a kid, stuff like that – but the one that really sunk its claws into me was Takeshi Kitano’s SONATINE. Sure, I know most Kitano fans prefer FIREWORKS and while I can kind of understand why it’s always SONATINE that provokes the strongest reactions in me. Kitano balances so many things so incredibly well in this film. The violence is the immediate hook, if I’m being honest, but it’s the pacing of the film, the way he gives his characters so much room to breath, that really sells it and makes it an exceptional piece of work. Sure, it’s a yakuza film and hits all the notes that yakuza films need to hit, but even moreso it’s a character drama that really takes the characters apart as they spend their days just waiting for something to happen and slowly realizing that they’ve been betrayed. It’s beautifully shot, has a sly sense of playfulness to it, it’s got that very fatalist edge that characterizes so much Japanese film, and despite having seen Susumu Terajima in, oh, twenty or thirty other films since this one he’ll always be Ken to me.

Todd Brown is the founder and editor of Twitchfilm.net (www.twitchfilm.net) one of the web's priemere resources for the latest info on genre, horror, independent, and of course Asian cinema. Along with his duites at Twitch he is also a programmer for Fantasia Film Fest in Montreal, After Dark Film Festival in Toronto, and Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas.