Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl

You’ve probably noticed that I’m getting heavily into Asian movies again (I sort of took a break for most of the year, catching up on things I had missed out on the world scene), and last night I watched another two movies, starting with SHARK SKIN MAN AND PEACH HIP GIRL. Directed by Katsuhito Ishii and starring Tadanobu Asano (and featuring another one of my favorite actors and Kitano regular, Susumu Terashima), this is one hell of a cool movie. Stylishly directed, it tells a rather simple story but in an interesting way, with a few freakish characters to color things up. I really need to see Ishii’s PARTY 7 now.

Next up was Takashi Miike’s DEAD OR ALIVE FINAL. I’m ashamed to say that I’ve yet to see the first two DEAD OR ALIVE films (I’ve had a hard time in the past getting copies with subs, but I think I’ll be able to watch them sometime next week), so this was a weird intro to the series, but it was still fun to watch. Some people I know had told me DOA FINAL was a huge letdown, but having not seen the others, I thought it was still entertaining in its own way (especially that wacky penis-headed robot at the end), although definitely not one of Miike’s stronger films. Still, if nothing else, it just made me want to see the earlier two films even more, especially because of the tiny sequence near the end that shows over-the-top flashbacks from DOA 1 and 2.