(1994)
Dir - Gakuryū Ishii
Overall: MEH
Stepping away from the cyberpunk aesthetic of his earlier movies, filmmaker Gakuryū Ishii's Angel Dust, (Enjeru dasuto), takes its cue from American police procedurals, particularly the ones that emphasis serial killer psychiatric profiling. While it boasts a brooding atmosphere and fetching cinematography from Norimichi Kasamatsu, Ishii and co-screenwriter Yorozu Ikuta's script never picks up the necessary steam to make the arduous pacing forgivable. The murder plot seems straightforward at first, (somebody picking off random women in crowded subway terminals every Monday), but once Kaho Minami tracks down her former, annoyingly smirking lover and his deprogramming clinic that allegedly "cures" former cult members, the story goes off the rails with a monotonous stream of sluggish set pieces and cryptic dialog. Several bizarre details are thrown into the mix, (like Minami being married to a hermaphrodite for reasons that are never divulged), but they seem to serve no purpose in an already nebulous narrative and only make the running time feel that much longer. Not without some merit, but the results are nevertheless frustrating.
(1995)
Dir - Gakuryû Ishii
Overall: GOOD
A New Age, sci-fi-adjacent abstraction, August in the Water, (Mizu no naka no hachigatsu), continues writer/director Gakuryû Ishii's stylistic shift from his kinetic early work into transcendental surrealism. Glacially paced, a sort of coming-of-age story is buried beneath picturesque visuals of natural landscapes, blue waters, skies filled with clouds and lunar close-ups, reflective skyscrapers, and symmetrically-framed interiors. It all alludes to mystical entities, extraterrestrial manipulation, enlightened comprehension, and metaphysical transformation in a heady exercise that answers no questions in lieu of gradually contemplating its many impenetrable themes. The movie is frustrating from a narrative perspective and indulgent to a point, which may not be to the tastes of anyone who is trying to piece together a stream of conscious delivery of ideas that is otherwise disguised within a plot-driven scenario. At the same time though, there is no denying that Ishii's agenda here is fascinating if not comprehensible, unfolding with an ethereal atmosphere, Norimichi Kasamatsu arresting cinematography, and a low-key musical score that often times takes a backseat to equally subdued nature sounds or even dead silence.
(1997)
Dir - Gakuryû Ishii
Overall: GOOD
Writer/director Gakuryū Ishii's third and final film from the 1990s, Labyrinth of Dreams, (Yume no ginga), closes out his trilogy of impenetrable, surreal arthouse movies and is the most aggressively motionless of the lot. An adaptation of a story by avant-garde, Shōwa period author Yumeno Kyūsaku, it concerns an introverted buss conductor who struggles with her feelings towards her latest work partner who may or may not be a serial killer that has affairs with his coworkers before dispatching of them in automotive "accidents". While the plot line is easy enough to follow, it is the completely unemotive nature of the characters and comically still presentation that confounds. People sit or stand across from each other as if physically paralyzed, either not answering one another's questions or waiting literal minutes before offering up a vague response. This along with a largely barren soundtrack that cuts out the background noise to focus on specific things that offer no further clues, all gives the movie a purposeful hypnagogic atmosphere that never lets up. Once again, Ishii's frequent collaborator Norimichi Kasamatsu delivers spell-binding cinematography, this time of the soft-focus, black and white variety that makes it seem more at home with something out of the early Japanese New Wave than the era of contemporary J-horror, which it technically almost belongs in.
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