READERS' CHOICE #41-B: AUDITION (1999)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

10

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, a few years ago

BEST SEQUENCE

After the titular audition, when we see Aoyama call Asami to express his interest in continuing their courtship, and we watch Asami's smile light up her face with joy

BEST LINE

"You guys auditioned many girls and you didn't pick me but you called me afterward. You just wanted to have sex with me. All guys are the same.” - Asami, justifiably upset and effectively expressing her feelings of betrayal in a way that's hard to argue

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

83%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"Great chemistry between the leads made this a warm and charming delight"

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"A widower takes an offer to screen girls at a special audition, arranged for him by a friend to find him a new wife."

THOUGHTS

• We've had so many dark and grim thrillers and horror movies so far, it's nice to lighten things up with a rom-com, no?
• In the vein of classics like 10 Things I Hate About You and She's All That, we're watching a movie about a relationship which was built on deceit. The main character, Aoyama, has been widowed and mostly single for seven years. Partly at the urging of his teenaged son, he decides it's time to get back out there, but he's a little stumped about the best way to find the right woman for him. Enter his film producer friend, Yoshikawa, who has what they consider to be a pretty good idea: they'll invite a variety of women to audition for a movie, a movie that the men know will never be made, and that way Aoyama will meet many different women and eventually take his pick; somewhat of a one-sided speed dating concept
• And through this, he meets Asami. Soft-spoken and demure, always wearing white, and with a lovely sing-song voice. Aoyama falls for her, but just like every relationship, theirs is not without conflict
• We eventually realize that Asami is still very close to her ex, a potential cause for concern, but which isn't actually a factor in the climactic quarrel between Aoyama and Asami. This culminating scene was almost my pick for the best sequence, and I certainly wouldn't argue with that. What's important about this part of the movie is that it shows us there's more to a relationship than just what one sees on the surface. Sometimes you need to go deeper. Deeper, deeper, deeper
• If you haven't seen Audition and you plan on watching it based solely on my recommendation, please either message me or comment on this post beforehand. I just want to make sure it's not too romantic for you
• Oh, and I have just been informed that some wires must have gotten crossed somewhere; somehow, the Rotten Tomatoes Critics Consensus written above was for the wrong movie! I inadvertently put the Critics Consensus for the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan classic You've Got Mail. Oh well, too late to change it now. Just call me Mr. Butterfingers!

Up next: OK, now it's time to get back into the American Film Institute's list! It's movie #80, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, and the first of nine Hitchcock movies which we'll be watching

READERS' CHOICE #41: ICHI THE KILLER (2001)

TW: Extreme violence, sexual violence and torture 

THRILL SCALE 1-10

8.5

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Nope

BEST SEQUENCE

The torture/interrogation scene in which Kakihara suspends his victim from the ceiling with metal hooks pierced through the skin of his back and his legs, sticks needles through his cheeks and jaw, and finally pours boiling hot oil on his back

BEST LINE

"There's no love in your violence"

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

64%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"Ichi The Killer is a thoroughly shocking gorefest that will surely entertain those with strong stomachs and a penchant for brutal violence."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"As sadomasochistic yakuza enforcer Kakihara searches for his missing boss he comes across Ichi, a repressed and psychotic killer who may be able to inflict levels of pain that Kakihara has only dreamed of achieving."

THOUGHTS

• Usually when I say "this movie isn't for everybody," I mean it as a suggestion. In this case I mean it as a warning. This movie is not for everybody. Honestly, this movie review may not be for everybody
• Ultimately I think I enjoyed this movie; at the very least, it definitely had an impact on me and it's not one I'll be forgetting anytime soon. The extremity of the violence in this movie is, frankly, ludicrous, and that's without even mentioning the amount of violent scenes the movie contains. If I had to estimate, I'd say there are at least a good 4-5 scenes and sequences in this film that count amongst the most violent, gory and disturbing content I've ever seen
• I wasn't totally sure where I wanted to place this next statement, but I think I want to make it known early: there are depictions of violence against women in this movie that I found appalling. I hope the trigger warning helped people avoid reading about this unnecessarily, and I'm not going to get too detailed, but the majority of the violence against women is unflinchingly brutal, and realistic in a way that I don't think is depicted quite the same as in many of the other scenes. I haven't read into the director Takashi Miike's intentions behind this, if there even are any deeper intentions, but without any further context, these scenes diminished my opinion of the movie a fair amount. I do want to talk about the rest of the movie without seeming like I'm sweeping anything under the rug, but I'll just say one more time, the scenes in which women were the victims of men's violence cast a shadow over the rest of the film, and they were deplorable in a way that I can't be entirely sure was the director's intention
• Outside of the previous note, the depictions of violence ran quite a gamut. There were scenes which looked cartoony and almost silly, like when a guy gets sliced right down the middle, vertically, and the left side and the right side of his body part ways. There were scenes which aimed for hyperrealism, like when we get a closeup of Kakihara, the main character, severing at least an inch off of the tip of his own tongue. And then, there were scenes which occupied a surreal middle ground. For example, there's a scene in which Kakihara decides he's going to pull a man's face off. He just grabs a cheek, throws him to the floor, and puts his back into it, even using his feet on the guy's head for added force. Almost all of the violence is remarkably convincing, even the scenes which are intentionally ridiculous; you know these terrible things aren't actually happening to these actors, but damn, it sure looks like it sometimes
• However, when a movie dials everything up to 11 like this, for the entire runtime with nary a chance to breathe, it may sound counterintuitive but even the ultra-violence eventually gets somewhat mundane. And outside of the shocking visuals, I actually found the plot a little hard to follow; therefore, by the end of the movie, when I was a bit worn out by 2 hours of extremes, my attention started to flag
• Certainly a unique movie, and I saw things I'd never seen before, never imagined I'd see, and will probably never see again. I was able to handle it, but I'm honestly not going to recommend it unless your interest was piqued
• Oh yeah, and one more thing, THE BLOND GUY ISN'T ICHI?! I hadn't seen this movie before, but I had seen pictures, I'd seen posters, I may even have seen trailers, and I was absolutely convinced that the blond man with facial scars and piercings had to be the titular Ichi the Killer. Nope. While said blond man was (who I'd consider) the main character, Kakihara, he sure wasn't Ichi. I was so firm in my assumptions, though, that this discrepancy even caused me some plot confusion early on

Up next: It's been a while since I've added a supplementary movie to the list. So, while it may be cheating a little to add a movie of my own to the Readers' Choice picks, this seems like a good chance to shoehorn in Audition, a previous movie by the same director Takashi Miike, and a movie that I must implore you to watch with as little prior knowledge as possible