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I think that Miike could quite possibly be the absolute most overated director in Asian cinema to date. To be perfectly honest, I don't see his appeal. He's a one trick pony, for the most part. He's got a yakuza fetish that could rival Tarantino's penchant for patchworked movies and mindless blood shed.

Now, to date, I've seen:

"Dead or Alive" - Mindless Yakuza..
"City of Lost Souls" - More of the same..
"Audition" - Pretentious "Basic Instinct" rip..
"Ichi the Killer" - HORRIBLY overhyped..
"Gozu" - Tried too hard to be occult/odd, and forgot to entertain

It's safe to say I've given him more than a fair chance to impress me, so what is it that YOU people see in his work, that makes him the Q.T. of the Far East?

I only seen ichi the killer and audition..I liked them both actually....probably the over top twisted factor made me like them..I really don't they were complete rip offs because I haven't seen any thing that made me cringe as much as those 2 movies ,well except maybe the passion

I seen most of his movies and I'm quite impress with his work. His most impressive work was Ichi. Ichi the Killer is based on the manga Koroshiya (which btw- is not available in America) and Takashii kept the characters behavior nearly exactly to the manga. I mean Hollywood tries so hard to stay true to their Comic Book movies and they failed miserably! Any comic book adaptation has been terrible (with the exception of Tim Burton's Batman) For me Takashii capture the style and gore of the manga and made a great adaptation. Too bad our American directors suck at making comic book movies (Blade, Spider Man, The Hulk, WTF???). Yup, is a pitty we look down at foreign talent and yet our own film industry is complete trash.

i've seen audition and dead or alive, i liked both... audition being a particular favourite of mine... and i think its pretty insulting to call it a basic instinct rip off, miike did a fine job with audition imo...

dead or alive... i like mindless violence sometimes... whats wrong with that?

Ichi the Killer is overrated, but it's still worth a look, compared to his other works like Audition(which I agree with the calling it a BI rip off is stupid, nothing like it), Vistor Q and Fudoh are fine films from Miike.

Staying true to characters, I guess, is commendable. I think "Ichi" and it's gore-found reputation is fan-made. There's hardly any to speak of, and everyone mistakes Ichi for the detective, who was the most interesting character in the film. Given most people that see these probably aren't familiar with any manga, muchless their origins, I don't know that they'd share the same opinions.



I don't care, honestly. Movies are made to be critiqued, people have opinions, and that's just the way I work. Like I said, just a lot of pretention in that movie, IMO. As for the "Basic Instinct" quip, was it sheer coincidence that Asami was wearing a white suit, sleeveless IIRD, sitting in an isolated chair in the middle of the room with her legs crossed? The two shared some character traits as well, and it may have been nothing more than a little homage to a similarly themed movie, but you can't deny the comparison can be drawn.

Bottom line is, "Audition" was a nice idea that didn't quite unnerve me as everyone claimed it would. Just some gross out scenes, which would have been more effective had they been executed and not implied. In addition, I felt as if we were made to feel too much for the dirty old man, Shigeharu.

80 minutes of dialogue and teasing for 10 minutes of contrived torture? No, thanks. But hey, atleast this Asian "horror" has one thing going for it. It's not a ghost story.

yes movies are made to be critiqued... but theirs a difference between criticism and down right general meanness (couldnt think of a better word )

sure there were scenes that seemed familiar, but they werent plastered all over the movie, they were subtle enough...

i found her completely different to stones character in basic instinct...

they had different motives and were polar opposites in terms of personality, i dont think the women were that similar...

yes she was a bit young, but what man wouldnt try to find a woman he considered beautiful?

i guess its one of those love or hate movies...

whip

umm...

Ichi was crazy!!

takashi miike is one of my favorite asian film makers in my opinion his best movies are ichi the killer, audition, and gozu.

I thought his cameo in Last Life in the Universe was rather funny

I've only seen Brother and the packaging said "Japan's answer to Quentin Tarantino" and while the movie had lots of elements I enjoyed (the whole ascension from the hood to respected gang was awesome) the end didn't quite cut it for me. I've heard a lot about Ichi the Killer though.

Brother isn't a Takashi Miike film, Takeshi Kitano directed Brother. Kitano is another respected film maker.

Originally posted by MildPossession
Ichi the Killer is overrated, but it's still worth a look, compared to his other works like Audition(which I agree with the calling it a BI rip off is stupid, nothing like it), Vistor Q and Fudoh are fine films from Miike. I just watched Visitor Q and must Takashi Miike is one director that takes big chances..yeah it's all for shock value but I never seen half this stuff in American cinema...it was pretty outrageous!

I've seen Ichi and Audition, I didn't care much for Ichi, I ended up falling asleep about half way through.

Audition on the other hand, I thought to be a great movie. I, unlike C-dic, found it to be very unnerving and disturbing, implied gore and horrible acts are almost always more effective then explicitely showing them, it worked well for audition.

The film was sureal but real at the same time, it's atmosphere was unlike any I've seen before, feeling like it was teetering between a dream and real life.

Of course, if you go into this movie expecting constant shock scenes, then you're going to be disapointed, it isn't about gore, shock, unnerving scenes, it's about the power of love and how harmfull being desperate can be.

Of course, Audition, and Ichi for that matter, aren't for everyone.

Well I have to disagree with the OP. I am not usually a fan of gore for gore's sake but I adore Miike. I think he is an incredibly bold filmmaker and I love the dark humour in his films and their bizarre characters.

Visitor Q to me is much more shocking than Ichi. It's not for the easily offended however.

Originally posted by feral cat
Just look at something like *The Bird People In China and you will see he is far from a one trick pony.

I was just going to mention this film - it's amazing, and about as far removed from his usual fare as you're likely to get.

Also Happiness of the Katakuris is a Miike that doesn't fit easily with the one's mentioned most often.

Saying that I personally love Audition/Visitor Q/Gozo/Ichi etc.

*Oops no apostrophe in ones.

I just saw Visitor Q, and was pretty impressed. I thought it was quite fascinating and interesting, also quite brave and surprisingly touching.

Ichi is overrated, as mentioned already, but Miike's made a lot of other films, however, as mentioned already, many of which are much better than Ichi, such as Bird People, as mentioned already.

...Just wanted to reiterate (and form a compound sentence).

Happiness of the Katakuri's was quite simply unique. It was a very interesting film with a story that no one other than Miike could do. The claymation was seamlessly integrated.

Anyone catch Miike's episode of Masters of Horror on Showtime? Trick question actually. Showtime pulled 'Imprint' from the lineup. I finally rented it on Netflix. shock fear ......................Suffice to say, it's one of the creepiest things I've ever seen. I actually had to leave the room during one part. It wasn't really a great story, but the lengths he went to............fear

Check out Izo sometime. It's a nice existensial trip with lots of killing.

Have you seen the original Korean film The Quiet Family, that Happiness is based on?

Well let's see I've only seen 3 films by Miike ; "Audition", "Ichi The Killer" and "Sukiyaki Western Django"... I hated all three.

Honestly I really can't say that I found anything memorable about any of them. Usually I try my best to take apart a movie and try to find anything I like about it : i.e camera work, script, direction, acting music, etc.

These three movies were really boring and dull, IMO.

Ichi the Killer I found entertaining at first, but it bored me with bad acting and mindless violence. Shit characters... I guess the Manga is to blame.

The Audition was a horrible disappointment to me. After hearing so many good things about it, I figured it at least had to be descent. The thing I hate most was that it seemed that Miike forced the movie to be "disturbing" and "over the-top". I didn't really see anything that appauling. I hate it when movies force things (and fail anyways) and this movie was pretty pretentious to me.

Sukiyaki Western Django was just plain-out terrible, in every way. Instead of being a homage it was a disgrace. I seriously had to FORCE myself to sit through this movie. Bad acting, EXTREMELY bad dialog, hodge-podge script. Oh man this was the worst movie I've seen in a long, long time.

Needless to say, I am not a fan of Miike. Is this the best he has to offer?

I recommend trying his less surreal type films, see Rainy Dog, and Ley Lines. If you don't like these two then you should just give up watching anymore of his films.

Umkay wench-face, I'll 'prolly check those out. If they suck arse, you know who I'm coming after : P.

BTW : Which films of the 3 that I mentioned do you consider "Surreal"?

The last two, compared to his other films they are quite out there. Films Gozu and so on are more surreal though.