William D
I came close to recommending this one, but I just can't quite get there. Most of the film is rather charming - not an adjective usually used for Miike's films - but the story started to take itself too seriously and dragged a bit towards the end.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
03/27/23
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Audience Member
This is one of the older Takashi Miike films that I've always heard good things about, but hadn't been able to track down until pretty recently. I can say that it was worth the wait, a more thoughtful film in the midst of his period of excesses and violence at the time.
The film is an interesting journey of two men from the city venturing into the countryside and finding their own forms of absolution there, and I would recommend checking it out.
Give it a rental at the very least.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/07/23
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Audience Member
Didn't really work for me. I found the first half pretty annoying, with bad pratfalls and dumb jokes, and the second, apparently more, uh, "lyrical" (ugh) half to be a bit cloying and sentimental, especially towards the end. Maybe it's because I only recently saw Aguirre, but I felt like the amazing setting wasn't utilised very well, with Miike's go-to conflict contrivance of a violent Yakuza feeling completely out of place. These complaints aside, I didn't outright hate it, but it never managed to draw me in.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/30/23
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Audience Member
This movie breaks the rules, as Miike usually does. It's beautiful and well constructed with a thick plot.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/21/23
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Audience Member
Something fresh from Visitor Q and Ichi the Killer director Takashi Miike. This is an enjoyable comedic art house drama with little to none of his trademark gore/disturbing scenes.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/26/23
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Audience Member
It's odd to see a film-maker like Takashi Miike, the notorious film-maker behind controversial films like Audition and Ichi The Killer make something that is so...well, I don't really even know how to describe it. It's certainly a unique, and dare I say, original fantasy film. Normally, I don't like it when people randomly toss around the word "original" when describing a film because there are bound to be a number of examples of what a film does that were done years, or even decades before. When it comes to The Bird People In China, I can honestly say that I have never seen any film like it, nor will I ever again. While I do enjoy fantasy franchises like Lord Of The Rings, The Neverending Story, Harry Potter, etc., this film is a very fresh take on fantasy with its whimsical premise, oddball characters, hilarious humor, themes about life, and everything in between. The premise alone is strange. A Japanese businessman is sent by his employer to check out a jade mine in a remote village in China, but the company didn't tell him that they had unsettled debts with the Yakuza, so the man is accompanied during the trip by a very angry and abusive debt collector for the Yakuza, along with their strange tour guide. What is already a strange journey becomes even more bizarre with the scenarios they find themselves in like riding a raft pulled by turtles, getting high as fuck on mushrooms, the tour guide loses his memory during the journey, and then they end up the remote village which just so happens to have a school that tries to teach people to fly like birds. It's a strange and hypnotic fantasy from start to finish, that touches on various themes like the emptiness of the modern world, the beauty of nature, self-discovery, and much more. If you love a good strange film, this is one to definitely check out, as you will never see anything like it. It's easily one of the best fantasy films I've ever seen.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/26/23
Full Review
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