Ishiro Honda's Gojira (1954)

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Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998)

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Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira (1999)

I was riding down the sunny streets of New York City on a motorcycle. As I sped toward Times Square, the former owner of my new bike’s parents shuttered through my mind: I wondered what their reaction would be when they found out that their son had just been murdered for his Tetsuo brand motorcycle. The thought passed, and I kept riding.

It wasn’t the first homicide I had committed that day. Just minutes earlier, I aimed the barrel of my gun at a propane tank parked at a fueling station and pulled the trigger. I wasn’t able to count the bodies before I could get away from the Five-O on the unidentified man’s Tetsuo bike, the same who lay dead on the pavement in the middle of the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.

The cops were catching up to me now. Fifty, sixty, seventy the speedometer read. I was the Minnesota cowboy who could not be caught; something in my teetering bulb of dread and dream knew I would never be. And so I killed again

The police were cut off by a walk only street in Greenwich Village. My newly hijacked motorcycle, a Kaneda model, was acquired from an Eastern European gentleman below an underpass off of Highway 78 running alongside the Hudson River. The man’s neck snapped sharply between my fingerless leather gloves. It was the last noise his body would ever make as his legs twitched silently beneath my feet. Sirens blared. This time, I didn’t have enough time to think about his parents.

I raced down the east end of Broadway St, weaving in between a combination of pedestrians, limos, and pigeons. A police officer flew out his windshield into oncoming traffic behind me, sporadically bouncing across the concrete safari of the city for blocks. I knew an acquaintance would be waiting in Brooklyn with a chopper to take us out of the sights and minds of the NYPD, but it would take more than a motorcycle to get there.

I headed for the docks on the Lower East Side, where I might be able to hijack a jet ski to take across East River into the borough to the south. The plot thickened when I tried to pass the SWAT teams on South Essex Street, where spotlights blinded and helicopters deafened. I was about to finally be roped in. The tires of my Kaneda were shot out by a rooftop sniper. For a moment, I flew. The next, I lay dead.

The masochistic nature of my killing spree in Grand Theft Auto IV left me thinking about those motorcycles I rode in my final hour of play. I suspected the names were Japanese, and I knew for a fact that they were fictitious.

Fictitious, but not original. A Google search took me to a character list for an animated film called Akira. Rockstar Games, the makers of the Grand Theft Auto series, branded their virtual motorcycles under the veil of an Easter egg, the names of Akira’s central characters.

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg labeled the film unmarketable in the United States, but Akira managed to achieve cult status after its national 2001 release.

Tetsuo and Kaneda are cyberpunk motorcycle gangsters, members of a society described as “low life and high technology.” Akira has an advantage over live action films in the genre in that the special effects options that went into making a dystopian Tokyo circa 2019 were limitless in its art form.

Akira is much praised as an animated cult movie that managed to influence live-action blockbusters. The Matrix (1999) drew from Akira’s account of a human’s attempt to do right in a corrupt, technology-based society, a remarkable feat for a film without any actors. Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA looked to director Katsuhiro Otomo’s methods of audio engineering when creating the sound effects for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003) and Vol. 2 (2004), compositing the noise produced by a 1929 Harley Davidson with that of a jet engine.

Word of a live-action remake of Akira arises in the media every so often. Warner Brothers Studios bought the rights in 2008, and the various proposed cast lists have been exclusively white A-List: Ryan Gosling and James Franco as the leads, Mila Kunis as femme fatale, Helena Bonham Carter typecast as the villain. No deals between the studio and the actors were ever secured, and production has shut down a total of four times as of January 2012. It’s better that way. The power of Otomo’s storytelling with the animated art form is timeless.

Watch for the respect Kaneda gives his brethren in light of their losses, dissimilar from the respect I failed to give my victims back in my Grand Theft Auto IV days. Hayao Miyazaki fanboys could never stomach the violence you are about to witness.

August King
Film Club Co-President

Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (2001)

I was in 2^nd grade when I first saw Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. I watched it once with a friend, and after that day, we watched it once a week for the rest of the year. I loved Nausicaa. I still love it. And I love Miyazaki’s other films – Howl’s Moving Castle, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, Castle in the Sky, and My Neighbor Totoro. I also love Spirited Away.

There’s something about Miyazaki’s animation that is amazing. He captures image, character, and message perfectly. First off, the animation is beautiful – the emotions on the characters’ faces (and the way they open their mouths really wide when they laugh), the colors, the style of drawing. Whatever the subject or tone, the artistry of Miyazaki’s work suggests an underlying joy. It’s more than just pretty images, although some Miyazaki scenes are stunning in their visual detail. His animation lends the cartoon scenes and characters a sense of reality. Watch Nausicaa some time. I love taking in every detail of the toxic jungle. Miyazaki includes every leaf and water drop, and doesn’t miss a thing. The pictures on the screen seem so alive. I think some of this comes from its being hand-drawn. It’s lot of fun to watch.

Another very real part of Miyazaki’s films is the emotion. In a lot of films, especially cartoons, it’s hard to believe in the way the characters are feeling. But in movies like Spirited Away, the emotions are clear. Miyazaki captures them in facial expressions and in actions, but also through the careful use of music. The soundtrack adds a lot to the excitement or emotion-filled moments. One of the most vivid places where the music comes alive in Nausicaa is where Nausicaa comes racing out of the jungle chased by a toxic insect. The music soared and became more urgent, and my heart raced with excitement. In My Neighbor Totoro, the plip plip sounds of water dropping after the rainstorm at the bus stop adds an amazing awareness of the passage of time while Satsuki waits for the bus.

With a Miyazaki film, though, you get entertainment and more; you walk away from them with something other than just a good time. I particularly like the messages implicit in his movies, especially his attitude about the environment, a subject that is important to me. As you watch Spirited Away, think about what’s going on beyond plot and character. Think about what Miyazaki might be saying about growing up, about greed, about family. It seems like there is always a good message portrayed through all his movies.

Whenever Spirited Away is mentioned, whatever group of people I’m around, people say, “Oh, I watched that movie when I was eight and I got so scared!” They don’t realize that that’s the beauty of it. You can’t be scared of something you don’t think is real, like those obviously fake, rubber monsters in an old horror movie. But when Chihiro’s parents turn around to face her and they are pigs, it’s pretty terrifying. At least, to an eight-year-old. More terrifying is after that, when Chihiro runs through the city full of the unknown and she can’t find her parents because they aren’t there. The thought of being abandoned and alone without guidance is the scariest. And Chihiro’s terror is probably the most real moment in Spirited Away.

I hope that moment is still terrifying, even if you’re not eight years old. That would mean that Miyazaki has succeeded, both in entertaining you and in making you feel something important about growing up.

Kaia Findlay
Miyazaki Devotee

Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1957)

Let’s do something really wacky this time. Let’s consider how Macbeth transcends the era in which Shakespeare wrote it – Jacobean England circa 1605 – and comments presciently on our own day and age. English teachers are always telling us that Shakespeare speaks to every age; it’s why we continue to find him in the modern classroom. Yeah? So what, really, does a guy who communes with witches, hears fatal prophecies, stabs a king to death, sees ghosts, falls for the idea that a child delivered by Caesarian section is “not of woman born,” and gets his head hacked off have to do with us?

First, let’s consider Macbeth’s relation to its own time. Although set in Medieval Scotland, the play’s Renaissance audience could see a direct parallel between the play’s situation and their own. Critic Terence Hawkes points out that “on 5 November 1605 a search by security forces, instituted at the personal behest of King James, discovered beneath the Houses of Parliament a secret cache containing enough gunpowder, fuses, and other implements to blow the king, his ministers, and the lawful government of the entire state sky-high” (Hawkes 2). This “Gunpowder Plot,” prepared by Guy Fawkes, a member of a group of English Catholics bent on assassinating King James, failed. Fawkes’ notoriety survived him though as the English celebrate the failure annually on Guy Fawkes Night.

This plot to kill a king, though, would have been foremost in the minds of Shakespeare’s audience. It would have seemed that Macbeth himself was, in part, a literary version of Guy Fawkes, although more successful. The play’s depiction of Lady Macbeth slipping into insanity, Macbeth receding into moral emptiness, and the natural world going crazy, all as a result of the regicide, confirms the Renaissance view of the king as rightfully placed and cosmically protected and explains the heavenly reason for Fawkes failure.

Now if Fawkes’s name rings a bell that’s because it has been in vogue lately. Ever since Alan Moore’s graphic novel, V for Vendetta, was made into a movie, people on this side of the Atlantic have been reintroduced to Fawkes, except the movie casts him as a hero, a vigilante who tears down a corrupt and oppressive government. (And if you want to see this transformation taken to an absurd extent, look at how the character and the slogan associated with him – “Remember, remember, the 5^th of November – have become affixed to libertarian Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul.)

The V character wears a Fawkes mask, his anonymity making him more of a symbol against tyrannical governance than an outraged citizen. So where does this take our connection to Macbeth? In a world where the anti-government, proto-terrorist vigilante is celebrated because he succeeds in blowing up Parliament, succeeds in bringing down the “king,” where does that leave Macbeth? Is he not a sort of hero? Well, no.

There is nothing in Macbeth that indicates that Duncan is corrupt (although there is little to suggest that he is not, too). Macbeth’s own inclination prior to the murder is not to do the deed. He feels, as host to the King, responsible for him. And afterwards he suffers from intense guilt. Everything about the play says his action is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Still, our society is distrustful of political power at this moment. It would be easy to digress and consider Macbeth as a version of Moore’s V, a man not driven solely by ambition or by a shrewish wife or by his own fevered visions, but by the desire to cast aside the powers-that-be and take control of his own life. If that’s not what Ron Paul wants, it’s certainly what his supporters want. Forty-five years ago, we may have been able to make a similar comparison to Lee Harvey Oswald. The point is that Shakespeare gives us room to consider all his characters in a modern context. You just have to connect some dots.

“Hey, hey, hey,” you’re yelling. “Aren’t we watching an Akira Kurosawa film? A JAPANESE film? About a guy not even named Macbeth?” Well, yes. But it’s the same story, and we encourage you to consider just what might have compelled Mr. Kurosawa, in 1957, to make a Japanese version of an early 17^th-century English play. Perhaps because where, or when, it takes place does not matter. What matters is the universality of the human condition it depicts. Enjoy Throne of Blood.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954)

To understand where we are now, we must understand our past. Every month, Hollywood releases some large action film with big actors and fight scenes. But how did today’s action film begin? The answer lies not in America, but in Japan.

Akira Kurosawa’s three-and-a-half hour sweeping epic Seven Samurai remains the epitome, and the beginning, of today’s adventure and action films. It takes a simple story, combines it with compelling characters, throws in some heart pounding action scenes, and a pinch of romance. But unlike the action films of today, all these parts work as a whole, and were made for the glory, not the money.

The story follows seven samurai who decide to defend a helpless village from a group of bandits who are planning to raid their crops during the harvest. The samurai will be fed small bowls of rice and given little to no payment, with the chance of success at a minimum. Why bother then? Maybe it’s for the samurai code and honor. Maybe for the adventure. Each comes for his own reason.

At three-and-a-half hours, Seven Samurai IS a daunting task for many to watch. The original American release had fifty minutes cut. But there is a reason for its length: to build real characters. Each samurai is given his own story without feeling unnecessary. We see the relationship between the samurai and the villagers grow. We see the crops grow. So when we get to the big raid of the village, we actually care for the characters and can actually mourn their deaths. It’s an ambitious task to say the least.

Kurosawa seems to meander toward two main characters. Takashi Shimura, also greatly known for his role in Ikuru, plays Kashimi, the eldest and leader of the samurai. He is not the strongest or best swordsman, and spends much of his time shaking his head, planning out the attack, and mapping out the story for us. Shimura simply plays this straight, not trying to overact. He is a knowledge bowl of mystery, a quiet man with a great aura, and works perfectly as our guide throughout this adventure.

Our comic relief and slight underdog is Kikuchyo played by the phenomenal Toshiro Mifune. Kikuchyo is only posing as a samurai, while actually a farmer’s son. He is bold, impulsive, clumsy, and a showoff. He carries a sword longer than others, thinking that can prove his worth. But in a film that’s 207 minutes long that, we start seeing him less as comic relief but as a full-fledged character that we will cheer for.

As Kurosawa would influence generations of filmmakers, Seven Samurai has many influences. Marxist ideas and Russian literature flow through the story. The action scenes feel inspired from Americans DW Griffith and John Ford. The characters, as fleshed as they may be, can be attributed a lot of Western cinema. Japanese critics attacked Kurosawa for being too Western sometimes, but he was simply doing what he must do – breaking out of the norm. His Japanese auteur counterpart, Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story), whose films were slow meditations on human nature, has no place in Kurosawa’s epics.

As much as Seven Samurai influenced today’s modern action films, it also created the remake. The Magnificent Seven, a western set in Mexico, is one of the first remakes ever made. Many of Kurosawa’s films would be slightly remade for American audiences, including Yojimbo as A Fistful of Dollars and The Hidden Fortress as Star Wars. Influences are simply not just in remakes but also in story arch, character types, and climaxes.

Seven Samurai is the king of action and adventure films. It’s brilliant in character, production design, and story. Although it is a daunting task to watch the entire film, the breadth of the film allows audience’s to appreciate its brilliance. To understand where we are going, we must know where we came from. One of the most influential films of all time, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is a true masterpiece.

Peter Labuza
Film Club