Love and Peace

tokyo 2020 is a hollow dream, a shortcut to glory veiling the nation's economic hardship and destined, like most olympics, to leave a legacy of suffering behind it. christmas deals in hollow dreams too; a corporate holiday that shits out novelties and platitudes, its mascot a sewer-dwelling alcoholic, its heartwarming, americanized hit songs sweeping under the rug memories of hiroshima. how better to express this than a majestically silly xmas musical built atop sadness, rage, mental illness?

Original and offbeat magical realist film brings together many aspects of Japenese pop culture to create a truly baffling experience that manages to somehow skirt the line between clever and stupid. Sion has big balls, and he uses the family film format to critique the fickleness and disposability of mass culture in bizarre ways that are both surprising and strangely moving. The scenes with discarded toys are the cinematic equivalent of Grandaddy's Jed The Humanoid.

The reason magic realism has such a bad reputation

Pikadoooon

At times almost SECONDS for kids. I get the feeling this filmmaker hates contemporary culture for the right reasons. Better to know nothing and just enjoy the singular experience of letting this movie unfold.

Great ingredients. Bad meal :(

A loser after some bullying flushes pet turtle trough the toilet, the turtle becomes magical and starts to grants the loser wishes turning him into a major rockstar, meanwhile the turtle grows bigger and bigger untill it's kaiju-sized. Like most Sono movies it's absolutely bonkers, but still Sono manages to infuse his characters with emotions in all this craziness.

Amazing lead performance. Great story that earns all its weirdness and silliness. Unforgettable, entertaining, clever, and unexpectedly subversive, tellingly invoking Fat Man and Little Boy in one breath and rock 'n' roll and Santa Claus the next.

A family friendly movie from Sion Sono, what is the world coming to? But don't worry, even if this movie is easy on the gore, it still goes hard on the weird, and doesn't shy away from criticizing modern culture, media and politics amid all the turtle-kaiju-Santa-puppet madness.

Regression from attachment to transitional objects to obsession with power and consumerist pursuit, with possible connection of such regression to wars and nuclear bombing.

Love and Peace is one of those movies where I didn't know how to feel. Under the bizarre surface are some allegorical elements which I was never able to truly grasp so I decided to just roll with it and enjoy the film. Ultimately I had fun watching it but I wish it had connected with me more.