Tag

I'm not saying ALL movies should start with a bus full of Japanese schoolgirls pillowfighting and then getting gorily bisected, only to turn into a surreal existentialist drama that slices... sorry, picks apart the very tropes that makes that sound intriguing. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying, the world would be better if they did.

I expect beautiful, unhinged, violent bedlam whenever I go into a Sion Sono film. But a pox on me for not thinking it would also be prescient and contemplative. Let's start a story about killer wind that slices Japanese schoolgirls in half and has a thing for upskirts and end it as a testimony on female liberation from toxic masculinity. Sono is afraid of nothing and life is better because of it.

sion sono's SUCKER PUNCH (by way of THE HAPPENING, PAPRIKA, EXISTENZ etc). i can't shake the feeling that he'd be better off thinking his movies through more instead of releasing 6 a fucking year; there's an all time favourite movie hiding in here, and he can't quite get there. still, he's a more vivid, subversive, devastating animé director than just about anyone who makes actual animés, and his lack of stability is part of what makes him vital.

A fever dream in which a woman seeks to escape the nightmare of her existence: being controlled by men for violent, subservient ends. Shades of eXistenZ or Vanilla Sky, but with the over-the-top bent that only a Sion Sono film could provide. I'm starting to think this guy is the most brilliant director working today.

Boring avant-pop splatter absurdism. Machine guns, schoolgirl skirts, cheap CG gore that's "cheap on purpose." There's nothing to engage with, just one damned thing after another, but of course we eventually learn that that's "on purpose" too because it's all like a media critique, maaaan.

Unafraid to be weird, and not afraid to both confuse and confront its captive audience. It presents a strong subtext, but loses itself a bit with the pacing. Certainly a unique experience, at the least. Also all the drone footage is breathtaking.

No cinema is more alive than that of Sion Sono, oneirically concerned here with a technological prison world in which individuals, and in particular girls and women, cannot escape a matrix of degraded fiction (including, perhaps, that of AMERICAN BEAUTY), but also with a cosmos that, more than real, is surreal in the precise sense that it contains possibilities that are more than just calculable probabilities but the radically improbable, this being the very condition of possibility of a future.

Now THAT'S how you start a movie! Tag is not afraid to have crazy shit happen unexpectedly, making for an enjoyably hard to predict ride. However, on a scene-by-scene basis I tended to ask myself "Is this kinda dumb? Or kinda cool? Both?". Once the final reveals arrived I was fully on board though. The post-rock-ish soundtrack and incredibly fakey looking crocodile get two sliced-off thumbs up.

Cute schoolgirls, upskirt shots, cute schoolgirls cut in half, pseudo-philosophical musings, more cute schoolgirls cut in half... Just another Sion Sono movie. Except, there is no such thing as 'just another Sion Sono movie', just varying degrees of WTF-did-I-just-watch. This film is very fitting to watch stoned/tripping. Also, it's much better that a few latest Sono films I watched.

Not good, but the beginning is amazing.

Sometimes Tag wants to have its cake and eat it too. For example, it purports to be a zany critique of the patriarchy, but it has no problem providing viewers with an endless slideshow of up-skirt schoolgirl panty shots. I'm of the opinion that this is a pro-perversion move, so those elements don't really strike me as sexist, but I could understand those who disagree. That being said, this movie's cast and screen time is dominated by women the whole way through, which is refreshing and unique.

The violence is so grotesque it get a bit mind numbing unfortunately. But it's the reveal at the end that makes this more than a simple exploitation movie. Leave it to Sono turn a movie in which a classroom is gunned down violently by their teacher into a critique on violent masculine society. Although I get the criticism that Sono wants to have and eat his cake too in this movie.

An exploitation film with social commentary about patriarchal and technological 'oppression'. The constant sense of repetition fits into its central theme, as the protagonists have little control over their lives and doomed to the same fate ad nauseum/ad infinitum. Sono wants to have it both ways: he gives as (mostly) cute Japanese girls in short skirts to ogle while simultananeously criticising the very act of ogling. It's an interesting premise, but it's really just a fancy gimmick.

While the memorable opening scene lets the viewers think that they are in for some gory fun and a lot of cheap effects, Sono explores some surprisingly progressive themes here. In fact, this feels like a predecessor to his similarly deceptive Anti-Porno. Between the beautiful score by Mono, memorable cinematography and Sono's usual dash of over-the-top excess, I didn't find it hard to forgive some weaknesses in pacing or CGI work.

I love how this movie can exist in completely different sensibilities for different people. Fun nonsense? check. Gory thrill ride? yup. Feminist exploration of righteous fury? apparently. Authoritarian validation of the known patriarchy? I don’t know but sure. Gotta love Sion Sono.

Bizzare, kind of dumb, and with poor effects at times, but it has it's moments and the overall impression is fairly good.

as with Love Exposure, i have no idea really what to make of it besides some hammy philosophizing here and there but it was a lot of fun. basically a Shintaro Kago B-movie

Weird, as almost all Japanese movies with a great soundtrack, the last song worth seeing the entire credits.

Fascinating, with beautiful images, he is right who says that it remember Paprika or eXistenZ. But, differently from Paprika, it hasn't that kind of LSD-trip immaginations, and it has not the more clear and theoretical plot of eXistenZ. The final twist about patriarchy arrives a bit unexpected, for sure, but also a bit disjointed from the rest of the film, that until the end was only a patchwork of nightmare scenes, a (funny) WTF movie with some oriental philosophic references. Needs a rewatch.