Review of The Bird People in China (1998) by Dsfsdfdsf S — 01 Jul 2012

I'd say this is a very good film. Completely different from anything else he's ever done, which is sort of his trademark really. Do things that you wouldn't expect from him. But if you had to pinpoint him to a certain genre it would be the ultra-violent horror films.

This is definitely a step in the completely opposite direction, pretty much as opposite as you can get. And while the rating may suggest otherwise, I thought this was a really good movies but I had some problems with it.

First things first the cast is solid. Renji Ishibashi is always great and Masahiro Motoki is likable. They make a good pair and are very entertaining together, when need be. The problems I had with the movie were mostly story-wise.

The story simply just didn't click for me, despite having some very charming and lovely moments. I just think that the movie didn't do a very good job to explain why he was so fascinated that he'd want to transcribe the song that the girl in the village sang.

Why did he do that??? Was it to find out how the people fly??? I have absolutely no idea and if it was explained in the movie then a poor job was done of it. And the discussion at the end that Wada and Ujiie's character have that, as Ujiie said, technology will come, as the villagers wanted electricity, and destroy this beautiful village and Wada was saying that without technology they wouldn't have been able to fly and discover this village so it isn't so bad.

That, to me, felt a bit preachy and completely unnecessary as the movie really had no pretentiousness and that discussion made the movie about something completely different than what it had been about until that point.

It just didn't fit. Those were my problems with the movie, despite thinking it was really good overall. I think they're sizable enough that it affected my overall rating of the movie. But I still really enjoyed this movie overall.

It's kind of aimless really, but it can also be very charming at times.