So I'm going to try something new here. I watch a lot of instant movies on Netflix and it leads me to watch some strange and unheard of films that I would have never seen under any other circumstances. And I figured why not share these great movies that you can watch with the press of a button with the world? (If you have a good reason why I shouldn't just leave it in the comments ;))

Noriko's Dinner Table


This is apparently a follow-up to a film titled "Suicide Club," which I haven't seen and it isn't avalable instantly, so it won't find its way into this blog series. Anway, you don't need to watch "Suicide Club" to appreciate the brilliance of this particular film.

I will refrain from using names, because I don't feel like jumping around IMDB and the like to find them and they're too Asian for me to remember off-hand, so I appologize for any confusion in my wording in advance. I'll try my hardest to keep this as intellegable as possible.

The story of the film is broken into four chapters, each one following a different character, though not in the sort of way where you're seeing the same story again and again from different angles. The story continues to move forward, despite the changes in narrorator. It works extremely well and allows back-story for the leads of the tail to flow easily into the narrative.

So anyway, on to the plot. Noriko is the main character. I'm using her name because I know it. She feels bored at home in a small town outside Tokyo and wishes to get away, to find something different and, through a social networking site, she finds a friend in Tokyo and runs away to meet her.

Noriko falls into a sordid world acting as a for-hire-famly-member for desperate people, being led by her online friend. I don't really want to give much of the plot away. It's a winding masterpiece, and I feel any information is too much. But, sufice to say, the way the story treats the idea of role and what a person's place is and how so few of us know or really find it is done so well and is extremely well realized in this work.

The movie is, at it's core, a horror film and ultra-violence is splashed here and there, from the blood spatter of a line of school girls jumping in front of a subway train, to a desperate father cutting down anyone in his way to get his daughter back. It's done well and helps keep the pace of this two-and-a-half hour and thirty-nine minute film. Every second is well worth watching, though, and the way the girls are drawn into the life of a for-hire-family unfolds and how they'd do anything to play the role they need to play and can't even understand who they are anymore is thrilling and fully entertaining.

Anyway, to wrap this all up, it's a great movie. It's Asian and long, so you have to want to read. It's deeply thematic and can get very bloody at times. I should also note that there is--especially in the beginning--some real melodrama here, so, if that instantly makes you cringe, you might want to stay away.

So, that's it! That wasn't so painful :D