Yo nimo kimyo na monogatari - Eiga no tokubetsuhen (2000)

User Rating:

6.9/10   

Directors:

Mamoru Hosi
Masayuki Ochiai

Writers:

Tomoko Aizawa ("The Marriage Simulator")
Ryôichi Kimizuka (segment)

Release Date:

3 November 2000 (Japan)

Genre:

Comedy | Fantasy | Horror | Romance

Plot:

A four-part anthology in the spirit of The Twilight Zone, this film starts off with a group of commuters stranded at a train station in the rain...

Plot Keywords:

Anthology

Awards:

2 wins

Cast

Kazuyuki Aijima	...	Manabe (segment "One Snowy Night") / Salaryman (segment "The Storyteller")
Izumi Inamori	...	Chiharu Takajo (segment "The Marriage Simulator")
Renji Ishibashi	...	Old Man (segment "Chess")
Takashi Kashiwabara	...	Yuichi Tokunagi (segment "The Marriage Simulator")
Narumi Kayashima	...	(segment "The Marriage Simulator")
Masahiro Komoto	...	Seiichi Tomoda (segment "Chess")
Ikue Masudo	...	(segment "The Marriage Simulator") (as Saya Takagi)
Akihiko Murata
Kiichi Nakai	...	(segment "Samurai Cellular")
Hideyuki Nakayama
Yukiko Okamoto	...	Kumi Kato (segment "Chess")
Megumi Okina	...	Karu (segment "Samurai Cellular")
Ren Ôsugi	...	Yoshiaki Yamauchi (segment "One Snowy Night")
Kazuma Suzuki	...	Takuro Yuki (segment "One Snowy Night")
Shinji Takeda	...	Akira Kato (segment "Chess")
Tamori	...	Storyteller (segment "The Storyteller")
Keiko Toda	...	Riku (segment "Samurai Cellular")
Akiko Yada	...	Misa Kihara (segment "One Snowy Night")
Kôji Yamamoto	...	College Student (segment "The Storyteller")
Norito Yashima	...	Man (segment "Samurai Cellular")
Isao Yatsu	...	Old Man (segment "The Storyteller")

Also Known As:

Tales of the Unusual (Japan: English title)

Runtime:

126 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese | English | French

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

South Korea:18

Movie Connections:

References Lifeboat (1944)

Looks good, needed better stories

A group huddling from the rain in a railway station listen to a set of weird tales told by a strange man whose identity is never revealed:

Tale 1: Four people trapped in the snow leave an injured fifth to die. (Sort of; the situation is more complicated but amounts to the same thing.) They take refuge in a cabin for the night...but it appears someone else is in there with them.

Tale 2: A royal minister in medieval Japan finds a cell phone and gets a call from a historical researcher of the future wanting to find out if the coup the minister is heading will happen as the history books say. In fact he's a coward who doesn't want to get involved...but the phone call makes him think again.

Tale 3: A chess master is defeated by a supercomputer and is so devastated that he becomes a raving derelict. A millionaire finds him and lures him into a chess game that he says governs the outside world. The chess master sees people dressed in black and white on a giant grid, when a piece is captured a man dies, etc. He's committed to a mental institution...but the visions don't stop.

Tale 4: An engaged couple visit a marriage bureau that gives them a VR preview of what their married life will be like. It's a horror, and they break up...but is that the end or not?

The tales all have interesting but faulty premises, each of which leaves something important unexplained. The first one is the best (also, incidentally, it's the only one that's a horror story, which I'd expected them all to be); the second looks like an episode of Spielberg's "Amazing Stories"; the third is the most interesting but the least credible (and I wonder if the idea was swiped from Cervantes); the fourth is Japanese soap opera (which I happen to like). The actors are good, the production is slick, and to me quite Western-looking, and there are a few wonderful images (e.g. a ghost on a wall, a woman dressed as a chess piece)...but it needed better stories.