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also known as Janku fudo
Junk Food1997
Blending widescreen cinematography with digital video, JUNK FOOD casts an unblinking but painterly eye over the darkest, most brutal fringes of contemporary Japanese society. JUNK FOOD depicts the hitherto unseen world of aberrant sexuality and savage violence that emerges when the sun goes down and clean, orderly Tokyo exposes its sordid underbelly. From gambling dens to wrestling rings, through make-shift funerals and crime-of-passion murders, director Masashi Yamamoto expertly knits together a series of smoky, neon-lit vignettes with documentary immediacy and gruesome clarity. Cashing in her antiseptic white-collar world for a white powder hell of lethal sex-play and furtive drug abuse, a beautiful young computer programmer unravels her way to the gutter. Clinging to an empty dream of success, a Pakistani immigrant graduates from armed robbery to double homicide. Using the same copycat precision with which they dress and drive, a carbon copy LA style street gang mounts a bloodthirsty coup d'etat of appalling viciousness.
What makes this film worth watching?
"It's not just true of New York, Los Angeles or Miami. Every naked city has a million squalid stories hatching under its smog." - STEPHEN HOLDEN
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Starring
- Ali Ahmed - Cawl
- Arata Furuta - Yokoyama
- Mika Kumagai - Shop Girl
- Miki Mia
- Hiroshi Mizoguchi - Shun
- Esther Moreno - Mariarna
- Keigo Naruse - Murdered Man
- Yôichi Okamura - Miyuki's Husband
- Onimaru - Ryo
- Kanji Tsuda - Sato
- Akifumi Yamaguchi - Boss
- Shizuko Yamamoto - Toshiko
- Miyuki Îjima - Miyuki
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Member Reviews (4)
top reviewer
THE MOST INTENSE SHOW ABOUT DRUG USE AND THE MNTAL STATE AND DEGRADATION OF THE DRUG USERSPERIORLY ACTED AND FOLLOWED THROUGH EXCELLENT CINEMATOGRAPH AND VRY INTENSE AT TIMES ALSO FAST PACED AND NEVER BORING WITH MANY SUPRISES THROUGHOUT A MUST SEE PACKED WITH ENTERTAINMENT!
top reviewer
mostly dumb but sometimes cool_i guess all of the pieces somehow go together_but maybe that's not important_i don't mind skipping around_cinematography is really cool sometimes & sometimes i'm into it and sometimes not_but i guess it's sort of trippy
My reaction is very similar to yours, except that I rank the film higher than you I think because of its amazing ending. The sequence where the gang throws the remains into the water, one sees the white bone remains sinking into the gray water, then one of the members attaches one remaining bone particle into his key chain, then they say good-bye to each other has the incandescence of Stranger Then Paradise at Lake Erie see, in my opinion. I also love the moment the subways conductor taps the dead man's shoulder thinking he is asleep and the shots of the harbor at the end.
My reaction is very similar to yours (very cool but a bit uneven), except that I rank the film higher than you I think because of its amazing ending. The sequence where the gang throws the remains into the water, one sees the white bone remains sinking into the gray water, then one of the members attaches one remaining bone particle into his key chain, then they say good-bye to each other has the incandescence of Stranger Then Paradise at Lake Erie scene, in my opinion. I also love the moment the subway conductor taps the dead man's shoulder thinking he is asleep and the shots of the harbor at the end.
This is a decent little film, nothing spectacular, but it was well made and used a unique method of storytelling that I found refreshing. It is the first film I have seen from Masashi Yamamoto and judging by this one, I would like to see more movies he directed.