The Great Yokai War

Miike Takashi has a solid reputation as the shock-Meister of Japanese cinema. He has built up this reputation with a succession of rapid and virtuoso films filled with whores, gangsters and manic murderers. They are striking for their careless and excessive violence and casual sex. You would not describe him as the ideal director for a children's movie - and that is just one of the surprises in this film. It is set in a bizarre and fantastic world inhabited by the strangest creatures ever to emerge from Japanese sagas and legends. In addition, the film maker has borrowed fantastic elements from almost every conceivable source. He based the film loosely on a film of the same title by Kuroda Yoshiyuki, dating from 1968. The `yokais' of the title are intangible creatures from Japanese folk tales. They can take on different shapes and are only visible to a select few. The protagonist is Tadashi (10), who has to go with his mother and live with his grandpa in the countryside following his parents' divorce. The city kid from Tokyo develops a great imagination in his new countryside surroundings and has many incomparable adventures, real or imagined. At a local festival, the shy Tadashi is unexpectedly given a special sword; then the grand adventure can start. (GjZ)