Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Micitype Pretty Good

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

WILLIAM FLANIGAN Viewed on DVD. Restoration = ten (10) stars. Director Nagisa Oshima's embarrassing exhibition of incompetence. The film's title is unrelated to the film, and likely picked out of a hat. If there were drunkards involved with this movie, they may have been the on-set Director and script writers (plus the head of production for the releasing studio)! Far from a comedy as claimed in studio press releases, this is a morose version of a what modern viewers would call a "ground-hog-day movie." The film keeps repeating itself, often scene by scene (you may think for a minute your disc player has restarted by itself!), to stretch out what is really a 12-minute short to reach an 80-minute release time. Acting is all over the map and nonsensical, but always hyper energetic with the supposed nationality of characters altering back and forth from scene to scene. (The Director seems to be making a ham-handed political statement that Japanese and North Koreans are interchangeable--wow!) Line readings by the principal characters indicate they realized they are trapped in a movie from which there is no escape (fortunately, disc viewers can always press the eject button on their remotes). Cinematography (wide screen, color) is fine except for prolonged, static beach scenes where lighting seems to fluctuate with the passing of clouds. Score is okay, but the playback speed of the theme song has been altered to produce an irritating "chipmunk" sound (in an attempt to be "Japanese cute"?). Titles are often too long and could benefit from some serious grammatical scrubbing. Recommend you use your remote's eject button early on--things do not improve with further viewing. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

MartinHafer The Folk Crusaders were a Japanese pop music group from the 1960s and are cast as the three leading men in this film that is somewhat reminiscent of a Japanese version of a Beatles movie...somewhat.Nagisa Ôshima directs this film and it bears his odd mark, as the movie is VERY surreal throughout. Now I must say that I noticed a couple reviews mentioned Jean-Luc Godard and despite what one said, I could find no evidence that Ôshima ever worked for or with Godard--though his style is very reminiscent of Godard as both represent the New Wave movements in their respective countries.I liked the basic idea of this film and some story elements were quite compelling. It's just that the style was a bit annoying to me--and I am not a huge fan of the New Wave style of film making, as it often deliberately tried to annoy or confuse the audience. Call me weird, but I prefer a film to make sense and NOT confuse the crap out of me.The film begins with a funny scene where the three guys go swimming at the beach. Some unseen hand reaches out from under the sand and steals their clothes--leaving Korean clothes and a bit of money in its place. From this point on, the guys learn what it's like to be an illegal alien in a country that doesn't want them. What I did not realize is that Koreans were sneaking in to Japan back then to avoid service in the Vietnam War. VERY FEW Americans ever heard that the South Koreans sent many, many troops to fight in the Vietnam War. And much of the film is intended as an anti-Vietnam War piece. This is pretty tough stuff here but it's handled mostly as comedy.I could try to describe the rest of the film but frankly it's awfully confusing and some of the other reviews have already done this. What bothered me, though, is that about halfway through the movie, it all started again and was virtually identical--though the three guys seemed to have learned by having played the scenes before and so they are able to make it all end differently the second time. Clever, perhaps, but a chore to have to basically re-watch about 40% of the film! As a result, I just felt the whole thing was over-indulgent. The poignancy was lost as a result and it seems like an opportunity lost.

cllrdr-1 Second of all Oshima never worked for him.Most important of all this film stars the great Japanese pop group The Folk Crusaders. Imagine The Beatles making an experimental film. it would look something like this.Oshima is concerned here, as he was in "Death By Hanging" made the same year, with Japanese anti-Korean prejudice. Socio-political events too complex and multi-faceted to discuss in a forum of this kind are the basis of this film -- which end with the recreation of the most indelible image of the Vietnam war.The result is a baroque masterpiece that foreshadows Rivette's "Celine and Julie Go Boating."

sharptongue This film is weird. Director Oshima had worked for Jean-Luc Goddard, and is clearly paying homage to the wacky French director here."Three Drunkards Come Home", as this film is sometimes called, begins with a surreal situation of three students playing on the beach and having their clothes pinched by Korean (refugees? soldiers?). They are then mistaken for Koreans and begin to play the roles themselves. Then the story starts again at the halfway point, continues for at least five minutes the same way, and gradually diverges.You need to be a serious film fan to take this sort of stuff. If you aren't a fan of Oshima or Goddard, don't go anywhere near this film. If you are, then you have some idea of what to expect.As a fan of Oshima but not of Goddard, I sat through this film with mixed feelings. As in Death By Hanging, Oshima makes some strong points about the Japanese discrimination against Koreans. But as its apparently main purpose and theme, I feel this was handled much better in Death By Hanging, and I consider Three Drunkards Come Home to be one of his weaker efforts.