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Originally Posted by Groundhog
I'm a big fan of Takeshi Kitano, but really need to see more of his films. I caught 'Dolls' by accident one night and thought it was brilliant, and I liked him in both Zatoichi and Battle Royale, too. Anything you'd recommend outside of these 3?
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Cthomer summed some of his other films pretty well. Kikujiro, Brother and Hana-Bi are all excellent, and somewhat divergent flicks. I'd put Kids return and Dolls on a lvel below those, but that's just personal taste. Violent Cop is pretty good, but I'd avoid Getting Any? which is a screwball sex comedy (?), that's alright but probably wouldn't leave anybody with a special feeling for his abilities.
My two favorites by far are Sonatine and Boiling Point (not the Wesley Snipes vehicle, ufortuately) and I'd highly recommend both. They're both pretty much Yakuza movies, although each with a little twist. Sonatine follows a group of gangsters to the beach as they attempt to conduct a futile business trip that slowly turns into an exile. Boiling Point focuses on a couple of odd, apathetic minor-league baseball players who mix-it-up with the local Yakuza in order to revenge the beating of a friend. Sonatine seems to be regarded as Kitano's best film, and stylistically it's definitely a cut above Boiling Point, but I prefer the latter by a hair, probably because Kitano plays a supporting role as a completely over-the-top anti-hero that is a startling change of pace from his usual stoic silence.
Moments of ruthless violence punctuate both, but if you've seen Battle Royale I don't think you'll have a problem.
While we're on the subject of modern Japanese directors, anybody familiar with Takashi Miike, and specifically 'Ichi the Killer'? Holy crap, that's the most ruthless movie I've ever seen...actually kept me from sleeping, and genuinely horrified me...yet I ended up deciding that I really liked the film, although it took me about a week to come to that decision, and it would probably take another year for me too consent to watching it again. Miike's a freak who makes like 5 movies a year, and apparently every single one of them are completely outrageous, although I wouldn't necessarily say they're all worth watching.