One of my favorite Japanese movie series is ALWAYS 三丁目の夕日 or Always Sunset on Third Street. I watched the first movie a couple weeks before the DVD release of the second movie. I just loved it. So much so that the day the DVD of the second movie was released I went to 4 different rental stores trying to rent it. As I previously wrote, I was excited to watch the third movie.

For two weeks before the release of this movie they aired the other two movies each Friday and was still so hooked. Kumi says she can’t believe how much I like these movies. She said I must be the only foreigner so crazy for it. Even though I think she cried more than I did. Of course since these were on TV they cut some scenes due to time constraints but what surprised me is that I could notice the scenes.

Before I get into the new movie, I’ll try and explain why I love these movies. I love Japan, and I have no desire to live anywhere else. Of course I’ve seen countless of movies about the 50s and 60s in North America but I never knew life in Japan. These movies show how life was. This time in Japan was unique because I think it was really the start of the North American influence over Japan. Kumi’s mother was in her preteens in the era and says she remembers the first TV, the ice box fridge, and the old clothes washer. If I think about my life time, there isn’t really big inventions. Sure we have iPhones and iPads but really they are just improved versions of something we already had. There has been no new inventions that changed how we lived. If I could go back in time I would go back to this era in Japan.

ALWAYS 三丁目の夕日’64. We went to see this movie in 2D not 3D as I’m not big on 3D. I enjoyed this movie and went threw several emotions as I did with the first two. I loved this movie. As I always say, I don’t review movies, I write about my thoughts and experiences while watching movies.

I really enjoyed how they did the Forest Gump style of taking old footage and adding the actors in. Even though you could tell, it still looked cool. A couple things I noticed about this movie. Ippei, who had big story lines in the first and second movie became a secondary character with not much story line at all. Also
Mutsuko makes a boyfriend, gets engaged and married in this movie. Sure that sounds fine, right? Well… The start of this movie was just before the ’64 Olympics and ended on the day that all the Olympic festivals ended. I looked up how long the ’64 Olympics lasted. It was only 2 weeks. So basically the whole movie took place in less than a month. W@W, that’s fast to get married.

Like I said before, I love these movies and I’m sure you would too. Also surprisingly I wasn’t the only foreigner in the theatre. There is a good article on The Japan Times Online about this movie. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/ff20120120a1.html

In the past week and a half I also watched Pulp fiction (great), Enchanted (surprisingly OK), Drag Me to Hell (Started OK but got stupid fast), New Town Killers (Surprisingly good British film) and Charlie’s Angels (Lucy Lui, Damn hot!)