Tokyo-Ga
Director: Wim Wenders
Year Released: 1985
Rating: 2.0
Fueled by a strong love for the films of Yasujiro Ozu, Wenders goes to Toyko to, I'm guessing, try to find Ozu's "old-fashioned" city instead of the fast-paced, seizure-inducing Tokyo of modern times. Some of Wenders' 'musings' are banal and, at worst, on a sub-McLuhan level, and aside from a neat conversation with Ozu's former cameraman, the sole reason to see this is for some nice shots of Japan itself and its citizens playing games of various sorts (Pachinko, golf, video games). Another critique is how Wenders fails to subtitle the conversations he has with other people (notably Werner Herzog), leaving non-German and Japanese speakers to rely on his voice-over for a summary/interpretation - this could be intentional on his part, but with a premise this flimsy and a documentary this scattershot, it's hardly pleasing.
