Three Films Make A Post: Everybody loves Otley…well, almost everybody

Otley (1969): I can’t say I love Dick Clement’s Otley, either. As a spy comedy about a ne'er-do-well played by Tom Courtenay stumbling into a complicated and somewhat cynical spy plot, the film’s simply not terribly interesting. It does very little you won’t have seen done better in other spy comedies.

Fortunately, the film does have an ace in the hole as another kind of movie: a perfect time capsule of London of its time, focussing on the bits populated by more everyday people, and showing no interest at all in the touristy parts of the City. There’s also a lot of pretty awesome fashion to gawk at. All of which doesn’t make the movie better as a spy comedy, but certainly does turn it into an interesting watch if you do like this time capsule aspect as much as I did.

The Cursed aka Eight for Silver (2021): Despite a handful of atmospheric shots and a couple of neat and creepy ideas, this film by writer/director/producer/cinematographer and potential hobby cook Sean Ellis, is rather a drag that suffers from a pretty terrible script. There’s a completely unnecessary framing device without a payoff, pacing that drags endlessly thanks to a lot of needless repetition of already established concepts, a bizarre problem with creating scene transitions in a movie already this slow, characterisation that’s paper-thin while also being portentous, and writing that’s generally so lazy, the film even felt the need to put the Beast of Gévaudan affair that’s a plot point a hundred years into the future (unless our protagonist is meant to be 135 years old).

There are also riffs on various better movies (hey, John Carpenter, how are you?), an awkward attempt at ingratiating itself to the social justice oriented parts of the audience that comes over as gratuitous rather than meaningful, and a lot of characters, most of whom have nothing to do. The practical effects are rather great, to be fair; the digital ones, on the other hand, are on the level of the script.

Misono Universe aka La La La at Rock Bottom (ugh) (2015): This one’s probably not one of the better movies of Japanese indie movie veteran Nobuhiro Yamashita (who started out with the great wave of this sort of thing in the middle-aughts, making movies like the glorious Linda Linda Linda and never stopped making films), though it is still a movie that makes emotionally affecting use of all of the hallmarks of its style: a minimal plot, elegant and meaningful framing and blocking, a sense of humour of the driest kind, and a deep understanding of how to make a slow-paced movie that’s slow-paced for a reason and not because the writer has no clue on how to pace something.

The acting is of the sparse and naturalistic kind you’d expect, too, with Subaru Shibutani, Fumi Nikaido and a lot of faces you’ll know when you’ve seen Japanese movies of this style doing their things very well indeed.

The film also is a good example of how different stylistic treatments can change the meaning and effect of a plot: an American movie would take the same plot of an amnesiac Yakuza turned singer in an amateur band, and turn it into something at least slightly triumphalist, loudly praising the human spirit; the Japanese indie approach turns the same material into something that’s somewhat hopeful, and quietly human that would just shake its head in unbelief at the less quiet approach.

In short: Ramblers (2003)

Original title: Riarizumu no yado

Some wild plan by their common actor acquaintance – and apparently money man – Funaki sends indie filmmakers Tsuboi (Keishi Nagatsuka) and Kinoshita (Hiroshi Yamamoto) off to a pretty run-down looking, and most definitely pretty cold, coastal town. Funaki is supposed to be waiting for them there and to have prepared accommodations in a local inn. Funaki’s late, though, and the inn is closed. The two virtual strangers will have to fend for themselves for several days, because Funaki’s not only very very late but also stops answering their calls altogether.

So there’s nothing to do for the two but to ramble and amble around town, talk about stuff and encounter various mildly strange people. For a time, a young woman named Atsuko (Machiko Ono) who may or may not have tried to commit suicide takes part in their misadventures.

As the description will probably already have made clear, Nobuhiro Yamashita’s (of Linda Linda Linda fame) Ramblers belongs to the quiet and deadpan type of Japanese comedy where the utter oddball craziness of other Japanese comedy seems to have been suppressed with help of the calm and quiet demeanour of the indie hang-out movie. There is situational comedy in the movie – actually quite a lot when you think about the actual situations and less about their presentation – but the film plays these things as calmly and quietly as its protagonists.

If they want, Yamashita and his cast can present a straightforward punchline as effective as the best of them, but the film is really much more interested in controlled non-reactions to the minor travails the guys have to go through. Often, both of them seem trapped in politeness, repressing authentic emotion not to be a bother to anyone, even when somebody else is at fault, or these emotions really should be expressed.

From time to time, on the other hand, in its worst moments, Ramblers is a bit too happy to let its characters express even their most banal thoughts, all too well emulating the experience of being trapped in some social situation with the most boring man (and it’s most definitely a man) possible. That, one can’t help but assume, it does on purpose, too.