The FORT90 FILM CLUB is back with not just another triple, but this time it’s a QUADRUPLE feature! And all four flicks have copious amounts of, well, just look at the title above...
MYSTERY MOVIE #1: Time for yet another tale concerning an odd couple, but these two are especially odd; in one corner we have a Lolita fashion designer, a small-town girl whose addiction (supplied by a clothing boutique in the big city) does not come cheap, hence why she resorts to selling bootleg Versace (which is actually her dad's racket). And in the other corner is a rough & tumble Yanki biker chick, who ends up being a customer; a bond is forged and adventures are had.
A contributing factor to the enthusiastic reception in the West was how, for many, it served as the first up close & personal look at various Japanese subcultures that the internet at that point had yet to fully illustrate. Many who wrote glowing reviews on LiveJournal and Xanga in their youth continue to extol its virtues via critical essays and even college theses.
MYSTERY MOVIE #2: The second installment of the five film long Whispering Corridors series (they're all self-contained, with the only connection between them all being that they're ghost stories that takes place in all-girl high schools), _________is a true standout for a variety of reasons, and not just because it has been often cited as one of the first visible representations of LGBT content in Korean cinema.
Two girls fall in love at a high school and are the recipient of scorn and harassment from the rest of the student body. A third girl intercepts the shared diary between the two, and the story unfolds in a non-linear fashion, constantly hopping back and forth, between before & after and life & death. Released in 1999, _________ was, simply put, exceedingly ahead of its time.
MYSTERY MOVIE #3: When one considers the wild world J-pop, and perhaps the even wackier world of Japanese idol groups, very little can compare to the outright absurdity & insanity that is AKB48, one of the most successful musical acts that most have never heard of. Which is truly odd, given just the basics alone: a super group that comprises of 48 total members (which at points has ballooned to 120+) that is spread across different teams, each representing a different characteristic, though it's ultimately just a way for the group to perform different venues simultaneously.
Everything from the means of obtaining a headlining slot in each team to the stringent codes of conduct that each member is expected to adhere to when not on stage is, in a word, insane. And all of it is touched upon in Documentary of AKB48: Show Must Go On, with relief efforts for the victims of 2011's earthquake and tsunami as one of its many backdrops.
MYSTERY MOVIE #3: The 80s and (most of) the 90s was the golden age for joshi puroresu (aka Japanese pro wrestling), yet by the turn of the century, its popularity was waning. The subject of this BBC produced documentary is GAEA, a promotion run by Chigusa Nagayo (one half of the legendary Crush Gals tag team, and cited as “the most popular woman wrestler of all-time") and illustrates what trainees must endure in order for Nagayo to deem them worthy enough to carry the torch and officially become a Gaea Girl.
Pro wrestling isn't so much fake fighting as it is choreographed fighting... but in Japan, they are clearly hitting each other... and in the case of this doc, you'll see one hopeful get drop kicked in the face over and over and over and over again. _________ is quite simply one of the best documentaries you've never seen, let alone heard of.
