Movies
A stylish Japanese drama with some remarkable modern touches. Not too surprising since we're dealing with an Akihabara-based story that involves three young tangentially related people. The cinematography is a touch livelier, the soundtrack has some very interesting electronic influences, the characters are a bit more out there and it's clear that writer/director Yusaku Matsumoto had a close affinity with the universe of his film. The punchy ending is just the cherry on the cake. Watch this if you're craving slightly edgier and more contemporary dramas.
Matsumoto tackles a courtroom drama. It's not my favorite type of film, but the subject was at least a bit more interesting than usually the case. For those who don't know, Winny is a p2p filesharing program that gained a lot of traction in Japan some 2 decades ago. It's the Japanese Napster if you will. Cybercrime is on the rise, and the Japanese police need some results to show that they're not entirely powerless. They plan some arrests, including the developer of the Winny software. He is brought to court and pressured to make a statement that he willingly created a program that could be used for copyright infringement. The presentation of the film is quite dry, with a lot of focus on the legal aspects, and procedural steps. There's also quite a bit on the legal and moral grey areas of filesharing and software development. The performances are solid and I quite liked the subject, but it doesn't really make for riveting cinema.Read all