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Sekai kara neko ga kietanara (2016)
Even worse than the book
The film manages to make look good the book it's based on, which had already exhausted the author's creativity in calling the protagonist's two pet cats Lettuce and Cabbage and thus sets the bar pretty low. It takes quite some liberty with regard to the book, omitting the most fun parts of it (the cat never gets to speak, the Devil doesn't wear Hawaii shirts; there are no upbeat songs in the sad scenes), and so it ends up a melodramatic mess, with wooden acting, poor character development, a soundtrack so boring and repetitive it would be unfit even for a furniture store, and a plot so foreseeable and unimaginative watching a blank sheet of paper would have been more thought-provoking and entertaining.
Nichinichi kore kôjitsu (2018)
Superficial acting, plot and tea philosophy
As a tea ceremony practitioner I was quite excited about the movie; but I found that it doesn't offer much beyond some nice pictures and a sense of seasonality. However, the acting is horrible even by Japanese standards, and the plot is so unmotivated it verges on the comical. (The pain of the protagonist's loss of father or boy friend are hard to relate to, since we're not introduced really to these characters.) Most annoying, however, I found the missed opportunity to showcase the spirit of the Japanese tea ceremony, which here is reduced to 'work hard' and 'we don't know why we do it that way'. Even the teacher's lecture of ichigo ichie (every meeting is unique) is unrelated to the rest of the movie and representation of the protagonists tea education; and the simplistic visualisation of the waterfall hanging scroll is the pinnacle of unimaginative film making.