Three Stories. One City. Must See.
Three short films with a common thread--Tokyo! explores the social impact of the giant megalopolis for which it is named.

Directors Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, and Joon-ho bong combine forces, contributing stories that will transform yo... (read full)

4/4  Tokyo! Quick Review
This Film is excellent. Each of the three shorts is unique and visionary, yet they link beautiful together through themes.
Watch it!

3/5 the usual uneven omnibus film
  by Roland E. Zwick (Valencia, Ca USA)
Full-length feature films that are really just compilations of shorter movies - usually revolving around a single topic or theme - tend not to work out all that well in the long one. Either the limited running time afforded to each individual story results in characters and plotlines that are too sketchy and underdeveloped to fully capture our interest, or the quality of each individual part varies so wildly that the movie as a whole fails to satisfy.

After "Paris je t'amie" a few years back and "Tokyo!" now, it would appear that, at some point, every "exotic" city will have a multi-part cinematic valentine to call its own. And whereas "Paris, je t'aime," not surprisingly, applied a romantic patina to its setting, "Tokyo!," also not surprisingly, has opted for a more sci-fi and metaphysical-oriented approach in exploring its locale.

In the first tale, "Interior Design," directed by Michel Gondy, Akira and Hiroki are a young couple who have come to the city to look for work and a place to live. He's an avant garde filmmaker, she his part time assistant and fulltime girlfriend. The movie deals with the tension that develops between not only Akira and Hiroki over finances and their future together but between the couple and the female friend whose cramped apartment they`re all staying in at the moment. Then, just at the point where all is beginning to seem hopeless, Hiroki involuntarily turns into a chair. You were expecting something different, perhaps?

"Interior Design," is of interest primarily in the way that it goes from the prosaic to the surreal without the slightest transition or warning. It's amusing to watch as the characters' lives suddenly come to parallel the movies he makes and the imaginative scenarios they are constantly playing out in their relationship. That one of those scenarios suddenly turns out to be real - or is it? - is all just a part of the game.

The second episode, "Merde," directed by Leos Carax, is even more over-the-edge in its content than "Interior Design." Denis Lavant plays a grizzled sort of man/creature in a green suit who emerges periodically from his home in the sewers to terrorize the understandably distraught citizens who inhabit the world above. Unsure of how to cope with such a menace, the Japanese government calls in a French lawyer with a goatee that perfectly matches the creature's to help with the crisis. Unfortunately, this highly stylized segment becomes a grueling, heavy-handed polemic against racism, xenophobia and capital punishment, devoid of charm, grace or even a modicum of entertainment value.

Luckily, in terms of quality, things pick up considerably with "Shaking Tokyo," easily the best of the bunch in both consistency and style. Imaginatively directed by Bong Joon-ho, "Shaking Tokyo" is a lyrical and poetic tale of a "hikikomori" - a person with a pathological phobia of leaving the house - who has to figure out what to do when he falls in love with a woman who, after meeting him once, turns into a hikikomori herself.

Thus, as with many of these omnibus movie packages, "Tokyo!" becomes, ultimately, a thing of bits and pieces, of two episodes that work and one that doesn't (not a bad ration as these things go, actually). My advice, therefore, would be to watch parts one and three and skip part two altogether.

3/5 I'm not impressed ...
  by P. White (Cambridge, United Kingdom)
I did wonder whether 3 non Japanese directors could pull off stories set in Tokyo from a Japanese point of view and I had a right to wonder.
Nothing quite works here and I speak as someone who knows Japan and Tokyo quite well. This is not the Tokyo or indeed Japan that I'm aware of and instead appears to be what it is, 3 foreign directors imagining a Japanese environment for a western audience. The first film starts reasonably well but strays into the overtly surreal (and I like the director's other work), the second film is just not very good and fails to make its point and the third is just poorly executed.
The Blu-Ray transfer is probably OK but I suspect the source material is quite poor (my personal HD camcorder footage of Tokyo looks FAR superior in image quality) and certainly the source strays into the standard definition at times.
This was really disappointing for me because I'd seen so many good reviews and it just isn't thought provoking, entertaining or aesthetically coherent.

4/5 TOKYO!
  by J. Bonnett (Brisbane, Australia)
A very intersesting film. Michel Gondry's film was my favourite of the three short films. Each film had a different take on life in Tokyo and each produced original and completely different stories. Definitely worth the watch especially if traveling to Japan or have been to Japan before.

3/5 1st film: minor Gondry, 2nd film: surreal/comic/political monster rampage (!), 3rd film: uninspired hikikomori fantasy
  by Erik Ketzan (Orbis Tertius)
Spoiler-free review.

Tokyo! is three short films by acclaimed international directors. The Blu-Ray transfer is gorgeous and the disc contains making-of featurettes. The three movies? The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, although not in that order.

The Good: Michel Gondry's film about an arty young Japanese couple. It's nowhere near as good as his best efforts (The Science of Sleep, Eternal Sunshine, and music videos), but better than Be Kind Rewind. Any Gondry fan should definitely watch it.

The Ugly: The second film, by French director Léos Carax, is pretty wild: a surreal and kinda gross monster-runs-amok movie that seems to be making some kind of convoluted political statement. Pretty fun to watch and the more I think about it, the more I admire its chutzpah.

The Bad: the final film by South Korean director Bong Joon-ho. It deals with the Japanese phenomenon of hikikomori (look it up on Wikipedia), which is this uniquely Japanese thing where socially alienated young men become shut-ins and don't leave their apartments for years. It is estimated that there may be as many as 1,000,000 hikikomori in Japan. The problem with Bong's film is that the hikikomori thing has become a trendy topic in pop culture and social sciences over the last few years and his film displays little new insight into it. The film's protagonist is a hikikomori, but the portrayal of his life and the resulting fantasy is too superficial, too cheap. In my opinion, the weakest of the three movies. For more on the hikikomori phenomenon, check out Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation.

Tokyo! is far from essential, but film buffs-- especially fans of Gondry-- should check it out.

5/5 Art Gone Wild Tokyo Style
  by A Customer (L.A.)
Entertaining, artful and out there! This is an art film that satisfies on many levels in three films by three directors. The element of fantasy is in all films. Humanity in the city; living, loving and lurking. Blu-ray is very good. Soft and crisp pics. Quiet and LOUD sound. See: Shaking Tokyo