Perfect Blue [Blu-ray + DVD]

A great psychological thriller that feels like it could happen (and probably does) in real life. This movie pretty much exposes the dark side of entertainment and fame and does it with a great script and beautiful animation. It's definitely something that sticks with you after the credits roll.

If it weren’t for his tragic death, Satoshi Kon would’ve become the greatest of all time for animation I’m sure. Absolute masterpiece of a film and a fantastic physical.

The best type of movie where you need to watch it multiple times to understand what happened. Your second viewing will be very different from your first.No scene or line of dialogue in the movie is meaningless. The second time you watch the movie you will notice all the little details that you missed during the first viewing.It's not really a "pleasant" movie. The subject matter and the cinematography does a great job of making the viewer uncomfortable, without being too much to bare. When the movie raises the tension, the tension does not persist for too long to make the movie hard to watch.

You know you've entered a powerful world when you suddenly realize you've forgotten that what you're watching is nothing but ink and paint. But, oh my god, what this master of animation does with mere ink and paint is absolutely breathtaking. At first, you believe you're watching just some silly, brainless, pop-culture fluff. And, yes, it is showing you what that culture is like. But almost at the same moment, you become aware of a deep, very dark and twisted level of human depravity and pain.The strangest part of this film is that the director/writer makes you feel sympathy with the worst of the characters he draws for you. Not at first, of course. At first, you are thoroughly repulsed and sickened by these people. But slowly, as you watch what they do and how and why they think as they do, you cannot help but feel a twinge of compassion. They are just as much victims of an ugly, twisted system as those who are openly exploited.I was under the mistaken belief that this turned out to be the last film made by Satoshi Kon, the creator who made Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers, besides other impressive films. In fact, Millennium Actress, from 2019(?), was, I believe, his last film. These all are outstanding works of art, not just "cartoons". You get the feeling with his work that had he the funds, he would certainly have made live-action versions of his stories. But, budgets being what they are, he had to settle for anime. Still, his work is just as masterful and important as anything coming out of Ghibli. It's just a shame that this man had to die so young. I suspect we've been robbed of some truly unique and powerful films. Oh, well. That's life -- such as it is.Again, I must emphasize that this film is rather deceptively simple. By the time you've gotten half-way through the story, you are absolutely hooked. Several times, I was rather surprised to realize that my mouth was open in shock at what I was seeing. The power of the sound and images he created is simply overwhelming. You quickly forget that you're watching a film; you are pulled, intellectually, emotionally, totally, into the story this man is telling. And even though the scenes you witness seem to be exploitative, the truth is that he is actually showing you exactly how the entertainment industry exploits the people it sucks into its web.I'm certain he intended this to be an indictment of the Japanese entertainment industry. But we all know that the world-wide entertainment industry operates along the very same lines. In fact, truth be known, it is far, far worse than any of us suspect. Only recently have some brave individuals been able to come out publicly and reveal just how perverse this industry truly is. Yes, we have whistle-blowers in every industry. But the entertainment industry operates at a truly depraved level of exploitation only recently being revealed. Fascinating how this anime director, twenty-some years ago seemed to be one of the first to sound the alarm. Sad, of course, how no one was really listening.

One of my favorite animated movies. Don't miss out.

This headbending, ahead-of-its-time Hitchcockian thriller follows an actress whose attempt to break away from girl-group stardom to forge a more serious acting career goes frighteningly wrong. Soon, her sanity's fraying as she's stalked both by a real-world obsessive and, seemingly, by a mocking phantom version of the bright, cheerful stage persona she left behind. As her breakdown intensifies, director Satoshi Kon blurs reality and cinematic fiction in increasingly clever and unsettling ways, leading to a thrilling, reality-warping final chase sequence that takes full advantage of animation's power to tell stories in ways live action simply can't. Made at the dawn of the Internet age, the film's keen attention to all the ways the Web could be turned against women seems creepily prescient.Unfortunately, that's not the only creepiness going on here. When I first saw this film about 20 years ago on DVD, I didn't realize I was watching a censored, R-rated version. The cuts made to get that rating -- primarily to the more graphic images in a murder sequence, a scene where the heroine's being pressured to take photographs with which she's not comfortable, and a final scene where someone's attempting to assault her -- didn't rob the film of any of its eerie power. And by suggesting, rather than showing, the grimier aspects of the narrative, they increased your sympathy for its heroine. (There's even some brilliantly deployed, near-subliminal fast cuts in the censored version, leaving you wondering whether you actually just saw what you thought you did -- which ties in really well to the film's overall theme!) The R-rated version critiques the heroine's exploitation without participating in it.That version, alas, isn't even an option on this edition, which came as an unpleasant surprise to me. The original cut gets graphic in ways that feel like it's taking part in leering at its heroine, rather than siding with her. Maybe the filmmakers were trying to make you complicit in that process, but doing so makes the viewing process deeply, viscerally unpleasant in ways that seem to go far beyond any kind of artistic intent.When those seedier aspects aren't shoved in your face, the film is brilliant -- a borderline masterpiece. I'd have no qualms rewatching and appreciating the R-rated cut for years to come. But the uncut original version's lack of restraint works against it, and leaves me uncertain about whether I'll ever feel up to watching it again.If you want to give Kon's work a try -- and if you love movies, you absolutely should -- start instead with MILLENNIUM ACTRESS or especially TOKYO GODFATHERS, which harness all his considerable talents toward kinder, more humanist ends that a wider audience can enjoy.