Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Nice effects though.

Better Late Then Never

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Takagi is your everyday (especially on Mondays) Japanese salaryman. Yet on this particular Monday, instead of heading to the start of the working week, he finds himself waking in a strange hotel room at the conclusion of a manic weekend. But there's one problem: he has no idea how he got there. Going through his personal artefacts, he gradually starts to piece together the story of what happened.Starting off at a funeral where he inadvertently causes the corpse to explode, he then alienates himself from his girlfriend with some strange behaviour, before ending up at the wrong bar. Alcohol soon proves to be his downfall with each additional drink seeing his situation grow worse and worse. Turning on the television, he sees the reality of what happened to him, finding himself the centre of attention with no way out. 'Monday' is a stylish film, with good camera-work for some tasty angles, but is laced with humour throughout, particularly Tsutsumi Shinichi's dance scene as the drunken Takagi descends into drunken madness. Jaunty editing blurs the line between sophistication and stupidity nicely. This is a satire towards the film's conclusion, questioning the right to murder, hold a gun, but most importantly, the right to use being drunk as an excuse - one I am particularly fond of. There are some clunky moments throughout the film. The speed of the descent, the slow-acting police at the film's conclusion; though these do add to the sense of surreal humour in the film, in a slow- paced, distinctly Japanese brand of cinema, where unbelievable scenarios are met with a very everyday sense of disbelief. Tsutsumi Shinichi - often the lead in early SABU films - gives a charming performance as Takagi, who goes through every emotion going on his weekend roller-coaster, with cameos from everybody's favourite supporting actors in Japanese cinema, Susumu Terajima, Ren Osugi and the beautifully named Tomorowo Taguchi. Drinking like there's no tomorrow will only lead you to not like what the morning will bring, and this is what SABU explores in 'Monday'. Stylish and satirical, this is one Monday you won't not like.politic1983.blogspot.co.uk

This film that opened the Sabu retrospective at New York's Japan Society and was a real blast.Sabu's fourth film is a kick in the pants. It's a film that starts off with a salary man waking up in a hotel room, unsure of how he got there. He then begins to remember back... it started at the funeral...moved on the bar....then continued on past the Yakuza...I've already told you too much because as with all of Sabu's films, the plot isn't the point, its the connections to the things we don't realize that are important. I don't want to say anything about what happens but the funeral becomes one of the funniest ever put on screen and the dancing puts to shame the much heralded Tavolta/Thurmond pairing in Pulp Fiction.I really like this movie a great deal. I suspect that it's going to hang with me for a few days before I can really find out how I feel about it. Its a film that has lots of stuff going on behind it's eyes as it were.If you can find a copy or see it at some screening I suggest you do so. Its further proof that Sabu is one the best filmmakers working today.

I really wanted to like this movie, but despite some moments of sheer brilliance, it doesn't quite hold together....As earlier reviewers have already stated, the film centers around a reserved young Japanese man who wakes up in a hotel room unable to remember the day before. He regains his memory little-by-little through flashbacks and little clues from his pockets. He soon learns he is the subject of a national manhunt, for reasons best left to the viewer."Monday" switches genres several times in the space of 1 hour and 40 minutes. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is difficult to do well. The first fifteen minutes are brilliant. The funeral scene is expertly timed comic gold....We then veer into absurd "Twin Peaks" territory at the bar, which ends up merely being annoying.We then enter Tarantino-ville, although the style is really more Dog Day Afternoon vs. American Psycho. The protagonist understands what he has done, and we watch as a very disturbed man goes insane before your very eyes. This is done well, but the film goes off-track again (is it being preachy? is it being tongue-in-cheek?) before ending.Basicaly, I felt that this is a very original movie and a very original idea that could have been a lot better. I'd like to see what else the director can do.

A strange puzzle. Mixture of kafkaesque atmosphere, pieces of black humor, slices of Japanese mythology, pacifist thesis. Ambiguous thriller about fall of a waste world, about normal existence like masks collection, about innocence like result of inactivity. A surrealistic funeral and explosion of corpse. The life broken decent limits and every gesture is a trap. Madness, Oriental Erinyes,an quaint fortune teller, a fascinating woman and Yakuza. Stupid murder and beginning of nightmare.A salary man in a hotel room.Monday morning. Reconstruction of last hours step by step. The sin like oil stain. Fascination, stupefaction, fear, negation of facts. Cobweb of memories. Slow suffocation.Palsy. The resignation.Traces of Sydney Lumet's "Dog Day Afternoon", Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" and "Kill Bill", Stone's "Natural Born Killers",David Cronenberg's "Spider", Ingmar Bergman's " Tystnaden". But important is only the Japanese recipes.In fact, subtle exploration of Dostoievskyan sin, exploration of unavoidable failure, impossibility of escape. New page of Old Greek moral lesson.