Minoru Kawasaki is a filmmaker who just ain't right. His films are ultra-bizarre and are not for normal people. And don't worry...the same strange guy who brought us "Executive Koala" (about a guy in a koala suit who works in corporate Japan) and "Rug Cop" (about a cop who fights crime...along with help from his sentient toupee) is pretty much in form with this strange picture.This film is a sendoff of the guy in a giant monster suit films that made Japanese films so famous (or infamous) in the 1950s-70s. You either love 'em or you hate 'em, but they made a ton of them. In this case, Kawasaki made a follow up to The X From Outer Space...a film made decades earlier. Why they chose to make a follow up, I don't know...perhaps they used some old footage or perhaps they just had the monster suit lying around.The film begins at a summit in Japan of the G8 leaders. During this meeting, a monster arrives from outer space in Sapporo and the Japanese try to get these heads of state to leave the country. However, in a show of solidarity (as well as stupidity) the eight world leaders vow to stay and help the Japanese rid their country of a weird monster named Guilala. And how do we know its name? Because one of the silliest clichés in Japanese monster movies, a cute little boy wearing a baseball cap appears and tells everyone about the beast...and they soon slap the kid and tell him to get lost! What follows are attempts by the various leaders to kill the monster using missiles, poison gas and the like...but the monster only grows stronger.At this point, the film goes from a nice little parody to ultra- bizarre, as the Japanese leader yanks off his disguise to reveal that he's...Jim Jong Il?! Yes, this crazy North Korean dictator has arrived to kidnap the summit and he vows to use his nuclear missile to rid the world of the monster once and for all. But scientists soon inform them that the nuclear payload will actually make Guilala stronger as well as multiply! So, it's up to the ancient god, Take- Majin to appear and try to save the day as well as President Sarkozy to flash the summit! What happens to that nuclear missile? You wouldn't believe me if I told you...you just have to see it for yourself!Compared to other Kawasaki films, this movie is downright normal...but it still is very strange and very funny. I especially love the way the various world leaders are parodied. It's all in good fun and is a treat for anyone who could use a laugh. Then, perhaps you could try some of the director's other films. In a way, I see "Monster X" as a gateway film...if you can handle that, you'll soon go on to the 'hard stuff'--Kawasaki's weirder movies!

Send up/spoof of the Giant Monster movies of the 1960's is married to a political satire about the G8. A reporter and photographer are covering the G8 when Monster X (using what appears to be new footage and old footage from the dreadful 1960's film called monster X) comes from the sky and begins to attack Japan. the world leaders decide that instead of fleeing that they will stay and fight. 10 minute sketch stretched to almost 100 minutes is a film sunk by obvious jokes, poor performances (anyone speaking English is beyond bad) and a sense of dullness. I didn't like this at all, partly because it pales when compared to a film like Big Man Japan but mostly because its not very good...any good. This is one of those times when I'm glad I didn't pay 12 bucks to see a movie in a theater.

From time to time i like to immerse on films like this. Those are the moments in which one enters a film for pure relaxation. I guess it's the same kind of spirit such filmmakers as Kawasaki put into creating this.Some of these rides are actually very profitable, and i think it is a mistake to excuse every unconsidered element of a film just because it is a B-flick or because the budget was close to zero. Some great, intelligent work has been that over that.Here we have a film made out of two elements: the will to freely play with known faces of the political scene these days, and the will to produce special effects that deliberately looking false and old-fashioned. I think this crew must have had a lot of fun making this, and in certain moments i too enjoyed being there. But it is the kind of fun a group of adolescents has making fun of an unlikable teacher or painting obscene messages on a wall. I'm OK with that, but something better could be put into this. It was nice to be watching a Power Rangers kind of fight so many years later, but 'nice' is not good.You know what this is now. It's your choice to embrace it or not. I did it with some interest, but i won't do it again.The pace is slow, cinematic rhythm was not also in the mind of these folks.My opinion: 1/5 http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

Before Grindhouse was released and completely ignored by American audiences, Quentin Tarantino had talked of his plans to make a few more B-movie revisits with Robert Rodriguez and other directors, expanding the concept to all possible genres. It's sad that such a project will not materialize, because The Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit is definitely a movie QT would enjoy, and it director the kind of guy he would love to work with: an energetic, grown-up child who loves every single frame of the films he makes, no matter how much crap he has to take from the critics (which is why he's called "the Japanese Ed Wood"). Monster X, which was shown Out of Competition at the 2008 Venice Film Festival, is a quintessential B-movie: geeky, cheap and aware of its silliness. In plain English: a lot of fun.The film acts as a sort of low-budget Godzilla reboot, with the big reptile replaced by an alien of sorts named Girara. The seemingly invincible creature awakes suddenly from a very long sleep, and starts destroying everything in sight. Too bad this happens at the exact same time as a G8 summit in Kyoto: given the disastrous situation, the participating nations (USA, Germany, France, Italy, etc) do their best to stop the monster, only to fail each time. Perhaps the key to sorting out this mess is hidden in a freaky temple in the woods, where people worship a being with a strange fascination for his, uh, private area.The G8 subplot would indicate some sort of political intent behind the movie, but that's just a load of rubbish: any kind of satire requires subtlety, and when the French President tries to seduce a woman with the phrase "I'm the Eiffel Tower and I want to penetrate your Arch of Triumph!", you know that's the last thing you'll ever find in the blatantly trashy script (by the way, since when do Brits speak with an American accent?). The "plot" is just an excuse for two silly-looking freaks to beat the hell out of each other, in scenes that could have been shot by a toddler in anyone's back yard or in an average workshop. It's that shameless "bag of dirt" quality that makes Monster X a guilty pleasure like few others. It's a movie made by geeks for geeks, and by not aspiring to any higher artistic consideration it actually manages to bring back the eight-year old hidden inside all of us, much like Peter Jackson's aptly titled Bad Taste, while more "noble" attempts to achieve the same effect have a tendency to fall flat on their backs.So yes, it's incredibly, incontrovertibly silly, cheap, whatever you want to call it. But it's also one of the most enjoyable "bad" movies that one can find. Plus, it has the additional treat of Japanese auteur Takeshi Kitano voicing the "good" monster: how much more can one ask for?