This was a pleasant surprise. As a sort of prequel to the film Young Thugs: Innocent Blood, which was a memorable but disjointed tale of teenage waste and wanton self-destruction, I wasn't sure what to expect. But what Takashi Miike delivered was a rather sweet elegy to youth, though still packaged as a "crime movie" on the cover. It's really not that at all, but more like Miike's Radio Days, or a form of Stand by Me (though Radio Days came more to mind, especially as it deals more with sometimes-funny sometimes-not family dysfunction). It follows two of the characters from the first film, Riichi (mostly Richii as I could tell) and Isami, as they meet as adolescents and become friends, collaborating on a model of the Apollo 11 pod. What I loved about the film was that Miike doesn't shy away from showing how a kid IS affected by what he sees around him, whether it's something small like watching/listening to a softly spoken conversation with his teacher on the phone with her husband (who doesn't treat her very well as we see, and Riichi is sure to give him a piece of his mind, no violence though), or something more blatant like the decay of the marriage between his mousy but loving mother and his powder-keg of a father who flies off at the handle at the drop of a hat (but is he really a mean guy or just crazy? I'd say more the latter). In this environment Riichi absorbs so much, understands some of it, and he doesn't really know he's growing up but he is in smaller ways. Miike shows a great natural attention to how boys talk and think - being that he was around the age of these kids in its 1969/1970 setting at the time, he knows at least what was on TV, hair-styles, even what was in the kinky strip clubs and porn magazines (that's a very funny bit I should add, where Ishima's brother is masturbating to an old 60's melody) - and it helps add to the dimension of the story. This is a somehow more mature work from a director who just a year before made the "official" version of the Young Thugs saga. But really, you can watch this on its own, it doesn't set up anything important or too memorable outside of personalities that come back in the second film, and there is a keen attention paid to how to move the camera at just the right time, or keep it still to emphasize a good emotional point. Strong acting, heartfelt writing, a dynamic sense of time and place, and even a bit of political satire thrown in - somehow, someway, and good- for-him, Riichi's father gets caught up in some disturbances in the streets, facing off like the glorious madman he is against the police and their fire-hoses as shown in TV footage - it's one of the director's best straightforward comedy/dramas, and shows what he could do outside of straight genre work. And a little Ennio Morricone music goes a long way as well.

Miike's Young Thugs duology is about as close to sentimentality and, yes, nostalgia as he gets. Nostalgia, ironically, is less sentimental than Innocent Blood, and a lot more believable. A young boy comes to age in 1968 Japan, living and learning (and fighting and brawling) as the world begins looking at the stars while man walks on the moon. He's a tempestuous boy, but then again he's from a tempestuous family, with a father that's always drunk and a mother that periodically leaves, a grandfather that cares over all of them as best he can with an amused expression, and a teacher who takes on personal risk to care for her student.Again, Miike's skills as a director are often best mentioned in his smaller, side works that don't get as much recognition because they aren't as flashy or stylistic (or full of rape, murder, drugs, and insanity, while we're at it). He has a love of childhood innocence and coming of age that slips through even some of his most perverse movies, but here he doesn't have to sneak it in because it's all on full display. A rounded imagination pulls it all together as the space race umbrellas the entire work, presenting the possibility of transcendental movement beyond what we're stuck on in this world. Conversely, the theme "nothing ever changes" is stated as well. Those two seemingly irreconcilable truths nevertheless inform the movie for the majority of its playlength.Granted, this one suffers from what I like to call Too Many Endings syndrome. The actual character development ends, but the movie continues through a coupla-three more endings before finally fading to black.--PolarisDiB

A key concern in the work of director Takashi Miike is the notion of family. In many of his films, the desire for the kind of stability and security only found within the traditional family environment is what drives his characters to the absolute extremes of the narrative, and often into the criminal underworld where the family unity will be surrogated by violent gangs and Yakuza syndicates. We see this idea in many of his best films, like Rainy Dog (1997), Ley Lines (1999) and Agitator (2001); where characters without families band together and find moments of acceptance between the bouts of violence and retribution. In other films, we have the presentation of the family in a more traditional sense, albeit, with elements of violent dysfunction and inevitable disintegration for the basis of great satire. Here, we find pictures like Visitor Q (2001), The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001) and of course, the film in question.The presentation of family in Young Thugs: Nostalgia (1998) is less abstracted than many of Miike's other films; with the specifics of the time and place and the emphasis on the dynamics of the characters in relation to the overall plot giving us something that seems very special and unconventional by the director's usual standards set by films like Ichi the Killer (2001) and Dead or Alive (1999); with the combination of great, intelligent characterisations, strong performances and some absolutely impeccable direction. Although it is based on a novel, the film feels like a more personal project for Miike, with the depiction of small-town Osaka life and the late-1960's/early 1970's timeframe being very close to the filmmaker's own youth and experiences; with that sense of nostalgia, as alluded to in the film's sub-title, being more apparent in the fantastic evocation of a particular time and place within Japanese culture and society. Some viewers have drawn comparisons to an American film like Stand by Me (1986), which I suppose is apparent in terms of nostalgia itself and the presentation of the quest in which the central characters set out on an adventure that they think will change their lives and put everything into an adult perspective, but simply find the same old trials and tribulations, only in a different setting.For me, it was more reminiscent of the flashback sequences of Miike's later masterpiece, Dead or Alive 2: Birds (2000), which captures a similar evocation of childhood abstracted by the combined forces of memory and imagination, whilst also bringing to mind a film like Shunji Iwai's All About Lily Chou Chou (2001), which again, presents the idea of characters striving to escape from a very real sense of childhood dysfunction. Obviously, a film like Lily Chou Chou focuses on a much older collection of characters, and therefore covers different themes and preoccupations to those expressed herein. Nonetheless, there is a similarity in tone as well as presentation, not to mention the depiction of a rural environment that is both tranquil and oppressive in almost equal measures. Miike also uses the film to examine three generations of Japanese masculinity, similar to the structure of the characters in The Happiness of the Katakuris, with the son, father and grandfather all living in the same house, expressing different views and opinions and ultimately clashing in such a way as to show the differences (and ultimately, the similarities) of these three very interesting characters.It works because it captures a mood and an atmosphere that is just perfectly realised on almost every level; from the extraordinary direction of Miike - with its great use of colour and composition and fantastic soundtrack that really manages to underpin the time and place like nothing else imaginable - to the believable script and the naturalistic performances of the incredibly young cast of characters. Despite his reputation as a director of sadistic torture and sexual violence, a film like Young Thugs: Nostalgia, remind us of what a naturally gifted filmmaker Miike really is. For example, his direction of children and actors with limited experience is really second to none, as he manages to elicit a series of natural and believable performances that convey everything from comedy to drama, while still managing to balance this out with more experienced performances from seasoned actors, like the talented Naoto Takenaka. Also, his use of camera angles, movement and composition, structure and pacing are all fantastic throughout, and demonstrate that Miike is a filmmaker equal to Martin Scorsese; in the sense of documenting the seamy side of life (and the working-class environment of Osaka) in a way that is alive with energy and emotion.The balance between comedy and drama is completely subtle throughout, while a few scenes of childhood imagination and fantasy are allowed to erupt, quite literally, in a burst of vigour and excitement reminiscent of the 60's work of Jean Luc Godard. Some of the humour is admittedly quite earthy, while the film pulls no punches with its depiction of domestic abuse, childhood scrapes and the seedy underbelly of Osaka's strip clubs and gambling dens; though again, this is Miike refusing to pander to the adult-notions of childhood or the generally accepted tone that films about childhood should convey. Simply put, there are no rose-tinted reflections or apple-cheeked cherubs here, but rather, a rough and tumble attitude with elements of grit and off-colour humour, all tied to a wonderfully spirited atmosphere of excitement, colour and adventure that is evocative to say the least. For this reason and more, Young Thugs: Nostalgia is one of the few great films about childhood, and one of Miike's very best and most compelling films to date.

A prequel to Miike's "Young Thugs: Innocent Blood", this follows Riichi in his early formative years growing up on his way to becoming the thug in the earlier film. One of the very few problems I had with Innocent Blood is the lack of in depth characterization, but that's remedied here in spades. Filled to the brim with the joys, heartbreaks, and wonder of childhood. the movie is universal in it's appeal and a true joy to behold. One of my favorite foreign coming-of-age films. This only solidifies the nothing that Miike can do much more then the violent, bizarre films that he's primarily known for.DVD Extras: Takashi Miike interview; Osaka's People featurette; Bio/Filmographies; original sleeve art; and theatrical Trailer My Movie: A