Before We Vanish (2017)

Three star said it was boring - they're wrong - it's worse than boring. The storyline plot premise of aliens taking over human bodies to conquer the planet or whatever has many past iterations/forms all of which made an alien presence somewhat believable. In this case all we get are humans acting (actually stilted acting with lots of stilted talking) like narcissistic superficial humans - just talking about themselves. In the beginning there was a bloody (not shown - just aftermath) of daughter killing parents which made no sense and nothing came of it and then later a few scenes of brief gun battles between an alien human and humans and finally little fire balls coming down that was suppose to represent aliens invading (the special effects part).

Apparently, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the director of the film, focus on expound the theme of the story mechanically, while structure of script is somewhat unsatisfactory. In addition, Kiyoshi Kurosawa did not deal with relationship well between the personal expression and mainstream value. However, because of veteran cinematography and proper performance, the executive ability of every single shot is very good. Therefore, in general, emotional expression is obviously better than the construct of world view in this film. In other words, the hesitation of director stops the film from becoming a classic work, if he could make a more determined decision, it will turn into a better film.

Characteristic spooky Kurosawa romance but with added science fiction and suspense elements. The husband is acting strangely in hospital, the teenage girl emerges from the house blood stained and a cheery teenager connects with a reporter who shows up in a borrowed TV truck. The film spends most of it's not short running time exploring the mechanics of spaceman invasion and it's done through rather endearing aliens - even when they start wreaking havoc with very loud, government issue automatic weapons.Scope filming and subdued playing register and the business of having the characters appear against backgrounds more brightly lit than they are manages to be eerie.

Seen at the Viennale 2017: At the beginning I liked this movie. I like the succinct dialogues that appear to be very often a trademark of Japanese movies. But with ongoing time, I sat in the cinema thinking: come on!, we got it, please show us the next scene. I did not look for the time. But it became a pain. Very often I thought, okay now comes the logical end. But no. Another intermediate dialogue had to be followed. And another one. And another one. At the end I was really exhausted.