Twitch

I must confess that I have rapidly lost patience with Ryuhei Kitamura. Versus is one wild ride of a film but, with the exception of his short film The Messenger, he has been on a steady decline ever since. I find his scripts sloppy and overlong, very rarely care even the slightest for any of his characters, and even the fight sequences have been eroding quickly as he keeps insisting on making fight films with models instead of fighters. I got so sick of this that I made myself a promise after being sorely disappointed by Azumi: I would give Kitamura the benefit of the doubt only for the films he had in production at that time. If none of that trio of films impressed me I'd never waste another penny tracking down one of his films.

The results? Aragami had only enough meat on its bones to carry a film half the length. Sky High was truly wretched on almost all levels, with only a few shots betraying the man's enormous visual skills. This leaves only Godzilla: Final Wars. You're down to your last strike Ryuhei, what are you gonna do?

Well, if these new clips are any indication, he's going to knock one out of the park. Check 'em out. Short one here, long one here. Ah ... mindless genre violence. It's what the man does best and it's here in spades ...

Clips via Tokyo Monsters, discovered thanks to Asian DVD Time.