Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Untama Giru (1989)

Director: Go Takamine

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Another paean to Okinawa's 'sacred indolence', this reunites the stars of Paradise View in a mythic/poetic social satire which plays like a fullscale orchestration of the themes and plotlines of the earlier film. The original Untama Giru was an Okinawan Robin Hood; the film's Giru (Kobayashi) is an exploited worker in 1969 who flees into the Untama forest after learning that his boss's adopted daughter is actually a crazed sow in human guise. While he teaches himself to levitate, the rest of the island debates what should become of Okinawa when the US (represented by John Sayles as a commissioner who gets off on blood transfusions from monkeys and pigs) hands it back to Japan. With the most unlikely barbershop quintet in film history serving as a chorus, this is doubtless the most spaced-out agit-prop ever filmed.

Author: TR 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Go Takamine

Producer: Junichi Ito, Natsuki Hariu

Cast: Kaoru Kobayashi, Jun Togawa, John Sayles, Chikako Aoyama, Susumu Taira, Edie full cast

Duration: 120 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.