CountZero313 A comet hurtles towards Earth, and Tokyo is abandoned as people head to high ground. A cynical one-time guru comes across two otaku, a record shop owner and his customer, who believe an obscure seventies song, Fish Story, will save the world. Many years earlier, a timid young man laments his inability to stand up for himself. Some years after that, a narcoleptic high school girl finds herself trapped on a hijacked ship, where a pastry chef is her best hope for a champion for justice.Director Nakamura fashions a likable, engaging human drama here, but deserves most credit for the naturalistic performances he elicits from his actors. Too often Japanese films are sunk by TV-style mugging from the principles, but here, there is a subtlety and nuanced portrayal evident throughout the ensemble cast. In the band, leader Atsushi Ito and Vocal Kengo Kora have betrayal and remorse to deal with between them. The tension is played out in a series of looks and never over-cooked. Kiyohiko Shibukawa as the drummer takes a while to speak, but when he does, it is with reason and tact. It would be so easy to have proto-punk band members sink into spats and histrionics. These portrayals resonate and convince. Gaku Hamada is especially effective as the meek friend who loses the girl (a spooky, sexy Mai Takahashi) to his overpowering alpha-male 'friend.' His tormenting of himself in the car after that particular episode is tragic and comic in equal degree, and proves the trigger to his redemption.The portmanteau structure is an over-used trope these days and detracts from the drama here. However, the film succinctly ties it all up at the end, and visually too - the lack of expository dialogue here as compared to other J-cinema is refreshing. A wonderful soundtrack tops it all off, the best use of a song for thematic purpose since Gimme Heaven. "Summer Days" is now the anthem to my August.

Tom Gill I came to this movie with high expectations since I had heard it loudly praised. Alas -- Ozu, Kurosawa and Mizoguchi must be spinning in their graves. Each of them had more talent in his little finger than the entire staff and cast of this profoundly silly movie. We are supposed to be impressed by the way the 4 stories are twined together at the end -- in fact, all we get is a handful of mini-films, each of them fairly ridiculous, cobbled together by a flimsy plot device. Everyone acts like a plank -- they might as well be reading from scripts sometimes. And the characters are cardboard cut-outs who appear to have stepped off the page of a cheap manga. Look at the exaggerated poses in the martial arts scene for instance. The old man in the record shop gloating because the human race has no chance of survival was especially irritating, and the moment when he got punched in the face was a rare highlight. This is sophistication? This is avant-garde? This is life-affirming humanist cinema? Lord save us all.

John Kincaid In short: Fish Story will take you on a wild, improbable ride that will leave you smiling once the credits begin. It is a film that rewards multiple viewings as it will leave you thinking and desiring to watch it again almost immediately. Great acting and an incredibly well put together set of events leads to a movie that definitely should be seen. My favorite film of 2009 so far.If you haven't seen Fish Story yet, you may want to stop reading this review after this paragraph. There aren't spoilers in my review, but it is one of those movies that is best viewed with no preconceived ideas about the plot. Watch the film and enjoy the twists and turns that the story takes. It is a ride that most will undoubtedly enjoy.Fish Story is about a punk band named Gekirin that recorded a single called "Fish Story" in 1975, a year before the Sex Pistols popularized punk music. Despite knowing that their music won't sell, Gekirin and their supportive producer decide to record this song knowing that one day it will impact the life of at least one person. The film jumps around different time periods ranging from 1975 to 2012, where a meteor is on a collision course for Earth. Going through the movie, the viewer is shown different stories without knowing what is going on or how they factor in to the main narrative.Each part of the film is captivating, despite the fact that we don't really know what is going on in the film as a whole. Every new story reveals a piece to the puzzle and when they all come together at the end you'll feel like jumping up, running outside, and telling everyone that they NEED to watch Fish Story. Then you'll want to watch it again. This movie has one of the most satisfying endings that I have ever experienced.I love the cast in this film. Acting was solid, but no award-winning performances. I particularly enjoyed Omori Nao, who played the producer that discovered Gekirin as well as a music shop owner whose store is open despite the pending destruction of Earth. I also thought Kora Kengo, playing Gekirin's singer, and Moriyama Mirai, playing a guy trained since birth to be a "champion of justice" (his action sequences were really cool) stood out. Based on a novel by Isaka Kotaro and adapted by Hayashi Tamio, Fish Story has a great script. Also, the cinematography is good (though certainly not groundbreaking) as well as the directing. Music is great, especially the song "Fish Story" which was written specially for the film.I can't really name many faults with this film other than it was a little bit draggy in some spots. Also, some may not enjoy the girl's (Tabe Mikako) overenthusiastic acting but I found that it fit her character. The film was just under two hours, but I felt that length was not a problem.Fish Story jumps around to different genre's (thriller, martial arts action, comedy, music documentary, etc) which I think keeps the movie incredibly engaging, constantly changing up the pace. During my second viewing, I couldn't help but think that I would enjoy watching a film that just took any one of the multiple stories presented and made it feature-length. All of them are that interesting. Having each individual story in the span of a single film, though, is what helps make Fish Story a magical experience. From beginning to end, you will be engaged and entertained. I advise everyone to see Fish Story.--John Kincaid @ jkfilmjapan.wordpress.com/

dbborroughs Sweet charming shaggy dog story about how a song saves the world from destruction. This is film that is rather impossible to describe simply except with the opening line of this review (to say more would either give too much away or require too much explanation). Beginning in the last five hours before a giant comet is set to hit earth and wipe everyone out, the film starts in a record shop (still open because "its business hours") where a discussion of punk music leads to the album and song called A Fish Story. The film then spins out telling the story of the song, the group that created it and the sequence of events, of which it is but one part, that lead to the saving of the earth and to the men standing in the record store.A frequently funny and smiling producing film this is a movie that will occasionally confuse you (you will wonder how it all ties together a mystery which remains until they reveal how it all ties together at the very end). It's a film with enough plot for five or six movies as threads are spun out and dropped once we see the relevant bits. We could have probably followed any one of them to the conclusion as well but many are just stops in the greater scheme of things.I liked this whimsical little film a great deal. My only real reservations come from my unhappiness with the over selling that the film got from the staff of Film Festival where I saw it. Many people went out of there way to tell everyone how great it was. Don't get me wrong it's a good movie, but its not quite the religious experience that at least one person inferred. Over selling or not I don't think I would have ever raved about the film. It's too rambling and too fragmented to ever be a full meal of a movie (I think some of the threads, especially the story of the band, would have been a better focus), it's really good after dinner piece of chocolate. This isn't to say that there is anything wrong with it, there isn't, its more something that you need to discover for yourself and not have handed to you with an impossible level of expectations. See the film if you get a chance, just don't worry about how it is, just know its worth your time.