The Unsatisfying "Terra Formars" is Takashi Miike's Weakest Film of the Decade
Takashi Miike has been a reliable go-to director for Japanese blockbuster cinema since 2010, releasing between two and three films every year of this current decade, equally achieving creative success as well as commercial. He rocked the foreign arthouse world with his samurai epic 13 Assassins (2010), and followed it up with a respectable remake of Masaki Kobayashi's 1962 masterpiece in Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (2011). Likely to be dismissed for remaking one of the all-time greats, Hara-Kiri is a dazzlingly colourful palette of heightened melodrama. Zebraman 2: Attack of Zebra City (2010), a meta-sequel to his 2004 family film, is a Joe Dante-style mockery of superhero and science fiction cinema, set with a black and white striped totalitarian metropolitan wherein a Lady Gaga-like figure rules everything. Ninja Kids!!! (2011) is an energetic children's movie with an onslaught of humourous slapstick and visual gags. Lowbrow humour and family-friendly entertainment