manuelasaez Japan, such a wonderful country with a rich history, makes some of the most absurdist movies on the planet. There are some movies so wild you start to think, "What magical drugs do they have there that causes people to come up with this stuff?". While some of the movies are creative and entertaining, being weird for weird's sake isn't always a good thing. That's where TAG comes in. It's weird, but not in a good way. Let me explain....The movie starts out AMAZINGLY. Girl is on a field trip, riding a bus with her classmates, when an invisible force slices the bus in half laterally, taking the lives of everyone on it except the main character. This happens in the first 10 minutes of the movie. The level of gore and depravity involved in this is commendable and I thought, "This movie is going to be great!" A movie about an invisible force that slices everything it comes across in half, leaving blood and gore in its wake? This is going to be an awesome movie! Man, was I WRONG. The invisible force was around for those 10 minutes and it never shows up again. Instead, we get a series of "alternate universes", each weirder than the next. There are only females in this movie, so everything that happens comes off as a middle school kids daydream playbook. Panty shots of High School aged girls? Check. Women in scantily clad underwear? Check. Girls fighting each other and killing each other in brutal ways? Check. A dude in a pig mask? CheckIt's like a child was asked "What type of movie to do you want to see?" and he answered, "Girls! Panties! Underwear! Fighting! Pig man!" and someone said, "We can make a movie out of that!". Absolutely tragic that someone thought that this would be appropriate for a feature length film, but here we are. It's to serious to be a comedy, not scary enough to be a horror film, not sad enough to be a drama, and definitely not enjoyable enough to be a full movie, so what gives? It's absurdist cinema with a low budget and not enough creative reigning in. This movie needed quality control, it desperately needed and editor, and it most assuredly needed to be screened a lot before it was released. There is no audience in the world that would find this movie enjoyable as a whole, although certain parts are so wild that they almost make up for the failure that is the rest of the film.Look, I love absurdist cinema and I would enjoy it more if it tried to be absurdist. Instead, we get a movie that IS absurdist, but takes itself WAYYYY too seriously. I wouldn't recommend this movie to ANYONE, except those that want to test their patience for weird, drug-induced nonsense.

Guy Teague i love apocalyptic dystopias and time travel and, of course, Japanese schoolgirls in their uniforms and blood and gore if it's ironic. throw in an unreliable narrator and you've hooked me. and i was hooked all the way in this movie. i kept stopping it to shoot frames--many of which i plan to use for memes on facebook, they're so pithy. most from 'sur' of course!towards the end i suspected it might fall apart when the big reveal came, but every time i formulated a guess, it would twist slightly and, although i'm not about to reveal anything, it was not only not a cheap cop-out, some serious issues were raised about the future and us as a society.btw, the only movies i give 9s to are epics such as lotr, for geniuses such as kubrick, and the occasional quirky black comedy. this movie earned the 9 from me fair and square with its imagination. my only quibble is i wish they could have afforded better effects in a lot of places, but the bus scene jerked me bolt upright in my chair and that was the intended effect, so they got their money's worth./guy

Oasis5 I'm rate this movie 6/10 and decided to rate Dragon Head (2003) at 1/10effectiveness scene: 8/10 (sometime boring enough to make my wife yawn out loud, but even the boring yawn scene is counted at the end, next time ... but next time, I'd love if it shorter and more brief than it was.)Mindblowing: opening 12/10, 2nd act 3/10, 3rd act 6.3/10, peak 7.5/10, ending(resolution) 4/10This movie distinguish from other japan movies lead cast by teenage, which always wasted time with ineffectiveness/meaningless scene. (Such as Dragon Head, Battle Royal even 20th Century Boy, which finally I came to realize that those movie made from comic book is just a step stone for a young actor/actress, these industry not meant to make it great.) Like everyone said the film opening was fantastic, amaze, wonderful, ... (sorry I can't tell how it's great in words) But prepare your mind not to set high hope at the end... but yet, every scene counted, even boring sequence after the opening.

conedust If nothing else, Sion Sono possesses an admirable work ethic. Depending on how one counts such things (and despite the often sprawling length of his films), he's averaged at least one major theatrical release per year since catching the attention of international cinephiles and horror nerds with 2001's Suicide Club. That's on top of an ambitious schedule of television shows, short films and little-seen mystery projects. Even so, 2015 was a banner year. Over a twelve-month period, the director cranked out five full-length features in a bewildering variety of genres and styles, finally rivaling the mad profligacy of Takashi Miike, Sono's countryman and peer in overcranked eccentricity.Tag, the first of these films semi-available to Western viewers, is an ambitious if modestly budgeted exercise in surrealist dream-horror. Sono's film takes inspiration and its Japanese title, "Riaru Onigokko" ("Real Tag"), from a popular science fiction thriller by teen-lit superstar Yusuke Yamada. Given that the novel in question recently spawned not only a successful screen adaptation but an entire, ongoing film franchise, it might seem strange that a celebrated art-house iconoclast would so soon choose to pay it another visit. In scripting his own version, however, Sono deviates significantly from Yamada's text, twisting the straightforward tale of a young man hunted by mysterious forces into a fragmentary, gore-soaked and frequently comical deconstruction of female identity in contemporary media and society.The story concerns a teenager named Mitsuko (Reina Triendl) and her attempts to navigate the inconstant landscape of what I hesitate to call her reality. We're given little opportunity to know Mitsuko, as Tag provides us no access to her past or inner life. Instead she's a blank and rather sleepy slate, and we drop into her ordinary schoolgirl's day in stereotypical media res. When the relative calm of a brief opening idyll explodes in grisly mayhem, we understand no more than Mitsuko herself, and from there we tumble with her, bouncing repeatedly from confusion to carnage and back again. Nothing we encounter coheres for more than a moment or two, not even Mitsuko's paper-thin sense of self. As our hapless heroine's trip down the razor-lined rabbit hole progresses, even her name and face become subject to revision. Though Triendl's Mitsuko remains central, three actresses eventually step in and out of the lead role. Mariko Shinoda plays the character as bride- to-be "Keiko", while Erina Mano appears as a determined young athlete named "Izumi", each quite strong and distinct in her portrayal. It's worth noting here that much of Tag's runtime is populated exclusively by women. This lends a distinctly political edge to the film's constant threat of apocalyptic violence, especially when combined with the polymorphous protagonist's adaptive blankness. For those who might need a bit more prompting, a hilariously bizarre third-act reversal makes Sono's intentions crystal clear.I don't know about you, but I'm a sucker for bugged-out existential thrillers in which the fundamental nature of reality is called into question, so I found Tag's shifting, looping, self-sabotaging storyline quite intriguing. Better yet, Sono corrals his penchant for long-winded digression this time out, confining himself to a careening, 85-minute sprint. This allows the film's disruptions and mysteries to retain their charge from beginning to end, despite the fact that "making sense" isn't high on the agenda. Many will doubtless feel cheated by the elliptical resolution, but as far as I'm concerned, the thrill of the ride more than justifies the price of admission.