Survive Style 5+ (2005)

dir: Sekiguchi Gen

An exercise in J-pop fluff, the movie has a strange sense of humor --standard Japanese quirkiness abounds, both in terms of story as well as look and feel. The candy coated sets are fun and kitchy, i.e. the feast of all breakfast feasts thrown artfully together into temporary glory, as it gets tackled by its intended recipient and one of many of the films' characters, Asano Tadanobu . The chef is his supernaturally gifted, ever-reincarnating, revenge seeking girlfriend whom a la Groundhog Day he sans explanation recurrently kills and buries. She comes back to get even, and he puts her back down, again, and again, and again.

For said quirkiness, the mood, while often light and airy, is tinged with underlying darkness, as in these aforementioned scenes in the woods at night, and as with the rest of characters and story-lines the film follows:

The three bumbling friends robbing houses, two of the bunch discovering more between them than just loot.

The ad saleswoman, oddly likable for being a cutthroat, sharky bitch, whose imagination is rife with silly, un-pitched ideas for unrealized products.

The oft-angry British hitman (Vinnie Jones) traveling inseparably from his translator, intently demanding of folks: What's your function?

Finally, there's the sympathetic family man/super dad who, while attending the TV taping of a talk show, gets hypnotized into thinking he's a duck.

Hilarity, naturally, ensues.

Of note: Sonny Chiba has a small role as an advertising company president.