I had big plans to see several of the films in the Pacific Cinemateque series of 1960s Japanese genre films over the long weekend (happy BC Day!), but laziness and a high neighbourhood Walk Score conspired to keep me around Main Street, which I am still enthusiastically exploring. Today, for instance, I walked up to the summit of Queen Elizabeth park to finally see the view (it’s spectacular), and out second-hand shopping with Meghan yesterday, we saw a fantastic vintage 1970s rug that I might go back and pick up.
Also, rumour had been that A Colt is my Passport, a cult Japanese ganster flick, might be the best of the series, and… to be honest, it’s fun, but really, it’s mostly just an above-average B-movie starring chipmunk-cheeked tough guy Jo Shishido. I’ve seen Shishido in Seijun Suzuki’s Branded to Kill from the same year, but seeing him again in this one mostly reminded me that I wanted to go back and see more Seijun Suzuki movies. Which is fair enough, I think — the movies in the series seem mostly intended for people who have already discovered Suzuki and want to see what else is going on in 1960s Japanese gangster flicks. While I would kind of liked to have seen more of the films in the series, it seemed more interesting historically than artistically. I’m just beginning with Suzuki — no need to move onto advanced studies just yet.