Midnight Eye reviews Air Doll and Rain Fall

It’s been awhile since I’ve been to Midnight Eye, one of the web’s best resources for Japanese cinema. But I dropped by this week, and saw that they’ve posted reviews of two films that have been on my radar for awhile.

The first film is Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s Air Doll, which follows the exploits of an inflatable sex doll who becomes alive and tries to find the meaning of existence. It seems like rather prurient material for Kore-Eda, whose previous films include Hana and Nobody Knows, but Midnight Eye’s Tom Mes calls Air Doll “[Kore-Eda’s] most commercial film and one of his most accomplished” (full review).

The second film is Rain Fall, a thriller based on the Barry Eisler novel. I first became aware of Rain Fall several years ago when it was announced that Jet Li had expressed interest in turning Eisler’s novel into a film. I picked up the novel, which follows a Japanese-American assassin working in Tokyo who becomes embroiled in a national conspiracy, and found it to be a very enjoyable read.

Directed by Max Mannix and starring Gary Oldman, Rain Fall has finally made it to the screen, and Midnight Eye’s M. Downing Roberts has some positive things to say about it (full review).