Console
best movie i've ever seen.
Humaira Grant
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
Arianna Moses
Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
Rosie Searle
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
EVOL666
I started watching Gemini several years ago but never finished it for some reason. As I'm making a point to go through my unwatched film collection, I decided to give it another go. The storyline concerns the eyebrow-challenged couple of Yukio and Rin. Yukio is a young doctor and Rin is his (supposedly) amnesiac wife. Things get really strange for the couple when a man that looks just like Yukio shows up...I have very mixed feelings about this one. Overall I'd say that I liked it-but I felt it could have been much stronger if it wouldn't have veered off into weirdo-territory the way so many '90s era Japanese films seem to do. The storyline is actually pretty straight-forward by the time you get to the end-but the atmosphere of the beginning is lost with a bunch of weird and garish costuming that felt nearly comical to me. I personally feel the first third of the film is really quite fantastic. During that segment-there's a constant feeling of anxious, near-dread that is almost early Cronenberg-ish in nature. Problem is-that feeling of suspense and general 'creepiness' dies quickly because the film becomes, well...too 'Japanese' for lack of a better term. Don't get me wrong-I'm typically quite fond of Japanese films and their often peculiar style-but in this one, it felt forced. I guess I shouldn't be surprised coming from the director of the TETSUO films-and he does show far more restraint in GEMINI-but it just wasn't enough. I honestly think this could have been a really fantastic film that just really misses the mark for me. Still a decent film-just not a great one. 6.5/10
Polaris_DiB
Director Shinya Tsukamoto of Tetsuo fame returns with something very different than his hyperkinetic cyborg technophilia mindtrip: an almost sober costume drama cum doppelganger thriller. This man has versatility, I must say.Now the story is decent, though not as great as it could have been. As strange occurrences and the feeling of an alien presence start plaguing a successful doctor's life, he suddenly gets trapped at the bottom of a well while a mysterious person who looks just like him takes over his life, including his house and his wife. Through dialog and flashbacks we learn that the mystery man is his long-lost brother, abandoned by his family because of a snake-shaped deformity on his leg. After he got separated with his wife Rin, he searched for her to find that Rin had married the successful doctor twin. Wanting revenge for his rejection from society, plus to get back at and back together with his old wife, the stranger decides to taunt his doctor brother by forcing him into the most abject of conditions.It's not particularly effective for horror or thriller approach, but it is a good movie in the way the one actor plays the double roles and the color and movement Tsukamoto captures. Apparently he hired actors from a certain local theatre to play the roles, and the approach they have to their characters is certainly very physical: the doppelganger and Rin snake around each other while making love, the way he cartwheels around to scare the brothers' mother, the level of distortion each character puts on their face in order to project their emotion. Add an extremely acute focus on costuming and you get something almost out of Noh theatre: demonic expressiveness, bright colorful motifs, paced and structured movements.--PolarisDiB
Infofreak
I was incredibly impressed by Shinya Tsukamoto's surreal cyberpunk classic 'Tetsuo', one of the most startling, original and disturbing movies of the last twenty years, and also knocked out by 'Tokyo Fist' his hyperkinetic and violent study of macho competition. Now, once again I'm impressed, this time by 'Gemini' his beautiful and haunting story of identity confusion, and sibling rivalry. The movie is said to be based on Edogawa Rampo's short story 'The Twins', but I've read it and it has virtually nothing to do with this film. Whatever, it doesn't matter, Tsukamoto has taken one or two ideas from Rampo's (excellent) story and expanded it into more interesting and inventive territory. Masahiro Motoki is brilliant in a duel role as the uptight bourgeois doctor and his malevolent criminal twin, and Ryo is beautifully enigmatic as his (apparently) amnesiac wife who is harboring a secret or two. 'Gemini' is a brilliant piece of film making, and I highly recommend it.
freakus
This film is based on a story by Edogawa Rampo, a japanese writer who was so enamoured of Edgar Allen Poe that he even took on his name. This Film is the best evidence I've seen of Poe heavy influence. The twins, the well, the wife.... at times I was reminded of "Tell-Tale Heart", "Cask of Amontillado" and "Fall of the House of Usher". Yet the film's art direction and directorial style took these themes in brilliant new directions. I loved the sound design in the early part of the film using Bulgarian(?) female chorus voices to punctuate the terror of the dark house as the wife searches for the father-in-law. The hair and make-up on the wife made her both beautiful and poisonous at the same time. A uniquely creepy film.