TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

VividSimon Simply Perfect

Executscan Expected more

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

WILLIAM FLANIGAN Viewed on DVD and Streaming. The sisterhood of the bordello. Prostitutes with hearts of gold. Customers falling for their pleasure service providers and Vice Versa. Do these themes seem familiar? All and many more well-worn subplots have been inserted into this mundane movie. It begins with the nonsensical choice of translated lyrical title--if anything is "watching" (besides disappointed viewers) it's a nearby river that is ready to flood and destroy things (again?) with the next tsunami. It ends in a physical mess (see below) and is pretty much a melodramatic mess in between. The script is pedestrian and attributed to Akira Kurosawa. It's easy to see why he was never allowed to make it into a movie. The studio-bound exterior real/virtual sets and the dressings/drawings/glass-shot-paintings thereof are well done except for the closing scenes (see below). Cinematography and sound are fine. Film score is light weight. Subtitles need a good grammatical scrubbing. They are frequently too long and often appear/disappear literally in an eye blink. However, inscriptions (like those on lanterns) are subtitled! Direction is undistinguished and workman like. Acting is uneven, amateurish, and far from riveting. Actors' makeup is atrocious. It subtracts rather than adds to the attractiveness of actresses. Male actor wigs are patently phony looking with visible seam lines. The story's conclusion is ridiculously contrived and as phony as the studio-bound outdoor set it takes place in. The latter seems to suffer from a lack of an adequate budget (if the film was shot linearly, perhaps the budget ran over and cuts were made at the end?). Shots of women perched in a rooftop (to avoid flood water) wearing "their best" colorful kimonos in daylight with an obviously artificial nighttime star field backdrop are far more amusing than dramatic. It's daytime TV soap opera masquerading as a movie. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

choden A wonderful film to watch with astonishing scenes and talented actors, such as Misa Shimizu and Nagiko Tono. After 15 minutes of watching, your eyes get locked on the screen and you do nothing but breathing in the atmosphere of the film waiting what the destiny will bring to the characters. This film makes you leave your position as a standard audience, it takes you in, it makes you a part of the story... Costumes and settings are brilliant; especially the district of the okiyas is skillfully built. It is definitely not very Akira Kurosawa, however it still gets a lot from the master, especially the stylistic story telling tells us we're in a distinguished land of cinema which is quite far from hollywoodish flamboyance.

bosscain this movie just goes to show that you dont need big explosions,muti-billion dollar computer graphics,or highly over paid actors and actresses to make a good movie, All you need is a excellent story line and plot. which the master of all japanese films,Akira Kurosawa pulls off brilliantly. I recommend this film to all that love a epic period piece. and for those that enjoy Kurosawas earlier works. 10/10

AltuKayar I did not like the movie `The Sea is Watching' very much because it was a rather slow movie. Its slowness is bad because I could not taste some of the feelings because of that slowness. Love was one of that feelings I am talking about. The movie is about the sense of belonging, freedom, and love however, there are also cultural things prevailed in it and those cultural elements are like big woodden beams in a river that prevent it to flow properly and decrease the speed of the stream. For instance, the non-talking communication between people prolonge the speeches and it makes all the thing slower.As aforementioned the film was not an outstanding movie about the common human emotions and desires like love, freedom or belonging. I rather consider this movie as a more documentary type movie about Japanese geishas. I can say that I have learned nearly everything about geishas because 95% of the movie was shot in a geisha village and geisha house and the movie is full of speeches, traditions, rules and things about geisha life.Besides that there are also a couple of samurais in the movie but little insight is given about them. The samurais in the movie are also weak characters and they are also very young, far from wisdom. Samurais were not that satisfactory for me.In addition to these, there were also good things about this movie. First of all, most of the movie is shot in a single house in general but the interesting thing was that during the movie the characters gather in different parts of the hosuse and this gatherings are long. Therefore, while watching the movie you can (at least I can) feel like I am someone from the house and I am with them because I knew the house very well, I mean you could get into the house, it is very well shown to the audience I think.There were also good symbolic visiuals in the movie like the sea symbolizing the freedom or the bushes between the sea and the village as the symbol for the obstacles in the way to freedom. And all the story is connected with these symbols at the end of the film. I good script but unexciting execution I can say.