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The Journey To Killing You (Japanese Series)

This dark gritty Japanese BL is something I was not expecting. The story focuses on a Yakuza bodyguard  assigned to kill his young boss. The premise sounds interesting but the execution was just weird. There were lot of problems with the show like violence, abuse, coercion and even forcing themselves sexually. Eventually it somewhere becomes. BL with some nonsense stuff. Thankfully the series was only 6 episodes of about 26-30 minutes each. Kataoka is a respected yakuza leader. His boss has grown old and frail, unable to manage the organization anymore. Leadership now falls to the boss's son, Keito. He assigns Odajima as Kataoka's new handler to keep him in check. Kataoka is impulsive and treats Odajima aslmost as a servant even forcing sex on him. But beneath the rough exterior, Kataoka occasionally reveals a gentler side. Odajima, on the other hand,  is stoic and distant, keeping his emotions under tight control. What Kataoka doesn't know is that Odajima has a hidden agen...

Alex und der Löwe (German) [Alex And Leo]

This German speaking movie begins with nice animations that instantly remind you of Pink Panther series and your expectations are raised. But as the movie progresses, you realize that it is such a predictable movie with very little charm in lead actors to carry it all the way through who hardly know the nuisances of acting in the first place. Leo is in advertisement who just broke off with his girlfriend of 4 years finally accepting that he is gay. Leo is a regular guy who catches his boyfriend cheating on him and is himself getting out of a relationship. Alex has 3 other friends: perky and sarcastic Tobi, a stage artist who gets shy every time he sees the same hot stranger, the psychologist Steffi and the hard-drinking Kerstin. The group of 4 have a chance encounter at a bar with Leo. Leo who has instant liking for Alex extends a hand of friendship and take it from here. Tobi as himself hates him and is always mean to Leo. Leo and Alex start hanging out and finally sleep together. When Leo tells Alex that he wants something permanent, Alex flips out since he just got out of a bad relationship. Meanwhile Tobi finally gets courage to talk to the hot guy and is now so very much in love with him. Both Alex and Leo realize their mistake and finally apologise to each other and get back together. This movie could have been so much better. With better actors, better character developments and better comedy. Don't get me wrong, the movie is charming in a amateur kind of way but it also has many flaws. Both the lead actors don't have it in them to carry a film on their shoulders. Plus they just dont have any chemistry to speak of. The plot is predictable, the camera work is unfortunately pretty uninspired, and it's obvious that the whole film was made with very little budget. Despite so many bad things to say, I still managed to sit through my first gay movie of 2011. (4.5/10)

Comments

ILHiker said…
I agree with the review and the rating,yet here I was rewatching it. It's not great, but I enjoyed it once again. I like the sort of reserved quality of Leo probably best. I watched the sort-of sequel Men to Kiss a few years back. I don't think I liked it as much as this one, though it was nice to see some of the characters once again.

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