Destruction Babies (2016)

Shota (Nijiro Murakami) lives alone in a tent in the small Japanese town of Mitsuhama. His older brother Taira (Yuya Yagira) is on the streets of the nearby city Matsuyama. Taira is fixated on having fistfights. If he sees a target on the street who looks as if they can present a challenge, he simply walks up and starts punching them in the face. While Shota sets out to find Taira, Taira falls in with Yuya (Masaki Suda): a local teenager who joins Taira's violent excursion for a cheap thrill.

Destruction Babies is cold and violent journey to a very bleak place. I have a fairly high threshold for on-screen violence, however Destruction Babies repeatedly made me flinch. It is not an outlandish action film replete with machine gun fire, sword fights or elaborate martial arts sequences. Instead it is a quite disturbed drama about the failure of Japanese society. Taira is not a skilled fighter; he simply has a high threshold for pain. As he impulsively dives into random street brawls - and I cannot exaggerate how many times in one movie this happens - they are not clean, stylised affairs. They are messy, brutal assaults. Noses break. Skin splits. Faces bruise like ripe fruit. It is a profoundly effective exercise in film-making, but it tells a story many viewers will simply not want to hear.

Pink and Gray (2016)

In the opening moments of Pink and Gray, a new film by director Ikao Yukisada, we watch a young woman lead a contemporary dance troupe. At the same time an impeccably well dressed young man in an expensive apartment climbs onto a stool, wraps a rope around his neck and hangs himself. A friend arrives and discovers the body, as well as six separate suicide notes sealed in envelopes and an invitation for the friend to choose one - and only one - to act as the victim's final words. That is one hell of an opening hook.

Before we can process what has actually happened, we are thrown back 14 years to the childhood of the two friends. We follow them into adolescence and adulthood, where they are spotted by a talent scout one day and invited to become part-time models and extras. One friend, Gotch (Yuto Nakajima), immediately finds success and becomes a major film and television star. The other, Daiki (Masaki Suda), struggles and largely fails. The contrast in their lives begins to tear their lengthy friendship apart. Between them is a third friend, the aspiring artist Sari (Kaho), who enters into a troubled relationship with Daiki during his career collapse.

That is honestly as far as this film can be discussed without ruining some of its best surprises. The bottom line is that Pink and Gray is a surprisingly inventive and unexpected sort of film that stands head-and-shoulders above other Japanese idol dramas.