Brightlyme i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

ebossert I'm a pretty big fan of Sion Sono, with "Love Exposure" (2008), "Strange Circus" (2005), and "Hair Extensions" (2007) being amongst my personal favorites from his portfolio. Even his more recent exploitation-style films like "Cold Fish" (2010) and "Guilty of Romance" (2011) have enough to hold interest, despite their skittish foundations. "Noriko's Dinner Table" (2005) is a dramatic spin off to the gruesome "Suicide Club" (2002). I read up on the film before seeking it out, so I knew what I was in for in terms of style: a slow-paced, character driven art-house flick that was very different from its predecessor. What I got was a boring movie that outstayed its welcome within the opening hour, then dragged mercilessly for another hour-and-a-half.The plot is bland, the acting is spotty, and the primary psychological elements are unfocused and sloppy. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but this film abuses narration to such an extreme that massive amounts of superfluous verbiage are used when only a few mere images would suffice. What results is an unbearable series of events that seem to exist for no other reason than to show something during the unending narration. The dialogue is drawn out yet somehow empty – virtually nothing of interest is said. Even after 159 minutes of characters constantly yapping (they literally cannot keep their mouths shut for more than 10 seconds at a time), the viewer inexplicably comes away from this movie with almost no additional understanding of the primary themes behind "Suicide Club", a film that also suffered from meaningless psychobabble but overpowered its flaws with horrific imagery.Subsequent to my initial disappointment, I attempted to rewatch "Noriko's Dinner Table" on two separate occasions, but simply could not make it past the opening hour. I'm frankly amazed that I made it the whole way through the first time around.

tedg Magical spaces in Hispanically influenced films are easy to locate. We as viewers find it easy to place ourselves there it seems natural. Only Medem challenges.There are three similarly structured magical traditions in modern Japanese films, and I find them tantalizing, sometimes difficult, visceral. This is squarely within one of these traditions, a small unsettling masterpiece. There seem to be many such, films that have not escaped the island. "All About Lily Chou-Cho" is my favorite, but this has a notable reverse fold.A common fold is that of performance in life: we all are acting a role that we are drawn to. "Audition" is a great example of where life performance slakes the life that contains it. This construction goes there and then reverses itself.Imagine a setup where two sisters end up working for a gang which hires out actors to play roles in families for pay. Pretty standard stuff for this tradition, and many of the ordinary girl-sex-angst-parent dynamics are acted out, some symbolically. But now imagine an overlain setup where they are unknowingly hired by their father to play themselves. There's more. Imagine that the film is broken into a collection of first person narratives, each reporting what they discover, and one of these leverages the fact that the father is a reporter- detective (who discovers the gang and sets up the inverted acting gig).The gang, incidentally, is from a previous movie that is not particularly relevant, except in that it occupies the same magical universe of lost girls.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

bloody_frets This was a roller coaster through the sickness of the human mind and back up to blue skies. I watched this after suicide club (that in my opinion was very average to not so good) and was amazed. The movie did not even need the Suicide Circle background. The symbolisms were nicely presented and the metaphors were very tight to the storyline. The atmosphere is heavy dramatic and suits the movie's concept fantastically. While watching you feel like you are passing from reality to fantasy and back again up to the point you don't know whats real anymore. We have to thank the very well presented characters for this (just enough info but not too much). This was a very very good movie. Long but good!

ctizon Wow. I must say, of all the films out there, this one has a concept that has never been done before.When this film was released, most of its recognition stemmed from it being the director's follow-up to his cult favorite "Suicide Club" (2002). In fact, that is what sparked my interest, as I am a die-hard fan of "Suicide Club". However, after viewing this film, I have to definitely recommend not going in and expecting a sequel. This film takes place in the same universe, and its story may clear up a bit of the whys in "Suicide Club", but it has a different story completely. Different characters, different timeframe, different genre, everything, but standalone film or sequel - this is one of the best films I've seen.We pick up the story a bit of time before the events of "Suicide Club" (6 months prior to be exact). A 17 year old girl named Noriko Shimabara lives with her father Tetsu, her mother Taeko, and her sister Yuka. Utterly bored with life, she spends hours contacting various teenage girls through the website "haikyo.com" (present in the first film). Aching to leave home and meet those like her, Noriko packs her bags and runs off to Tokyo. The very next morning, she meets Kumiko - the founder of the website haikyo. But she is immediately swept into a bizarre game of acting as part of a family and getting paid for it. Eventually, she contacts her sister Yuka, who runs off to be with her sister. Their mother commits suicide, and 6 months later their father hears about a suicide cult in Tokyo that caused 54 girls to jump in front of a train. Tetsu has a feeling that Noriko is involved, so he starts a very long journey to get his daughters back. However, by the time he reaches them, 2 years have passed, and they have become completely detached from reality and from themselves.This is where the movie reaches its climax, and goes into the bizarre and gruesome territory that anyone familiar with the first film would be expecting. But this is NOT a horror movie in any sense of the word. It's almost pure drama. Even though it has a seemingly complicated plot, at heart it is simply a story about a girl's journey to her own soul and to the heart of life. And what a dark journey it is.The ending is a bit like the first one's ending, with a sense of accomplishment. It is quite the uplifting ending for an otherwise depressing film. But it gives no easy answers. I'll be looking forward to the third one, where the events from this film and the last film are finally tied up.The symbolism and messages in this film are incredible, and the plot was perfectly crafted to convey them all. I don't see how anybody could NOT like this movie. It is the perfect embodiment of all human emotion.10/10