Blue Spring

Another great Ryuhei Matsuda flick. Everything he does turns to gold, quality-wise any way. It is a coming of age/gang/high school movie with a little bit of everything for everyone. The movie begins with Kujo (Ryuhei Matsuda) going to the roof of the school and beating out everyone else to be the leader of the gang. How they decide who is by playing "The Clapping Game," they hang off the banister and see how many times they can clap without falling to their deaths. It goes through trials and tribulations, threats to his leadership, 2 deaths, one of which is a murder. A room being painted entirely black by someone who has gone insane? A midget Gardner teaching them important lessons on life, one of their friends quitting school to become a professional baseball player? Not to mention feces, there are few good Japanese movies that do not have feces? And a motorcycle that's almost as cool as the one from Wild Zero. Despite the violence, murder, feces, face smashing, and all that, the movie really leaves you (well me at least) with a warm fuzzy feeling inside. It shows how these two now enemies became at one time the best of friends. I would recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys Japanese cinema, if you don't have a taste for it, you probably wouldn't get it.