Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

FrogGlace In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

poe-48833 Now THIS is the kind of movie that Disney should be producing... Something with a positive message that doesn't necessarily further the interests of the Military Entertainment Complex. The idea of "skin-ship" (the "sharing of feelings through physical contact") is EXACTLY the kind of message kids need these days, especially when electronics and "virtual reality" have all but made contact between people (much less people and animals other than house pets) a rarity. (Of course, such contact entails risk, as I found out this past summer. I went to a shelter- which WASN'T a "no-kill" facility- and adopted a pair of kittens. Unfortunately, there were far more cats there than we could possibly afford to adopt- and three days is the "limit" there-, including playful triplets and, sadly, an older cat who was sent to the shelter by a dying man in the hopes that she would be adopted. As if THAT weren't heartbreaking enough, a neighborhood cat gave birth to more than half a dozen kittens- on my back porch or under the house- who proceeded to succumb, one by one, to the relentless HEAT here. I called every single "cat-friendly" organization in town to try to get help, but none of them- not ONE- could (or WOULD) do a thing. So I spent every morning finding and bagging these small, dehydrated bodies... until they were all gone. Contact entails risk, but I think I've come to understand at least one thing: it's only LOVE that makes Life worth living.)

Roedy Green Quill could be billed as a quasi-documentary about how golden lab guide dogs for the blind are trained in Japan. It is all quite informative, but not very dramatically interesting. For the most part, it is child suitable. There is sadness as the dog Quill is taken from his puppy home to be trained, then taken from there to serve, then taken from there when the owner dies. Quill himself eventually dies of old age in an overblown sequence that goes on and on and on like some sadistic Disney flick determined to make every child cry. I was saying out loud, "for pity sake, tell the vet to put him down". The pathos dissipated for me when one character gave instructions to Quill on what to do when he got to heaven. That was just too silly.

FilmCriticLalitRao Before watching this film, I was feeling quite excited as I just had a certain idea of what Sai Yoichi might be as a filmmaker. He started his illustrious career as an assistant for Nagisa Oshima on the highly controversial art film "Empire of the senses". It was the same film for which the famous gangster turned filmmaker Koji Wakamatsu provided funds. In the recent past, I had seen only one film directed by him "Blood and Bones". For me,although it was a very violent film I had ever seen in my life, it enabled me to keenly watch and observe Kitano Takeshi's acting talents. So it was with such pleasant expectations and unknown surprises that I began watching this film with my family. At the end of the film, I was feeling elated as I had discovered an hitherto unknown facet of Japanese culture. To begin with, "Quill" made me catch glimpses of family life in Japan as it was shot in a small town away for the bustling metropolis Tokyo. Watching this film made me realize how much value people from Asian countries especially Koreans, Chinese and Japanese attach to English language and culture. It is true that one should try not to be sentimental about dogs, what pleased me the most was the emotional bond which Yochi Sai depicted by making a blind person aware of his dog's worthiness. There are moments of sadness in the film but all in all they served their purpose well. This is a point which all serious viewers would take away with them when they watch this simple, frank and honest film.

Harry T. Yung Spoilers This little movie has attracted a lot of attention in town, hitting #2 in the box office last week. Local film critics, the lazy ones at least, have resorted to saying things like `have lots of tissue ready' or some such cliché. Truth of the matter is, this one is not a tear-jerker.If anything, Quill is more like a documentary, a slightly dramatized documentary similar to Touching the Void. Without the contrived, crafted emotional bumps seen often in Hollywood flicks, this Japanese film takes us gently along the life of Quill, the seeing-eye dog, through many partings: with his original parents, `adopted' parents, trainer, and finally `partner'. Sharing with Quill his small, humble moments of joy and sadness, we also come to understand a little more the role of a seeing-eye dog. We are reminded of the inevitability of death, but also the zest and joy of living. In the end, without the help of stultified tear-jerking formula, our eyes would maybe moist a little at the friendship between a man and a dog.One inconsequential note on the background music. In the scene of the man and the dog going for a final walk together, the background music is the beautiful Bach-Gounod's version of Ave Maria (hope I got this right). Just by sheer coincidence, I recently watched Raging Bull, in which the same piece of music is used in the opening credit, with markedly different effects.