Perfect Days (PG)

133 minutes, opens exclusively at The Projector on Feb 8
5 stars

The story: In a pairing of greats, German film-maker Wim Wenders directs Japanese actor Koji Yakusho as a dedicated toilet cleaner in Tokyo going through his cyclical rituals: rising every dawn, misting his bonsai plants, downing coffee, then heading out to Shibuya Ward’s 17 public toilets to scrub and mop.

Perfect Days sounds like the unsexiest movie ever.

But 78-year-old auteur Wenders has traversed Paris, Texas (1984) and communed with angels on Wings Of Desire (1987). He also visited Tokyo for Tokyo-Ga, his 1985 documentary on his Japanese cinema idol Yasujiro Ozu.

And, like Ozu and Perfect Days’ middle-aged protagonist Hirayama (Yakusho), Wenders has come to embrace the textures and rhythms of the everyday in this gentle character study, which is competing for the Academy Awards’ best international feature.

Hirayama listens to cassette recordings of 1970s American rockers Lou Reed and Patti Smith in his minivan. He photographs the trees in the urban park.

He frequents a neighbourhood bar and browses a thrift bookstore for William Faulkner paperbacks.

His wordless contentment in his rich yet simple life is a marvel, and won Yakusho the 2023 Cannes Film Festival’s best actor prize.

It is ruptured by other people inserting themselves into his solitude – most irrevocably, a runaway teenage niece (Arisa Nakano) and Hirayama’s estranged sister (Yumi Aso).

The unexpected visits are almost shocking in their emotional impact because of their understatement. They hint at an unhappy family past, and that backstory remains an enigma, right through the extraordinary final close-up of Hirayama weeping and smiling.

“Next time is next time,” he would say. “Now is now.”

The movie, shot in 15 days, is all about living fully in the present.

Hot take: Only a mature master could dream up such a moving meditation on the beauty of the mundane.

Rob N Roll (NC16)

98 minutes, opens on Feb 8
4 stars

The story: Gordon Lam and Richie Jen buddy up as timid wannabe robbers who cross paths with an actual bad-a** robber, played by Aaron Kwok, when they unwittingly foil his heist.

Director Albert Mak has long been an assistant of Hong Kong cinema doyen Johnnie To (Drug War, 2012; Life Without Principle, 2011).

Whether To appreciates this parody of his crime dramas featuring his stock players as losers, Rob N Roll is a blast.

Lam and Jen’s pair of dispirited middle-aged best friends are, respectively, a taxi driver with a crabby pregnant wife and a widowed social worker behind on his nursing home rent. They plan a robbery to plug their finances.

Kwok has a rocking time subverting his Heavenly King image as the pro wrestler turned buck-toothed bandit, who hires them to retrieve his bag of stolen cash after it is mislaid in Lam’s cab.

From his Yau Ma Tei neighbourhood money exchange heist – which is also the scene of a subsequent secondary hold-up – the action fans out across the territory.

Maggie Cheung Ho-yee’s ambitious lady cop and her young partner (Leung Chung-hang) are in pursuit.

Lam Suet, John Chiang and Michael Wong add to the melee as triad figures, the last losing a finger amid the shoot-outs and slip-ups.

With clockwork nimbleness, Mak locks together the dozens of moving parts and the dozens more zany characters, all excellently played.

The caper is a model of old-school efficiency. It has brio and heart in the trio’s bromance, and in portraying – under the guise of farce – the struggles of the city’s underclass.

Hot take: This comedy of errors is the funniest ticket of the Chinese New Year season.