JFF THEATER: The Blue Skies at Your Feet (2022) | 君が落とした青空 - Part II

Nice little movie.  I thought about starting to rate the movies/dramas that I watch, like a 1 to 10 thing or a "out of 5 stars" thing but I remembered exactly why I don't do that.  I may have already mentioned this before but I love these Asian dramas and movies and I'm annoyingly easy to please (about a lot of things) so even if a show starts off a little rough but finds its footing and ends nicely, I'm happy.  I would be here giving movies 10/10 all the time and that kind of defeats the purpose of rating movies or shows doesn't it?  Besides, the purpose of this blog is NOT to review, critique and get you to watch them.  I mean, in a way, it kind of is but it's still not the primary purpose here.  I started my Asian drama blog as a place to keep track of the dramas I was watching before there were any sites available specifically or this.  That first blog was dedicated to J-dramas only and then I started to have access to J-movies so I needed a blog for that.  And as I discovered K-dramas, the 2 blogs grew into Asian movies and dramas blogs.

I've been watching J-dramas for a little over 30 years and K-dramas for about almost 15 years.  Not sure when I started watching J-movies; I would estimate maybe 20 years.  I've also watched a couple of Chinese dramas, a Taiwanese one and several Korean movies.  In the 30 years I have been watching, there has been only 1 drama that started off so badly that I considered just dropping it and forgetting I even attempted to watch it.  But I didn't.  I kept watching it and it was surprisingly entertaining and I ended up feeling glad I had stuck with it.  From that experience I started my 3 episode rule which has worked out well for me.

Now, this movie was nice.  It started out good and it went in a direction I wasn't expecting and then i went the way I was expecting!  I guessed the ending wrong but was happy it ended the way it did because it was much better than what I had in mind!

JFF Theater Available for August

Here are a list of the movies available on JFF Theater's site.  I plan to watch as many of these as I can!  I'm starting kind of late but I'm going to do my best.

Suspect X | Mystery, Drama (128  min)

Midsummer's Equation | Mystery, Drama (129 min)

The Complex | Thriller Horror (106 min)

The Hotel of My Dream | Comedy, Drama (98 min)

The Blue Skies at Your Feet | Romance, Drama (93 min)

Yudo | Family, Japanese Culture (126 min)

Sagrada Reset Part 1 | Fantasy, SF (103 min)

Sagrada Reset Part 2 | Fantasy, SF (125 min)

JFF THEATER: The Blue Skies at Your Feet (2022) | 君が落とした青空

 Time to watch a JFF Theater movie.  There are 9 movies available to watch and they all sound good.  In order to pick 1 to watch, I decided to go with the one that's the least longest and then work my way through to the one that is the longest.  This movie is 93 min long and has several titles it goes by.

The Blue Sky You Fell Under

The Blue Sky You Have Lost

Summary from Asianwiki.com:

"Miyu and Shuya are high school students.  They have dated for 2 years.  Miyu and Shuya have a promise that no matter what, they will watch a movie together on the first day of each new month.  When they are on their way to the movie theater, Shuya suddenly cancels their date.  Shuya seems like he is hiding something and he acts nervous.  Later, Miyu goes to the place where she is supposed to meet Shuya, but she witnesses Shuya getting into a car accident.  She panics, but when she wakes up, she finds herself on the morning of the accident.  Miyu keeps waking up on the day when Shuya got into an accident."

So, it sounds like this is a time travel, Groundhog Day kind of movie.  Sounds interesting!

There Goes Benio, the Smart Girl (1987) | はいからさんが通る| Haikarasan ga Tooru

Decided to watch this one because it's Hiroshi Abe's debut movie.  I'm not sure when I first saw him but it was definitely in a drama.  I suppose I could go and look at a list of his TV work and figure it out.  If I had to guess, I would say possibly Dragon Zakura. All I know is that once I saw him, it was love at first sight!  I looked up a list of other dramas he was in and I started watching them.  I was never disappointed!  I quickly learned I wasn't the only one who thought he was very handsome.  The more dramas he was in that I watched, the more I really liked him as an actor.  He was very good at taking on different types of characters and not playing them the same way (if that makes any sense).

In his first role, he was just okay for me.  It was a main role but it didn't feel like he was in it much.  

Summary from online: (not sharing the site because I see there were at least 4 or 5 sites with the exact same summary and I have no idea whose summary it was originally!)

"Benio , a peppy tomboy, is surprised to learn that she has been secretly betrothed by her grandfather to a young officer named Shinobu Ijuin.  Because of his family's noble status, Benio must first undergo rigorous training to learn how to be a proper bride and wife before she can marry.  However, because of her vivacious personality, this proves to be more challenging than anyone imagined."

Hiroshi Abe plays Shinobu Ijun.  Seeing him so young, I don't think I would have thought he was particularly special if I had watched this back in 1987.  Aside from the fact that I was not into Japanese guys (or any Asian guys) back then, he looked like any other Asian guy.  I fell for a bit more mature looking Hiroshi Abe which is a little odd for me. 

In a nutshell, Benio is a cute girl but she is headstrong.  She finds out she is engaged to a guy she doesn't know and starts living in the home where she is taught how to be a proper girl.  Shinobu likes her and he treats her well and Benio starts to like him.  Before he ships out, he tells Benio he wants to marry her after he gets back and she agrees.

What happens after that?  You'll have to find the movie and see!  It's a cute movie and it's kind of predictable.  If I was able to figure it out, anyone can.  I usually watch movies and get lost somewhere because I'm just watching and enjoying the movie.  I'm not thinking ahead about it.  Anyway, cute movie.  I liked it!