Cloud / Charisma
Eureka Entertainment
Original Release Date Sept 27th, 2026 (Cloud, Japan) / February 26th, 1999 (Charisma, Japan)
Written by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Starring Masaki Suda, Kotone Furukawa, Kōji Yakusho, Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, Yoriko Dôguchi
Language Japanese (English subtitles available)
by "Doc" Hunter Bush,
MovieJawn Staff Writer & Podcast Director, cohost of the Hate Watch/Great Watch Podcast
MovieJawn Staff Writer & Podcast Director, cohost of the Hate Watch/Great Watch Podcast
The Movies: Excellent
As a disclaimer: I received check discs for these films, which are review copies that don't have the final artwork or packaging. This may also mean some discrepancies between my copies and the finished versions. This dual release is also Region B only, meaning this primarily applies to folks in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand OR those of us with region free players.
I am no expert in the films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa. I saw Pulse (2001) when it first came out in the U.S., but I don't remember many details; it's all just lumped in with other films of the J-Horror boom. Much more recently, I have seen Cure (1997) and Sweet Home (1989), both of which I enjoyed, but that's about it as far as my pre-existing knowledge. I wasn't even aware that Kurosawa had directed Sweet Home when I watched it. So if you had pointed all those out to me and asked me if I was "a fan" I would probably have said "Sure?"
Not now though. Having watched both Cloud (2024) and Charisma (1999), two very different films united by Kurosawa's particular vision, I can definitively say "I am now a fan of Kiyoshi Kurosawa." It's an ineffable thing, but I just enjoy the way he makes movies. Both Cloud and Charisma are written as well as directed by Kurosawa, and while there are thematic corollaries, they're really very different films. Cloud is an experience that starts as something like The Strangers (2008) and ends up somewhere akin to Mother! (2017), while Charisma is like Return to Oz (1985) with a touch of The Princess Mononoke (1997).
Cloud follows Ryôsuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda), an online reseller, purchasing items and reselling them at an inflated price, as he becomes disenfranchised with his factory day job and quits to move with his girlfriend out to a suspiciously gorgeous house on a lake. Once there the film begins a slow slide away from the somewhat familiar setting and world, transforming into a supernatural-adjacent cautionary tale so gradually that you at first feel completely buffaloed before realizing this had been inevitable the entire time.
Charisma even more quickly abandons its recognizable world, with overworked police detective Goro Yabuike (repeat Kurosawa collaborator Kōji Yakusho) heading into a forest populated with multiple groups willing to battle over their viewpoints, all centered around a rare tree, known as Charisma, and its negative effect on the forest around it. Each faction differs on what they think should be done to / with Charisma, and they're more than willing to go head-to-head over this disagreement.
Both films are allegorical and examine issues of identity and loneliness, two of Kurosawa's pet concerns, but their approach and focus vary widely. In Cloud, Yoshii has wracked up an impressive number of adversaries through his unethical business practices, yet is unaware that he has been constructing the engine of his destruction all along and that his online identity will not hide him forever. In Charisma, Yakusho wanders from one camp to another, largely unbothered by anyone, as they each try to enlist him to their respective points of view. At some point, he inevitably decides to take control of the situation and choose what happens next, but will he be prepared for the repercussions of his actions? Will any of us?
The Packaging:
As I mentioned above, the copies I received did not have packaging, so I am leaving this section blank.
The Audio + Video: Excellent
Both these transfers look tremendous. It's a little more impressive for Charisma, which comes to us from over a quarter century ago, but I was repeatedly shocked with the visual sharpness and clarity in Cloud as well. There's one brief shot in Cloud, of Yoshii's girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa) walking by a car and her reflection across its roof is as clear as the rest of her. It's not an especially impressive shot (or, I should say not deliberately impressive) but it was just gorgeous. This is indicative of Kurosawa's eye. He also favors silhouette, negative space, and strong backlighting and I was enraptured by the soft halos of light coming into the dark spaces throughout Charisma.
That's another aspect of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's filmmaking that really appeals to me: his visual aesthetic is so all-encompassing. It permeates every shot, all locations, thoroughly. There's a stateliness to his shot composition that often feels grander than the subject matter. It's a similar feeling to viewing art in a gallery: these objects and images, though often outwardly mundane, are presented as though they have a greater weight than you may at first realize. It's, if not meditative, then certainly contemplative.
Kurosawa utilizes music with specificity and deliberation. Off the top of my head, I can't remember much about the score of Cloud (by Takuma Watanabe), but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It means it coalesced perfectly with what I was feeling throughout. I can, however, summon up a particular bouncy bit of percussion and wind from the Charisma score (by Gary Ashiya, also the composer for Cure) not only because it's used repeatedly, but is in such seeming juxtaposition to the events of the film that every time I noticed it, I spent time considering what it was conveying. In the end it lends the whole film the feeling of a fable, something of importance, with a lesson and consequences, but with a sense of gleeful adventure beneath or behind it all.
On a more technical level, the quality of the audio mix for both films was impeccable. I utilize a three-channel sound bar and I never had to adjust the volume, though I will mention that the commentary tracks for each film, from Dr. Jonathan Wroot, world cinema teacher and Japanese cinema researcher from the University of Greenwich, are slightly louder. So if you're back-to-backing any of these films with a commentary watch, you might want to bump it down a notch or two, lest you get spooked.
Special Features: Excellent
Between these two discs, I believe Eureka has put together a perfect release as far as context goes. As I said above, this release has cemented me as a Kiyoshi Kurosawa fan and that is due as much to the quality and style of the work as it does to the context provided in the bonus features. The two aforementioned commentary tracks from Dr. Jonathan Wroot did a lot to help me organize my thoughts on Kurosawa by answering many questions I had about the works, but those combined with the video essay A Cerebral Cinema by Joe Hickinbottom is what really catalyzed everything.
As a heads-up, the disc for Cloud only features the trailer, while the disc for Charisma has two featurettes in addition to the trailer for that film (which actually gives away some big concepts, but I digress). Personally, I love the inclusion of the trailers for the simple fact that it gives me something substantial to compare the video transfer against, as trailers are typically unrestored.
- Cloud commentary track with Dr. Jonathan Wroot
- Cloud trailer (1:02)
- Charisma commentary track with Dr. Jonathan Wroot
- A Cerebral Cinema: the works of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, video essay by Joe Hickinbottom (28:15)
- Making of Charisma (30:00)
- Charisma trailer (0:34)
In Summary: Must Own
Y'all. I am deep in the pocket for Kiyoshi Kurosawa now! I really loved Cure when I watched it, and Sweet Home is cool (and the main inspiration for the Resident Evil games, fun fact), but it wasn't until unpacking the two featurettes here that I began to have an understanding of Kurosawa's interests. To me, his films feel like they don't just ask questions, they feel like they ARE questions, and they don't have an answer. Even now, with this revelation freshly in mind, thinking back on my experience watching Cure, I believe I'm onto something.
Kurosawa isn't concerned with telling you what he thinks. More than any filmmaker I can think of off the top of my head, he's interested in allowing you all the information you need to make your own decisions and then sit in that interpretation. It comes back to what I said about standing in a gallery, considering the art; there is no right or wrong way to appreciate it. What's important is that you appreciate it at all and consider what you believe it is saying.
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