Two genre-bending final fantasies by way of Japan. By CALEB STARRENBURG.

CINEMA provocateur Miike Takashi’s previous Festival offerings have attracted praise, derision and outrage in equal measure. The maverick director’s latest entry, the genre-bending Sukiyaki Western Django, might easily be his most accessible to date (although not necessarily his best); not least of which because it features a delightfully unconvincing cameo by Quentin Tarantino, and a Japanese cast delivering lines in phonetically pronounced (although mostly unintelligible) English.

The East-meets-West cinema mash-up references Sergio Corbucci’s Django and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo as the director pays homage to the spaghetti western; or, paradoxically, as he reaps delicious revenge on Hollywood’s penchant for remaking J-Horrors. The film’s Yojimbo-Fist Full of Dollars-esque plot about a mysterious gunslinger (Ito Hideaki) caught in the middle of a small town’s battle over a gold-mine is surprisingly linear (for Miike). The town’s gangs are conveniently colour-coded into red and white (peculiar references are made to the War of the Roses throughout), while a secret-weapon, mute child and Shakespearian romance are thrown into the mix for good measure. The story, however, merely serves as a vehicle to deliver us brilliantly banal lines “I cannot die because I must win”, alongside buckets of hot led, a steadily mounting body count and torrents of vibrant red blood. Miike’s action set pieces are dispensed with a dose of black humour and his characteristically kinetic flair (the finale is particularly impressive), while the film’s garish pop-art visuals borrow liberally from Tears of the Black Tiger.

Another of the Festival’s Japanese contributions, Vexille isn’t so much a coherent film, as an exhaustive collection of science-fiction plots scrambled through the mind of a robot (with a post-Hiroshima annihilation complex) and spat out the other side onto a Paul Okenfold soundtrack. Fortunately, this CGI extravaganza comes to us from the team behind previous Festival favourite Appleseed, so it’s enough to sit back and watch the eye-candy. Part of the Animation Now quota, Vexille is set in the year 2077 and examines the actions of SWORD – a secretive squad of American soldiers tasked with infiltrating an isolationist Japan (as the antithesis of Miike’s film, in Vexille Americans all speak Japanese). It seems, having raised the ire of the world for illegal android experiments, Japan has installed a colossal shield to prevent prying eyes. This makes everyone nervous; must be time for some United States intervention. If it all sounds a bit ridiculous, that’s because it is. And I haven’t yet mentioned the gargantuan Dune-inspired metal eating worms.

But Vexille isn’t particularly interested in exploring its paper-thin themes of free-will and man’s convergence with machine; this is film that seeks to push the boundaries of animation. Vexille sensibly opts against the realistic visuals of Final Fantasy or the recent Beowulf, instead striving for a highly stylised vision of the future. With a slick look and feel reminiscent of a platform game, the film opens at a cracking pace that, aside from a period of prosaic exposition, doesn’t let off until its high octane finale.