THE CALAMARI WRESTLER

A wrestler develops a deadly disease and subsequently mutates into a giant squid. For him: shocking. By Japanese standards: normal. For us: elysian kaiju cinema without any remorse or rationality. A film that the New York Times praised as ‘surprisingly coherent’ – perhaps the most restrained compliment in the history of film reviews (but in wrestling, as we all know, you take what you can get from the mainstream). It must be added that the film is worth watching if only to see a man-sized squid reminiscing on the riverbank (and beating up his opponents) once in your lifetime. A triumph over the banal in the fantastically stupid.