Convenience Story

Director Satoshi Miki has apparently been making films for almost twenty years, which is actually pretty shocking; Convenience Story very much feels like a first film from a director who hasn’t quite figured it all out yet. About a guy who befriends the oddball owners of an out-of-the-way convenience store, pretty much everything here feels incredibly awkward, from the low-rent style to the clumsy pacing to the overall sense of off-putting quirkiness. That’s not to mention Haruyuki Takada’s outrageously ugly cinematography, which finds like 90 percent of the film bathed in an unappealing pukey-yellow hue. It’s bafflingly bad, but then very little here works, so why not I guess?

*1/2 out of ****