New Japanese film reviews appear every last Friday of the month.

Pussycat Daisakusen ****

At last, a film to savor. Billed as a kind of homage to Russ Meyer's exploitative action features from the 60s, this has it all. Three curvaceous go-go dancers (Kei Mizutani, Nao Eguchi and Yukari Nunokawa) on a rampage, looking for a big bag of cash that might be hidden in the kitchen of wheelchair-bound gangster. Director Ryuichi Honda keeps it flush with 60s flavors, mood-indigo music, paisley-print fashions in dayglo colors, outrageous zooms and dizzying pans, and best of all, it looks like it was made on a budget of 10 dollars - and when the money ran out the film ended (it clocks in at a refreshingly slight 60 minutes). It's showing as part of a double bill with a short pastiche of a peculiarly Japanese genre - the nutty Nikkatsu actioner. A couple of young hitmen team up with a bunch of go-go girls to take on an evil gangboss - in disguise! Austen Powers was never this much fun.

Moonlight Jellyfish *

This is a weird one. Take the familiar young punk drama, add a sibling with a very rare, terminal disease, and stir in one hospital romance. That's way too much drama for one film, but pretentious director Kosuke Tsurumi needs more. He piles on the atmosphere with time-outs for music-video metaphors, shimmering jellyfish over Shinjuku skies. The film starts out as a straight docudrama on dealing with xeroderma pigmentosum, as pretty-boy gangster Tatsuya Fujiwara cares for his young mentally challenged, sunlight-allergic brother Ryo Kimura. With his always perfectly moussed hair and slight frame, Fujiwara never convinces as a Kabukicho gangster, especially in the scenes with his ruthless Chinese rivals. The unlikely premise lurches into the unbelievable as young, credulous nurse Aya Okamoto falls for the dashing punk, and topples over into the ridiculous as Tsurumi builds to a "Dog Day Afternoon" finale.

Akasen *

Shotaro Oku's first feature is simply amateur night at the movies. It looks like a bunch of famous young actor friends playing dress-up and improvise, and has to be the worst film of the year. In a sleazy redlight alley in postwar Shinjuku, pimps, whores and punters wile away the hours eating, sleeping, smoking opium and having orgies. The always-sneering Shido Nakamura stars as a vicious pimp who rapes young runaways and then sells them into brothels, Tsugumi plays a happy hooker with a crush on her pimp, but the pros are outdone by the extras forever mugging in the background, or winking and grinning at the camera. It's about as decadent and dangerous as a high-school play staging of the de Sade's "Justine." Embarrassing to watch.

Wild Flowers **

Director Takashi Komatsu attempts to make a companion piece to the Korean wrestling comedy "The Foul King" with this feature about a failing women's pro wrestling group. Real pro wrestlers Mizuho Ishikawa, Cutie Suzuki and Emi Tojyo star alongside newcomer Miki Suzuki as the women tag teams, and they are impressive both in and out of the ring. The slight story has a reluctant Yoshinori Okada forced to take over as manager of his mom's struggling female wrestling team. The director goes for pathos rather than exploitation, and misses a number of chances to stage sexy catfights or cartoonish violence. A little more sureeal pussycat go-go nonsense wouldn't have gone amiss here. As it is, viewers may feel like throwing in the towel long before the film reaches its predictable, heartwarming conclusion.

Cha no Aji *

This is like being trapped in a bar with a rambling drunk intent on telling you shaggy-dog stories. Katsuhito Ishii, who showed promise in "Shark Skin Man" but is now the most grating director in Japan, throws together a bunch of crazy moments with a cast of wacky characters, and then lets them overstay their welcome by about 2 hours. This is part nature documentary (Ishii has turned into a bit of a tree hugger), part healing comic fantasy, and wholly unbearable. Time and time again you wished to hear the director scream "Cut!" as scenes drag on and on long beyond their welcome. Cut those silly bits of business with a senile grandpa (the horrible one-eyebrow actor Tatsuya Gashuin). Cut those endless, banal scenes with extras going "What?" at each other. Cut that excruciating five minutes with Tadanobu Asano acting all shy with his old flame. Cut that 10-minute sequence with the boy on the bike screaming the name of a boring Japanese board game. The only person who comes out of it with any dignity is Anna Tsuchiya, the freshest face on the Japanese film scene.