Timing and Translation by Patonyan

(Second Half online January 9th)

There's two funny things about this movie one can pick up quite easily: the totally weird choice of filming out of a hotel with the strangest shade of green for wallpaper one has ever seen and yet again a 'people monitoring' movie starring an actor whom at this point in time we should just start calling "Mr. Random Guy" because to the best of my knowledge, he has no stage name and anytime a studio is looking for the 'everyday' man to take part in an amateur movie, he's seemingly on everyone's speed dial (this is the actor in the first scene, not also just as easily recognizable "JAV Actor David Bowie" in the second).

But we're not going to just talk about two random things of note from BULLITT's second go-around with a theme their sister studio HOT ENTERTAINMENT has been doing for a bit longer. At the face of things, just how different are they anyway? The series by HOT if anything seems more of a BULLITT movie in that involves a unique challenge ('strangers going from kissing to sex') whereas the BULLITT one shown here in PEOPLE MONITORING - WILL REAL FRIENDS HAVE SEX TOGETHER? 2 takes a simpler approach to reach the same conclusion: yes, sexually charged situations make strange bedfellows. There with HOT, strangers. Here with BULLITT, as the title alludes, real friends. Both can be pretty awkward encounters if you ask me and who knows which is more believable (and believe it or not, if anything, the real strangers playing a kissing game sounds more like "this can happen" to me!).

Running an anything but svelte four hours and featuring multiple groupings (thankfully not all shot in that strange hotel room), we've encounter after encounter that may all end the same (spoiler: SEX), but as always with these types of movies, while the pistons are glorious, the journey to get there is where it's at and unless one really knows solid street game Japanese, you're going to need subtitles by humans who can parse rapid fire exchanges to really get a good idea as to what's going on. There's no standout scenes this time and that is no pan: a good JAV movie is one that is balanced and one where each scene doesn't overpower the others. Yes, all the women are in their twenties (how cool would it be if there was a version of this where you had a guy that age paired with a woman two decades his senior?!) so age-wise, there is overlap aplenty, but body types of all shapes and sizes are covered from skinny to curvy.