Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

2021 [JAPANESE]

Action / Drama / Romance

15
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 99% · 115 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 81% · 50 ratings
IMDb Rating 7.5/10 10 11096 11.1K

japan love triangle coincidence anthology writer first love

Director

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi Photo
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi

Top cast

Katsuki Mori Photo
Katsuki Mori as Nao
Shouma Kai Photo
Shouma Kai as Sasaki
Kiyohiko Shibukawa Photo
Kiyohiko Shibukawa as Segawa
Aoba Kawai Photo
Aoba Kawai as Nana
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
1.09 GB
1280*714
Japanese 2.0
NR
Subtitles
23.976 fps
2 hr 1 min
Seeds 8
2.24 GB
1920*1072
Japanese 5.1
NR
Subtitles
23.976 fps
2 hr 1 min
Seeds 12

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by ObsessiveCinemaDisorder 8 / 10

3 Engaging Conversations in a Well-Executed Anthology Film

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is a Japanese anthology film told as three dialogue-driven vignettes, about an unexpected dating mix-up, a malicious seduction, and a misunderstanding between strangers. The three shorts are not love stories, but rather stories about love in the face of coincidence.Written and directed by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, the man behind the currently Oscar-nominated Drive My Car, the film evokes drama out of everyday mundanity.If you had Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy on mute, you wouldn't see anything visually dramatic happening. There's no violence, chases, or explosions. Hamaguchi delivers three dramatically engaging conversations on film, much like a theatrical play. What the dialogue churns out of its characters is remarkable, ranging from the dark, the perverse, and the deceitful. It covers every color of the emotional spectrum, which I suspect was Hamaguchi's goal.The film brilliantly steers clear of the trappings of anthology films. The three segments are in a perfect balance with each other and all serve the film's overall theme. There was no best segment out of the three, which is quite impressive.After seeing Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, I thought about the everyday quality of life and how often that is forgotten as being dramatic. What the film explores is in a similar artistic area that the HBO show Mare of Easttown was exploring earlier this year.Every dramatic moment in life tends to be a person in front of you about to reveal something for better or worse. And life just all seems like luck of the draw. This theme washed over me and I recollected similar moments in my own life afterward.Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy captures its idea with impressive precision and also with a whimsical smile on its face. They don't really make films like this anymore and I'm glad someone brought it back. I look forward to seeing Drive My Car now.
Reviewed by tedempsey-80741 9 / 10

Watch if only for the 3rd Act

Bookended by fantastic pieces,I would have rated a little lower, but the third act is marvelous. TBH the second story is good but way overshadowed by the other two. What a great treatment of what it means to "love."
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