Based on the’70s TV series of the same name, Mitsubachi Hachi is fresh off a successful screening at Italy’s renowned Giffoni children’s film festival. For this idyllically beautiful effort, Tatsunoko Productions has put together a...
The Japanese film industry has a weakness for “time slip” films, so it’s not surprising that even a quirky and inventive director like Yoshihiro Nakamura (Golden Slumber, Fish Story) would throw himself into the genre—albeit...
Awaremi Mumashika calls to mind recent comedies by Satoshi Miki (Instant Numa) and Kankuro Kudo (No More Cry), in which oddball characters come together in wacky, convoluted situations that play out in a humorous, often...
This column has long championed Hirokazu Kore-eda as the best Japanese filmmaker working today, so Torso—the directorial debut by longtime Kore-eda cinematographer Yutaka Yamazaki—aroused much anticipation. Somewhat akin to the American movie Lars and the...
Whenever Studio Ghibli releases a film these days, it’s a national event—even if the film is not directed by Hayao Miyazaki and is essentially a remake. Karigurashi no Arrietty, helmed by veteran Ghibli animator Hiromasa...
Of all Japan’s wartime colonies, Taiwan feels the least bitterness towards its former occupier (which is not to say there’s none at all). It’s fitting, then, that this film, based on a short story by...
Jinsei Tsuji is as close as Japan gets to a renaissance man. A longtime rock vocalist, he’s also an award-winning novelist, a screenwriter, and yes, a film director. His latest effort, which premiered at the...
A curious feature of Japanese cinema is that themes get repeated in mini-cycles—recently, for instance, we’ve had a cluster of films dealing with amnesia (though I can’t remember enough movies to be sure!). The latest...
Occasional actor Tatsushi Omori (son of dance legend Akaji Maro) burst onto the directing scene with his brutal but compelling 2005 masterpiece Gerumaniumu no Yoru (“The Whispering of the Gods”). It was, without a doubt,...
When Japan’s leading comedian Beat Takeshi decided to become a film director in the late ’80s (under his real name, Takeshi Kitano), he specialized in gritty, deadpan, hyper-violent yakuza flicks. Those early films—Violent Cop, Boiling...
Based on the successful novel of the same name, Kokou no Mesu explores medical corruption and the politics of patient care. It’s set in 1989, a time when liver transplants from brain-dead donors were legal...
Japanese films set in the idyllic countryside are a distinct genre—one whose blend of melodrama and nostalgia usually leaves all but the most ardent followers cold. Permanent Nobara is no exception. Talented director Daihachi Yoshida,...
If you ever wanted to see the cinematic equivalent of a J-pop song, here's your chance. Rendezvous floats along with a heavy dose of cloying cuteness, clever but predictable hooks, and a faint whiff of...
The PIA Film Festival has a wonderful tradition of supporting young Japanese filmmakers, and this flick is the 19th in a long line of fine movies made with PFF scholarship money. Sawako (Hikaru Mitsushima) is...
This high school drama, based on a manga of the same name by Tetsuya Honda, is a re-imaging of the old samurai chambara film genre for the Hello Kitty crowd. Sixteen-year-old kendo champion Kaori (the...
Though many fine films have been set in Okinawa (Shohei Imamura’s 1968 effort Kamigami Fukaki Yokubo and Go Takamine’s Untamagiru from 1989 spring to mind), the recent trend has been towards poorly made movies that...
Sometime actor Yukinori Kameda takes a stab at directing an old fashioned mystery—and does a pretty decent job of it. In the grand tradition of Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen (both of whom are referenced...
Koji Wakamatsu’s films from the 1960s were plotless orgies of sex and violence (and sexual violence). They shocked, mystified and scandalized the entire country, never more so than when Affairs within Walls (1965) became...