Director Yoshihiro Nakamura’s last two films, Fish Story and Golden Slumber, have both been excellent—so expectations were high for this newest release. This unpredictable auteur has come up with a quirky and engaging—though not exactly...
Theater director Kei Horie brings his own play to the big screen in this well plotted but overdone thriller. Yasuko (model Azusa Okamoto) is a depressed hostess who has attempted suicide in the past. On...
Writer/director Hiroyuki Okiura and anime studio Production I.G. have produced a winner with their touching Momo e no Tegami. Working on realistic and fantastical levels, this animation centers on 12-year-old Momo (voiced by Karen Miyama),...
Shinya Tsukamoto is a fascinating, frustrating filmmaker who is not always able to realize in filmmaking technique what his creative mind comes up with. Fortunately, that is not the case with Kotoko. Tsukamoto burst onto the...
Japan has a tradition of cheesy chopsockey flicks that rivals the leaders of genre, Hong Kong, and as one might expect the native versions are often more campy and less technically accomplished in terms of...
Yoshimitsu Morita was one of the few contemporary Japanese directors that enjoyed both critical and box office success over his 30-plus year career. He broke through in 1981 with his hit Something Like It and...
The earthquake and tsunami disaster of March 11, 2011 has spawned numerous documentaries, including Lucy Walker’s Academy Award-nominated short The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom. Successful manga entrepreneur and former long-term Japan resident Stu Levy...
Since he won the Grand Prize at Tokyo International Film Festival in 2003 for Vibrator, Ryuichi Hiroki has been consistently one of the best filmmakers in Japan. He’s put his distinctive touch on both documentaries...
What do you do if you’re an avant-garde filmmaker—an underground legend—struggling for widespread recognition? Well, one thing probably best not to do is change your name after 30 years in the biz. But that’s exactly...
Yusuke Iseya is an acclaimed actor and artist so there was much interest when he decided to direct as well. His 2002 directorial debut Kakuto was well received but it has taken nine years for...
This flick, which snatched the Special Jury Prize at the Tokyo International Film Fest last year, treads a fine line between touching and cliché, sweet and saccharine. Katsu (the renowned Koji Yakusho) is a down-home lumberjack...
The dothack (spelled .hack) phenomenon is a multimedia franchise mainly active in online and video game production. CyberConnect2 created the project and they work with Bandai. It has been adapted to manga, anime and other...
As Johnny Depp, among others, will tell you, a massively popular film franchise can do wonders for your career. Filmmaker Takashi Yamazaki was a mid-level director when he took on the first Always: Sanchome no...
No doubt in his own estimation Sono Sion believes he is an edgy filmmaker pushing the boundaries of his art, and as such, in this adaptation of a manga of the same name, he includes...
There have been a rash of Japanese films purporting a revisionist history of WWII over the last decade or so, not the least of which was Pride, which tried to lionize war-time prime minister Hideki...
Last year the indie film Kantai (Hospitalite) garnered the Japan Eyes prize at the Tokyo International Film Festival and generally received critical support, though it hardly did any business at the box office. Directed by...
This fascinating film by auteur Amir Naderi, an Iranian-born filmmaker who has been working in the US for decades, is extremely difficult to review, as it is simultaneously gripping and disappointing. It combines the story...
This hard-boiled thriller is based on the semi-autobiographical novel of Korean-Japanese Gu Su-yeon, who also directs. It revolves around his gang experiences in the rough-and-tumble town of Shimonoseki on the southwestern tip on Honshu. We...
Recently, many Japanese comedies have been hit-and-miss, and this is only made more intense by the currently popular over-the-top style advocated by the likes of Satoshi Miki (Instant Numa) and Kankuro Kudo (Brass Knuckle Boys). Thermae...