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Dispatches from TIFF
I managed to see four films at this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival, despite the usual struggle to buy tickets as a non-journalist/VIP and the fact that most…
Missing Child Videotape
Rairu Sugita in Missing Child Videotape. I have learned to temper my hopes for any new J-horror releases in the last fifteen years, simply because I’ve been disappointed…
Godzilla Minus One
Ryūnosuke Kamiki and Minami Hamabe in Godzilla Minus One. When I saw Pacific Rim back in 2013, I remember summarizing it by saying, “In this film, an oil…
The Making of a Japanese
Elementary school students eat lunch in a scene from The Making of a Japanese. When the popular Japanese TV program Hajimete no otsukai (My First Errand) debuted on…
Remembering Every Night/全ての夜を思い出す
In 2017, director Kiyohara Yui released her first feature film, Our House (私たちの家), and established herself as a talent to watch. Though that film at times felt a…
君たちはどう生きるか/The Boy and the Heron
Hayao Miyazaki and his team are undoubtedly masters of their craft. It’s been ten years since Miyazaki directed a film (the wonderful, if divisive, The Wind Rises). This…
Egoist
Hio Miyazawa and Ryohei Suzuki in Egoist. Representations of queer characters in mainstream Japanese TV and film can often feel dated. Occasionally you’ll get nuance and depth (Three…
Tokyo International Film Festival 2022
Anna Yamada in The Mountain Woman. Scheduling conflicts and sold-out screenings meant that I was only able to see three films at TIFF this year, but it was…
Sadako DX
Oji (Kazuma Kawamura) and Ayaka (Fuka Koshiba) attempt to solve a familiar mystery in Sadako DX. Despite being a phenomenon in Japan and around the world for more…
Plan 75
On July 26, 2016, in Kanagawa, Japan, a man entered a residential care facility for persons with disabilities and proceeded from room to room, stabbing the sleeping residents…
Ribbon
Writer/director/actor Non (Rena Nonen) in Ribbon. It’s difficult to separate first-time director Non’s film Ribbon from its creator’s story of taking on Japan’s notoriously abusive entertainm…
Cow’s Neck Village (Ushikubi mura)
Kōki in Cow’s Neck Village. Takashi Shimizu’s kyōfu no mura (scary village) trilogy has been, if anything, an interesting experiment. The three films—Howling Village (2020), Suicide Forest Vi…
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
Fusako Urabe (left) and Aoba Kawai in Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. Ryusuke Hamaguchi seems endlessly fascinated by serendipity and fate. His characters’ lives hinge on chance meetings,…
Ju-on: Origins
(This is one of the ones I watch so that you don’t have to, folks. Spoilers ahead.) Against all odds, I still hold out hope for Japanese horror—that…
A Different Kind of Hope
It’s really hard to imagine sitting in a movie theater again. The last movie I saw in a theater was Takashi Shimizu’s Inunaki mura (Howling Village). Not the…
Dear Etranger / 幼な子われらに生まれ
It’s no secret that divorce is messy and complicated, particularly when children are involved. From the child’s perspective, it may be the moment that you realize your parents…
A Girl Missing (よこがお)
Early on in Koji Fukada’s A Girl Missing (Yokogao), protagonist Ichiko (Mariko Tsutsui) is spying on people from an apartment window. We hear the faint sound of a…
Lying to Mom / 鈴木家の嘘
(Warning: not exactly spoilers, but this review does include some detailed info about the latter half of the film.) Japanese cinema of the last 20 years (and much…
Mori: The Artist’s Habitat (Mori no iru basho)
There are actors who have to do very little to be captivating on screen, who are a joy to watch even when they’re simply sitting silently and staring…
The Hungry Lion / 飢えたライオン
Based on The Hungry Lion’s marketing campaign, which features images of teenage girls taking selfies, you might think that this is a Black Mirror-style parable about the dangers…
One Cut of the Dead / カメラを止めるな！
(Warning: this review contains spoilers about the structure of One Cut of the Dead, which I don’t think detract from enjoyment of the film.) One Cut of the…
Shoplifters / 万引き家族
Hirokazu Koreeda’s Shoplifters is a revelation, the culmination of years of study on a particular theme, a movie that brings together all of the director’s strengths and, for…
Oh Lucy!
There are moments in Oh Lucy! that made me laugh out loud, and plenty of others that made me smile. It’s positively bursting with talented people who give…