- Japan, Cannes film festival, Drama films, Science fiction and fantasy films, World news, Asia Pacific, Festivals, Culture, Film
Sheep in the Box review – a bland, baffling tale of AI children from Hirokazu Kore-eda
There’s nothing wrong with film-makers leaving their comfort zone but the Japanese director’s latest effort ju…
- Japan, Cannes film festival, Drama films, Europe, World news, Asia Pacific, France, Books, Festivals, Culture, paris, Film, Film adaptations
All of a Sudden review – care home drama is tender, meditative and a little too precious for its own good
Cannes film festival: Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s ocean-hopping treatise on love and mortality is undeniably beautiful…
- Japan, Cannes film festival, Drama films, World news, Asia Pacific, Romance films, Festivals, Culture, Film
Nagi Notes review – clear, calm light shed on criss-crossed family passions
Cannes film festivalSet in a beautifully filmed provincial Japanese town, what could have been a soapy drama i…
- Japan, Drama films, Period and historical films, World news, Asia Pacific, Stage, Theatre, Culture, Film
Kokuho review – passionately male Cain-and-Abel kabuki epic of gender-crossing actors
Lee Sang-il’s heartfelt drama spans 50 years following the bond and rivalry between two brothers who play the …
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Exit 8 review – Escher-esque subway station corridor leads to disquieting psychological mystery
A commuter’s entrapment provides a taut, unnerving and rare example of an adaptation that holds close to the v…
- England, Kazuo Ishiguro, Japan, Drama films, Science fiction and fantasy films, World news, Asia Pacific, Books, UK news, Culture, Film, Film adaptations
A Pale View of Hills review – two-stranded adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro novel in the shadow of the A-bomb
Kei Ishikawa’s take on Ishiguro’s first published work is frustrating and bland, undermining its fascinating c…
- Fukushima, Japan, Environment, Japan disaster, Nuclear power, World news, Documentary films, Asia Pacific, Energy, Culture, Film
Fukushima review – a devastating account of disaster and denial in 2011 nuclear catastrophe
A tense return to the disaster foregrounds the heroism of the ‘Fukushima 50’ while raising questions about cor…
- Family films, Japan, World news, Asia Pacific, Books, Culture, Animation in film, Film, Film adaptations
Little Amélie review – tender and poignant study of the fragility of early childhood
Based on a 2000 novella, this sweet animation follows a young girl who wakes from a vegetative state on the ve…
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Sham review – Takashi Miike revisits infamous ‘murder teacher’ trial in unflinching courtroom drama
Based on a real-life case of a teacher charged with abusing a child, Japan’s master of the extreme doesn’t sit…
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Rental Family review – Brendan Fraser seeks meaning in pointless Japanese role-play drama
Fraser plays a hapless Tokyo-based actor working for a firm that offers bespoke therapeutic role-play services…
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Escape review – notorious Japanese revolutionary tells story of country’s most wanted criminal
Director Masao Adachi – formerly of the Japanese Red Army – on the infamous Satoshi Kirishima, who went on the…
- Teen movies, Japan, Drama films, Science fiction and fantasy films, World news, Asia Pacific, Culture, Film
Happyend review – Orwellian Japanese high-school drama is brilliantly dystopian
Teen romance and paranoid surveillance collide to dysfunctional effect in Neo Sora’s beguiling debut future se…
- Japan, Technology, Drama films, Crime films, World news, Asia Pacific, Internet, Culture, Film, Thrillers
Cloud review – bizarre internet action thriller descends into hail of bullets
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s baffling crime farrago follows a cyber fraudster pursued by an angry gang of disappointed s…
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Stray Dog/High and Low review – Kurosawa lifts crime drama to astonishing new peaks
★★★★★/★★★★★Drawing on hardboiled US fiction, as American film had fed on his own Seven Samurai, the director b…
- Japan, Reality TV, World news, Documentary films, Asia Pacific, Television & radio, Television, Culture, Film
The Contestant review – the cruelty of reality TV on show in one of its earliest manifestations
Tomoaki Hamatsu was a sensation over the year he stayed alone in a single room amusing the camera, but this do…
- Japan, Society, Rape and sexual assault, Law, World news, Documentary films, Asia Pacific, Culture, Film
Black Box Diaries review – inside the remarkable events that triggered Japan’s #MeToo movement
Japanese journalist Shiori Itō tells how she pursued her rape case against a prominent TV executive This is th…
- Malala Yousafzai, Fukushima, Japan, Marine life, World news, Documentary films, Asia Pacific, South Korea, Culture, Film
The Last of the Sea Women review – female Korean divers as picturesque eco-feminist tradition
Sue Kim’s film about South Korea’s underwater fishers has everything from nuclear pollution to sexism to cover…
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Lumberjack the Monster review – an explosion of horror strangeness from a master of the art
Takashi Miike’s operatically over-the-top new film concerns a serial killer but who needs a plot with all this…
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Tokyo Story review – Yasujiro Ozu’s exquisite family tale stands the test of time
An elderly couple visit their grownup children in this stunning work of art from 1953, now re-released for its…
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Perfect Days review – Wim Wenders explores a quiet life in Tokyo
Bittersweet tale of an apparently contented toilet cleaner has an ambient urban charm, but feels a little too …