World cinema
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Remembering Every Night review – drifting drama follows three Tokyo women living their lives
Yui Kiyohara’s film of long shots and silences could be deeply boring or oddly fascinating depending on your p…
- Oscars 2024, Japan, World cinema, Hayao Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli, World news, Asia Pacific, Culture, Animation in film, Film
‘Irreplaceable’: will Hayao Miyazaki, Japan’s animation auteur, ever retire?
The Boy and the Heron’s Oscar win has prompted debate over whether the 83-year-old could put down his pencilIt…
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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…
- Japan, World cinema, Cannes film festival, Drama films, World news, Asia Pacific, Cannes 2023, Festivals, Culture, Film
Monster review – Hirokazu Kore-eda’s hydra of modern morals and manners
Japanese director Kore-eda offers a deliberately dense but ultimately hopeful examination of how to negotiate …
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Plan 75 review – Japanese euthanasia drama grapples with tough questions
Japan’s over-75s are offered a painless death in exchange for a modest payment in Chie Hayakawa’s slow-burning…
- Japan, World cinema, Drama films, Society, Law, Assisted dying, Death and dying, World news, Asia Pacific, Culture, Film
Plan 75 review – life is terminated at 75 in melancholy anti-euthanasia drama
To combat an ageing population, a future Japan passes a law to pay older citizens to sign up for an easeful de…
- Japan, World cinema, Science fiction and fantasy films, World news, Asia Pacific, Anime, Culture, Animation in film, Film
Eternal 831 review – anime thriller stops all the clocks with a superpower
In Kenji Kamiyama’s drama, a boy discovers that he can halt time when emotionally stirred and that terrorists …
- Japan, Venice film festival, World cinema, Drama films, World news, Asia Pacific, Festivals, Culture, Venice film festival 2022, Film
Love Life review – tangled and tragic human drama about chaotic life twists
Venice film festival: Japanese director Kôji Fukada has crafted a richly painful and quietly comic human drama…
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Why Drive My Car should win the best picture Oscar
Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s light yet profound drama is the kind of thrilling discovery that foreign-language cinema i…
- Japan, World cinema, Drama films, World news, Asia Pacific, Festivals, Berlin film festival 2021, Culture, Berlin film festival, Film
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy review – a triptych of light-touch philosophy
Ryusuke Hamaguchi brings a gentle warmth to this ingenious collection of three stories united by themes of fat…
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Screen sensation: the single-shot thriller bringing time-travel into the Zoom era
It was shot in a week and premiered to 12 people, but micro-budget sci-fi movie Beyond the Infinite Two Minute…
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‘The script is a vehicle’: Japanese director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi on Drive My Car
Hamaguchi’s award-winning and absorbing new movie Drive My Car deals with issues of grief and infidelity – and…
- Japan, World cinema, Drama films, Action and adventure films, Akira Kurosawa, Westerns, Culture, Film
Seven Samurai review – an epic primal myth that pulsates through cinema
Akira Kurosawa’s tale of ascetic mercenaries brought together for a single job inspired endless imitations, bu…
- Japan, World cinema, Cannes film festival, Drama films, Haruki Murakami, World news, Asia Pacific, Books, Festivals, Culture, Film, Film adaptations
Drive My Car review – mysterious Murakami tale of erotic and creative secrets
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi reaches a new grandeur with this engrossing adaptation about a theatre director grappling wi…
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Crazy Samurai: 400 vs 1 review – epic, single-take battle of bloody-minded intensity
Only the most hardcore action junkies will have the stamina for what is essentially one marathon sword-fightin…
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Labyrinth of Cinema review – cult Japanese director’s epic blitz of pop-culture hyperactivity
Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s last work starts as a sentimental elegy to cinema-going’s golden age but takes us through …
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The Legend of the Stardust Brothers review – 80s Japanese bubblegum pop curio
Even with a glorious mishmash of a pop soundtrack, it’s not obvious why Makoto Tezuka’s cult musical needs a r…
- Fukushima, Japan, Environment, Japan disaster, World cinema, Nuclear power, Drama films, Asia Pacific, Culture, Film
Fukushima 50 review – Ken Watanabe in simmering tribute to power-plant heroes
There’s a touch of Hollywood in this dramatised account of the 50 workers who stayed at Fukushima Daiichi in a…
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The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice review – Ozu’s bittersweet triumph
This portrait of married middle age is deliciously flavoured with mystery and melancholyThe flavour is that of…
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Immortal Hero review – silly vanity project made in bad faith
The self-produced film by faith leader Ryuho Okawa is woefully misjudged and reveals the laughable reality beh…