On paper, Hakota Yuko’s debut feature, Blue Hour, has much promise. The film was inspired, in some measure or another, by Isao Takahata Studio Ghibli…
Hiroshi Okuyama’s debut feature, Jesus, displays impressive technical mastery; besides writing and directing, the filmmaker served as cinematographer and editor. The academy ratio framing, combined…
Sayaka Kai’s Red Snow opens with a small, obscured figure running through a blizzard, their red jacket a blurry smear against a field of…
Ever since Kathleen Edwards decided to take a break from music and open a coffee house in Stittsville, Ontario, alt-country’s been sorely missing one…
Beautiful Lie caps a trilogy of releases this decade from husband-and-wife duo Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis (the other two being 2013’s Cheater’s Game and 2014’s Our…
More than half the songs on Thomas Rhett’s Center Point Road could believably slide into the Today’s Top Hits playlist on Spotify — which…
Willie Nelson has always been prolific — writing songs, collaborating with anybody and everybody, often releasing multiple albums within the span of a single…
Aaron Watson compiles a hefty 20 tracks on his towering double album Red Bandana, a number that bears some sentimental significance: There’s a song…
Jeux de plage, the debut feature from Japanese director Aimi Natsuto, is a film that’s more than eager to engage with the greats of…
Set in the Osaka slum of the title, The Kamagasaki Cauldron War’s very existence testifies to its politics: it defies a local ordinance that…
Being Natural is one of those impossible objects, difficult to talk about without spoiling but also not particularly interesting to think about without acknowledging…
Sho Miyake’s And Your Bird Can Sing, based on a novel by the late Yasushi Sato, is sort of like Jules and Jim in…
As the former assistant and protégé of the great Hirokazu Koreeda, Nanako Hirose has made a debut film that unsurprisingly doesn’t stray too far…
The 2019 edition of New York-based film festival Japan Cuts runs from July 19 to the 28th (find the full schedule of screenings here).…
Kazuya Shiraishi’s Dare to Stop Us is something of a biopic on late Japanese filmmaker Koji Wakamatsu, who, with films such as The Embryo…
Ma opens with patient dolly shots gliding over a green canopy and through the lush foliage of a forest, eventually coming to rest on…
Twenty years ago, police inspectors Tam (Patrick Tam) and Fong (Jade Leung), along with a squad of elite Hong Kong police special forces, are…
Defying categorization in nearly every conceivable sense, Japanese director Sabu’s Mr. Long may initially suggest itself as an actioner, if one were to look at…