Kiyoshi Kurosawa is our great purveyor of modern ennui, a chronicler of creeping existential dread as the world we have created now threatens to…
Chop wood, carry water. The well is running dry for the titular noise punk band of Ken’ichi Ugana’s The Gesuidouz. Their shows in their…
In Japan, the term jidaigeki — literally translating to “period drama” — is typically ascribed to a genre of samurai film, most commonly set…
Daihachi Yoshida’s black-and-white character study Teki Cometh follows the daily routines and ruminations of retired French literature professor Gisuke Watanabe (Kyôzô Nagatsuka). Divided into…
In his cryptic new film Whale Bones, Takamasa Oe attempts a “how we live now” exploration of disaffected youth and the aimless ennui of…
Passion projects like Kubi almost always deserve greater appreciation and more careful interest than a mere evaluation of their qualitative values can merit. Takeshi…
With enough practice, seemingly anything can become normal, even the working practice of Shunji Iwai. For the better part of his career, Iwai’s melodramas…
Upon initial release in 2016, Shin Godzilla — the product of co-directors Hideaki Anno (creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion) and Shinji Higuchi (storyboard/SFX artist)…
Absence — no matter how great or small — creates mystery. Mystery inspires intrigue or, at the very least, interest. Interest encourages active engagement:…
The clean and well-organized business environs of Sho Miyake’s All the Long Nights seem to come straight from the catalogue; the city skyline casts…
Parables, as with social satires, have been considered both ripe for adaptation and stubbornly resistant to reinterpretation; although Kafka and Orwell have seen their…
MONDAYS Anyone who has ever worked a 9-5 office job has likely felt stuck performing the same meaningless tasks day after day. The only…
No film festival would be complete without a road movie. For the 2023 edition of Japan Cuts, the U.S. premiere of Under the Turquoise…
Earlier in 2023, this writer vacationed in Montreal and saw Eckhart Schmidt’s The Fan (1982) at the Cinéma Moderne, going in completely blind and…
Repentance is good. At least, it is under certain conditions: it must be clear, sincere, and selfless. Most importantly, while it is always good…
Anyone who has ever worked a 9-5 office job has likely felt stuck performing the same meaningless tasks day after day. The only possibility…
Hiruko the Goblin Shinya Tsukamoto: unapologetic termite artist, jack of all cinematic trades — besides merely directing all of his feature-length freak shows, he…
Wife of a Spy Though over three decades into his varied, distinctive career, American critics have only really paid Kiyoshi Kurosawa intermittent attention, almost…