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3/5
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11 Rebels
(2024)
|
James Hadfield
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The whole thing is fun without being particularly gripping, perhaps because the script runs out of convincing reasons for its underdog antiheroes to keep up their resistance even after they’ve discovered it’s a ruse.
Posted Nov 06, 2024
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4/5
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The Cats of Gokogu Shrine
(2024)
|
Mark Schilling
|
“The Cats of Gokogu Shrine” stays true to its observational ideals to the end. It also gives us poetic glimpses of nature as the seasons change and cherry blossoms give way to a raging typhoon.
Posted Nov 06, 2024
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3/5
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Adabana
(2024)
|
James Hadfield
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Shinji’s moral quandary is ultimately less engaging than the questions “Adabana” raises about the nature of identity and what it is that makes us human.
Posted Oct 30, 2024
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3/5
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Cha-Cha
(2024)
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Mark Schilling
|
Sakai, who has made romantic dramas a specialty in both her film and TV work, sets us up for a love story about two nonconformists that runs along familiar rails, but promptly undermines it.
Posted Oct 18, 2024
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4/5
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The Young Strangers
(2024)
|
James Hadfield
|
It’s a showstopper in every sense: a bruising, epic set piece filmed mostly in a continuous take, with the camera in the ring with the fighters.
Posted Oct 18, 2024
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3/5
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Happyend
(2024)
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Mark Schilling
|
Thin on plot, “Happyend” is redolent with atmospherics that wordlessly express the emotions of its characters, beginning with the conflicted Kou.
Posted Oct 11, 2024
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4/5
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Super Happy Forever
(2024)
|
James Hadfield
|
The Japanese-French co-production puts its resources to good use: The visuals and sound have a finesse that’s rare in homegrown indie fare.
Posted Oct 04, 2024
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2/5
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Previously Saved Version
(2024)
|
James Hadfield
|
Ishikawa delivers a movie that’s attractive to look at but never more than mildly engaging.
Posted Sep 27, 2024
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4/5
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Cloud
(2024)
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Mark Schilling
|
... A masterful psychological thriller.
Posted Sep 27, 2024
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|
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Amarcord
(1973)
|
Sheelagh Lebovich
|
I have only one regret -- that I have seen it and cannot therefore have again the thrill of seeing it for the first time.
Posted Sep 24, 2024
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|
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The Conversation
(1974)
|
Foumy Saisho
|
In his brilliant new film The Conversation, Francis Ford Coppola has captured one excruciating aspect of contemporary ills as no other filmmakers have ever done before him except Antonioni.
Posted Sep 24, 2024
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3/5
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Living in Two Worlds
(2024)
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James Hadfield
|
Mipo O’s “Living in Two Worlds” is a film with such good intentions, made with such diligence toward issues of representation, it feels unsporting to point out that it’s also a trifle dull.
Posted Sep 19, 2024
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3/5
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Worlds Apart
(2024)
|
Mark Schilling
|
“Worlds Apart” achieves a tender epiphany as masks fall away and private truths are told. And it shows us that worlds can stay apart, but still orbit something resembling love.
Posted Sep 19, 2024
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3/5
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All About Suomi
(2024)
|
James Hadfield
|
A scrappy song-and-dance finale, modeled on golden-age MGM musicals, ends things on a damp note. But before that, the film delivers its coup de grace during a final act...
Posted Sep 12, 2024
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4/5
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My Sunshine
(2024)
|
Mark Schilling
|
This story unfolds at a deliberate pace with a minimum of dialogue, but once this triumvirate is formed, the gentle-spirited comedy of the opening scenes gives way to a tension whose sources are crystal clear from a word here and a glance there...
Posted Sep 12, 2024
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3/5
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There Is a Stone
(2022)
|
James Hadfield
|
There’s no riddle to solve here. We’re just watching people pass time, in each other’s company or alone. In an era of diminishing attention spans, it feels quietly radical.
Posted Sep 05, 2024
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|
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Desert of Namibia
(2024)
|
Mark Schilling
|
Kawai’s masterful, multilayered performance, which presents Kana more as willful and lost than born bad and raised wrong, both exposes and humanizes her.
Posted Sep 05, 2024
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3/5
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Rude to Love
(2024)
|
James Hadfield
|
Eguchi’s brittle, darkly funny performance is so compelling that the story’s mystery elements — including an incriminating social media account that Momoko keeps obsessively checking — can feel like contrivances.
Posted Aug 29, 2024
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3/5
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Sayuri
(2024)
|
Mark Schilling
|
Sayuri finds a partial solution in Japan’s ero-guro (erotic and grotesque) artistic genre, which shades its humor pitch-black to match the darkness of the deeds on display.
Posted Aug 29, 2024
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3/5
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The Box Man
(2024)
|
Mark Schilling
|
Ishii films this story with stylized energy, strange, shadowy atmospherics and a vibe comically deranged but deeply serious.
Posted Aug 19, 2024
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4/5
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Blue Period
(2024)
|
Matt Schley
|
Moments that felt over-the-top in the anime version... Maeda pulls off with looks that are subtle but unmistakably filled with emotion.
Posted Aug 15, 2024
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3/5
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Mommy
(2024)
|
James Hadfield
|
It’s a flawed and sometimes frustrating film — but a fascinating one, too.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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3/5
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Mononoke Movie: Karakasa
(2024)
|
Matt Schley
|
If the original series was cool, with its deliberate pacing, ironic detachment and dry humor, and that swinging theme song by jazz singer Charlie Kosei, the film version is hot: overwhelming, in-your-face, nonstop and loud.
Posted Aug 07, 2024
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Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
(2022)
|
Roland Kelts
|
It wryly refuses to take itself or its world too seriously, which, like Murakami’s best fiction, makes its openly emotional scenes heartbreaking.
Posted Aug 07, 2024
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3/5
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To Mom, With Love
(2024)
|
Mark Schilling
|
“To Mom, With Love“ is finally a heartfelt love letter to the home drama itself, which in its essence is about as up-to-the-minute as kabuki. And to its fans, it’s as evergreen in its appeal.
Posted Aug 07, 2024
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3/5
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Great Absence
(2023)
|
Mark Schilling
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“Great Absence” is more explicitly poetic than rigidly programmatic.
Posted Jul 11, 2024
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4/5
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YOLO
(2024)
|
Mark Schilling
|
“YOLO” is a winner of a film: You come out energized and ready to land a punch on life, belly fat included.
Posted Jul 08, 2024
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3/5
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Missing
(2024)
|
Mark Schilling
|
Finally, for all its docudrama-like starkness and harshness, “Missing” builds to moments of tenderness and grace, illuminated by a soft, somehow consoling light.
Posted May 31, 2024
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3/5
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Rei
(2024)
|
James Hadfield
|
Hikari and Masato’s tale reaches a fitting conclusion, in a scene that goes from cringeworthy to achieving a moment of startling clarity. Like “Rei” as a whole, it tugs you both ways at once.
Posted May 30, 2024
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4/5
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Bushido
(2024)
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Mark Schilling
|
“Bushido” is veteran director Kazuya Shiraishi’s first samurai period drama, but like his... “The Blood of Wolves,” the film is a lovingly conceived and meticulously executed throwback that revitalizes the genre.
Posted May 30, 2024
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2/5
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18x2 Beyond Youthful Days
(2024)
|
Mark Schilling
|
I found the film’s last act formulaic, right down to the swelling violins. But “18×2 Beyond Youthful Days” also illustrates why its two leads have won acting awards, a slew in the case of Hsu.
Posted May 30, 2024
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3/5
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Trapezium
(2024)
|
Matt Schley
|
Still, it’s that conflict — motivated not by good versus evil, but by differing goals and points of view — that elevates “Trapezium” above a lot of anime in the same genre.
Posted May 30, 2024
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3/5
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Swimming in a Sand Pool
(2024)
|
Mark Schilling
|
Best known for Linda, Linda, Linda, his rousing 2005 hit about a schoolgirl rock band, Yamashita draws appealingly natural performances from his cast of young newcomers.
Posted May 09, 2024
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5/5
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Evil Does Not Exist
(2023)
|
Mark Schilling
|
Words and images from early scenes acquire new depth and force by the climax, which explodes on screen to chilling and lingering effect, leaving the audience wondering exactly what they have just seen.
Posted Apr 26, 2024
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2/5
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City Hunter
(2024)
|
James Hadfield
|
The film can’t quite settle on the right tone. The final act is a particular drag, as the story shifts to a series of generic sets that look like John Wick knock-offs.
Posted Apr 26, 2024
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3/5
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Penalty Loop
(2024)
|
Mark Schilling
|
Intriguing but frustrating.
Posted Mar 28, 2024
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3/5
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Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction Zensho
(2024)
|
Matt Schley
|
Minor characters have cartoonishly exaggerated faces that are more Looney Tunes than anime -- perhaps chosen to stand in contrast with the serious plot. Serious, but not dour: There are plenty of amusing pokes at modern society and politics.
Posted Mar 22, 2024
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2/5
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Matching
(2024)
|
Mark Schilling
|
As the film’s ever more bizarre events unfolded, I was reminded of film critic Roger Ebert’s famous definition of an “idiot plot,” here meaning a plot that only works because the protagonist is an idiot.
Posted Mar 08, 2024
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2/5
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The Parades
(2024)
|
James Hadfield
|
The Parades is just as gentle as Kore-eda’s movie [After Life], but it doesn’t reach the same depths, either in its meditations on mortality and memory or on the nature of film itself.
Posted Mar 01, 2024
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3/5
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Visitors
(2022)
|
James Hadfield
|
Wipe away the goo and viscera and there’s a redemptive message buried in there somewhere. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and Ugana’s monsters feel fine.
Posted Feb 22, 2024
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2/5
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After the Fever
(2023)
|
Mark Schilling
|
As the title implies, the film’s fever eventually breaks, but by this time I was broken on the wheel of everything from Sanae’s droning monologues to the pot-stirring theatrics.
Posted Feb 22, 2024
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4/5
|
Amélie
(2001)
|
Giovanni Fazio
|
[It gives us] a playground Paris that reflects the attitude of his heroine toward life. Instead of brooding in dour urban alienation, Amelie finds herself transfixed by the tide of individuals the city offers and the endless possibilities for connection.
Posted Feb 13, 2024
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3/5
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Sin and Evil
(2024)
|
Mark Schilling
|
Penetrating yet overplotted.
Posted Feb 08, 2024
|
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3/5
|
Everything, Everywhere
(2024)
|
Mark Schilling
|
In this ambling, revelatory film, with its hints of darkness beneath the Instagrammable surface, we also find a stubborn resilience in its people.
Posted Feb 02, 2024
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3/5
|
Golden Kamuy
(2024)
|
James Hadfield
|
Call it the Marvelization of Japanese cinema. For all its extravagance, Golden Kamuy only leaves you half full.
Posted Jan 19, 2024
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4/5
|
Kizumonogatari: Koyomi Vamp
(2024)
|
Matt Schley
|
In the years since the original films came out, it feels as if theatrical animation in Japan has become increasingly aimed at wider audiences, and it’s nice to be reminded that niche stuff like this exists.
Posted Jan 11, 2024
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3/5
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Following the Sound
(2023)
|
James Hadfield
|
There’s no denying the emotional charge of the final scene. Just let me get back to you about what the heck it means.
Posted Jan 04, 2024
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4/5
|
Perfect Days
(2023)
|
Mark Schilling
|
For all its Ozu-esque touches, such as shots of two characters moving in tandem, Perfect Days expresses its maker’s artistic identity and outsider’s perspective to -- pardon the wordplay -- perfection.
Posted Jan 04, 2024
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3/5
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The Imaginary
(2023)
|
Matt Schley
|
The result is a good-looking, sometimes moving picture. But with the talent [Studio Ponoc] has at its disposal, I hope they really let their imaginations run wild on the next one.
Posted Dec 21, 2023
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2/5
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Till We Meet Again on the Lily Hill
(2023)
|
James Hadfield
|
There’s something insidious about its wholesomeness, with characterizations worthy of a wartime propaganda film.
Posted Dec 14, 2023
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