“Syria Mon Amour,” the Japan title of “Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait,” is a direct homage to Alan Resnais’ 1959 classic antiwar movie “Hiroshima Mon Amour” and reflects a desire on the part of the two-person distribution team to put the film in a Japanese context. The original title, however, is ...
The title of “Creepy,” the new shocker by horror maestro Kiyoshi Kurosawa, sounds like an in-jokey self-parody. It’s like titling a new Adam Sandler comedy “Goofy” (or if you’re not feeling charitable, “Crappy”). But “Creepy,” which premiered at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, is ...
In the manner of Captain Renault in “Casablanca,” I was shocked — shocked! — to find so much dialogue in a modern-day movie. But then “Irrational Man” is a Woody Allen venture and, apparently, Allen is unaware, or has chosen to ignore, that couples ...
The tele-screen received and transmitted simultaneously. … There was of course no way of knowing when you were being watched. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual was guesswork. At any rate they could plug in to ...
The Islamic State’s organized use of social media for global recruitment and propaganda took many by surprise, but their adversaries are now hitting back. Rojava, the Kurdish-led revolutionary zone in northern Syria, has been looking to rally Western support to its cause, and its ...
An astronaut in deep space finishes up some repairs to the parabolic antenna on his spacecraft’s exterior. Through his helmet’s microphone, he commands the ship’s controlling supercomputer, HAL 9000, “Open the pod bay doors, HAL.” A second later he gets a calm, cold response ...
Doesn’t everybody want somebody who understands their true inner self? For some, it’s a spouse, for others, a friend; for others still, it’s Mom. Some, however — and not all under the age of 5 — have this meeting of minds and hearts with ...
Money is the new sex at the movies. Actually, if we’re honest, maybe it was also the old sex. Whatever — in our overly consumerist society, money is on everyone’s mind and more filmmakers are discovering the excitement that a stock chart can generate. ...
When the histories are written years from now, our era will be defined by information technology in much the same way that the 1960s were defined by rock ‘n’ roll and social protest, or in the U.S., the ’20s by Prohibition. People will look ...
“Girls,” an Emmy award-winning HBO series, focuses on a quartet of women in their early 20s who are trying to — surprise, surprise — figure out what they want to do with their lives. Like its outspoken creator — the intellectual “It Girl” Lena ...
Everybody loves a good scandal, and they don’t come much riper than the tale of Mamoru Samuragochi. The public unmasking of “Japan’s Beethoven” — a celebrated “deaf” composer who turned out to be neither completely deaf nor the main author of his work — ...
“Danchi” doesn’t translate easily into English. “Apartment complex” or “housing estate” are only rough equivalents for the thousands of public-housing units thrown up in the postwar boom years to cope with Tokyo’s exploding population. Equipped with running water, flush toilets and other amenities, with ...
Just because you’ve seen this story before doesn’t mean you shouldn’t see it again … I think. “Southpaw” is an excessive, some may even say maniacal, retread of boxing movie classics such as the “Rocky” franchise, “The Fighter” and “Raging Bull. But it’s so ...
