Going into “In This Corner of the World” (“Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni”), Sunao Katabuchi’s animation about a girl’s coming of age in prewar Hiroshima and wartime Kure, I was vaguely expecting an anti-war film like Isao Takahata’s classic “Grave of the Fireflies” (“Hotaru ...

Why does modern society assume that all women want the same three things: love, sex and babies? The short answer is, because pop culture has decreed it so. The slightly longer answer is that brilliant female novelists such as Paula Hawkins and Gillian Flynn ...

When the Harry Potter saga reached the end of its eight-movie run in 2011, only a Muggle would have predicted that we’d heard the last from J.K. Rowling’s world of wizardry. Never mind the obsessive fandom that the novels and films inspired, they were ...

"Nuclear Nation 2016" re-examines the situation facing Fukushima refugees forced to abandon their homes and evacuate from their hometowns after the Fukushima disaster.

The Japanese films at this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival were a varied lot, from the multiplex fare in the Special Screenings and Japan Now sections to the indies in the Japanese Cinema Splash, Competition and Asian Future sections. But only one came away ...

“I know that many film fans have an allergy to films based on plays,” writes Kenji Yamauchi on the website for his new film, “At the Terrace” (“At the Terrace: Terasu Nite”). “The never-changing setting and the long conversations bore them.” “Boring,” however, was ...

Tom Cruise probably needs another franchise like he needs a third foot. Nevertheless, here he is in “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back,” the sequel to the 2012 movie that was so awful it hurt. Now he’s back (even though the second half of the ...

With his 1993 major studio debut, “Dazed & Confused,” director Richard Linklater tried to go mainstream with the style he’d explored in his Gen-X defining indie hit “Slacker.” Set on the last day of school in the summer of 1976, “Dazed” felt like it ...

Is Tokyo Filmex losing its raison d’etre? Opening less than a month after the Tokyo International Film Festival ends, Tokyo Filmex was once the hard-core indie antithesis of the larger, more mainstream TIFF, but the latter is now more welcoming to the kind of ...

Philippine trans people, Scandinavian reindeer herders and a romantic comedy about the Holocaust dominated the closing ceremony of the 29th Tokyo International Film Festival on Thursday. The ceremony at Ex Theater Roppongi opened appropriately enough with awards to individuals who furthered domestic cinema this ...

For the premiere of “Satoshi: A Move for Tomorrow,” actors Kenichi Matsuyama and Masahiro Higashide and director Yoshitaka Mori were on hand to greet fans before the screening of their film, which closes the 2016 Tokyo International Film Festival. The movie focuses on Satoshi ...

It’s a fantasy that many women like to give into sometimes: That you can be somewhat older, a little disheveled, not exactly fit, but still get the man of your dreams. Or make that two, or even three if you count a perfect baby ...