Tag - koji-fukada

 
 

KOJI FUKADA

Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 8, 2022
‘Love Life’ tells a meandering story about grief
Koji Fukadau2019s drama about a married couple hit by tragedy is a little too oblique for its own good.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / 2019 in Review
Dec 19, 2019
2019 saw just a few glimmers of hope in an otherwise mediocre year for Japanese film
The year predictably saw new iterations of long-running anime favorites top the box office, but the year's truly interesting films lay much further down the financial rankings.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 24, 2019
'A Girl Missing': You can run, but you can't hide
Mariko Tsutsui already had many stage, TV and film credits when she appeared in Koji Fukada's 2016 drama "Harmonium." But her performance as a woman whose life is destroyed by Tadanobu Asano's seductive ex-con was a revelation. She made the leap from the naive and sexually starved wife of the film's first half to the hardened and guilt-ridden survivor of the second while maintaining her laser focus on the character's inner core.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 23, 2018
'The Man from the Sea': A Japanese savior washes up in Aceh
Koji Fukada leads a younger generation of Japanese directors who are more internationally minded than their predecessors. He even used French export titles for his first two features — "Hospitalite" (2010) and "Au Revoir l'Ete" (2013) — reflecting the influence of French cinema, particularly the work of Eric Rohmer. Also, he cast American actress Bryerly Long as the star of "Sayonara," his 2015 sci-fi movie about a dying woman being cared for by a humanoid robot in a doomed world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 20, 2017
Surefire formulas failed Japanese cinema in 2017
In a quarter-century of reporting on the Japanese film industry, I've yet to find one optimist about its future.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Mar 10, 2017
Fukada's filmmaking a breath of fresh air
Koji Fukada's black comedy "Hospitalite" ("Kantai") won best film in the Tokyo International Film Festival's Japanese Eyes section in 2010 and since then he has become accustomed to stepping up on stages to receive prizes for his work.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 22, 2017
Kanji Furutachi: Reacting to Japan's film industry
Over the years I've heard many complaints about the bad acting in Japanese films, from the hammy emoting of over-indulged veterans to the amateurish turns of "idols" cast more for their agency connections than any perceptible talent. I've added to this chorus of negativity, but I've also noticed that often the best things in otherwise forgettable movies are the supporting actors who bring a spark of originality, individuality and professionalism to even blink-and-you-miss-them roles.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 28, 2016
'Harmonium': Dangerously good family drama
The films of Koji Fukada have long wrapped ambitious themes in deceptively unassuming genre packages. His 2011 international breakout "Hospitalite" ("Kantai") begins as a quirky comedy but becomes a sharp-edged drama of deceptions and secrets. Last year's "Sayonara" starts as an offbeat essay in apocalyptic sci-fi, centering on a terminally ill woman and her robot caregiver, but transitions into a stark examination of death and dissolution.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 18, 2015
Fukada's 'Sayonara' captures android intimacy
'We all die alone" is a thought voiced by the famous (Hunter S. Thompson and Orson Welles among them), but it seems to state the obvious. We also all have toothaches alone, do we not?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 11, 2015
Director Koji Fukada explores nuanced human-robot divide in 'Sayonara'
Whether it's the anthropomorphic cyborg cat Doraemon, Sony's artificially intelligent canine pet Aibo or even baby harp seals created to assist dementia patients, robots have long been recognized in Japan as capable of providing therapeutic and emotional assistance for their human owners.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 16, 2015
Girls take charge of their love lives in 'Chigasaki Story'
Koji Fukada's 2013 beach film "Hotori no Sakuko" ("Au Revoir l'Ete") was a loving homage to French master Eric Rohmer, with lengthy European-style vacations bestowed on Fukada's Japanese protagonists.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 9, 2014
Fukada's young castaways on adulthood's shores
Born in Tokyo in 1980, Koji Fukada released his first film in 2004, but his breakthrough was 2010's "Kantai (Hospitalité)," a witty black comedy about a mysterious stranger who talks his way into a job at a small Tokyo printing shop and is soon insinuating himself into the lives of the shop's proprietor and his family. Premiering in the Tokyo International Film Festival's Japanese Eyes section, "Hospitalité" won the best film prize and was widely screened abroad, while its French title and story called up comparisons with the 1932 Jean Renoir comedy classic "Boudu Saved from Drowning."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 10, 2013
TIFF is your chance to catch up with Japanese film
The Tokyo International Film Festival, now in its 26th edition, has had its share of detractors, dissing it for everything from competition lineups of major festival castoffs (no longer true since TIFF stopped insisting on world premieres) to a Special Screening section that is essentially a PR showcase for upcoming commercial releases (still and forever the case). And yet foreign critics, bloggers and fans keep turning up at TIFF for at least one reason: The festival offers a rare chance to see large numbers of new and not so new Japanese films with English subtitles, in better-than-average screening conditions.

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A statue of "Dragon Ball" character Goku stands outside the offices of Bandai Namco in Tokyo. The figure is now as recognizable as such characters as Mickey Mouse and Spider-Man.
Akira Toriyama's gift to the world