Kaori Shoji - The Japan Times

April 29, 2024

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Kaori Shoji

Kaori Shoji writes about movies and movie-makers for the Film Page, plus takes a turn at the Bilingual Column. Biggest mistake of her career: taking the very dignified Nagisa Oshima to McDonald's for an iced coffee.

For Kaori Shoji's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

CULTURE / Film

May 9, 2001

Talent aside, some people were born to dance

Center Stage Rating: * * * Director: Nicholas Hytner Running time: 115 minutes Language: English, with Japanese subtitlesOpens May 12 Ballet lessons (along with violin and piano) are often forced upon us at a certain age and continue until we or our parents throw a major tantrum and we call it quits. There are some little girls, however, who take to the barre like the mafia to crime and show up for lessons with their hair in buns and wearing cute, expensive leotards. When the music starts, they raise themselves on little, little toes and walk all the way across the room, their faces transformed by rapture. It is in this instant that other less coordinated 10-year-olds (like this reviewer) vow to take up smoking as soon as possible and waste as much time as possible in the bathroom.

CULTURE / Film

May 2, 2001

Don't go messing with the Iron Ladies

Satree-Lex Rating: * * * Japanese title: Attack Number HalfDirector: Yongyoot Thongkongtoon Running time: 105 minutes Language: Thai, with Japanese subtitlesNow showing A lot of men say that femininity is a dying art. Women are no longer interested in polishing that side of themselves and, consequently, men are feeling distressed. If it's any consolation, I would like to point out that some people out there are keeping the flame burning and burning brightly. I'm talking about the transsexuals who seem privy to all the secrets of womanhood that, had I known even a smidgen of 10 years ago, could have transported me from movie-review hackdom to a Much More Glamorous Place. Still, it may not be too late for re-education so I made tracks to Shibuya to see a movie called "Satree-Lex" ("Iron Ladies" in English, released in Japan as "Attack Number Half").

CULTURE / Film

Apr 25, 2001

Wake up, it's just a bad movie

The Family Man Rating: * * Director: Brett Ratner Running time: 125 minutes Language: EnglishNow showing This is Kafka's nightmare scenario: One morning, a man wakes up and finds he's turned into a giant bug. He must deal with the inner turmoil that follows. This is writer/director Brett Ratner's scenario: One morning, a man wakes up to find himself in a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house in New Jersey with two kids and a wife. He must deal with the inner turmoil that follows.

CULTURE / Film

Apr 18, 2001

That's, like, what living is like, in'it?

Ratcatcher Purely Belter Rating: * * * * 1/2 Japanese title: Boku to Sora to Mugibatake Director: Lynne Ramsay Running time: 93 min. Language: English Now showing Rating: * * * * Director: Mark Herman Running time: 99 min. Language: English Opens April 28 So often, children in British cinema are plagued by unfulfilled longing, longing that, likely as not, stems from some small, innocent desire. We are privy to their dreams, but rarely see them satisfied. You can't help but feel outraged over the struggles of children in British movies, rowing their feeble boats against a current that insists on carrying them away into stories of injustice, abuse, bad plumbing, "never enough money in the house" and so on.

CULTURE / Film

Apr 11, 2001

Another shade of blue: so strange, so familiar

Chong Rating: * * * Director: Lee Sang Il Running time: 54 minutes Language: JapaneseOpens April 21 as the morning and late show at Box Higashi Nakano Theater "Chong" is a derogatory term for the zainichi -- descendants of Koreans brought to Japan. But "Chong" the movie tells you that it's also the Korean word for "blue." How strange that this word, so spiked with political gunpowder and consequently banned from public airwaves, should turn out to have another, altogether innocent meaning.

CULTURE / Film

Apr 4, 2001

Yummy, yummy, yummy, she's got love in her tummy

You know how a woman says "I'm not 16 anymore" as a prelude to making decisions and realigning her life? It's a phrase that signals her decision to stick to one guy, one career, a single brand of facial cream. Goodbye to psychedelic craziness, hello to . . . smoking cigarettes in bed, in the dark, on sleepless nights. Oh well.

CULTURE / Film

Mar 31, 2001

You really don't want to go there

There must be an organization in Hollywood called Bad Sequels Inc. (not to mention Happy Endings.com and Dial-a-Corpse). The people over at Bad Sequels are dressed in gray, carry briefcases and have the furtive look of a nervous salesman. They go up to some successful producer at some 7-ish cocktail party and whisper out of the corners of their mouths: "Sir, you're a man with brains and foresight -- we can see that right away. So we know you'd be interested in this brand-new, tip-top sequel that comes complete with cast, grip and gaffer. Whaddaya say?" And the producer, because it's Friday night and he's had a few drinks, says "Uhhh, OK," and signs on the dotted line. Then the men in gray hastily lock up the case, sprint out the door and drive away, fast.

CULTURE / Film

Mar 24, 2001

Ritchie's rogues return

"Snatch" is more than a movie: It's a bubbling, babbling comic strip on wheels. Not fitting into the usual British movie mold -- it's neither a Merchant-Ivory rendition of upper-crust angst, nor a working-class saga passed on by Ken Loach -- "Snatch" is in a genre by itself, showcasing a crack ensemble of Londoners, who could have been scanned from the Rogue's Gallery of "Dick Tracy." Except, of course, for their accents.

CULTURE / Film

Mar 17, 2001

Upon further meditation . . .

Sometime after Gus Van Sant had released "Goodwill Hunting," he took a trip to India. During his stay, he was faxed a screenplay from Sony Pictures. Written by an unknown anchorman called Mike Rich, "Finding Forrester" had everything that prompted Van Sant to cut off his journey and return to LA. Three days later, he was in a meeting with producer Laurence Mark and ready to work.

CULTURE / Film

Mar 10, 2001

A real woman is hard to find

The problem with "women's movies" is this: Too often, they make you think that the world out there belongs to men. Otherwise, how could they keep painting the same old pictures of women struggling to gain self-respect, raise children, find true love, bond witheach other, etc.? In the real world, women may ride the space shuttle, but in the movies, they're still fighting the time-honored battles for love and security. Battles that will, according to Hollywood, end in a big, romantic wedding. "Where the Heart Is" is that type of "women's movie," which probably accounts for the discomfort (and certain level of depression) of sitting through it.

CULTURE / Film

Mar 3, 2001

Gwyneth and Ben's last tango in L.A.

My friend Mari has a dilemma -- she just split up with her boyfriend of three years. They work in the same company, on the same floor, and Mari had hoped it was leading to a church wedding in Tuscany. Instead, it ended after a screaming, 10-hour argument, and with the boyfriend owing Mari a total of 1.5 million yen.

CULTURE / Film

Feb 24, 2001

Space . . . the funny frontier

Think of it as a "Seven Samurai" in outer space. OK, well there are only six warriors in "Galaxy Quest" but the comparison kinda works. They are a group of has-been actors whose sole claim to fame is a TV series called "Galaxy Quest" that went off the air 18 years ago. But American human beings weren't the only ones watching the show. In another galaxy, aliens on the planet Thermia had also been getting the airwaves. Firmly believing the "Galaxy Quest" crew to be real-life superheroes, the Thermians transport themselves to Earth (actually downtown L.A.) to recruit the actors for intergalactic warfare. Oh yeah, and this is a comedy.

CULTURE / Film

Feb 17, 2001

A British man in Shepard country

Sam Shepard, long known as the spokesman playwright of the American West, has a talent for endowing his cowboy-hatted characters with urban, neurotic psyches. The result has always been interesting. Now we get to see that firsthand in a film called "Simpatico," based on his play of the same title. This involves Shepard's favorite cast format of two guys and one woman, seemingly simple country folk who shoot coyote and square dance without a care in the world, but who turn out to be in desperate need of an expensive N.Y. shrink.

CULTURE / Film

Feb 10, 2001

One for the guy upstairs

If God was in the mood for a really good movie, chances are he'd flip through the listings and make tracks for "Unbreakable." Everything about it has a huge appeal to the Omniscient: the dynamics of Good and Evil, the fundamental questions of Existence, man's helplessness in the face of accidental fate.

CULTURE / Film

Feb 3, 2001

Every faulty step you take . . .

Now you see the great Keanu Reeves, now you don't.

CULTURE / Film

Jan 27, 2001

Some guys have all the luck

Here's a strange thing. All our lives, movies have taught us that for love relationships to happen, men must be tall and smooth-skinned and lookgreat in Levi's (let's not even think about how women must be). Yet the very people responsible for generating the myth are often polar opposites of the characters they create. I'm talking about guys like Alfred Hitchcock, Bernardo Bertolucci, Quentin Tarantino -- at first glance they look like total noncontenders in the dating market. But as we all know, their names are coupled with the most glamorous women in the world.

CULTURE / Film

Jan 20, 2001

Do you really wanna know?

So it's said that Freud's dying words were: "What do women want?" Whether any female on the premises answered: "I'll tell you, only if you'll give it to me," is unknown, but the point is, women are a mystery. Even to the greatest of minds, not to mention our own.

CULTURE / Film

Jan 13, 2001

Holy mother of threesomes!

Actor Edward Norton has only been in the business four years, but he makes you think that he's been there forever.

CULTURE / Film

Jan 6, 2001

The movie's the thing

Who do you think you are, the Prince of Denmark? Such is the complaint I'd like to lodge with wordy, lordly, self-obsessed people whose introverted grievances often manifest themselves in extroverted acts of harm. Hamlet had always struck me as a curious choice for a hero. It's true he gave some great speeches and avenged the death of his father, but look at the havoc he wreaked in the meantime. When it comes to loyal sons who slay their evil uncles, Simba in "The Lion King" could teach the Prince a thing or two.

COMMUNITY

Jul 14, 2000

Get up, get busy: It's summertime

Much as I hate to admit it, summertime in Tokyo is less than joyous. The season just doesn't have that celebratory, liberating mood, it doesn't slow down, grow languid or lean back with an iced tea. Summertime in Tokyo means sweating businessmen carrying suit jackets with their forefingers to cut fabric contact down to a minimum, and office girls sitting with woolen blankets over their laps to avoid the industrial chill of the air conditioner.

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.

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When trying to trace your lineage in Japan, the "koseki" is the most important form of document you'll encounter.

Climbing the branches of a Japanese family tree

By Alex K.T. Martin

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Prize winner Maki Imoto catches light with glass

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