Mark Schilling - The Japan Times

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Mark Schilling

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jan 3, 2018

'Mr. Long': Chang Chen's charisma carries a stylish film

The cool, tight-lipped killer-for-cash that Clint Eastwood played in the Sergio Leone Westerns of the 1960s has become an icon and, in his many imitators, something of a cliche.

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

Dec 20, 2017

A courtroom drama, an alien takeover and the lives of sex workers all feature in the best Japanese films of 2017

This year was bad for Japanese films box office-wise, but not quality-wise. Here are my best 10:

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Dec 6, 2017

'Vigilante': Brotherly love takes a beating in an intense family drama

Saitama doesn't get a lot of respect. This prefecture has a reputation, especially among those who live in the posher precincts of Tokyo, as the land of boring bed towns, populated by the tragically unhip.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Dec 6, 2017

'Hanagatami': Extravagance on the edge of war

Despite a lengthy filmography that began in the 1960s, Nobuhiko Obayashi is known in the West mainly for his 1977 feature debut "House." This horror-fantasy about a house that devours its inhabitants is a surreal riot of the imagination that tosses local filmmaking conventions out the window.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 29, 2017

'And Then There Was Light': Moments of beauty engulfed in miserabilism

Tatsushi Omori's films have been pushing boundaries since his 2005 debut "The Whispering of the Gods," with its story of a young murderer's return to a Christian community presided over by the priest who abused him as a child.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle

Nov 23, 2017

Sun, sand and the silver screen

Launched in 1981 by Jeannette Paulson Hereniko, the Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF) was the first film festival in the United States to focus on films from the Asia-Pacific region. Being a bridge between East and West is still its mission, but HIFF now has plenty of company around the world....

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 22, 2017

'Spark': A fool and a straight man walk into a bar...

Stand-up — one comic in front of a microphone — is the default setting for live comedy in the United States. In Japan the equivalent has long been rakugo, a traditional form in which a single performer tells comic stories. Today, however, aspiring comics usually opt for manzai, a style of duo comedy...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 22, 2017

'The Lowlife': A complicated look at the motivations of AV actresses

Poverty and debt are two traditional reasons for becoming a porn actress. But as Takahisa Zeze's new film "The Lowlife" nonjudgmentally shows, the women who work in Japan's giant AV (adult video) industry today may also have other, more personal motivations, though they are still social outsiders.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Books

Nov 18, 2017

Ishiro Honda: The master behind Godzilla

Everyone knows "Godzilla," the 1954 film that introduced Japan's most famous monster to the world. But the name of its director, Ishiro Honda, was for a long time only mentioned by foreign critics and fans in passing, if at all.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 15, 2017

'Yocho "Foreboding"': The doctor is in ... and he's terrifying

In a Hollywood that is increasingly obsessed with superhero blockbusters, the place to see many acclaimed filmmakers these days is on the small screen. In Japan, though, the Wowow entertainment channel has been producing original dramas by local auteurs for some time.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 8, 2017

'Hyouka': Teen detectives delve into dark territory

Teenage sleuths date back to the days of "The Hardy Boys" and "Nancy Drew," but unlike those literary icons, the high schoolers who set out to solve a mystery in Mari Asato's "Hyouka" do not perform thrilling deeds of detection and derring-do.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 1, 2017

When it came to casting 'Kokoro,' director Vanja d'Alcantara says her search began and ended with Jun Kunimura

Jun Kunimura has long been one of the most active Japanese actors overseas, starting with the Ridley Scott thriller "Black Rain" in 1989 and continuing with the South Korean horror hit "The Wailing" last year. Able to shift gears effortlessly from comedy to drama or from bumbling husband to slithery...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 1, 2017

'Goodbye, Grandpa!': Even at a funeral, there's no escaping a dysfunctional family

Funerals are just about as common in Japanese family dramas as weddings, but few films make them the focus of the story. The funniest would be Juzo Itami's "The Funeral," a 1984 black comedy about two married middle-aged urbanites negotiating the intricacies of a traditional Japanese funeral when the...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 25, 2017

'Mixed Doubles': A match made in heaven falls flat

Mainstream Japanese films, goes the common lament, are now merely the last links in a corporate media chain that begins with a hit property, be it a novel, comic or a smartphone app. Original scripts are thin on the ground.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 24, 2017

The Tokyo International Film Festival can be a time of true cinematic discovery (if you know where to look)

Film festivals have multiplied like bamboo shoots in Japan over the past two decades, from Okinawa in the south to Sapporo in the north. But the country's biggest is still the Tokyo International Film Festival, whose 30th edition takes place from Oct. 25 to Nov. 3 at venues centering on Roppongi Hills....

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 24, 2017

Japan's main film festival has come a long way from the days of 'bubble era' excess

The Tokyo International Film Festival, which begins on Oct. 25, will celebrate its 30th edition this year. It was first held in 1985 and I started attending it, as a reporter, in 1991.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle

Oct 19, 2017

Kyoto's ambience is key to making KIFF special

Film festivals don't take place in isolation: An interesting city makes for a more interesting festival, unless you are the sort of movie nerd who sees six films a day and lives on convenience store sandwiches.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 18, 2017

'Outrage Coda': Takeshi Kitano's kill count climbs high for trilogy's finale

In his nearly three decades as a director, "Beat" Takeshi Kitano has won many critical plaudits and prizes abroad. But in Japan he is best known as a TV personality and comedian. These two strands of his artistic personality — master director and mass entertainer — have come together in his "Outrage"...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 18, 2017

'Dawn Wind in My Poncho': Boys come of age on a typical road trip

Japanese road movies are many; ones featuring high school kids, relatively few. One was Daigo Matsui's 2015 "Our Huff and Puff Journey," about four high school girls in Fukuoka who set off on their commuter bikes to see a concert in Tokyo.

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.

Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.

By Tomoko Otake

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Fujitsu crafts sustainable innovation for itself, society

Fujitsu crafts sustainable innovation for itself, society

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