One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. I'm not sure if Takahisa Zeze knows this phrase but it applies to the heroes of his new film, "The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine," an overly long, high-energy passion project that languished in development hell for ...

Written at the start of World War I and published in 1925 after its author's untimely death, Franz Kafka's "The Trial" is one of those novels everyone knows by reputation (or, in my case, from a fevered reading in high school). The unequal contest between ...

Love can drive you nuts. One recent illustration of how can be seen in the American TV show "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend," about a successful New York lawyer who runs into her teen crush one day, and soon after quits her job and moves to California ...

Now 75, Kirin Kiki is everyone’s favorite Japanese grandmother, a role she has been playing for years now on big screens and small. But she has also never been anyone’s stereotype of quietly suffering, nobly self-sacrificing Japanese womanhood. Starting on television in the mid-1960s she ...

What's in a name? On one level, it's how you identify yourself to yourself (as in dorky name, dorky self-image). On another, it's your social calling card, your link to family, going back generations (or not, if an ancestor decided to exchange one name ...

Writer's kindness was legend, and his photos and columns told the story of a Tokyo social scene's rebirth after war and Occupation.

Both budgets and box-office prospects for Japanese indie films have been declining for years. As the former approaches the zero mark, so do recognizable actors and other standard indicators of quality. Audiences, smelling amateurism, stay away. Flying in the face of this dismal trend is ...

When a Japanese director wins the Palme d'Or — the highest award at the Cannes Film Festival, the film world's equivalent of soccer's World Cup — the response of the local media is to celebrate: Our side won. Making the victory sweeter for Hirokazu Kore-eda ...

"The Big House" captures more than just football in a documentary about the University of Michigan's main stadium.

Japan has long had an image as a country of workaholics, dedicating their lives to the almighty yen. But recent Japanese movies, especially at the lower end of the budget spectrum, are full of furiitā ("freeter," a fairly young part-timer or freelancer) trying to ...