'The Hungry Lion': A nuanced account of the social media nightmare we all fear
Teenagers take chances that, to the adults in their lives, are sheer idiocy (as I know first-hand from both sides of the teenager-adult divide). These days anything they do or say can also end up on social media, which can instantly turn an adolescent ...
'In Pursuit of Silence': A documentary looks at what it'll take to finally get some peace and quiet
The 1964 tune "The Sound of Silence" by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel is a bona fide classic, but it never really identifies just what this "sound of silence" is. That task instead falls to "In Pursuit of Silence," the documentary about this surprisingly ...
'Come On Irene': You can't buy love ... or a decent protagonist
In the late 1980s, Japanese media ran a flurry of reports on an alarming shortage of brides in the country's rural areas. Unable to find potential partners at home, bachelors in farming villages were searching for wives in mainland Asia — sometimes with support ...
'Asako I & II': Things are vague in this girl-meets-boy-meets-boy's doppleganger tale
"There will never be another you" goes the old song. Then again, some people believe in doppelgangers, doubles to living humans who are ghostly in form and malign in intent. Ryusuke Hamaguchi's "Asako I & II," which screened in competition at this year's Cannes Film ...
'I Want to Eat Your Pancreas': An eye-catching title doesn't make up for over-the-top sentimentality
The most interesting thing about "I Want to Eat Your Pancreas" is its title. Based on that title, you'd be forgiven for assuming the new anime film, an adaptation of the popular novel (and not to be confused with last year's live-action version), has something ...
'The Miracle of Crybaby Shottan': It's never too late to make your move
Chess pops up in a surprising number of feature films. Just look at all the documentaries and dramas about the outrageously gifted Bobby Fischer. Shogi, or Japanese chess, is a different and smaller story, though "Satoshi: A Move for Tomorrow," a 2016 film about ...
'And Your Bird Can Sing': A vague take on the complexities of youth
The work of the late novelist Yasushi Sato, who took his own life in 1990, has been enjoying a minor cinematic renaissance over the past decade. Starting with Kazuyoshi Kumakiri's "Sketches of Kaitan City" in 2010, the author's stories have spawned four films to ...
'Ponoc Short Films Theatre, Vol. 1: Modest Heroes': An anime studio's modest break with norms
"Modest Heroes" studio Ponoc was founded by producer Yoshiaki Nishimura, formerly of Ghibli, just as that legendary anime studio decided to cool its jets back in 2014. Ponoc's debut feature, last year's "Mary and the Witch's Flower," established it as a kind of Ghibli ...
'Sunny': The gang reunites for some 1990s nostalgia
Compared to today's Tokyo, where teenagers quietly curate their Instagram feeds in Starbucks and tourists happily snap selfies from the middle of Shibuya Crossing, the 1990s were a wilder, freer time. Shibuya was then the domain of the kogyaru, teenage girls who cheekily flouted traditional ...
'Killing for the Prosecution': A complex crime drama stuffed with exposition
Once a maker of Hollywood-style sci-fi ("Gunhed," 1989) and noir ("Painted Desert," 1993), Masato Harada has become a director of films about fact-based, character-testing group missions, be it police routing radicals from a Karuizawa villa ("The Choice of Hercules," 2002) or samurai fighting the ...
'Penguin Highway': What goes up must come down ... in penguin form
There's something about the playful, magical realist novels of Tomihiko Morimi that seems to lend itself to animated adaptations. Those adaptations include TV series like "The Tatami Galaxy" ("Yojohan Shinwa Taikei") and "The Eccentric Family" ("Uchoten Kazoku"), plus last year's film "The Night is ...
'The Exorcist Nurse': Horror hits the hospital for some summer chills
Summer was once the peak season for horror in Japan, part of the local custom of beating the heat with chills from scary stories. But since the decline of J-horror a decade or so ago, local horror films have become harder to find in theaters, ...
