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Jun 22, 2017

Hacksaw Ridge / Cinema Sunshine Ikebukuro / 2017-06-24 to 2017-06-30

9:30, 12:15, 15:00, 17:45, 20:30
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 21, 2017

Don't follow this scary Pied Piper to the cinema

Released in 2003, Takashi Shimizu's "Ju-on: The Grudge" and "Ju-on: The Grudge 2" both had a simple premise — vengeful ghosts turn an ordinary suburban house into a death trap — but the scares, such as a kohl-eyed dead boy with a terrifying grip, were fresh and effective.
Jun 8, 2017

Chotto Ima Kara Shigoto Yamete Kuru / Osaka Station City Cinema / 2017-06-10 to 2017-06-16

until June 11 8:30, 14:40, 17:00, 21:30 / from June 12 14:40, 17:00, 19:00, 21:20
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Jun 2, 2017

'Wonder Woman' sets out on her quest to transform Hollywood

"Wonder Woman," the comic-book epic poised to dominate the box office this weekend, also shatters one of the remaining glass ceilings for women — directing big-budget, Hollywood superhero movies.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Jun 1, 2017

Dad-made 'bento' make a splash on the silver screen

Japanese movies tend to portray Japanese dads as male chauvinists who never step into the kitchen if they can help it and have little interest in raising their kids. Consider Yasujiro Ozu's timeless classic "Tokyo Story." Sure, Chishu Ryu played a kind and gentle patriarch — but did he once help the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 31, 2017

'Logan' director takes Wolverine character in unexpected new direction

There's a scene in "Logan" — the latest addition to the "X-Men" franchise — where an aged, ailing Professor X (Patrick Stewart) exhorts Logan, aka Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), to open his mind to the possibility of a normal human existence, with a family to love and care for.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
May 25, 2017

Hollywood's love storyboard

If you're the type who sticks around after a movie to read the credits, you'll know it takes more than one village to make a feature-length film. Ten or even 20 villages is more like it. Among the villagers are people with the title of "storyboard artist" and "film researcher," although, like many artisans...
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics / FOCUS
May 22, 2017

Three years after coup, junta deeply embedded in Thai life

On Friday evenings in Thailand, sandwiched between the evening news and a popular soap opera, is a prime-time program that has been running for three years, or ever since the military took power in a May 22, 2014, coup.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 3, 2017

Disney modernizes a tale as old as time with live-action 'Beauty and the Beast'

It's a common complaint: "Hollywood doesn't have any new ideas," and it's evident in the reimaginings of everything from "Annie" to "A Nightmare on Elm Street."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 2, 2017

Ryuichi Sakamoto provides a soundtrack to life at 'async' exhibition

How has Ryuichi Sakamoto been able to harness melancholy so skillfully? How has he created such desperately sad music, and then managed to get up in the morning and do it again and again, over several decades?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Apr 13, 2017

Fashion's night at the museum

"The First Monday in May" opens April 15 at the Bunkamura Le Cinema Theater in Tokyo's trendy Shibuya Ward (the Japanese title is "Metto Gara, Doresu o Matotta Bijutsukan"). It's a documentary about a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition titled "China: Through the Looking Glass" in 2015.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 12, 2017

Hollywood's 'Ghost in the Shell' remake misses the mark

After the online petitions, the countless think pieces and Twitter tirades, Hollywood's "Ghost in the Shell" was never going to have an easy passage. Rupert Sanders' film — a $110 million live-action movie based on a beloved manga and anime property — was ill-fated from the start, tarnished by the...
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Apr 12, 2017

Would-be livestreaming stars boost billion-dollar Chinese market

Jing Qi, a part-time presenter on the livestreaming platform Huajiao, underwent cosmetic surgery in March to improve her chances of becoming an internet celebrity.
Apr 6, 2017

Kamen Raida × Supa Sentai: Cho Superhero Taisen / Namba Parks Cinema / 2017-04-08 to 2017-04-14

until April 13 10:10, 14:50 / April 14 10:10
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Apr 6, 2017

When the talent gets religious

"Ankoku Joshi" is a murder mystery involving six pretty JK (slang for joshi kosei, high school girls)" who all have something to hide. The film's title literally means "pitch black girls," which pretty much explains their characters' personalities in what soon becomes a grisly little tale directed by...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Mar 29, 2017

The psychological perils of a Japanese homestay

All the homestays I have done in my life — three of them — were psychologically traumatic in uniquely torturous ways.
Mar 16, 2017

Your Name. / Apollo Cinema 8 / 2017-03-18 to 2017-03-24

14:15
Mar 16, 2017

Collateral Beauty / Aeon Cinema Minatomirai / 2017-03-18 to 2017-03-24

Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 15, 2017

'Slavemen': Men enslaved by juvenile fantasies

Noboru Iguchi would seem to be in the enviable position, at least to his mostly male fan base, of doing exactly what he likes and never having to grow up. A veteran director of low-budget exploitation films, Iguchi has an unabashedly adolescent obsession with short-skirted schoolgirls, spandex-clad superheroes,...
Mar 9, 2017

Moana (dubbed) / Namba Parks Cinema / 2017-03-11 to 2017-03-17

March 11, March 13 to March 16 9:00, 9:50, 11:25, 12:15, 14:00, 16:30, 17:30, 19:00, 20:00 / March 12 9:00, 9:50, 11:25, 12:15, 14:00, 17:30, 20:00 / March 17 9:30, 12:00, 14:30, 15:50, 17:00, 17:50, 20:15
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 9, 2017

India's democracy is strained by illiberalism

India continues to be robustly, even chaotically, democratic. But its freedom is under growing threat.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 8, 2017

A dystopian future set in the present aftermath

With "Homo Sapiens", director Nikolaus Geyrhalter paints a haunting dystopian vision of civilization minus its creators. This unique documentary consists of nothing but steady, perfectly framed wide-shots of abandoned structures and wastelands. Imagine Wes Anderson doing location shots for "The Walking...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 8, 2017

'River': sink, swim or keep running

Up until about 10 years ago, being a white man in Southeast Asia meant you did pretty much what you pleased and damn the consequences, at least in the realm of fictional cinema. (See Leonardo DiCaprio in "The Beach.") Often, the characters are thrown into prison on drug trafficking charges and narrowly...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 1, 2017

'The Handmaiden': A sinfully silly gothic psychodrama

Korean genre stylist Park Chan-wook is best known to Western audiences for his "Vengeance" trilogy: a trio of malevolent, blackly comic thrillers that included his 2003 breakout hit, "Oldboy." But his recent films have coalesced into an informal trilogy of their own, linked by a shared enthusiasm for...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 25, 2017

Polish film director Andrzej Wajda represented the voice and conscience of a nation

"I stood here just after the end of the war," Polish film director Andrzej Wajda said. "I was only 19 years old. The entire area was flattened, just rubble. The Stare Miasto (Old Town) was one big gaping pit that I stared into."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 22, 2017

'La La Land': Sometimes we need a trip to la-la land

La-la land: the mental state of someone who is not aware of what is really happening, and a nickname for the American entertainment industry centered on Los Angeles. These two meanings bleed into each other in director Damien Chazelle's multi-Oscar-nominated musical, "La La Land," which is about a state...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 15, 2017

'Cell': Sometimes it's better to just hang up

After seeing "Cell" I wanted to call my grandmother who, with the emergence of the world's first iPhone in June of 2007, predicted the end of civilization as we know it. Five months later she passed away, and some of my cousins whispered that perhaps it was the curse of technology that did her in, or...
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Feb 15, 2017

It'll get released in Japan — come 'Hell or High Water'

Among the snubs and surprise inclusions in this year's Oscar nominations, one might have stood out for Japanese movie fans — and I'm not talking about "Your Name." In what's surely a first, a Best Picture nominee has bypassed cinemas here and gone straight to Netflix.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 8, 2017

'Green Room': Saulnier runs a red light on violence

The opening aerial shot of "Green Room" soars over the wavy green mass of an Oregon cornfield, before finding a swath through it where a van has swerved off the highway. Inside the van, so shabby you can practically smell the stale beer and B.O., four members of a rough-living punk band, The Ain't Rights,...
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Feb 1, 2017

Hiroki Matsukata: a gangster farewell

Hiroki Matsukata, who died at age 74 on Jan. 21, may have been born into an acting family — his father was jidaigeki (historical drama) actor Jushiro Konoe — but in his yakuza films for the Toei studio in the 1960s and '70s, Matsukata's portrayals of feral-but-charming hoods seemed to boil up off...

Longform

Dangami House is a 180-year-old former samurai residence of the Kato clan, who ruled over Ozu, Ehime Prefecture, until the Meiji Restoration.
A house, a legacy and the quiet work of restoration in rural Japan