Film / Reviews Nov 11, 2020
‘Sakura’: A family held together by dogged devotion
by James Hadfield
Hitoshi Yazaki turns Kana Nishino’s novel about a family overcoming tragedy with the help of their dog into an amiable but wildly uneven drama.
Film Apr 3, 2019
'Afternoon Breezes': Hitoshi Yazaki's pioneer of Japanese LGBTQ cinema is revisited
by Mark Schilling
What was Japan's first LGBTQ-themed film? One often-mentioned candidate is Keisuke Kinoshita's 1959 melodrama "Farewell to Spring," though more for the emotional ties between its young male protagonists than anything explicitly erotic. More upfront in its treatment — and more critically acclaimed — is ...
Film / Reviews Jul 18, 2018
'Still Life of Memories': An erotic drama that perpetuates the male gaze
by Mark Schilling
Hitoshi Yazaki goes slightly overboard with visual innuendo in an otherwise artistic film.
Film / Reviews Mar 23, 2016
'A Cappella' conjures up the spirit of revolution in 1960s Japan
by Mark Schilling
When I see Japanese films set in the late 1960s and early '70s, at the height of student protests, I always feel that something is off, while knowing that the "something off" is me. At the time I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, aka Counterculture ...