Film Oct 6, 2019
Film director Hirokazu Kore-eda steps out of his comfort zone
by Mark Schilling
Award-winning director makes rare move overseas with latest release in a bid to experience various types of filmmaking.
Film / Reviews Aug 14, 2019
'Cherry Blossoms and Demons': Swan song remains an ugly duckling
by James Hadfield
The late Kirin Kiki maintained such an industrious work schedule that moviegoers have had multiple chances to pay their last respects since she passed away last September. "Cherry Blossoms and Demons" is her actual swan song, albeit one that all but the most ardent ...
Film / Reviews Jun 5, 2019
'Erica 38': The rise and fall of a true con artist
by Mark Schilling
Con artists in movies are typically likeable rogues who prey on the deserving. The title character of Yuichi Hibi's "Erica 38," who is neither "Erica" nor "38," is closer to the unlikable reality: A woman who dupes others with no discernible guilt or remorse, ...
Entertainment News Mar 18, 2019
Japanese rock singer and actor Yuya Uchida, who performed as the opening act for the Beatles' concerts in Tokyo in 1966, has died of pneumonia at a Tokyo hospital, his management office said Monday. He died Sunday morning at 79. The native of Hyogo Prefecture ...
Film / Reviews Oct 10, 2018
'Every Day a Good Day': The wonder of tea with Kirin Kiki
by Mark Schilling
I attended my first tea ceremony decades ago, as part of a company orientation. Kneeling on the floor, I sat in the formal seiza position, stumbled through the motions and sipped the thick green tea. Just as the pain in my legs was reaching ...
Film Sep 16, 2018
Veteran actress Kirin Kiki, who won two Japan Academy best actress awards during her career, dies in Tokyo at the age of 75.
Film Jun 28, 2018
Actress Kirin Kiki wants an ending with no twists
by Mai Yoshikawa
When life gave her lemons, film star Kirin Kiki didn't make lemonade, but wild grass enzyme juice. It's the only thing that has satisfied her taste buds since her advanced-stage cancer caused her to lose her appetite, and even her desire for alcohol has vanished ...
Film Jun 28, 2018
'Japan's grandmother' Kirin Kiki has defied conventions throughout her long film career
by Mark Schilling
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 ...
Film / Reviews May 16, 2018
'Mori, the Artist's Habitat': A delightful dip into a creator's world
by Mark Schilling
Fact-checking biopics is an easy game for critics to play since nearly all films about real people fudge facts or even outright lie to tell a story. I've played the game myself, but in the case of Shuichi Okita's delightful "Mori, the Artist's Habitat," ...
Film Dec 21, 2016
A new wave of Japanese filmmakers matches the old
by Mark Schilling
Nearly two decades after the Japanese New Wave of the 1990s, the directors who led it, including Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Hirokazu Koreeda and Naomi Kawase, are still the local industry's most prominent faces abroad. But this year a new generation of filmmakers has finally started ...
Film Jun 3, 2015
Director Kawase disregards criticism of her sentimental leprosy drama 'An'
by Mark Schilling
When I first interviewed Naomi Kawase in 1998, after she won the Cannes Film Festival's Camera d'Or award for her first feature, "Moe no Suzaku" ("Suzaku"), I remarked on her "quietly stubborn determination" to persist in the face of various detractors. If anything, criticism ...
Film / Reviews Jun 3, 2015
Director Naomi Kawase has finally made a 'real Japanese film'
by Mark Schilling
Sooner or later, many Japanese directors — be they internationally acclaimed auteurs or industry outsiders — end up making what Sion Sono (a noted auteur/outsider himself) once described to me as "a real Japanese film." To put it simply, this sort of film is ...