'While We're Young': Generation X, meet the millennials
Noah Baumbach ("Frances Ha," "Greenberg") examines the concept of youth in "While We're Young" with a kind of clinical detachment. There's no glorifying or romanticizing, and he certainly doesn't seem too enamored by today's Bright Young Things. Not that this comes as a surprise — ...
Van Sant plots a bleak hike through Aokigahara
At least Arthur Brennan didn't want sushi, an AKB48 concert or a night out on the town with a maiko (trainee geisha) on his arm. As Japan's ranking soars on the international travelers' destination lists, the more cliched their itineraries seem to get. But ...
'St. Vincent' gets old, Bill Murray lives forever
At this point in his career, Bill Murray has become such a master of translating his own bemusement into the amusement of his audience that you could probably put him in a 30-minute infomercial about crop futures and still get a few laughs. "Ladies and ...
Time to get over the 'shock' of aging actresses
"Americans can be strange about aging," said French actress Jeanne Moreau, in a brief interview she gave me back in 2005. She was then at the tail end of her 70s and had just co-starred with French heartthrob Melvil Poupaud in "Le Temps Qui ...
Unflinching survival epic recounts tsunami horror
Director Juan Antonio Bayona came out of nowhere — well, Barcelona and the world of music videos, actually — to drop "The Orphanage" on an unsuspecting world in 2007. This chilling and intelligent reinvention of the haunted-house genre went on to become No. 1 ...
The Japan Medical Association (JMA), once the most powerful lobby group with mighty political clout, still clings to its position of staunchly opposing any scheme to increase the number of doctors, in order to protect its own vested interests. As the nation faces an increasing ...
