Ryohei Suzuki, Fumino Kimura, ©Courtesy of Netflix Like all long-running manga-anime series, the “City Hunter” franchise has a complicated history of adaptations. Technically, this is the first live-action Japanese film based on Tsukasa Hojo’s Shonen series, but previous non-animated film adaptions were produced in Hong Kong (starring Jackie Chan and Gary Daniels) and France (as…
There are few animators with quite the same reputation as Hayao Miyazaki. The Japanese legend has been working for over half a century and, despite multiple claims from the man himself of previous films being his last, he continues to churn out incredible content at the age of eighty-two. The 2014 Honorary Oscar winner has…
Children don’t always have a full picture of the world or a complete understanding of how everything works. That can lead to confusing situations in which an action or a comment is misinterpreted, and when adults become involved, things can spiral wildly out of control. But it’s just as important to weigh the contributions of…
Time loops are a tricky thing, and it typically takes film or television characters a decent amount of time to even figure out that’s what happening. Shock and denial tend to come in first, and then the difficulty of convincing someone else that this is real causes considerable frustration and dismay. After that, it’s a…
There are few films more impactful in the history of cinema as Star Wars. It managed to become a box office hit with audiences and influence decades of science fiction, winning numerous technical awards and spawning many sequels. What has become a franchise now includes multiple lauded television series and an endless supply of tie-in…
A funeral or memorial service may attract an interesting crowd, since it’s no longer possible for friends or family to pay direct respect to the dead by showing up and being seen. Instead, it may be about a genuine bond to the departed, the meaning that will be assigned to their presence by surviving loved…
And Then Yoshimitsu Morita 1985 Japan 130 minutes Japanese with English subtitles Morita’s award-winning first foray into period films is an adaptation of master of literary modernism Sōseki Natsume’s celebrated novel of the same title. Morita’s second and final collaboration with the iconic Yūsaku Matsuda (The Family Game), who stars alongside legendary actors like Chishū…
Social media allows people to hide behind an online identity and to become someone other than who they are. If they do not identify themselves either by name or face, that adds as additional anonymity in which they truly can be someone else, not held back by physical descriptors or any past history of behavior…
Elaiza Ikeda, a Filipino-Japanese actress and fashion model, marks her directorial debut with the feature Town Without Sea, part of the line-up of North America’s largest festival of contemporary Japanese cinema: Japan Cuts. The story is set in Tagawa, within the Fukuoka Prefecture, and describes the coming-of-age of a shy teenager, who is at a…
Love is hard enough to find without added pressure from family members and society. Everyone’s circumstances are at least somewhat different, yet there’s an expectation that exists in every culture, varied as it may be, of when and how people should couple up and start a family. There are any number of factors that can…
Films have a power to transport audiences, to invite them to faraway places and ideas they’ve never visited and may never have the chance to see. They may be real or imagined, but the impact of any film comes from its ability to draw in viewers and to present a compelling escape. Auteurs and genres…
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