While Horiuchi’s narrative is all about the difficulty of ending things, the melancholic dimension of what has to end only comes to full emotional blossom as the finale reaches its conclusion.
Short Movie Time: Kitten (2022) review [Skip City International D-Cinema Festival]
Yamaguchi elegantly underlines the importance of showing one’s Otherness to the other and the problematic nature of succumbing to the seduction of deceiving oneself by reflecting sameness to the other.
Joint (2021) review [The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme]
Oudai Kojima proves, once again, that the yakuza genre is not dead and that, given the current societal constellation and the various currents within, engaging crime narratives can still be made.
Short Movie Time: How Beautiful Japanese Morning Is (2011) review
By relying on silence to emphasize his elegantly created visual association, Suita succeeds in delivering a quite ironic exploration of the beauty of a Japanese morning.
XXXholic (2022) review
“An exquisite visual experience that is sadly held back by its unfitting manga-like moments.”
Mothra (1961) review [The Godzilla Project]
By elegantly using the kaiju Mothra, Honda warns the Japanese spectator of the destructive societal effects that the blind adoption of unrestricted capitalism and wild consumption can cause.
Short Movie Time: Storage Man (2022) review [Skip City International D-Cinema Festival]
Tetsuro Manno proves that he has mastered the drama-genre and shows off his ability to create a quite thematically dense experience.
Birds Without Names (2017) review
“Shiraishi is not only able to confront the spectator with the perverse side-effects of a patriarchal phallic societal Other – i.e. male opportunism, but also reveals, in an extremely moving finale, that even within such problematic Other love remains a possibility.”
Short Movie Time: Long-Term Coffee Break (2022) [Female Gaze – Japan Society]
Fuelled by great performances and a visually pleasant composition, Fujita confronts the spectator with the subjective weight of a symbolic commitment and the phantasmatic nature of marital harmony.
Short Movie Time: But It Did Happen (2022) [Skip City International D-Cinema Festival]
Ruichi Suita offers a masterclass in using images as signifiers and concatenating them elegantly to sketch out the unaccepted truth that determines a subject’s signifiers and acts.
She is Me, I Am her (2022) review [Japan Society – Female Gaze]
Nakamura elegantly unpacks how the corona situation disturbs the field of desire as well how important the presence of bodies is within the societal field driven by desire.
Onpaku (2022) review
While Fujii does not re-invent the J-horror genre with Onpaku, he does prove the horror-frame can still be exploited to deliver satisfying horror narratives.
Missing (2022) review
Shinzo Katayama delivers one of the most satisfying drama-thrillers this year.
Rin (2019) review
An enjoyable but deeply flawed narrative.
Short Movie Time: Two Of Us (2019) [Female Gaze – Japan Society]
Negishi proves that she is ready to tackle the daunting task of making a feature film.
psycho-cinematography 