The emotional drama is extremely flat – and even the sexual encounters, despite being well-acted by the female cast, cannot infuse life into the dried-up bed of the film’s emotional river.
Category: Family
Rainy Blue (2025) review [OAFF 2025]
Asuna Yanagi does not simply deliver a heartwarming coming-of-age narrative, but also a work that has the potential to inspire young people.
Dollhouse (2025) review
Yaguchi’s horror will please audiences new to the J-horror genre as well as long-time fans of the genre.
Demon City (2025) review
A fun, yet extremely forgettable experience.
Bullet Train Explosion (2025) review
A competent sequel that will please audiences and invites spectators to explore Sato’s classic.
The Godzilla Project: Godzilla Minus One (2023) review
A triumphant return of the most beloved Kaiju of all and a deeply emotional experience that re-assessing the themes of the original Godzilla in a refreshing way.
A Girl named Ann (2024) review
One of most upsetting confrontations with the way the societal and familial Other can fail the subject.
Renoir (2025) review
Chie Hayakawa delivers an incredible moving experience that succeeds in exploring the difficulty for the subject to deal with death and the loss it introduces.
HappyEnd (2024) review
An incredible tour-de-force that hits home.
My Sunshine (2024) review
A bittersweet celebration of youth – seishun, celebrates the importance of the encounter and of desire, the force that pushes the subject towards inter-subjective connection.
Teki Cometh (2024) review [Camera Japan Festival]
A vivid and mesmerising experience that does not only illustrates the subjective impact of increased isolation on giving meaning to one’s own life – on the stability of the frame of one’s ego.
Evil Does not Exist (2023) review
Ryusuke Hamaguchi offers a highly meditative exploration of the position of violence within the natural Real and the human symbolic, the realm of speech.
The Young Strangers (2024) review [Camera Japan Festival 2025]
Uchiyama delivers a masterpiece that does not merely grab the spectator by his throat, but confronts him with the fundamental importance of the signifier in a heartrending way.
The Harbor lights (2025) review [Japannual 2025]
The beauty of Harbor Lights lies in its ability to invite the spectator to think through the dynamic of inter-generational trauma – the dimension of loss – and the destabilizing effect of (structural) discrimination long after the credits have faded.
The Invisible Half (2025) review [Japannual 2025]
Masaki Nishiyama’s message resounds clearly: embrace your Otherness, despite all the societal hammers seeking to hammer you, the nail that sticks out, down.
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