One of the most pleasant surprises of this year.
Category: Festivals
Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist’s Journey (2025) review [Fantasia film Festival]
Seki offers audiences a touching fictionalized account of Akiko Higashimura’s relationship with her mentor Kenzo Hidaka.
Honeko Akabane’s Bodyguards (2024) review [Fantasia Film Festival]
Ishikawa delivers an engaging narrative with some satisfying twists, many funny moments, and pleasing action-sequences.
Garo: Taiga (2025) review [Fantasia Film Festival]
Keita Amemiya does not only please fans and newcomers alike, but proves the continued appeal of the tokusatsu superhero genre
Ya Boy Kongming! The movie (2025) review [Fantasia Film Festival 2025]
Shibue’s film can be enjoyed by anyone, yet only those who have watched the drama-series can fully appreciate the narrtaive’s resolution.
Rewrite (2025) review [Fantasia Film Festival]
Daiga Matsui’s narrative ultimately develops into something that expands beyond mere romance, a surprising and highly satisfying time-loop drama.
Cha-Cha (2025) review [Nippon Connection 2025]
Mai Sakai light-heartedly perforates the fantasy of writability of The sexual relation and cheekily confronts the spectator with the radical misrecognition that structures the field of romance.
Transcending Dimensions (2025) review [Nippon Connection]
A masterpiece, a culmination of his past disillusionment with the societal Other and his interest in spiritualism and rebirth born from being mistreated by the Other of the law.
River Returns (2025) review [Nippon Connection 2025]
Masakazu Kaneko convinces the spectator to go beyond the consumptive way of interacting with the other and have more eye and ear for the subjectivity of the Other.
Missing Child Videotape (2024) review [Nippon Connection 2025]
Ryota Kondo proves that the emaciated and abused body of J-horror still has some life within it.
Kaiju Guy (2025) review [Nippon Connection 2025]
A narrative that engages the spectator from start to finish, but offers him one of the funniest yet heartfelt celebrations of Tokusatsu filmmaking.
Escape (2025) review [Nippon Connection 2025]
Adachi crafted a beautiful and affectionate piece on the troubled subjectivity of a subject who choose to escape, erasing his name from the societal field, to avoid capture.
Yoyogi Johnny (2025) review [OAFF 2025]
Kimura’s choice to give the tragical dimension of love a deadpan comical twist pays off, creating a unique narrative that will resonate with youth and those who have kept in touch with their younger self
I Am Kirishima (2025) review [OAFF 2025]
A timely narrative that highlights the inert quality of a societal field structured by capitalism and right-wing nationalism.
Good Luck (2025) review [OAFF 2025]
Shin Adachi utilizes the dynamic of the encounter to examine the problem of desiring within the societal field and the way desire give rise to misunderstanding between subjects.
psychocinema 