Tag: Japanese
Shoplifters
Writer/director Hirokazu Koreeda’s extraordinary and brilliant new film about a disparate Japanese makeshift family may start in a gentle and slightly confusing manner, but by the time the final credits role you will be totally engrossed in the movie that won the prestigious Palme d’Or at Cannes last summer. The family live crammed into a small dilapidated…
Berlin Drifters
When it comes to sexually explicit movies there is often a fine line between art and pornography, and in Berlin Drifters, director Kôichi Imaizumi crosses it back and forth throughout the movie. This tale of two Japanese gay men who are essentially trying to find their own very different ways in Berlin is told through a whole…
Oh Lucy!
Oh Lucy! is a deliciously funny black comedy that takes aim at the stereotypes of two different cultures and in which you simply cannot help fall more than a little in love with the seemingly sad sack of a protagonist. Setsuko (Shinobu Terajima) is a middle-aged unmarried office worker in some anonymous Tokyo Office in…
Boys For Sale
One of the most surprising facts to come out of first time filmmaker Itako’s intriguing documentary about the whole culture of young Japanese rent boys, is that they were also so relatively normal and matter-a-fact about their profession that they had all chosen as an easy way to make money. Most of the 10 boys…
Close Knit
Japanese writer/director Naoko Ogigami’s latest movie is a delightfully sensitive family story that puts a refreshing slant on the continuing dialogue about the transgender community that is the focus of more and more films these days. 11-year-old Tomo (an enchanting and rather sanguine Rin Kakihara) has a single-parent mother who has a habit of suddenly…
