First Love (Hatsukoi) (2019)
★★★★☆
Deceptively titled First Love is Takeshi Miike’s irresistibly anarchic yakuza noir, stuffed with gratuitous violence, comedy, romance and severed heads.
Japan
Maborosi (1995)
★★★★☆
Following Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner and Oscar-nominated Shoplifters, UK audiences now get a chance to see the director’s earlier work Maborosi for the first time.
Cannes Film Festival 2018: Day 6
★★★★☆
Cannes Film Festival 2018
The Third Murder (2017)
★★★★☆
The Third Murder by Hirokazu Koreeda is a totally absorbing philosophical exploration of the nature of truth and freedom and whether they can exist, the difference between the law and justice, and whether anything differentiates murder and the death penalty.
London East Asia Film Festival: Before We Vanish (2017)
★★★★☆
Before We Vanish by Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a genre-bending Japanese bodysnatchers movie that provokes an alien apocalypse on Earth.
Your Name (2016)
In Makoto Shinkai’s haunting Japanese anime, two teenagers swap bodies and lives.
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Cannes review: Before We Vanish (2017)
★★★★☆
Before We Vanish by Kiyoshi Kurosaw is a genre-bending Japanese bodysnatchers movie that provokes an alien apocalypse on Earth.
Mr Long (2017)
★★☆☆☆
Rehabilitating the hitman with Japanese kindness, Sabu’s Mr Long flickers between moments of splendour, kitsch and sentimentality.
Your Name (2016)
In Makoto Shinkai’s haunting Japanese anime, two teenagers swap bodies and lives.
Read More
Festival Review: An (2015)
★★★☆☆
With cherry blossom, sweet red bean paste and lovable pensioners, Naomi Kawase’s An is a light, soft-centred Japanese fancy.
Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter (2014)
★★★★☆
With a delicate, mesmerising performance from Rinko Kikuchi, Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter is a darkly comic tale of misadventure – tragic, odd and uplifting.
Festival Review: Chasuke’s Journey (2015)
★★★☆☆
Despite a promising concept of heavenly screenwriters, Sabu’s Chasuke’s Journey ends in an occasionally visually arresting but hare-brained disappointment.
Like Father, Like Son (2013)
★★★☆☆
A meditation on the ties that bind, Hirokazu Koreeda’s Like Father Like Son is a delicately Japanese exploration of fatherhood, blood and ambition.
Like Someone In Love (2012)
★★★☆☆
An ethereal wander through Japanese relationships, Abbas Kiarostami’s Like Someone In Love reveals the clumsy confusion of human communication.