Japan
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Sakura Ando stars as a small-time grifter who gets in way over her head in Bad Lands, a Japanese crime drama that attempts to shine a light on the country’s predatory… Read More
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The 37th film in the Japanese blockbuster franchise, and the 33rd produced by Toho Studios, Godzilla Minus One turns the clock back to the late 1940s as it dramatises a destructive attack… Read More
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Your wedding day should be one of the happiest days of your life, yet it can also be one of the most stressful. From the months of planning, to interfering… Read More
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Shinichiro Ueda’s metatextual zombie comedy One Cut of the Dead caused a sensation at the Japanese box office in 2017, and at film festivals around the world. Its frenzied film-within-a-film… Read More
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If you had the ability to see people’s fate, to know when they were about to die, would you tell them? Even if it jeopardised your own life? This is… Read More
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Asia has not always been at the forefront of the fight for gender equality. Even in Asian cinema, too often it’s the men who wrestle with world-changing events, while the… Read More
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In You Shine in the Moonlight, Sho Tsukikawa’s adaptation of Tetsuya Sano’s light novel, a high-school girl with a rare terminal illness tasks her classmate with completing a bucket list… Read More
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In 1998, Japanese director Hideo Nakata created Ring, one of the most celebrated Asian horror movies of all time. An adaptation of Koji Suzuki’s chilling bestseller, Ring became a flagship… Read More
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Last summer, Japanese drama series Ossan’s Love proved a surprise hit, not just in Japan but also in Hong Kong, where it’s screened on ViuTV. Its overwhelmingly positive portrayal of… Read More
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Cinema is filled with stories about journeys, and none more so than the long, slow march towards death that each of us must travel. Ageing and mortality are inevitable facts… Read More
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Following the international success of 2016’s Your Name , director Makoto Shinkai conjures another tale of impossible young love, stretched across multiple dimensions – even with the protagonists from that… Read More
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A big-screen sequel to a star-studded Fuji TV drama series, The Confidence Man JP: The Movie follows Dako (Masami Nagasawa) and her crew of high-stakes con artists to Hong Kong,… Read More
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When housewife and mother Yuko Suzuki (Hideko Hara) discovers that her reclusive adult son, Koichi (Ryo Kase), has committed suicide, she attempts to take her own life. After weeks in… Read More
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Twenty-three-year-old filmmaker Hiroshi Okuyama became the youngest ever recipient of the new director award at last year’s San Sebastian Film Festival with his debut feature Jesus, which wowed audiences with… Read More
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Following in the grand tradition of master filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, A Long Goodbye is forged not from earth-shattering drama, but rather the minutiae of everyday struggles that test the bonds… Read More
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Sixty-five years after the release of Godzilla, nothing has withered the impact or influence of this atomic-fuelled Japanese masterpiece. Conceived as a direct response to King Kong, which enjoyed a… Read More
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A young amnesiac and a grieving widower find a modicum of solace in each other’s company in the debut feature from Nanako Hirose, former assistant to acclaimed filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda.… Read More
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A team of homicide detectives go undercover at a top Tokyo hotel to catch a serial killer in Masayuki Suzuki’s crowd-pleasing adaptation of Keigo Higashino’s bestselling novel. Anchoring this glossy,… Read More
The James Marsh film review archive 