REEL JAPAN
Insights into Japanese cinema and television
Category: Uncategorized
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Score: 5/10 THE WAILING is a slick production, full of interesting choices in direction and editing. There are genuine moments of ominous horror. However, viewers may be surprised to find that THE WAILING is a bumbling mall cop movie wrapped in the skin of a demonic possession movie. I am guessing the filmmakers bet that…
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Score: 2/10 SWORD OF FIRE is the fifth of a series of twelve film adaptations starring Ichikawa Raizo as Nemuri Kyoshiro, a red-haired, half Portuguese (hence the “sleepy” western eyes), half Japanese wandering ronin. Based on the historical novels of Shibata Renzaburo, which spawned many series over decades. Ichikawa Raizo VIII was adopted into a…
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Score: 6/10 MINAMATA is a rare bird of a film. A true story set in the early 1970s in Japan, with brief interludes in NYC, it was filmed in Japan and Serbia. Directed by Andrew Levitas, an American who has helmed two movies, it features a mostly Japanese cast rounded out by Johnny Depp and…
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Score: 8/10 FAKING BEETHOVEN is a unique outing in the history of Japanese cinema. Written by Bakarhythm, noted Japanese screenwriter and comedian who brought us the recent comedy hit HOTSPOT, it is based on Kagehara Shiho’s 2018 nonfiction book and features superb acting from a huge cast, but lead Yamada Yuki carries the film. He…
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Score: 9/10 A charming ensemble workplace comedy sprinkled with hints of sci-fi and the supernatural, HOTSPOT will pull you in and make you fall in love with the humdrum personalities that populate this small resort town in the mountains. Its ingenious title is a pun on the hot spring vacation spot where it is set.…
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SCORE: 8/10 “Does it spark joy?” SAMURAI SHIFTERS is a delightful romp through Edo-period Japan which strikes a perfect balance between the dramatic and the comedic. Director Inudo Isshin (THE FLOATING CASTLE) keeps the story laser-focused despite the huge cast of colorful characters. Hoshino Gen stars as Shunnosuke, a pale bookworm born into the samurai…
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Score: 3/10 MISSING is a long slog of a movie that can’t decide if it is an oddball buddy film or a Nancy Drew-esque detective flick. The buddies are a pervert and a slob who team up to commit crimes that crisscross the lines of mercy, sadism, and opportunism. The young detective is a streetwise…
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Score: 8/10 Film director (and occasional actor) Harada Masato recently passed away, leaving behind an impressive body of work. He may be best known to western audiences as the villain in THE LAST SAMURAI, but he directed 26 feature films. His 2015 film, THE EMPEROR OF AUGUST is a remake of the 1967 film JAPAN’S…
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Score: 6/10 An interesting addition to the canon of Japanese horror films and series, HUMAN SPECIMENS is adapted from the novel by Minato Kanae (SUNSET). The production leans on symbolic and transformational cinematography, detailed art design, and strong but enigmatic performances from the stellar cast. There are many horror productions in which the filmmakers force…
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Score: 6/10 Less action-packed than chapter one, chapter two of season 5 is primarily concerned with three long-delayed conversations. The first is between Nancy and Jonathan, whose relationship chemistry has been put under questioning by the writers this season. Their fateful dialogue happens in an inventive landscape of dripping and oozing matter transformed by a…
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It’s been a busy year chock full of Japanese productions dropping on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Jme, and elsewhere. Some disappointed, many entertained, and a handful soared to heavenly heights. The following mini reviews are taken from REEL JAPAN’s current and upcoming posts: ASURA Score: 8/10 Director Hirokazu Kore-eda known for his dozen feature films,…
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Limited Series Score: 4/10 Film star Shibasaki Ko remains a reigning queen of Japan’s television dramas. In her early days she co-starred in DR. COTO and GALILEO, as a nurse and police detective, respectively. Most recently she headlined INVISIBLE for the TBS station in 2022, memorably playing a mysterious and dangerous dealer of secrets. In…
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Score: 8/10 Wakamatsu Setsuro’s SNOW ON THE BLADE concerns the fallout from one of the most dramatic incidents in 19th century Japanese history–the assasination of Lord Ii Naosuke by a gang of revolutionaries. A powerful minister from a family who served the Tokugawa shoguns for generations, Lord Ii angered anti-westerners by agreeing to open ports…
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SCORE: 8/10 “Flipping through books so much your fingerprints wear off is a joy.” These words are spoken by a senior editor at the small Tokyo publisher at the center of this story. Based on the novel by Miura Shion, THE GREAT PASSAGE is an inspirational story about men and women who made their life’s…
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SCORE: 10/10 Based on a true story, director Takita Yojiro (DEPARTURES, WHEN THE LAST SWORD IS DRAWN) brings us an absorbing biopic about human perseverance and the struggle for science against ignorance and superstition. Okada Junichi turns in one of his finest performances as Santetsu Yasui, a young man living in the late Edo period…
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Limited series Score: 6/10 Strange Instruments of Mercy: A recent mystery series showcasing two young stars of Japanese cinema and television. Like an onion, peeling back its layers will make you cry. Tears of disappointment? Or tears in solidarity to these grieving and resilient characters? I have been looking forward to seeing the female leads,…
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Score: 3/10 Director Yamashita Tomohiko helms an Edo-era heist story that is, at best, an exploration of how poor men under strain of debt turn to thuggery. At worst, it lacks enough substance, stakes, and twists, to justify its passage into cinema. In the hands of a brilliant filmmaking crew, it could have succeeded. However,…
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Score: 5/10 Fittingly for a movie that focuses so much on the 18th century Edo government’s currency policy, IWANE, like a coin, has two sides: On one side, it is a conventional samurai film, shot brightly through modern lenses, with maximum stunt work pitting one style of swordplay against another, featuring a young warrior haunted…
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Score: 7/10 A young man gifted in swordsmanship but short in patience begs his teacher and his lord to allow him to travel to the neighboring domain to study swordsmanship further. Meanwhile, his clan leaders fear the annihilation of their entire domain after years of hiding fields, grain warehouses, and surplus funds from the Shogunate.…
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Limited series Score: 5/10 In this cold case murder mystery, a middle aged cop finds his elder mentor is at the center of the mystery. Further, the cold case once reopened spawns new deaths. Veteran Japanese actor Shibata Kyohei, known for his former onscreen detective persona and numerous guest roles (excellent as the dad in…
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Score: 9/10 Based on a novel by Nakayama Shichiri which chronicles the travails of two young people, Tone and Mikiko, whose world is violently wrenched from them by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami leaving them orphans and throwing them together. It also boldly tells a story of a series of grisly murders occurring years later.…
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Limited series Score: 5/10 Small Town Police Handle International Crimes With the Fate of Okinawa At Stake This moody historical detective miniseries pours fire and ice on a ticking clock. The fire comes in the form of Aoki Munetaka who plays a headstrong and reckless young Okinawan detective who is justifiably distrustful of authority. The…
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Score: 6/10 The Duffer Brothers bring us right into the action, which unfolds across four very different landscapes: suburban Hawkins, the military/twisted science industrial landscape, the moldy vegetative Upside Down, and an intriguing dreamier landscape of the Upside Down. Stranger Things has always put Hopper and Eleven at the center of their military and ESP…
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Hulu/Disney+: 2 Seasons Score: 6/10 Potentially more damaging to the Japanese tourism industry than any other production, Gannibal tells the story of a policeman from the city who takes a job in an isolated mountain village. It is hardly a spoiler to say: accusations of cannibalism haunt this village. Gannibal, which is based on a…
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Netflix, 1 season, 6 episodes Score: 5/10 Fujii Michihito, veteran director of the big and small screen, helms this project. He is best known for realistic thrillers like FACELESS, THE VILLAGE, and HARD DAYS (all excellent) as well as intriguing television dramas like THE JOURNALIST. I was surprised to see his name attached to this…
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Score: 7/10 The paradox of THE LAST SAMURAI and the two adaptations of SHOGUN: If you don’t know Japanese history, they intrigue and they invite you in. If you do know Japanese history, these pseudo-histories disappoint. There is nothing in them which is as interesting as the reality. Like SHOGUN, THE LAST SAMURAI runs the…
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Score: 8/10 Slow and steady, this quirky samurai film by Shigemichi Sugita moves inexorably to its bittersweet conclusion. At the center of this tale is a disabled and dependent warrior. His life has been a string of disappointments and near misses with happiness. Especially afflicted by bad luck in his relationships with women, his love…
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Score: 8/10 A War Film of Quiet Introspection: Two scenes stand out for their metaphorical poetry: Near the beginning, our protagonist, an elder samurai, explains to an inquisitive young lady that he admires crows because they always fly towards the sun. Worried, she admonishes him that he will go blind if he also gazes at…
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Score: 8/10 This film appears to have a message, and director Takashi Koizumi tries very hard to show rather than tell it. The cast ranges in age from schoolchildren to nono-generians and Koizumi has herded them into the mountains near Nagano, taking care to film across four seasons. What slowly unfurls like a fiddlehead in…
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