I’m a skeptic by nature. When the blandly attractive heroes and heroines in romcoms talk about “love at first sight” and “true love,” I...

A24’s The Tragedy of Macbeth begins with narration over a blank screen. William Shakespeare’s familiar verse immediately establishes the...

[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Two swordsmen stare each other down. Wind howls through the empty...

Masayuki Suo’s Talking the Pictures ends with a quote attributed to director Hiroshi Inagaki: Movies were once silent. But in Japan, they...

[The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] The plot of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car revolves around a...

Recently, I purchased a ticket for Japan Society’s upcoming screening of Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo, one of only three...

When you get right down to it, the most memorable documentaries serve the same basic purpose as narrative films: telling stories,...

[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Near the end of the first of the three Rashomon-esque chapters that...

This weekend, I decided to get into the spirit of the Halloween season by buying a five-movie access pass for Nightstream, a (supposedly)...

[The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] From its mournful reprise of Louis Armstrong’s “We Have All the...

Efficient. If I had to choose a single word to describe Paul Schrader’s directorial style, that would be it: Efficient. In his movies...

Concluded Japan Cuts 2021 with a self-catered double feature: It’s a Summer Film!: This lighthearted ode to the spirit of creativity is a...

If you still require evidence that Takashi Miike is a certified cinematic genius, look no further than his latest effort, The Great Yokai...

Here in the United States, Kiyoshi Kurosawa has acquired a reputation for primarily producing “J-horror,” thanks in large part to the...

The jidaigeki genre has become increasingly rare in recent years, even in its native country. Revisionist, postmodern, cynical twists on...

[The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] The pre-credit sequence of James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad is more...

Following an appropriately surreal and dreamlike prologue, David Lowery’s The Green Knight opens on a surprisingly mundane note: an image...

[The following review contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Netflix’s recent three-part adaptation of R. L. Stine's Fear Street novel...

[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] After a yearlong absence due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the MCU has...

The marketing for Richard Donner’s 1978 adaptation of Superman proudly proclaimed that the film would convince audiences that “a man...