[ The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] The first movie I ever saw at Japan Society, way back in the ancient pre-COVID days of 2017, was a Meiko Kaji vehicle—specifically Blind Woman’s Curse , a delightfully weird relic of ‘70s exploitation cinema that blends chanbara  action, horror, grotesque comedy, and Butoh  into an unclassifiable cocktail of disparate yet harmonious artistic disciplines. So obviously, when the venue’s fine film programmers recently...

[ The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] The first Ready or Not  was a delightful surprise. I initially threw it on just to kill some time during a long airplane flight, only to find myself thoroughly entertained by its tight narrative structure, irreverent tone, and solid ensemble cast (especially Henry Czerny, who has been my favorite character actor since I saw Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible at age nine). Although the marketing had prepared me for a...

[ The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] When I was younger, I was obsessed with the phenomenon of “backmasking.” I have many fond memories of huddling over my desk until three o’clock in the morning, illuminated only by the glow of my computer monitor, listening intently to reversed audio clips. Being a skeptic, of course, I never truly believed that the purported “hidden messages” contained therein were authentic. Nevertheless, I marveled at the human brain’s...