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Veteran Japanese actor Yakusho Koji will be feted with the prestigious lifetime achievement honor at the 18th Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong. Yakusho, who won best actor at Cannes in 2023 for Wim Wenders‘ “Perfect Days,” becomes the third Japanese recipient of the Afa’s highest accolade, following director Yamada Yoji (2008) and actress Kiki Kirin (2016).

A former civil servant who first ventured into Taiga drama (long-running TV series broadcast by Nhk), then played in several films by Kurosawa Akira, Yakusho became a major 1990s star in Asia as a result of “Shall We Dance?,” in which he portrayed a ball room dancer, and “Lost Paradise.” He also starred in Itami Juzo’s “Tampopo.”

The honor recognizes Yakusho’s four decades of contributions to cinema. The acclaimed performer was nominated four times and has previously nabbed the Afa best actor trophy twice — for “The Blood of Wolves” (2018) and “Perfect Days...

While he has created some of the most notable and lasting entries in the J-horror craze of the late 1990s, this only touches the mere surface of what defines the overall work of Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa. The features he did for the sadly short-lived Director’s Company is an interesting and insightful journey through the visual and thematic landscape which he would explore further in his famous works such as “Cure”, “Creepy” or “Cloud”. “Bumpkin Soup”, also known as “The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girl”, from 1985 is his sophomore feature and had previously been rejected by Nikkatsu for being “too weird” before it was picked up by Director’s Company. The playful melange of comedy, coming-of-age and even musical is an experimental take on Kurosawa’s core theme of the relationship of people and places as well as the search for meaning in the modern world.

on...

Well, here we are again. As we mention almost every year, the fact that the Japanese movie industry manages to produce the more ‘7/10′ movies than any other industry in the world has, once again, led it to the top of the Asia, since other countries’ industries have their ups and downs, with the Korean one in particular having one of its worst years in recent times. Furthermore, and despite the inherent problems local productions face, including the number of productions that is around 600 on a yearly basis, the gradual opening up of the industry, as witnessed in a number of co-productions with other Asian countries that was particularly evident in Tokyo International Film Festival, and the support program for local filmmakers to attend international festivals the government announce, local cinema has a number of reasons to be optimistic.

Without further ado, here are the best Japanese movies of 2024, in reverse order,...

Before Ayo Edebiri broke out in “The Bear” and “Bottoms” or even as a voice on “Big Mouth,” she was a huge Letterboxd influencer, offering a mix of hilarious and thoughtful commentary on a wide range of cinema. She has largely tempered her posting, still contributing a brief review from time to time, but is now returning to the film criticism forum with some recent Criterion Closet picks.

“I be on these sales. I’m on these sales. I’m getting 50 percent off these DVDs just like you are, so I’m very excited to be here,” Edebiri said as she scoured shelf upon shelf of classic cinema.

Edebiri’s first pick was Akira Kurasawa’s pulpy crime drama and the inspiration for Spike Lee and Denzel Washington’s latest collaboration, “High & Low.” Discussing the film, Edebiri said, “I’ve been seeing this popping off Letterboxd, which I think...

Su Yu Chun is a graduate of Tokyo University of the Arts. “It's Not that Pig's Problem” was awarded in Pia Film Festival in 2021. After shooting the short “Down the Road”, he came up with her debut feature, “Inch Forward”, which is her graduation project.

On the occasion of Inch Forward screening at Osaka International Film Festival, we speak with her about films-about-films, the inspiration behind the film and the development of the script, the reason so many Japanese movies have scenes at the sea, Nobuhiro Suwa appearing in the movie and other topics.

The film-about-films category has become quite popular lately. What do you like particularly in this style of movie and why did you choose to shoot one?

I probably prefer the film set to the film. I like metafictional films and I wanted to make a metafictional film from the first planning stage.

Is the story autobiographical?...

Kōji Yakusho is one of the greatest actors alive by any metric. In Japan, he's been nominated for a whopping 23 Japan Academy Film Prize acting awards, and has worked with some of the greatest Japanese directors of all time — Hirokazu Kore-eda, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Masayuki Suo, Takashi Miike, Shinji Aoyama, Kon Ichikawa, Hideo Gosha, Juzo Itami, and, of course, Shōhei Imamura.

However, Yakusho has also made a huge impact around the world, his star power and handsome solitude bringing acclaim to films like Shall We Dance? and Memoirs of a Geisha. He is one of the rare international actors to break out into mainstream recognition without resorting to speaking English, thanks to films like Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha and Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Babel. In 2023, he achieved what's arguably the greatest international recognition an actor can receive, winning Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for director Wim Wenders' beautiful character study,...

Spoiler Alert: This story contains mild spoilers for “The Brothers Sun,” available to watch on Netflix now.

On May 22, 1992, three men brutally stabbed Japanese filmmaker Juzo Itami outside his Tokyo home, just days after the release of his satire “Minbo no Onna,” or “Mob Woman.”

The director of “Tampopo” and “A Taxing Woman” suffered slash wounds across the face, neck and shoulder, but ultimately survived. Police suspected the attack may have been the yakuza’s retaliation for Itami’s “Mob Woman,” which portrays Japanese gangsters as crude bullies who are outsmarted by lawyer Mahiru Inoue (played by Itami’s wife Nobuko Miyamoto).

This assault inspired writer-producer Byron Wu to develop “The Brothers Sun,” the crime family dramedy starring Michelle Yeoh as matriarch Eileen “Mama” Sun, which premiered on Netflix early this year.

“I just thought it was so funny that these gangsters were so insecure about their jobs that they beat up a comedy director,...

What would you do if you discovered that your once-ordinary life was built on the foundation of one of Taiwan’s largest (and successful) organized crime families? Netflix’s crime comedy The Brothers Sun runs the gamut and the streets of the San Gabriel Valley for answers. Co-created by Byron Wu and Brad Falchuk, the eight-episode series follows the Sun family matriarch, Eileen Sun (Michelle Yeoh), who, after falling in love with a “country boy,” became second in command to one of the most lucrative and dangerous gangster businesses in Taiwan. Because of the potential threats on her family, she decides to spare her youngest son, Bruce (Sam Song Li), from the violent family business and moves with him to Los Angeles while leaving her older son, Charles (Justin Chien), back in Taiwan with his father (Johnny Kou) who turned him into a cutthroat assassin.

Here, Wu speaks with Deadline about the writing process,...

One of the first pieces of advice given to aspiring screenwriters is to try to write conflict without introducing a gun. Often, it’s a practical suggestion — for student productions, prop guns can be hard to come by — but it’s also an important learning exercise. Guns can be a crutch. If a character points a gun at someone’s head, there are immediate life-and-death stakes, sure, but then what? Someone either pulls the trigger or they don’t. The act itself isn’t what matters. It’s the context surrounding the action: Who’s being threatened? Why are they being threatened? What’s to be gained or lost by shooting them or letting them live? How did they get here? What drove them to such extremes? Answering these questions is what gives a story its pulse, and if you’re too quick to get to the gun, then the narrative flatlines.

Many films have tackled the complex topic of human desire, but none have done so in such a strange and unique way as 1985's Tampopo. The satiric Japanese Western, directed by Juzo Itami, explores the many roles that food plays across cultures, while simultaneously poking fun at the many tropes of American cinema. The movie draws a parallel between food and cinema as both are communal art forms that cross the boundaries of class and culture. The movie is a true and devoted love letter to the human sensory experience in all its forms and a very funny satire that is sure to appeal to anyone who has fallen in love with either food or film.

In what is definitely one of the greatest transitions in movie history, former actor Juzo Itami wrote and directed his first film in 1984, “The Funeral” which ended up netting five Japanese Academy Awards in 1985, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor for Tsutomu Yamazaki, while it also came first in the annual Kinema Junpo critics' poll. The production was financed by Itami and his wife Nobuko Miyamoto, along with a friend of theirs, the cake mogul Yasushi Tamaoki, and was distributed by Atg. The script was inspired by Itami's own experience of his father-in-law's funeral, while it was shot in the house of the family, and the son of the couple also played a part.

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The movie begins with the narrator introducing us to an elderly couple, Shinkichi Amamiya and his wife, Kikue, just before the former has...

Japanese actor Koji Yakusho, winner of Cannes’ best actor prize this year for his universally acclaimed performance in Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, has been selected 2023 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival’s filmmaker in focus.

Yakusho will attend the Taiwanese festival in person and present a selection of seven of his films during the event’s 17-day duration. The titles shown will include Perfect Days and the erotic classic Lost Paradise (1997), as well as five titles selected by Yakusho himself, including Kamikaze Taxi (1995), Shall We Dance (1996), Cure (1997), Eureka (2000) and The Woodsman and the Rain (2011).

“With these seven films, cinephiles will be able to witness the charm and versatile acting of a legendary actor,” Taipei’s organizers said in a statement.

Across his four-decade career, Yakusho has been nominated for the Japan Academy of Film Prize 23 times, including seven consecutive nominations in the best leading actor category, which he has won three times,...

Children of the mid-1980s will likely recall the Toys "Я" Us Super Toy Run. The 1985 sweepstakes was one of the most alluring prizes offered to a toy-hungry youth, and most kids secretly had a plan of attack, should they win. Winners were given a shopping cart and five glorious, unfettered minutes to run through their local Toys "Я" Us, scooping whatever they wanted into it. You were allowed to keep whatever you could carry out. It was essentially a form of legal looting.

The modern cineaste's version of the Super Toy Run is, of course, the Criterion Closet. On a long-running video series put out by the Criterion Channel, notable filmmakers are invited to look through a small storage room filled floor-to-ceiling with Criterion Collection Blu-rays, and are permitted to take what they want. Unlike the Toys "Я" Us equivalent, unfortunately, no one full-arms an entire shelf of Blu-rays into a waiting shopping cart.

The Japanese entertainment industry has lost a truly marvelous talent. On January 15th, 2023, versatile character actor Noboru Mitani passed away at the age of 90. On the website Yahoo! Japan, Kyodo News reports the cause of death being “due to acute exacerbation of chronic heart failure”( Kyodo News 1). Mitani worked with an array of filmmakers, frequently appearing in the works of Kinji Fukasaku and Juzo Itami. He was also quite active in television and theatre. Tokusatsu fans may recognize him for his appearances in “Return of Ultraman,” “Ultraman Taro,” and “Space Sheriff Gavan,” while anime enthusiasts may remember him for voice acting in the series “Princess Tutu.” His wide range, colorful personality, and how real he could make his characters feel made him stand out as an actor. He also was often able to convey so much through his facial expressions alone, even in moments without dialogue.

Noboru Mitani and Hiroyuki Kawase...

Festivals

On Aug. 24, Ukraine independence day, the Venice Film Festival has revealed that it will host a Ukrainian Day on Sept. 8, as part of the festival’s Venice Production Bridge initiative. The day will kick off with a panel discussion introduced by the president of the Biennale, Roberto Cicutto, and the artistic director of the 79th festival, Alberto Barbera.

Panelists include the Ambassador of Ukraine to Italy, Yaroslav Melnyk; the head of the National Cinema Institution of Ukraine, Marina Kuderchuk; the director of the film “Luxembourg, Luxembourg” (which will screen in competition in the festival’s Horizons strand), Antonio Lukich; the director of the film “Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom” (screening out of competition), Evgeny Afineevsky; the exhibiting artist in the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 59th Biennale Arte, Pavlo Makov; the curator of the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 59th Biennale Arte, Boris Filonenko; the representative of Ukraine’s...

Above: The movie poster for Sweet Home.It was at the height of the early-'00s J-horror boom that director Kiyoshi Kurosawa built his reputation as a master of the eerie. A nuanced filmmaker whose methodical style provoked genuine chills, he stood apart from the glut of jump scare merchants with a brand of anxiety-inducing, existential horror that eschewed shock tactics in favour of deep, brooding atmospheres. As slow-burners like Cure (1997), Pulse (2001), and Loft (2005) left audiences lingering over the nature of the human condition, a turn to family drama with 2008’s Tokyo Sonata would then mark the apex of his career with an Un Certain Regard Jury Prize win at Cannes. Fast-forward to September 2020, and he’s been recognized for excellence once again, with a Silver Lion win at Venice for his latest film, Wife of a Spy.But back in 1989, the rookie director was at the reigns of a...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

After the Storm (Hirokazu Kore-eda)

Can our children pick and choose the personality traits they inherit, or are they doomed to obtain our lesser qualities? These are the hard questions being meditated on in After the Storm, a sobering, transcendent tale of a divorced man’s efforts to nudge back into his son’s life. Beautifully shot by regular cinematographer Yutaka Yamasaki, it marks a welcome and quite brilliant...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

The Age of Shadows (Kim Jee-woon)

Eyebrows were raised when it was announced that South Korea will submit the as-yet-unreleased espionage thriller The Age of Shadows for Oscar consideration instead of Cannes hits The Handmaiden and The Wailing. Premiering out of competition at the 73rd Venice Film Festival, writer/director Jee-woon Kim’s return to Korean-language cinema after a brief stint in Hollywood with the Schwarzenegger-starrer The Last Stand...

Every week we dive into the cream of the crop when it comes to home releases, including Blu-ray and DVDs, as well as recommended deals of the week. Check out our rundown below and return every Tuesday for the best (or most interesting) films one can take home. Note that if you’re looking to support the site, every purchase you make through the links below helps us and is greatly appreciated.

Anatahan (Josef von Sternberg)

Josef von Sternberg called Anatahan his best film. Borne from more than a decade’s worth of frustration with the studio system, it was, as the last picture he completed, his stamp on his time as a director. Even then, when released in 1953, it was only released in a butchered format, and, as it often goes in such cases, was subsequently abandoned by popular consciousness. But a few times each year, cinephiles (at least...

"Whatcha eating?" Janus Films is re-releasing a Japanese film from 1985 titled Tampopo, from director Jûzô Itami, highly acclaimed by critics and foodies as one of the best films about a love for food. Described as a "ramen western", it's about a truck driver who stops at a small family-run noodle shop and decides to help its fledgling business. Tampopo is played by Japanese actress Nobuko Miyamoto. The film also has a few vignettes about the relationship of love and food. I only recently fell in love with authentic Japanese ramen after moving to New York and traveling to Japan a few years ago, and now I desperately want to see this. The 4K re-release will play in a few select cinemas (listings here) and I'll definitely be eating ramen after seeing it. For a full guide on ramen in Japan made in partnership with the re-release, click here. Enjoy! Here's...

More than just a variety of western, spaghetti is the movie food of love, death and lip-smacking slurps

This week's Clip joint is by Jay Glennie, who is currently writing a book of interviews with British Oscar winners. Follow him on Twitter @Britannium

Think of spaghetti and the movies and the chances are an image of a mysterious man with no name in a Sergio Leone western is instantly brought to mind.

But think again! Whether it's egg or durum wheat pasta, spaghetti in particular has proved a pivotal plot device in many of our favourite movies. I'm jumping through hoops (see what I did there?) for these carbohydrate-laden scenes.

The Lady and the Tramp

Spaghetti has never been more seductive than in this scene between a streetwise mutt and a prim 'n' proper Cocker Spaniel. When the Tramp takes his love to the best Italian restaurant in town, Tony's,...

"Yoshimitsu Morita, whose films depicted the absurdity and vulnerability of everyday life in conformist Japan, has died," reports Yuri Kagayama for the AP. "He was 61." His breakthrough came with The Family Game (1983), winner of five Kinema Junpo Awards — Best Film, Director, Screenplay, Actor (Yusaku Matsuda) and Supporting Actor (Jûzô Itami) — in which Matsuda plays "an offbeat tutor who forms a heartwarming relationship with a young man in a stereotypical middle-class family."

"Though even its most perceptive commentators reduce Kazoku geimu (Family Game) to a critique of 'affluent, middle-class nuclear family life in the city and nose-to-the-grindstone education systems' [Keiko McDonald in 1989], Morita's most widely known film is before all else hilarious," wrote Bob Davis in Senses of Cinema in 2006. "Its laughs derive from inappropriate and idiosyncratic behavior, unseemly frankness, slapstick antics, gross-out tactics, repetitions, exaggerations, explosive contrasts, and unnatural pacing." In Davis's "brazen 'ranking' of Morita's films, Family Game, Deaths in Tokimeki, Sorekara [And Then], Keiho,...

Rank the week of June 14th’s Blu-ray and DVD new releases against the best films of all-time:new Releasesbattle:los Angeles

(DVD and Blu-ray | PG13 | 2011)

Flickchart Ranking: #3294

Times Ranked: 3631

Win Percentage: 42%

Top-20 Rankings: 9

Directed By: Jonathan Liebesman

Starring: Aaron Eckhart • Ramon Rodriguez

Cory Hardrict • Gino Anthony Pesi • Ne-Yo

Genres: Action • Action Thriller • Alien Invasion Films • Apocalyptic Film • Science Fiction • Sci-Fi Action • Thriller

Rank This Movie

Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son

(DVD and Blu-ray | PG13 | 2011)

Flickchart Ranking: #19020

Times Ranked: 83

Win Percentage: 31%

Top-20 Rankings: 1

Directed By: John Whitesell

Starring: Martin Lawrence • Brandon T. Jackson

Jessica Lucas • Michelle Ang • Portia Doubleday

Genres: Comedy • Police Comedy

Rank This Movie

Hall Pass

(DVD and Blu-ray | R | 2011)

Flickchart Ranking: #5878

Times Ranked: 1164

Win Percentage: 40%

Top-20 Rankings: 4

Directed By: Bobby & Peter Farrelly

Starring: Owen Wilson • Jason Sudeikis • Jenna Fischer • Christina Applegate • Nicky Whelan

Genres: Comedy • Romantic Comedy

Rank This Movie

Kill The Irishman

(DVD and Blu-ray | R | 2011)

Flickchart...

Eclipse's Oshima's Outlaw Sixties DVD box set is the first serious attempt to represent Nagisa Oshima's 1960s filmography on North American home video. The marketing of this box tends to make Oshima seem like a Eastern Jean Luc-Godard, but like other members of the so-called Japanese New Wave, Oshima worked in a completely different aesthetic, cultural and political space. 

Nagisa Oshima's feature film career can be roughly divided into three periods: Shochiko (1959-1960), Sozosha (1965-1972), and Euro-Japanese co-productions (1976-1986). The Eclipse box set presents five films from the beginning of the Sozosha period, including Pleasures of the Flesh (1965/B&W), Violence at Noon (1966/B&W), Sing a Song of Sex (1967/Color), Japanese Summer: Double Suicide (1967/B&W), and Three Resurrected Drunkards (1968/Color). These films make use key themes that Oshima would return to throughout his career like criminality, sexual deviance, the Japanese left, militarism, and Japanese-Korean relations. However,...

Hungry? Let Jan Jarventaus cook up the perfect ingredients for cinematic explorations of the culinary arts

Cookery shows used to be a sterile affair, a simple Ikea assembly manual of what to do, to the letter. Then the small screen invented gastroporn and life has never tasted the same. Cinema, however, has always had a healthy fascination with the sensual aspects of this transformation of raw material into a heady brew – a fascination undoubtedly nurtured in part in earlier days by taboos and proscriptions on what could be considered appropriate expressions of sensual delights.

The food recipe also has strong metaphorical links with the notion of alchemy: a skilled practitioner performs a feat of magical transmutation of base elements which are mere lumps of lead in the hands of the non-adept.

There are obvious cases in cinema where hard-to-swallow themes are leavened by a love of food entering the equation.

Director Walter Hill.

Kicking Ass with Walter Hill

by Jon Zelazny

Action flicks. Two-fisted tales. Guy movies. Whatever you want to call them, writer, producer, and director Walter Hill is one of the living masters, with a resume full of classics from The Getaway (1972), to the Alien series, and the definitive eighties action-comedy blockbuster, 48 Hrs. (1982).

2009 marks the 30th anniversary of The Warriors (1979), Hill’s surreal “street gang on the run” cult classic, and his breakout success as a director.

Jon: A couple years ago, you did an audio commentary and on-camera intro for a new DVD edition of The Warriors. It was the first time I’d ever seen you; is it my imagination, or have you kept a low profile over the years?

Walter Hill: I’d never done a commentary before on one of my films. I don’t like the idea of explaining a movie; I...

By Craig Phillips Yet another in my series of fully biased reports on movies that are frustratingly absent a current DVD release here in the United States (the other two lists are here, and here.) Here are ten more neglected films -- and this is one article I wouldn't mind seeing become dated, when/if these films finally do arrive on disc:

The List of Adrian Messenger: I'll confess that I haven't seen this one since I was a pre-teen (on television one night), but it was one of the first mystery films I both really loved and even understood, aside from the 70s all-star Agatha Christie films. Even if there's a chance it's now dated, the pedigree -- director John Huston, actors Kirk Douglas, George C. Scott, Robert Mitchum, et al -- should alone be enough to get this one its due on DVD. A real head-scratcher that it's...

With great sadness we report that Dan Talbot's 43 year old company New Yorker Films is ceasing operations. Rumor during the Spirit Awards was that he was asking Palm Pictures, where Bob Berney is nesting currently with Jeannie Bernie, recently of New York Film Society, to take over his collection. No solid news however has hit the press yet. Dan Talbot and New Yorker are legendary and loved. His theater, Lincoln Plaza Cinema is said to be intact. To repeat IndieWire's list of film community members who have worked at New Yorker, are Bingham Ray, Jeff Lipsky, John Vanco, Susan Wrubel, Mary Ann Hult, Mark Lipsky, Sasha Berman, Suzanne Fedak, Rebecca Conget and Harris Dew. Personally, when head of acquisitions at Republic Pictures, he called me and offered me a straight video distribution deal (no advance, no mg) to Juzo Itami's Tampopo and The Funeral from him at at time when he never paid more than $5,000 for U.S. rights to foreign language films. Tampopo was an evergreen seller for us and in fact, it's still showing theatrically in U.S. and it's being offered by Amazon on DVD. And Juzo Itami himself was a national treasure of Japan.