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Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For regular updates, sign up for our weekly email newsletter and follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSHard Truths.Mike Leigh’s forthcoming Hard Truths will reunite him with Marianne Jean-Baptiste, star of Secrets and Lies (1996). It will be the British director’s first film set in the present day since Another Year (2010).Jia Zhangke has divulged some details of We Shall Be All, now in the early stages of post-production. In production off and on since 2001, the film will be his first feature since Ash Is Purest White (2018). “I travelled with actors and a cameraman to shoot, without a script, without any obvious story,” the director told Variety. “This is a work of fiction, but I have applied many documentary methods.”Robert Bresson’s rarely seen Four Nights of a Dreamer is being restored by MK2 Films, set for a spring release.

As you go through the whole filmography of directors such as Yasujiro Ozu, you start to notice a certain pattern, not only in terms of the visual style but also considering elements of the story. The concept of marriage is, most of the time, when collisions and arguments start to erupt within the family unit, signifying the chasm within Japanese post-war society and some underlying issues in a conformist culture which, to this day, have not been fully resolved. In “Tokyo Twilight”, possibly one of his bleakest features stylistically and narratively, Ozu again shows the family as a mirror of society, its contradictions, regrets and guilt, posing the question of where the culture is headed and whether freedom and independence will bring the solution people wish for.

Tokyo Twilight is screening at Japan Society as part of the Family Portrait program

Shukichi Sugiyama (Chishu Ryu) is a respected employee in a Tokyo bank.

Presented by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan, and Japan Society

February 15-24, 2024 at Japan Society

and partner venues in NYC

New York, NY – Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan and Japan Society are proud to announce the eighth installment of the Aca Cinema Project film series – Family Portrait: Japanese Family in Flux – an ongoing initiative fostered by the Government of Japan to increase awareness and appreciation of Japanese films and filmmakers in the United States. The Aca Cinema Project has presented events in both New York and LA since 2021, and its upcoming edition will showcase over nine contemporary and classic films from February 15-24, 2024 all with the central theme of the modern family. The bonds of the Japanese family are often revered in the West, and this series will both celebrate these traditions as well as call into question their reality and relevance in our quickly changing modern world.

Ozu Yasujiro, the leading Japanese film director behind classics including “Tokyo Story” and “Late Spring,” has had his double birth and death anniversaries – Ozu died in 1963 on the day of his 60th birthday, a little more than a year after the release of his last film “An Autumn Afternoon” – celebrated throughout 2023 at places as varied as the Cannes Film Festival, Los Angeles’ Margaret Herrick Library and the Taiwan Film & Audiovisual Institute.

But it falls to October’s Tokyo International Film Festival to put on this year’s biggest and most comprehensive reconstruction of Ozu’s surprisingly varied career.

Working in conjunction with the National Film Archive of Japan, the festival will present an extensive retrospective that covers almost all the films that Ozu directed (TIFF/Nfaj Classics: Ozu Yasujiro Week) from Oct. 24-29.

Ozu spent his entire career, from camera assistant in 1923 to renown director in 1962, as an employee of major Japanese studio Shochiku,...

Season 2 of the Emmy-winning comedy “Hacks,” the debut of Colin Firth’s true-crime drama “The Staircase” and the streaming return of “The Matrix: Resurrections” all await HBO Max subscribers in May. If you’re looking for something new to watch or wondering what’s on HBO Max this month, not to worry, we’ve got the full rundown.

There are several must-watch new TV shows on both HBO and HBO Max this month, new and returning. Acclaimed Jean Smart comedy “Hacks” returns for Season 2 on May 12. As for the new debuts, May sees the premieres for HBO Max’s “The Staircase” on May 5, starring Colin Firth as Michael Peterson in the true-crime limited series, as well as the HBO premiere of Steven Moffat’s (”Doctor Who”) series adaptation of “The Time Traveler’s Wife” on May 15.

New films this month include the streaming return of “The Matrix: Resurrections” and streaming premieres...

With movie theaters fully back up and running, HBO Max no longer has any major film releases to point to with its list of new releases for May 2022. That’s alright though as the streamer is leaning into the HBO side of its branding to offer up some fun TV releases.

The biggest HBO Max original this month is undoubtedly the return of Hacks on May 12. The first season of this comedy starred Jean Smart as a venerated Vegas comedy and Hannah Einbinder as her new millennial assistant. The first batch of episodes was excellent and even won an Emmy or two for its troubles and now season 2 will look to keep up the good vibes.

Premiering on May 15, is The Time Traveler’s Wife. This series adaptation of the 2003 novel (which in turn became a a 2009 movie) keeps up with two star-crossed lovers who can never quite make the timing work…...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Film at Lincoln Center

Films by Hong Sang-soo, Bong Joon-ho, and Park Chan-wook are only part of “Relentless Invention: New Korean Cinema, 1996–2003.”

Metrograph

Susan Sontag’s debut feature Duet for Cannibals has been restored.

The Carax / Bong / Gondry anthology Tokyo! has late-night showings, while Cukor’s Little Women screens early.

A Noah Baumbach retrospective pairs...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Museum of the Moving Image

A major Terrence Malick retrospective has begun.

“No Joke: Absurd Comedy as Political Reality” ends with the staggering The Trial and Monsieur Verdoux.

Film Forum

Films on the Romanian revolution are showcased in a new series.

Ozu’s Tokyo Twilight screens in a restored version.

Films by George Roy Hill...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Film Forum

Two by Ozu, Tokyo Story and Tokyo Twilight, screen in restored versions.

Films by George Lucas and Joseph Losey play this weekend, as well as a print of Twelve O’Clock High.

Museum of Modern Art

MoMA has reopened, and it is–I do not say this lightly–almost too much in one weekend.

I learned to talk Ozu in the baths. Chin-deep in hot spring, lips pruning, my mother and my grandmother would wait for women to walk just out of earshot. Then, they offered their verdicts: Setsuko Hara forehead. Those Kinuyo Tanaka cheeks. Wrists made for slipping out wallets, like hers, oh you know, that actress so good with showing appetite—Haruko, yes, Haruko Sugimura. I should specify that we talked Ozu women—he gave us so many shades—because there really was only one Ozu man: Chishu Ryu, the poet of sighs. That’s not quite true, of course. There are wagons of men in the four decades of his films. But in the waters of Hakone and Atami, my mother and her mother weren’t quite interested in dissecting man or brotherhood. Disrobed, we wanted to get to the heart of things, to the kinds of truths, and un-truths, mothers pass on to daughters.

For those accustomed to the bittersweet greatest hits of Japanese auteur Yasujirô Ozu’s later period familial dramas, the lesser known 1952 social satire The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice reminds one of a wider range than some of his revered titles would indicate. Seeing as this more obscured title arrived just a year prior to 1953’s ineffably devastating Tokyo Story (review), with its poignant intergenerational rifts, makes the latter title all the more unprecedented. Likewise, the coterie of titles marked by seasonal or time-oriented motifs which would follow in quick succession (Early Spring; Tokyo Twilight; Equinox Flower; Good Morning; Late Autumn; The End of Summer; An Autumn Afternoon) speaks to Ozu’s own dislike for the themes and motifs used here.…...

Launched in 2006, the Cine Fan Summer International Film Festival (SummerIFF) premieres new films with an added appeal to the younger audience in Hong Kong. The screenings of around 30 titles from pop Asian fare to restored classics to award-winning titles freshly from world-class film festivals are held in August every year. SummerIFF arouses the interest of public in watching films and continues to develop new audiences for Hkiff. Filmmakers and critics are invited to attend meet-the-audience sessions to facilitate cultural exchange.

This year, SummerIFF will be bringing a host of Cannes titles, including “The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil” sees Korea’s burly charismatic actor Don Lee anchors the high-concept thriller.

“The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil”

The Fantastic East section brings awe-inspiring experience with a selection of six gripping films from Japan and South Korea, including “Almost a Miracle”, a lighthearted romance by Ishii Yuga, “Ride Your Wave” from free-spirited animator Yuasa Masaaki,...