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1 week ago | 
thefilmstage.com | Blake Simons
What is love? For some, it is mutuality––a chemistry, care, and concern that blossoms into an equally supportive relationship. For others, it is devotion––a one-sided, obsessional affection that the lover finds selfless. Japanese idol group Happy Fanfare sing about love, but they’re not allowed to pursue their own––such is the “No Love” clause present in their contracts.
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2 weeks ago | 
indiewire.com | Blake Simons
Ask anyone — it’s easy to get lost in the Tokyo subway. The city’s underground boasts ample signposting to guide commuters and tourists — but there’s so much of it, the passageways and stairways all look alike, and oh, we’re right back where we started. Genki Kawamura’s delightful blockbuster provocation “Exit 8”understands and exploits these frustrations, transforming these claustrophobic corridors into a site of psychological exploration, personal choice, and national anxieties.
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2 weeks ago | 
thefilmstage.com | Blake Simons
When confronted with the past, do you drive away or turn back to face it? Siblings Ren (Kurosaki Kodai, in his first lead role) and Emi (Mai Kiryu) have been estranged from their father (Ken’ichi Endô) for the ten years since he chose a new work opportunity in Tokyo. Ren, now a florist, notices a familiar name on the neighboring workstation’s order card.
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2 weeks ago | 
screenanarchy.com | Blake Simons
Richard Linklater has long been interested in approximating and revisiting reality. The Before films showed us temporal fragments spun out from a personal chance encounter; Boyhood crafted empathy out of temporality; and Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly abstracted our world to explore the effects that dreams and drugs can have on it. Nouvelle Vague does not, conceptually, immediately strike as an extension of this filmography-wide project, and yet it is.
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3 weeks ago | 
indiewire.com | Blake Simons
Kana (Yuumi Kawai) is a listless young woman in her early twenties living in Tokyo. Working as a beautician, drifting between men, and moving through life without clear rhyme or reason, her character is abrasive, unexpected, and revelatory to encounter on screen.
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3 weeks ago | 
yahoo.com | Blake Simons
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key TakeawaysKana (Yuumi Kawai) is a listless young woman in her early twenties living in Tokyo. Working as a beautician, drifting between men, and moving through life without clear rhyme or reason, her character is abrasive, unexpected, and revelatory to encounter on screen.
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3 weeks ago | 
indiewire.com | Blake Simons
It begins as many great films do: with a character peering through a window, their gaze landing on someone and fixing itself there — eyes widening in curiosity, interest, perhaps recognition. The characters in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels have a tendency to unspool when faced with their Rube Goldberg prompt to do so, the three-act nature of their memories ripe for successful cinema adaptation.
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3 weeks ago | 
yahoo.com | Blake Simons
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key TakeawaysIt begins as many great films do: with a character peering through a window, their gaze landing on someone and fixing itself there — eyes widening in curiosity, interest, perhaps recognition.
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3 weeks ago | 
easternkicks.com | Blake Simons
FEFF 2025’s multi-hyphenate juror talks Japan Night and beyond…Of all the guests at this year’s Far East Film Festival in Udine, it’s Megumi that I find myself most excited to speak with. The Japanese film industry is at a turning point. #MeToo has shaken up the old guard, new female directing and producing voices are emerging, and fresh production initiatives have revamped the pipeline. Japan’s is a national cinema that appears to be asking: what’s next?
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4 weeks ago | 
desperatelyseekingsubtitles.substack.com | Blake Simons
Hideki Noda is a legendary figure in international theatre, staging more than forty plays in his home country of Japan over the past fifty years. His work is literary, dialogue-rich, and full of clever wordplay — which of course makes it a formidable task to translate. But barriers of language have never deterred Noda or slowed him down. In the early 1990s, Noda moved to London, an experience that inspired him to found theatre company Noda Map and work across both countries.
