Japanese Story

Jul 6, 2020 — Songbook In the blue moonlight of a humid December night, an escape is underway. A man in army fatigues runs from an open-air cell with a rolled-up rug in one hand and a sword in the other, stolen from someone...

Jul 6, 2020 — Kore-eda’s first feature shot outside of Japan also gives us the first pairing of Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche.

Jun 29, 2020 — Channel Calendars This July, the Criterion Channel celebrates unconventional artists who march to the beat of their own drum, with spotlights on indie iconoclast Miranda July, cutting-edge composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, downtown poet Sara Driver, lyrical documentarians Bill and Turner Ross, and formally...

Jun 26, 2020 — This week’s history-seeped highlights explore queer cinema legacies, black stories on screen, and marketing movies while a pandemic rages.

Jun 23, 2020 — Late in Tokyo Olympiad, Kon Ichikawa’s thrillingly anomalous record of the 1964 Olympic Summer Games, the film documents one of the most taxing contests, the individual modern pentathlon, in a startling montage of still photographs, accompanied by stark sound effects....

May 27, 2020 — Twenty-one festivals from around the world contribute to the eclectic lineup of the free We Are One: A Global Film Festival.

Apr 13, 2020 — The director of House, dozens of experimental films, and thousands of commercials returned again and again to the devastation of the Second World War.

Apr 3, 2020 — Everyone remembers their first time with Toshiro Mifune. With almost anyone else, such a first would be recollected with a shrug or a casual “it was . . . fine.” But Mifune induces delirious and perfect recall: of him flat...

Mar 27, 2020 — Following a briefing on the crisis, we turn to a few items that might help us take our minds off it.

Jan 23, 2020 — The return of Miranda July, a first feature from Garrett Bradley, and a new doc from Kirsten Johnson are a few of this year’s most anticipated features.