Machiko Kyo. Japanese star Machiko Kyo was seen in several of the most widely admired cinema classics of the 1950s, including Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu, and Teinosuke Kinugasa’s…
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Scariest Movies Ever Made: Chicago Critics’ Top 100. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, tops the list but a number of strange and spooky omissions.
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Abbas Kiarostami’s Tokyo-set drama Like Someone in Love offers a stylish and intriguing look at a dysfunctional ‘love triangle.’
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Nagisa Oshima: In the Realm of the Senses Iconoclastic Filmmaker dead at 80 Nagisa Oshima, best known as the director of the sexually charged 1976 psychological drama Ai No Corrida…
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Toshiro Mifune (second from right) in Seven Samurai. The Academy had its John Hughes tribute on Sunday. Tonight, Turner Classic Movies is paying tribute to someone who may not be…
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Zhang Yimou on the set of A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop a.k.a. A Simple Noodle Story. Best known for his lush collaborations with Gong Li (Raise the…
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Michiyo Aratama, Tatsuya Nakadai in The Human Condition Masaki Kobayashi’s The Human Condition, based on Jumpei Gomikawa’s novel, is probably as well known for its scope and scale as for…
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The Masseurs and a Woman. The usual 1930s Japanese film preoccupations with societal roles are explored in writer-director Hiroshi Shimizu’s moving Anma to onna / The Masseurs and a Woman…
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Spirited Away directed by Hayao Miyazaki. As part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ three-month celebration of anime, a screening of Hayao Miyazaki’s 2002 Oscar-winning animated feature…
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Wedding Peach. ANIME! High Art - Pop Culture “ANIME! High Art - Pop Culture,” a multimedia exhibition spotlighting the art of Japanese animation, will have its American premiere at the…
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Erotic sex stories: “Debauched Desires.” PRESS RELEASE Kino International and KimStim are proud to release the four-DVD set Debauched Desires: Four Erotic Masterpieces by Masaru Konuma. Directed by the master…
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Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s capably acted urban family drama Tokyo Sonata exposes the seemingly inexorable unraveling of Japan’s traditional social fabric.
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Rashomon effect revisited: Toshiro Mifune and Machiko Kyo in Akira Kurosawa classic. Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 classic Rashomon, which officially introduced Japanese cinema to the world at large, will be the…
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Set (and filmed) in pre-World War II Japan, Kenji Mizoguchi’s female-centered Sisters of the Gion is a fine ‘feminist’ melodrama. Isuzu Yamada stars.
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Akira Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well deserves to be as well known as Rashomon and Seven Samurai. Toshiro Mifune stars.
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Released 9 years after atomic bombs were dropped on 2 Japanese cities, the 1954 classic Godzilla / Gojira features 1 of cinema’s greatest monsters.
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Two-time Palme d’Or-winning filmmaker Shohei Imamura died in Tokyo on May 30. The 79-year-old Japanese filmmaker had been suffering from liver cancer. Born in Tokyo in 1926, Imamura entered a…
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Seijun Suzuki’s challenging but noteworthy musical Princess Raccoon mixes various cinematic genres and styles. Zhang Ziyi and Joe Odagiri star.
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This fall, New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is presenting the film series “Early Autumn: Masterworks of Japanese Cinema from the National Film Center, Tokyo.” The series consists of fifty-three…
Black Rain. Animego’s DVD release of Shohei Imamura’s Black Rain includes as a bonus feature a selection of World War II-era anti-Japanese propaganda films. Sponsored by various U.S. government bureaucracies,…
House / Hausu by Nobuhiko Obayashi. Schedule and synopses from the American Cinematheque website. Wednesday, September 23 - 7:30 PM Japanese Cult Classics Double Feature: HOUSE (HAUSU), 1977, Janus Films,…
Nagisa Oshima. “No other director of Oshima’s generation has made more vital, inventive and challenging films, or taken more risks. He is a giant in contemporary cinema.” - Tony Rayns…
In addition to a screening of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will have another East Asian cinematic event in the upcoming weeks: an…
Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 action classic Seven Samurai is one of those rare films that get better and better with each new viewing. Toshiro Mifune stars.