Tsukamoto’s latest is somewhat a mixed oddity, set in the torrid aftermath of WWII and centering on several characters who must eke out a survival while confronting personal trauma, shot in a handheld style with a digital indie look.
Suzuki’s middle entry of his arthouse ‘Taisho’ trilogy sees a playwright get bogged down by his own shifting realities, fictive or otherwise, spawning a spectral meta-theatrical experience that is largely inscrutable yet weirdly transfixing.
A tad overlong, but this coming-of-age, teen angst movie captures with exceptional ambition the pre-social media stan culture with a kind of authenticity, intimacy and raging fervour quite rarely experienced in cinema.
It does sometimes feel too stretched out with Kurosawa milking sentimentality out of its melancholy postwar drama, but the compelling characters take us somewhere meaningful as we ponder about what it means to be poor but in love.
Probably Miyazaki’s most epic film inasmuch as it is a pure fantasy-adventure with strong themes of peaceful co-existence as battles are waged among humans, animals and spirits.
A terrific and beautifully-shot melodrama full of warmth and pathos as Kore-eda invites and immerses us into the lovely world of three adult sisters and their much younger half-sister who has come to join them.
A girl with a sought-after magic crystal falls from the sky in this underrated early gem from Miyazaki, packed with action, comedy and fantasy in what could be his purest, most exhilarating adventure.
This is Kore-eda operating at his peak as he delivers one of 2023’s finest films with this intricately-structured and revelatory drama about the blind spots in our understanding of human behaviour and empathy.
Students are forced to kill each other by law in this Asian Extreme cult classic par excellence, still as provocative more than 20 years on in its themes about youth, rebellion and authoritarianism.
Light-hearted and mildly amusing, Ozu’s most accessible late-career work explores the generation gap and quirks of communal communication amid a rise in consumerism in a modernising Japan.
Eternality Tan 