From Lu Over the Wall to Ride Your Wave, animator Masaaki Yuasa’s films have always involved songs to some extent, but Inu-Oh is the...

Fate. Karma. Luck. Do such intangible forces truly govern the trajectory of human existence? Or is our suffering simply the result of...

There was no other way. It’s no hyperbole to claim that Doctor Strange played an instrumental role in thwarting Thanos’ genocidal...

[The following essay contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] The Digital Age has transformed mankind into a society of insatiable...

I apologize in advance if this review seems jumbled, disjointed, or confused; unfortunately, utter incoherence is the default response to...

[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] In the works of Stephen King, such mundane terrors as abusive...

I was not emotionally prepared for what I encountered within the pages of In Ghostly Japan. I was only vaguely familiar with author...

[The following essay contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Over the course of his career, David Cronenberg has become...

[The following essay contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] One of Everything Everywhere All at Once’s many spectacularly...

[The following essay contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Early on in Cyrano, Joe Wright’s delightfully maximalist musical...

Belle is Mamoru Hosoda’s most artistically accomplished work to date. As a longtime fan of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer...

I’m a skeptic by nature. When the blandly attractive heroes and heroines in romcoms talk about “love at first sight” and “true love,” I...

A24’s The Tragedy of Macbeth begins with narration over a blank screen. William Shakespeare’s familiar verse immediately establishes the...

[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Two swordsmen stare each other down. Wind howls through the empty...

Masayuki Suo’s Talking the Pictures ends with a quote attributed to director Hiroshi Inagaki: Movies were once silent. But in Japan, they...

[The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] The plot of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car revolves around a...

Recently, I purchased a ticket for Japan Society’s upcoming screening of Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo, one of only three...

When you get right down to it, the most memorable documentaries serve the same basic purpose as narrative films: telling stories,...

[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Near the end of the first of the three Rashomon-esque chapters that...

This weekend, I decided to get into the spirit of the Halloween season by buying a five-movie access pass for Nightstream, a (supposedly)...