Perfect Days
The IMDB description of Perfect Days reads: "A janitor in Japan drives between jobs listening to rock music." Not exactly an exciting premise for a film, but that is mostly…
The IMDB description of Perfect Days reads: "A janitor in Japan drives between jobs listening to rock music." Not exactly an exciting premise for a film, but that is mostly…
A couple of weeks before I saw this film, I read filmmaker Werner Herzog’s first novel "The Twilight World,” which draws on his meeting 25 years ago with Hiroo Onoda,…
Adapted from a short story by Haruki Murikami, one of my favorite authors, Drive My Car is a haunting drama about love and grief and reckoning. It centers on two…
This stylish thriller from director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is set in Japan in 1940 shortly before they entered World War II. It opens with beautiful young couple making an amateur movie…
Set in São Paulo, Brazil, home to the largest Japanese diaspora in the world, Yakuza Princess is an action packed martial arts thriller and story of self-discovery. A young Japanese…
This week's picks are heavy on big name directors: Louis Malle, Akira Kurasawa, Volker Schlöndorff, Ingmar Bergman, Billie August, Hal Ashby, and John Huston. Many of these are their first…
This week I chose a comedy thriller, a political thriller, a classic screwball comedy, a wartime romance, a storybook romance, a Japanese existential drama, and a loving ode to an…
What are you streaming this week? When the COVID-19 pandemic began, I started a list on my Facebook page, posting a film I love every day. That list has grown,…
I'm not a big animation watcher, at least not of the big Disney/Pixar variety. But anime is a different story. Films like Spirited Away or Akira feel every bit as…
Following in the tradition of a spate of recent foodie flicks, Ramen Shop wraps a slight story in a culinary journey and has you drooling and wishing the film would…
This film from Japanese director Hiorkazu Kore-eda (Nobody Knows) is a beautiful drama about what family means. I saw it at Middleburg, and it's stayed with me. The story is…
Another year at a fabulous festival! I wonder how long this little Virginia horse country festival can keep it up. It's sure to burst its seams soon. This year's slate…
This documentary was full of surprises for me. I've been an art lover for as long as I can remember, but somehow missed knowing one of the most critically acclaimed…
Without doubt one of the quirkiest movies I've seen in a long time, Oh, Lucy! is by turns hilarious and sad and brutally honest. The central character is Setsuko, a…
Korean director Chan-wook Park's (Oldboy) latest film The Handmaiden is an amazing adult thriller. It is twisty and erotic and romantic and funny and utterly surprising. And very hard to…