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Romantic films from directors like Makoto Shinkai and Yoshimitsu Morita showcase the best of Japanese cinema. It's a part of Asian entertainment that has seen a recent rise in worldwide popularity along with K-dramas. Similar to romantic K-dramas, many Japanese romance films employ some of the most popular tropes in romance, such as love at first sight and love triangles. These tropes allow all audiences to connect with the foreign films' stories.

Despite being seen in numerous films before, the way these tropes are integrated into the plot also helps the films to feel entirely brand new. Sky of Love and Shall We Dance? are some of the more well-known examples of Japanese romance films, but there are a few other picks that are worth a watch for romance fans. From stunning animation to live-action dramas, there's a Japanese romance film for everyone.

Related Netflix’s 10 Best Live-Action Japanese Shows,...

What do we do when tragedy strikes? What if it happens to one of our own family members? Grief hits us in different ways. There's no black and white 'right or wrong' on the human response, it seems. This notion is explored with a heavy hand in Love Life, a new contemplative film out of Japan that will make you cry, hug your loved ones, and more.

Skilled writer-director Kōji Fukada employs some innovative storytelling and filmmaking techniques in this latest feature that will keep us thinking about the complex love story he weaves long after the credits roll.

It's safe to say Love Life can be added to the list of great Japanese movies as of late. Here's our take.

Families Can Be Messy

With a title like Love Life, our minds might go to that Max series of the same name that featured Anna Kendrick in its acclaimed first season.

The opening stretch of Fukada Kôji’s Love Life is rich in textures that put the characters’ present-day lives into nuanced context. When we first meet Taeko (Kimura Fumino), she’s playing a game of Othello—a modern version of Reversi—against Keita (Shimada Tetsuta), her young son from a prior marriage. They live with her current husband, Jiro (Nagayama Kento), in an apartment furnished by his parents and currently decorated to celebrate Keita’s win in an Othello tournament. When Taeko steps out to the balcony, she calls out to some of her friends, who are rehearsing a routine to hold up congratulatory signage. Then she drops by the soup kitchen where she works, and on her day off, after being called in to defuse a situation.

The significance behind some of those details and how it slowly comes into focus is one of Fukada’s signatures. Several scenes...

It takes a great deal of careful plotting to make a good confined single location thriller. Films such as Buried (2010), The Pool (2018), and 4×4 (2019) rely on a variety of complications to maintain tension without becoming repetitive or overstaying their welcome. It’s a delicate balance, but when it’s done well, the results can be electrifying.

Writer Michitaka Okada adopts a unique conceit for their latest, #Manhole, which readily employs social media to drive the narrative of a successful realtor, Shunsuke Kawamura (Yûto Nakajima), who falls down an open manhole the night before his wedding.

Director Kazuyoshi Kumakiri cues audiences that phones will play a vital part by opening with an elaborate split-screen video of Shunsuke’s work colleagues taping congratulations at his wedding party. Immediately following the party, a drunken Shunsuke bids his friend Kase (Kento Nagayama) goodbye, stumbles down the street and almost immediately falls down a hole in the ground.

Award

Paramount+ and Tving‘s Korean series “Bargain” has won the critics’ choice award at the Seriencamp Festival in Cologne. In April, “Bargain” became the first-ever Korean series to win best screenplay at the Canneseries Festival in France.

The series stars actors Jun Jong-seo (“Money Heist: Korea”) and Jin Seon-kyu (“Extreme Job”) and is an adaptation of director Lee Chung-hyun’s 2015 short film of the same name. Director Jun Woo-sung, who was part of the production team of the short, picked up the story and developed it into a six-part series. “Bargain” revolves around a group of strangers who gather at a remote motel with ulterior motives – seeking to bargain. Unlike the original film, the series follows the characters after an unexpected earthquake traps them inside the building. With no one to trust, they must find a way to survive.

“Bargain” is developed by Paramount+ and Tving, out of Paramount...

Stan Refreshes Lionsgate Output Deal

Australian streamer Stan has refreshed its output deal with Lionsgate. The new agreement means Stan lands the local first-run of shows including the upcoming CIA thriller series Gray, starring Patricia Clarkson, Lydia West and Rupert Everett. Also on the menu are Son of a Critch, Welcome to Flatch and Steven K. Knight’s Spartacus sequel series. Theatrical features include White Bird, Alice and Darling. Stan will remain the Aussie home of the Power franchise, The Serpent Queen, Minx, Bmf, Gaslit and Hightown and also picks up Lionsgate catalog titles such as Mad Men, Weeds, The Spanish Princess, Black Sails, La La Land and Twilight.

Indigenous Canadian Stand-Up Show Readied

Exclusive: Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and the Canada Media Fund are among the backers of a comedy TV series billed as the first all-Canadian and Indigenous stand-up show. They have signed on to develop...

Japanese filmmaker Koji Fukada is back with another middle-class (melo)drama about common people in uncommon life situations. “Love Life” premiered at Venice and after that went on the tour of festivals.

“Love Life” is screening at the Museum of the Moving Image, as part of the First Look 2023 program

Taeko and her husband Jiro live a peaceful life. At the beginning, their mood could be seen as celebratory, since they are throwing a party for his stern father's 65th birthday, and also celebrating her son Keita's local Othello championship title. However, Jiro's father has a hard time accepting the fact that his son married a divorcee with a child from her previous marriage.

A sudden tragedy resulting in Keita's accidental death starts the spiral of events. Firstly, Keita's biological father Park (Atom Sunada) suddenly appears at the funeral and Taeko has the urge to do her best to...

Exclusive: Oscilloscope Laboratories has acquired North American rights to Japanese director Kôji Fukada’s drama Love Life.

The film world premiered in Competition in Venice last year (you can check out the Deadline reveal of a first clip here) and went on to play at multiple festivals including Toronto and London.

The acquisition announcement followed hot on the heels of news that the film had been selected for the Museum of The Moving Images (MoMI) First Look Festival, running in New York from March 15 to 19.

Oscilloscope will release the film this year.

The film stars Fumino Kimura as Taeko, a woman living a peaceful life with her husband (Kento Nagayama) and young son.

A tragic accident brings Taeko’s ex-husband, who is the father of her son, back into her life. He is deaf, down on his luck and homeless. To deal with her own pain and guilt, she throws herself into helping him out,...

The Tokyo Revengers live-action movie franchise returns in 2023 with a two-part sequel: Chi no Halloween -Unmei- (Bloody Halloween -Fate-) will be released in Japan on April 21, while Chi no Halloween -Kessen- (Bloody Halloween -Decisive Battle-) will be released on June 30. All movies are based on the manga series by Ken Wakui published from March 1, 2017 to November 16, 2022 in Weekly Shonen Magazine.

Continuing after events from the first movie, Takemichi (Takumi Kitamura) returns to the present timeline, meets Hinata but soon discovers the even more vicious Tokyo Manji Gang has murdered her again. In order to save Hinata, Takemichi has to travel ten years back in time to investigate and change a “sad incident” that affected six men, who happen to be the founding members of the Tokyo Manji Gang.

Cast members from the first movie including Takumi Kitamura, Yuki Yamada and Ryo Yoshizawa will once again reprise their roles. New cast...

Japanese filmmaker Koji Fukada is back with another middle-class (melo)drama about common people in uncommon life situations. “Love Life” premiered at Venice and after that went on the tour of festivals.

Love Life is screening at Black Movie

Taeko and her husband Jiro live a peaceful life. At the beginning, their mood could be seen as celebratory, since they are throwing a party for his stern father’s 65th birthday, and also celebrating her son Keita’s local Othello championship title. However, Jiro’s father has a hard time accepting the fact that his son married a divorcee with a child from her previous marriage.

A sudden tragedy resulting in Keita’s accidental death starts the spiral of events. Firstly, Keita’s biological father Park (Atom Sunada) suddenly appears at the funeral and Taeko has the urge to do her best to help this troubled deaf homeless Korean man.

John Malkovich starrer Seneca – On the Creation of Earthquakes and Alex Gibney’s untitled Boris Becker documentary are set to have their world premieres at the upcoming Berlin International Film Festival next year. The projects are among the six titles which will play in the fest’s Berlinale Special Gala section, which also includes Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool, starring Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth and Cleopatra Coleman and Todd Field’s Tár.

Infinity Pool will get its European premiere at the festival while Field and Tár stars Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir will attend the festival to give a public talk as part of the Berlinale Talents section.

The festival also announced its first project from its Berlinale Series section: Zdf’s eco-thriller The Swarm (Der Schwarm), based on the eponymous bestseller by Frank Schätzing. The project follows an international group of scientists who do research...

Japanese filmmaker Koji Fukada is back with another middle-class (melo)drama about common people in uncommon life situations. “Love Life” premiered at Venice and after that went on the tour of festivals. We caught it at a special screening at Zagreb Film Festival.

Taeko and her husband Jiro live a peaceful life. At the beginning, their mood could be seen as celebratory, since they are throwing a party for his stern father’s 65th birthday, and also celebrating her son Keita’s local Othello championship title. However, Jiro’s father has a hard time accepting the fact that his son married a divorcee with a child from her previous marriage.

A sudden tragedy resulting in Keita’s accidental death starts the spiral of events. Firstly, Keita’s biological father Park (Atom Sunada) suddenly appears at the funeral and Taeko has the urge to do her best to help this troubled deaf homeless Korean man.

The Film Circuit begins with Telluride, a small but perfect film festival in the mountains of Colorado as simultaneously Venice unfurls the films that will soon be released in the wonderful arthouse cinemas of Europe, followed closely by Toronto whose films foretell the coming year’s Oscars nominees. It is a very exciting time to be on the festival circuit.

And simultaneously with these great screenings are sidebars, panel discussions, workshops, master classes and all around great networking for filmmakers around the world.

Venezia 79 Competition

Il Signore Delle Formiche

Director Gianni Amelio

Main Cast Luigi Lo Cascio, Elio Germano, Leonardo Maltese, Sara Serraiocco / Italy / 134’

The Whale

Director Darren Aronofsky

Main Cast Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Samantha Morton, Ty Simpkins / USA / 117’

White Noise

Director Noah Baumbach

Main Cast Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy, Sam Nivola, May Nivola, Jodie Turner-Smith, André L. Benjamin and Lars Eidinger / USA / 136’

L’IMMENSITÀ

Director Emanuele Crialese

Main Cast Penélope Cruz, Luana Giuliani, Vincenzo Amato, Patrizio Francioni / Italy, France / 97’

Saint Omer

Director Alice Diop

Main Cast Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville, Aurélia Petit / France / 123’

Blonde

Director Andrew Dominik

Main Cast Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale, Xavier Samuel, Julianne Nicholson, Lily Fisher / USA / 166’

TÁR

Director Todd Field

Main Cast Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kauer, Julian Glover, Allan Corduner, Mark Strong / USA / 158’

Love Life

Director Kôji Fukada

Main Cast Fumino Kimura, Kento Nagayama, Atom Sunada / Japan, France / 123’

Bardo, Falsa CRÓNICA De Unas Cuantas Verdades

Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Main Cast Daniel Giménez Cacho, Griselda Siciliani, Ximena Lamadrid, Iker Sanchez Solano, Andrés Almeida, Francisco Rubio / Mexico / 174’

Athena

Director Romain Gavras

Main Cast Dali Benssalah, Sami Slimane, Anthony Bajon, Ouassini Embarek, Alexis Manenti / France / 97’

Bones And All

Director Luca Guadagnino

Main Cast Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, Mark Rylance, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny, Jessica Harper, David Gordon Green, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jake Horowitz / USA / 130’

The Eternal Daughter

Director Joanna Hogg

Main Cast Tilda Swinton, Joseph Mydell, Carly-Sophia Davies / UK, USA / 96’

Shab, Dakheli, Divar (Beyond The Wall)

Director Vahid Jalilvand

Main Cast Navid Mohammadzadeh, Diana Habibi, Amir Aghaee / Iran / 126’

The Banshees Of Inisherin

Director Martin McDonagh

Main Cast Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan / Ireland, UK, USA / 109’

Argentina, 1985

Director Santiago Mitre

Main Cast Ricardo Darín, Peter Lanzani, Alejandra Flechner, Norman Briski / Argentina, USA / 140’

Chiara

Director Susanna Nicchiarelli

Main Cast Margherita Mazzucco, Andrea Carpenzano, Carlotta Natoli, Paola Tiziana Cruciani, Luigi Lo Cascio / Italy, Belgium / 106’

Monica

Director Andrea Pallaoro

Main Cast Trace Lysette, Patricia Clarkson, Adriana Barraza, Emily Browning, Joshua Close / USA, Italy / 113’

Khers Nist (No Bears)

Director Jafar Panahi

Main Cast Jafar Panahi, Naser Hashemi, Vahid Mobaseri, Bakhtiar Panjeei, Mina Kavani, Reza Heydari / Iran / 107’

All The Beauty And The Bloodshed

Director Laura Poitras

USA / 117’

Un Couple

Director Frederick Wiseman

Main Cast Nathalie Boutefeu / France, USA / 64’

The Son

Director Florian Zeller

Main Cast Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby, Zen McGrath, Anthony Hopkins, Hugh Quarshie / UK / 124’

Les Miens

Director Roschdy Zem

Main Cast Sami Bouajila, Roschdy Zem, Meriem Serbah, Maïwenn, Rachid Bouchareb, Abel Jafrei, Nina Zem / France / 85’

Les Enfants Des Autres

Director Rebecca Zlotowski

Main Cast Virginie Efira, Roschdy Zem, Chiara Mastroianni, Callie Ferreira / France / 104’

Toronto is in spite of itself in a civilized sort of way in competition for the premieres with Venice, though the sequential festivals are serving different constituencies. Still, The Whale, for example is premiering in Venice and then traveling to TIFF.

TIFF Gala Presentations:

The Whale directed by Darren Aronofsky, produced and to be distributed in U.S. and actng as international sales agent A24.

TIFF says: “Brendan Fraser gives a career-defining performance in Darren Aronofsky’s arrestingly intimate drama about a reclusive English professor struggling with personal relationships and self-acceptance, adapted from the stage play by Samuel D. Hunter.”

Alice, Darling by Mary Nighy

Also playing are Alice, Darling (Mary Nighy) in which Anna Kendrick captures the anxious psychology of a woman in an abusive relationship as her friends try to reconnect with her while on a cottage getaway.

Black Ice(Hubert Davis) about Black hockey players facing systemic racism in the sport.

The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Peter Farrelly) about man’s story of leaving New York in 1967 to bring beer to his childhood buddies in the Army while they are fighting in Vietnam. An Apple TV+ production.

Butcher’s Crossing (Gabe Polsky) is a frontier epic about an Ivy League drop-out as he travels to the Colorado wilderness, where he joins a team of buffalo hunters on a journey that puts his life and sanity at risk. Based on the highly acclaimed novel by John Williams. Isa Altitude

The Hummingbird (Francesca Archibugi)Hunt (Jung-jae Lee)A Jazzman’s Blues (Tyler Perry)Kacchey Limbu (Shubham Yogi)Moving On (Paul Weitz)Paris Memories (Alice Winocour)Prisoner’s Daughter (Catherine Hardwicke)Raymond & Ray (Rodrigo García)Roost (Amy Redford)Sidney (Reginald Hudlin)The Son (Florian Zeller)The Swimmers (Sally El Hosaini)What’s Love Got to Do With It? (Shekhar Kapur)The Woman King(Gina Prince-Bythewood)

Special PRESENTATIONSAllelujah (Sir Richard Eyre)All Quiet on the Western Front (Edward Berger)The Banshees Of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)Blueback (Robert Connolly)The Blue Caftan (Maryam Touzani)Broker (Hirokazu Kore-eda)Brother (Clement Virgo)Bros (Nicholas Stoller)Catherine Called Birdy (Lena Dunham)Causeway (Lila Neugebauer)Chevalier (Stephen Williams)Corsage (Marie Kreutzer)Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook)Devotion (Jd Dillard)Driving (Madeleine Christian Carion)El Suplente (Diego Lerman)Empire of Light...

Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. Oscilloscope releases the film in select theaters on Friday, August 11.

An enormously poignant melodrama told at the volume of a broken whisper, Kōji Fukada’s “Love Life” represents a major breakthrough for a filmmaker who’s found the perfect story for his probing but distant style. In that light, it doesn’t seem incidental that “Love Life” is a story about distance — specifically the distance between people who reach for each other in the wake of a tragedy that strands them far away from themselves.

Inspired by the plaintive 1991 Akiko Yano song of the same name, “Love Life” introduces us to a domestic idyll that it disrupts with a deceptive casualness typical of Fukada’s work. The bloom comes off the rose slowly at first, and then all at once in a single moment of everyday awfulness.

Venice film festival: Japanese director Kôji Fukada has crafted a richly painful and quietly comic human drama

Might the title be an instruction? If so, it’s not so easy to obey, judging from this movie from Japanese director Kôji Fukada who made such an impression with his sweet, Rohmeresque feature Goodbye Summer in 2013. Love Life is an inexpressibly tragic and painful human drama about complicated lives, a movie that interleaves the utter desolation with a dry understated comedy and a sense of emotional tangle and chaos, a film that moreover blindsides its leading female character – and us, the audience – with an entirely unexpected coda section away from Japan in South Korea. In Shakespearean terms, this could be a filmic “problem play”.

A married young couple are living together in a small flat: Taeko (Fumino Kimura) and her husband Jiro (Kento Nagayama) and their lively eight-year-old son Keita (Tetsuda Shimada...

Even the most solidly founded of marriages can be strained and shattered by the death of a child. For handsome, wholesome Japanese couple Taeko and Jiro, however, that tragedy shows up all the fault lines that were already in their young relationship, and that’s before living ghosts of the past show up for both partners. Koji Fukada’s “Love Life” unabashedly embraces melodramatic contrivance in its examination of modern middle-class love tested as much by social prejudices as by personal demons; it just does so with such pallid, polite reserve that its sentimentality never becomes transcendently moving. As such, this agreeable but overlong pic finds the Japanese writer-director still struggling to regain the form of his jolting 2016 Cannes prizewinner “Harmonium.”

That film was an exercise in disorienting tonal contrast and conflict, with a vein of blood-dark comedy running through severely tragic events. “Love Life,” on the other hand, is an earnest,...

Grief and guilt are the twin quiet rivers running beneath Koji Fukada’s ambiguously titled Venice competition entry Love Life, a delicately tangled story of generational conflict and the silences that, without being overtly aggressive, can drive people apart. Anyone familiar with the work of Japan’s greatest cinema maestro, Yasuhiro Ozu, will recognize the general territory. It is a space within which tectonic social shifts are disguised under layers of traditional social observance, often involving large meals, and where profound emotions may be — and often must be — contained within a glance.

Taeko (Fumino Kimura) and Jiro (Kento Nagayama) have been married for around a year, having met several years earlier in the social welfare office where they now both work. Taeko already had a child, Keita (Tetta Shimada), from a previous marriage to a man who abandoned them when Keita was a baby, perhaps because he was barely able...

Enormous personal events unfold throughout Kôji Fukada’s soulful Japanese drama “Love Life,” premiering at the Venice Film Festival: a marriage, a reunion, an affair and, most notably, a death. And yet the scale in which Fukada works — as both writer and director — is so deliberately intimate that immense experiences feel microcosmic, while tiny moments make a huge impact.

His heroine, Taeko (Fumino Kimura), is so self-effacing that it often feels as though she would erase herself if she could. Most of the time, she is able to look to others for meaning and definition; in her small, generic flat within a block of large, generic apartment buildings, she serves her in-laws, her husband, her son Keita (Tetta Shimada). At work, from a cubicle or a sidewalk, she serves as a social advocate, helping unhoused and otherwise disadvantaged strangers.

When she can’t find something to do, she lingers in near-immobility,...

Click here to read the full article.

The apartment at the center of Love Life, Koji Fukada’s mellow study of grief and dislocation, is, like the film, compact and practical. A long table, surrounded by a narrow bench and various chairs, occupies the center of the living room. The kitchen is tucked in a corner. Near the entrance: a bathroom with a short tub, a sink, a toilet. Toward the rear: sliding doors leading to a balcony overlooking a hideous concrete lot; a bedroom on the right. Evidence of family life is everywhere: height marks etched into a wall, trophies, diplomas, a child’s drawings, books, clothes on hooks, shoes in corner.

Taeko (Fumino Kimura), Jiro (Kento Nagayama) and their 6-year-old son, Keita (Tetta Shimada), live in this unfussy space, and how they interact with it is one of the most edifying aspects of Fukada’s latest feature. With Love Life,...

The tragedy at the center of “Love Life,” the new film from Japanese director Kōji Fukada which premieres in Competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival, does not come to disrupt a perfectly happy family. Cracks are visible in the facade of the life shared by Taeko (Fumino Kimura) and Jiro (Kento Nagayama) even before the fatal accident that claims the life of Keita (Tetta Shimada), her young son from a previous marriage.

Continue reading ‘Love Life’ Review: Kōji Fukada’s Film Is An Uneven Melodrama On Grief And Intimacy [Venice] at The Playlist.

Click here to read the full article.

Six years after his 2016 film Harmonium won Cannes’ jury prize in the Un Certain Regard section, Japanese director Koji Fukada is taking the big step up into Venice’s main competition with the emotionally intense family drama Love Life.

Fukada’s rise to the top tier of the international festival circuit has been telegraphed for some time. His breakthrough family comedy Hospitalité won best picture in the Japanese cinema category of the 2010 Tokyo International Film Festival, and in 2020 that same event featured him as its director in focus with a mini-retrospective. Effectively, the Tokyo festival’s organizers were arguing that Fukada was worthy of the type of top-level industry attention that Venice has now bestowed upon him.

Fukada’s ninth feature, Love Life tells a taut domestic drama about a newly married Japanese couple (Fumino Kimura and Kento Nagayama) enjoying a peaceful existence...

Click here to read the full article.

For the 79th Venice Film Festival, artistic director Alberto Barbera has put together one of the most well-curated lineups of his career. Both studios and streamers are well represented.

Netflix scored an opening-night coup with Noah Baumbach’s White Noise, with buzz promising that it’ll wow the Lido, alongside Andrew Dominik’s Marilyn Monroe biopic, Blonde, with Ana de Armas; Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Mexican epic Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths; and Romain Gavras’ French action thriller Athena.

Studio fare is well represented by Warner Bros.’ Don’t Worry Darling from director Olivia Wilde; Focus has Todd Field’s Tár with Cate Blanchett and Mark Strong; MGM will debut Luca Guadagnino’s Timothée Chalamet-Taylor Russell starrer Bones and All; Searchlight presents The Banshees of Inisherin from Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri director Martin McDonagh; and Sony Pictures Classics will be...

The 79th Venice International Film Festival has just announced the line-up for the next edition. The 79th Venice International Film Festival is organised by La Biennale di Venezia and directed by Alberto Barbera. It will take place at Venice Lido from 31 August to 10 September 2022. The Festival is officially recognised by the Fiapf (International Federation of Film Producers Association).

The aim of the Festival is to raise awareness and promote international cinema in all its forms as art, entertainment and as an industry, in a spirit of freedom and dialogue. The Festival also organises retrospectives and tributes to major figures as a contribution towards a better understanding of the history of cinema.

Here are all the Asian Titles on the Programme:

Competition:

Love Life

Director Koji Fukada

Main Cast Fumino Kimura, Kento Nagayama, Atom Sunada / Japan, France / 123’

Shab, Dakheli, Divar (Beyond The Wall)

Director Vahid Jalilvand

Main Cast Navid Mohammadzadeh, Diana Habibi,...

Click here to read the full article.

Netflix has lined up its next big-budget feature for Japan, a key growth market for the global streaming business. The company has greenlit a suspenseful rom-com romp titled In Love and Deep Water from veteran drama screenwriter Yuji Sakamoto (Tokyo Love Story, Kadin). Sakamoto describes the project as “a romantic comedy delivered on an unprecedented scale” for the Japanese film industry.

Yusuke Taki will direct, with Nikkatsu and Django Film handling the local production for Netflix.

In Love and Deep Water is set on the Msc Bellissima, a massive luxury cruise ship headed for the Aegean sea. While at sail, the Bellissima‘s loyal butler Suguru and a mysterious woman named Chizuru cross paths as they try to uncover a shocking murder-mystery that occurs early in the voyage.

Ryo Yoshizawa (Sakura, Kingdom) stars as Suguru and Aoi Miyazaki (Future Family, Birthday Card) plays Chizuru.

Another Decade with Takashi Miike is a series of essays on the 2010s films of the Japanese maverick, following Notebook's earlier survey of Miike's first decade of the 21st century.Being in league with Takashi Miike, taking the sensually arrayed and flayed curtains of flesh in stride, has a way of making one think of Claude Rains in Lawrence of Arabia: “It is recognized that you have a funny sense of fun.” When you make it your life’s work to decorate the insides of cinemas with the exploits of desperate, subhuman Yakuza, your idea of the business of law enforcement and especially your idea of heroism are bound to be just as warped as your sense of "fun". Miike’s cop movies are few and far between—he doesn’t get cops and he doesn’t much like them. There’s something about lying to people about the...

Warner Bros. International Television Production and Japanese pay-tv broadcaster Wowow are partnering for a third season of Japan's hit local-language remake of Cold Case.

The new season, titled Cold Case: The Door to the Truth, will star Yo Yoshida, Kento Nagayama, Kenichi Takito, Ken Mitsuishi and Tomokazu Miura. Directors include Takafumi Hatano, Akira Uchikata and Toshiyuki Morishita. The third season, which will again be 10 episodes, will premiere in Winter 2020.

The commission will bring the series to 30 episodes in total — the requisite number for global licensing and distribution deals.

The first two seasons of Cold Case achieved ratings ...

The team behind the hugely entertaining Fish Story are set to unleash a multi-layered look into life on a Japanese council estate. Yoshihiro Nakamura is one of the rare examples of directors that can make entertaining films from very complex and intelligent stories. See You Tomorrow, Everyone is another great example of multi-layered stories mixed with interesting characters in a very entertaining setting. Starring Gaku Hamada (Sake Bomb, Fish Story), Kento Nagayama (Shield of Straw, Crime or Punishment?!?) & Nene Ohtsuka (I Wish, The Foreign Duck The Native Duck & God in a Coin Locker), See You Tomorrow, Everyone is yours to own on U.K. DVD from October 14th, 2013, courtesy of Third Window Films. Synopsis: Gaku Hamada is Satoru, a simple boy who lives in a government-built estate where he is told that life is so perfect that he never wants to leave. The estate has everything one needs for a happy life; schools,...

The official website for Toshiaki Toyoda’s upcoming film I’m Flash! has been updated with a 1080p YouTube embed of its new trailer.

Tatsuya Fujiwara stars as Rui Yoshino, the charismatic celebrity leader of an upstart religious group called “Life is Beautiful”. One night he meets a beautiful, mysterious girl named Rumi (Kiko Mizuhara) and the two go out for a drive in which they’re involved in an accident with a bike. The crash leaves Rumi unconscious and Rui somehow escapes without a scratch.

In order to escape the subsequent scandal, Rui’s mother and sister assign him three bodyguards (Ryuhei Matsuda, Kento Nagayama, and Shigeru Nakano) and send him off to a desert island in the south. During their time together on the island, Rui makes a decision that will have a major impact on all their lives…

“I’m Flash!” will be released by Phantom Film...

The official website for Toru Hosokawa’s upcoming island survival movie Paikaji Nankai Sakusen has been updated with a trailer.

Based on a 2004 novel by Makoto Shiina which has been described as modern spin on Robinson Crusoe, the film stars Sadao Abe as a cameraman named Sasaki who decides to take a trip to an island in southern Japan to cheer himself up after being laid off.

After he gets drunk with some campers one night, he wakes up to discover he’s been relieved of all his money and possessions. Later, he meets a young man from the city named Okkochi (Kento Nagayama), the Kansai dialect-speaking Apa (Shihori Kanjiya), and Kimi (Nozomi Sasaki) and the four of them begin a life of island survival together.

One day, Sasaki hears a rumor of the four homeless campers who stole his stuff, and he begins formulating an intricate plan to both...

Today it was revealed that former Thee Michelle Gun Elephant front man Yusuke Chiba and former Blankey Jet City drummer Tatsuya Nakamura will be teaming up for the first time to create a theme song for Toshiaki Toyoda’s upcoming film I’m Flash!

Additionally, they’ll be putting together a concept album under the name “I’m Flash! Band” along with bandmates Kazuhide Yamaji and KenKen.

The film was written and directed by Toyoda and was originally inspired by the song “Oh no! I’m Flash” by Sheena & The Rokkets guitarist Makoto Ayukawa (video).

Tatsuya Fujiwara, who was eager to work with Toyoda for the first time, stars as the charismatic leader of an upstart religious group who is involved in an accident which leaves a mysterious girl named Rumi (Kiko Mizuhara) in a vegetative state. In the aftermath, he flees to a desert island with a group of...

Director: Keralino Sandorovich. Review: Adam Wing. Every day is pretty much like any other, that is of course, unless your name is Ayame (Riko Narumi) and you live in a world created by Keralino Sandorovich. With a pin-up career going nowhere fast, Ayame takes on the PR role of ‘police chief for the day’, a job that would normally require her to put on her best smile and act like she works for the police department. Unfortunately for Ayame, today is not a normal day. The staff at the police station insist on treating her like a real police chief and look to her for advice, enthusiasm and instruction. Which is bad enough in itself, but add to the mix an ex-boyfriend who works as a detective at the station, and you’re starting to have a very bad day indeed. Things are a little more complicated than that though,...

From Third Window Films

Starring: Riko Narumi (Bushido Sixteen, Yamagata Scream, Trick: The Movie), Kento Nagayama (Villain, Hard Romanticker, Liar Game)

Sakura Ando (Love Exposure, 8000 Miles 2, Sweet Little Lies),Megumi Okina (The Grudge, Shutter, Red Shadow)

DVD Release Date: 14 May 2012

Pre Order Now (link below)

Synopsis

Have you ever experienced a day when you are carrying on as usual just like the day before but strange things keep happening one after another on that particular day? This is a slapstick comedy, like Kafka’s novel, filled with incongruous nightmares and nonsensical laughter.

Ayame (Riko Narumi) is an unsuccessful girl celebrity, who happens to take on the PR role of a “police chief for a day”. The job of a campaign girl is to smile and act as a police chief for one day. It should have been a simple job, however, the police station staff treat her like the real...

Kiko Mizuhara has been cast as the female lead in Toshiaki Toyoda’s I’m Flash, playing the role of a “mysterious beauty” named Rumi who is involved in an accident which causes her to be left in a vegetative state.

Mizuhara (21) made her acting debut in Anh Hung Tran’s Norwegian Wood in 2010 and has been very active in television commercials and modeling.

The movie, which was first announced back in January, features an original script by Toyoda and stars Tatsuya Fujiwara as a charismatic religious guru named Rui who has become a wealthy celebrity for his work.

One day, Rumi approaches Rui, with her only connection to him being that her younger sister was once a member of his organization, “Life Is Beautiful”. After meeting Rumi, Rui is responsible for the accident which leads to her injury. He escapes with only minor scratches and decides to go into...

Confessions, Villain, 13 Assassins, and the other winners of the 2011 Japan Academy Prize have been announced. The 34th Annual Japan Academy Prize, “often called the Japan Academy Awards or the Japanese Academy Awards, is a series of awards given annually since 1978 by the Nippon Academy-sho Association for Excellence in Japanese Film. Award categories are similar to the Academy Awards.” The award ceremony was held on February 18, 2011 at the New Takanawa Prince Hotel in Tokyo. The full listing of the 2011 Japan Academy Prize winners is below.

Picture of the Year

Kokuhaku (Confessions)

Animation of the Year

Kari-gurashi no Arietti (The Borrowers)

Director of the Year

Tetsuya Nakashima, Kokuhaku (Confessions)

Screenplay of the Year

Tetsuya Nakashima, Kokuhaku (Confessions)

Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role

Satoshi Tsumabuki, Akunin (Villain)

Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role

Eri Fukatsu, Akunin (Villain)

Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role

Akira Emoto,...

The official website for the upcoming teen softball comedy, Softboy, has been updated with a new trailer. The film was directed by Keisuke Toyoshima, who previously helmed segments in several omnibus projects like Ghost vs. Alien 03 and Hijoshi Zukan, as well as episodes of The Ancient Dogoo Girl TV series.

The film stars Kento Nagayama as a student named Onitsuka who’s been spending the last summer of his high school life considering his future goals—chief among them being to one day become a master chef of French cuisine. One day he’s approached by his friend Noguchi (Kento Kaku) with a harebrained scheme; if they start the first and only youth softball team in Saga Prefecture, they’d have to be invited to the national tournament by default—making them local sports heroes. Together they assemble a group of 9 players to field a team and begin practicing, but...

Earlier today, a press event was held in Kyoto to announce the production of a new film called Mother Water, which involves many of the same cast and staff who previously brought us “Kamome Diner”, “Megane”, and “Pool”. The film’s seven main cast members were all in attendence: Satomi Kobayashi, Kyoko Koizumi, Ryo Kase, Mikako Ichikawa, Kento Nagayama, Ken Mitsuishi, and Masako Motai.

Set in Kyoto, the breezy tale focuses on circumstances surrounding three women and their relationships with other people around town. Much like “Kamome Diner”, the film has a peaceful, indifferent theme and involves ordinary characters brought together by a local establishment. However, instead of focusing entirely on one place, several different characters run their own businesses.

Kobayashi plays a whiskey bar owner named Setsuko, Ichikawa plays a tofu maker named Hatsume, Kase plays a used furniture dealer named Yamanoha, Mitsuishi plays a public bath owner named Otome,...