meta: Drama
2019
'The Five Star Stories': In The Year 7575 ... April 15, 2019
This late-1980s anime time capsule is daft but fascinating, if only because it hints at how a new re-adaptation of the same material might really go places
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'One Cut Of The Dead / Kamera o tomeru na!': This Camera Cannot Be Stopped, Ever! March 25, 2019
Not just a love letter to the cinematic underdogs who pull off amazing things with sheer sweat, it is one of those amazing things pulled off with sheer sweat
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'Dororo': Take (Back) Another Little Piece Of My Heart February 5, 2019
Osamu Tezuka's feudal-era supernatural epic manga gives us two antiheroes, mutilated in body and spirit alike, both seeking wholeness
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2018
Sōseki Natsume's 'Kokoro': One Classic, Three Translations December 24, 2018
The great masterwork of modern Japanese fiction, by one of its all-time luminaries, has been translated multiple times, each version its own testament to the complexities of translation as an art
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'A Shameful Life': Osamu Dazai's 'No Longer Human', All Over Again November 26, 2018
An all-new translation of Osamu Dazai's bleak masterwork brings fresh clarity and immediacy to a staple of modern Japanese literature
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'AKIRA' At 30-Something: The Manga At The End Of The World October 16, 2018
On having a reckoning with the god-emperor of modern manga, in a restored English-language edition at last
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'Maborosi': The Unanswerable Question July 27, 2018
Hirokazu Kore-eda's debut feature, twenty years on, remains an ominous and poignant masterwork
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'A Silent Voice': Children Of Lesser Gods June 27, 2018
A gorgeous adaptation of the acclaimed manga, and a story with a hard moral question: Who gets to be redeemed?
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'The Man Who Stole The Sun': I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb. Now What? June 1, 2018
Almost forty years later, this jet-black comedy about a one-man nuclear terrorist ring remains an absurdist masterwork
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'After The Rain': Two (Broken) Hearts Beat As One April 14, 2018
What starts as an unlikely (and potentially squicky) romance becomes a more ambitious story about kinship between those with buried dreams
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'An Actor's Revenge': Improvised, And Served Cold March 31, 2018
It's normally bad to call a movie 'stagy', but Kon Ichikawa's kabuki tragedy revels in it to great effect
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Kon Ichikawa's 'Kokoro': The Wretched Hearts Of Men March 9, 2018
Kon Ichikawa's 1955 film version of Sōseki Natsume's classic novel adapts it with fidelity, intelligence, and just enough changes to be stimulating
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'your name.': If A Body Meet A Body ... January 26, 2018
Makoto Shinkai's blockbuster is an eyeful and a heartful, but look closely and you'll see the seams
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2017
Natsume Ono's 'not simple': Human Ruins October 20, 2017
The creator of 'ACCA: 13' and 'House Of Five Leaves' also gave us this haunting story of a young man thrown onto life's scrap heap
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Takeshi Kitano's 'Violent Cop': Contents Under Pressure October 11, 2017
'Beat' Takeshi Kitano's first outing as director remains among his best movies -- and also among his most nihilistic and unforgiving
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2016
'The Fake': Closer To God October 25, 2016
The follow-up from the director of 'King Of Pigs' is both more artistically accomplished and more emotionally scarring, an attempt to get us to care about someone who would otherwise never warrant our sympathy
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'Empire of Corpses': Dead Man's Party July 27, 2016
Label anything 'steampunk' and the label tends to take over, but this fantasy from the late lamented Project Itoh is about more than just clockworks and longcoats
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'Only Yesterday': All The Things I Was July 12, 2016
Unseen in English since its original 1991 release, this Isao Takahata/Studio Ghibli production was more than worth the wait, and not just for its name recognition
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'The Boy And The Beast': You'll Be A Man, My Son! June 28, 2016
Mamoru Hosoda's new film starts as a predictable story of irreconcilable opposites forced to work together, but becomes something more ambitious and challenging -- and worth sticking with despite its narrative bumps
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'Aoi Bungaku: No Longer Human': The Man Without Qualities June 11, 2016
The first of the 'Aoi Bungaku' animated adaptations of classical Japanese literature is a keen, well-devised adaptation of Osamu Dazai's novel of downfall and decadence
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'Rampo Kitan: Game of Laplace': Darker Than You Think May 23, 2016
Edogawa Rampo's 'erotic-grotesque' horror stories are remixed for the (post)modern day in this sinister, surreal, and colorful adventure
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'A-JIN': Live, Die, Repeat April 29, 2016
After 'Knights of Sidonia', Netflix and Polygon Pictures aim -- sucessfully -- for darker and harder-hitting territory
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'Night On The Galactic Railroad': We Are All Made Of Starstuff February 16, 2016
The animated version of Kenji Miyazawa's fable isn't just a Classics Illustrated; it finds a voice of its own with which to tell its story of eternity and afterlife
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'Die Wergelder': A Taste Of Blood Money February 1, 2016
After his samurai body-horror epic 'Blade of the Immortal', Hiroaki Samura now gives us a Nikkatsu-style, pulp-inflected action fable
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'Lady Snowblood': Revenge, Best Served Cold January 15, 2016
A pivotal inspiration for Tarantino's 'Kill Bill', this violent revenge tale brings us an anti-heroine who's as much of an outsider for being a woman as she is for being an assassin
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