An incredible lineup of participants in this underseen film - Yasuzo Masumura, Ayako Wakao, Machiko Kyo, Yasunari Kawabata, Kaneto Shindo, Hikaru Hayashi, and consulting by head of the Urasenke tea ceremony school Sen Soushitsu - but the result is unfortunately a bit undercooked.
The poignancy and delicate poetry of Kawabata's work doesn't often translate well to the screen - my personal favorite film adaptations of his novels are Masahiro Shinoda's With Beauty and Sorrow, and Mikio Naruse's The Sound of…

Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Jane Birkin and Michel Legrand on the bill had me so sure this was going to hit me where I wanted it to, but it ended up being too much of a slog. The first hour and twenty minutes are just short of the right amount of tension that entices you to keep watching, and all that's left is Alain, Romy, and Jane dappled in Côte d'Azur sunlight brooding and not doing much at all -…

It's thirty minutes too long, over-melodramatic and way too sentimental, but I'll be damned if I can think of the last time a movie made me weep like this one did. Keeping in mind that Japan has a long history of people proclaiming how a full moon brought them to tears - one only has to skim through the country's vast body of ancient literature to get an idea - it's understandable that the Japanese people have an affinity with…

"When things don't go well, I try to when I liked myself best."

I'm a sucker for slow Japanese films where more is implied rather than said, and while Kore-eda usually does it a lot better, Ishikawa's films are a haven for people like me.

You might say Su-ki-da is the most dramatic of his three feature films, but even then there are only two traumatic events that the narrative hinges on, and everything else is pared down to…