Misa Shikuma
“Haikara-San” plays at the Grand Illusion Cinema June 9-11.
The first installment of a two-part adaptation of the popular manga from the ‘70s, Haikara-San is a fun jaunt through Japan’s Taisho era, as seen through the eyes of the headstrong, adolescent tomboy Benio...
“The Doctor From India” plays at the Northwest Film Forum June 6-10.
Septuagenarian Dr. Vasant Lad, one of the world’s leading experts in Ayurveda, a traditional form of medicine, hasn’t let age slow him down one bit. Lanky, bespectacled and speaking in evenly measured tones, his...
South Korean movie “The Day After” plays at Northwest Film Forum May 25-27
South Korean director Hong Sang-soo, indie master of realist cinema, shows that the web of lies spawned by a middle-aged publisher’s affair in The Day After is anything but the black and white palette...
Animated Japanese cult hit “Mind Game” is at Grand Illusion Cinema for one week
Coming to the Grand Illusion Cinema for a week-long limited engagement, Masaaki Yuasa’s 2004 cult hit Mind Game, based on Robin Nishi’s manga of the same name, remains as vibrant and evocative as ever,...
Half Life in Fukushima documents life in the “red zone”
Playing this weekend at the Northwest Film Forum, Mark Olexa and Francesca Scalisi’s haunting 2016 documentary Half Life in Fukushima follows Naoto Matsumura, a middle-aged former rice farmer who tends to the animals left...
This week: Northwest Film Forum shows “The China Hustle” and “Dream Empire”; Chinese animated...
The China Hustle
Dir. Jed Rothstein
USA, 2017
“There are no good guys in this story, including me,” says Dan David, co-founder of GeoInvesting, to the camera. Like countless other investors post 2008 crash, David thought he’d...
Japanese films at the 2018 Berlinale Film Festival feature challenges in rural settings, a...
Blue Wind Blows
Dir. Tetsuya Tomina
Japan, 2018
Set on Japan’s Sado Island, a setting chosen by director Tetsuya Tomina for its history and well-preserved provincial way of life, Blue Wind Blows is a poetic vignette on...
Japanese alien movie “Yocho” explores what it means to be human
Adapted from Tomohiro Maekawa’s 2005 play, “Before We Vanish,” director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s take on the impending alien invasion story couldn’t be further from the average sci-fi dystopian thriller. Subtle and cerebral, Yocho takes its...
Documentary “The Silk and the Flame” chronicles social and parental pressures on young people...
Shot in black and white over the course of the Lunar New Year celebration in Jiwa, a small village in central China’s Henan province, The Silk and the Flame follows Yao, the successful youngest...
Chinese and Taiwanese movies shine at the 2018 Berlinale Film Festival
Girls Always Happy
Dir. Yang Mingming
China, 2018
Girls Always Happy, the first feature-length film from writer, director and star Yang Mingming, is a cinema verite-esque exploration of the dysfunctional codependency between a widow (Nai An) and...