Kaori Shoji - The Japan Times

Today's print edition

Subscribe for more access

Meta

Kaori Shoji

Kaori Shoji writes about movies and movie-makers for the Film Page, plus takes a turn at the Bilingual Column. Biggest mistake of her career: taking the very dignified Nagisa Oshima to McDonald's for an iced coffee.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 10, 2014

Geki×Cine marks 10 years of screen-stage marriage

You wouldn't know it to look at our poker faces, but deep down every Japanese is a drama queen.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 3, 2014

Polish history captured by a man who was there

He may be 88 years old and the director of 54 films, but Polish film giant Andrzej Wajda is still evolving as a storyteller. His latest, "Wałesa: Man of Hope," opens in Tokyo on April 5 (as "Wałesa: Rentai no Otoko") and marks his further foray into the realm of history as entertainment, following...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 3, 2014

'Wałesa: Man of Hope'

Poland's legendary filmmaker Andrzej Wajda takes on Lech Wałesa, Poland's man of the people, in this fictional documentary "Wałesa: Man of Hope," and it comes as somewhat of a surprise.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 3, 2014

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Apr 3, 2014

'The Counselor'

Director: Ridley Scott

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 27, 2014

They say people can endure having nowhere to live, but having nothing to drive is licking the very bottom of the barrel. That fate hasn't come to "Parked" protagonist Fred Daly (Colm Meaney), at least not yet. But he's inching closer, as he eases his Mazda into a parking lot on Dublin's east coast. This...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 27, 2014

'21 Jump Street'

Jenko used to be a girl-magnet jock-god, so this high school thing should be a breeze for him. Not so for his cop buddy Schmidt (Jonah Hill), who was an overweight, bullied nerd and hasn't changed much since graduation. The surprise is that high school now functions as an equalizer and they're both treated...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 27, 2014

Director: Brad Anderson

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 20, 2014

'The Broken Circle Breakdown'

Love is supposed to crush you and marriage is the fast track to long-time despair. Such dark truisms are flung about in "The Broken Circle Breakdown," a Belgian film whose spirit is so 20th-century Americana it may as well be draped in the Stars and Stripes. And those truisms seem so glamorous, recalling...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 20, 2014

'Saving Mr. Banks'

The word "no" comes out of the lips of P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) more frequently than any other (I counted five in less than 50 seconds of screen time). She often strings them together like beads, presenting them to Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) himself, who only wants to take her book "Mary Poppins" and...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 20, 2014

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters

Director: Thor Freudenthal

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 13, 2014

Surviving the latest trend in American cinema

Who is this man? The protagonist in "All is Lost" is also its sole character — an older (but astoundingly fit) stranded sailor portrayed by 77-year-old Robert Redford. He's unnamed, and does not speak except for right at the beginning of the film when he's reciting a letter to persons unknown. The...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 13, 2014

Frozen" is a story of two journeys: one of Princess Anna, who wants to rescue her kingdom from a permanent winter, and the other of her older sister Elsa, who (unintentionally) generated the blizzard that has entrapped their castle and its surroundings in mile-high dunes of snow.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 13, 2014

The Catholic Church in Ireland has much to answer for in "Philomena," the real-life story of an Irish woman who was thrown into a convent as a pregnant teenager and forcibly separated from her baby son when he was 3 years old. She spent the next five decades searching for him.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 13, 2014

The Frozen Ground

Director: Scott Walker

Japan Times

LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL

Mar 9, 2014

I hereby take myself as my lawfully wedded yome

I was trudging home the other night with a dōryō (同僚, colleague) after another in a series of sābisu zangyō (サービス残業, unpaid overtime) sessions, debating whether to skip dinner or stop off at the nearest 24-hour sūpā (スーパー, supermarket). Out of the blue, my colleague asked...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 6, 2014

'12 Years a Slave'

It's hard to resist comparing "12 Years a Slave" with "The Butler."

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Mar 6, 2014

This reboot (roboot?) of Paul Verhoeven's 1987 kinetic action classic reprises the concept of man-as-machine and vice versa, this time in the blindingly white conference room of evil conglomerate OmniCorp, as its executives ponder how best to deploy their newest creation. This is police officer Alex...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Feb 27, 2014

They say that the EU in its current state of capitalism is a mirror of America in the 1990s. (Remember what that was like? It wasn't all bad, really.) This certainly applies to the Berlin-set micro universe of "Oh Boy," whose very title smells like teen spirit — but it's actually set in the present...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Feb 27, 2014

'Do You Know What My Name is?'

There's no getting away from the fact that Japan is a super-senior society. Age is on our minds, so it's surprising how Japanese films dealing with old age are rarely upbeat, especially those tackling dementia and other mental illnesses that come with growing old.

You can often see generations of families enjoying performances together at Fuji Rock Festival.

Japan’s summer music festivals are feeling the heat in more ways than one

Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.

The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'

By Tomoko Otake

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Omron helping firms achieve carbon neutrality

Omron helping firms achieve carbon neutrality

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER

international-reports