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Comprising international premieres, short programs, and some of the country’s finest-ever films in new restorations, 2024’s Japan Cuts––running July 10-21 at New York’s Japan Society––has been unveiled. It’s in the festival’s nature that numerous works and directors are lesser-known on American shores, though a cursory search has one regularly stopping: new films by Takeshi Kitano (Kubi), Shunji Iwai (Kyrie), Shinya Tsukamoto (Shadow of Fire), and Gakuryu Ishii (The Box Man) populate the selection. Meanwhile, Hideaki Anno’s modern classic Shin Godzilla debuts in a new, black-and-white cut Shin Godzilla: ORTHOchromatic.

Its classics section is three-for-three: Ishii’s August in the Water, Shinji Somai’s Moving, and Toshiharu Ikeda Mermaid Legend, which is more or less one of the greatest films ever made. One can anticipate at least a couple of Japan Cuts’ current unknowns are tomorrow’s figureheads.

See the full lineup below:...

In the wake of Hayao Miyazaki’s latest Oscar win for “The Boy and the Heron” and the VOD dominance of “Godzilla Minus One,” Japanese cinema continues to be as vital as ever to American audiences. That should make the upcoming edition of Japan Cuts, the annual film festival celebrating Japanese cinema co-produced by Japan Society, one of the most exciting events on New York cinephiles’ summer calendars.

The lineup, which IndieWire can exclusively reveal, contains a mix of American and New York premieres alongside a curated selection of newly restored classics. Notable titles include “Shin Godzilla: ORTHOchromatic,” a new black-and-white version of Hideaki Anno’s 2016 kaiju blockbuster; and “Shadow of Fire,” the war drama from “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” director Shinya Tsukamoto that premiered at the 2023 Venice Film Festival.

“We couldn’t be more amazed by this year’s festival,” Peter Tatara, director of film at Japan Society, who...

“Branded to Kill” is Seijun Suzuki’s absurdist nihilistic statement. A film compelled by Freudian drives, surreally, brought into the bright light of day. From this perspective, the utterly insane plot makes deranged sense. Suzuki worked with a team of writers, in a daring collaborative effort; to bash the out script in double quick time. The studio, Nikkatsu rejected the initial script by another writer. Suzuki took this to mean that the studio was out of ideas, so eight men frantically wrote a script, and Suzuki bolted it altogether in a riot of cinema!

Action and eroticism were the popular fashions in Japanese cinema through 1966/1967, so Suzuki intended to give the studio what they want! This slice of pragmatism led to him being fired, a long law-suit and being blacklisted for a decade.

“Branded to Kill” is an anarchic gangster film, jarring in tone, brutal in action and wild in sex,...

Stars: Jô Shishido, Kôji Nanbara, Isao Tamagawa, Anne Mari, Mariko Ogawa, Hiroshi Minami | Written by Hachiro Guryu, Takeo Kimura | Directed by Seijun Suzuki

Writing movie reviews opens up a world that is full of films that I probably would never have had the chance to see. Branded to Kill (Koroshi no rakuin) is one of these and Arrow Video have taken the movie and given it their usual excellent treatment, providing a chance to see it in its best form.

The story revolves around a hit-man who is ranked three with a fetish for sniffing boiling rice. When he fails at his latest job the woman who paid for the hit comes into conflict with him, pushing him into a fight consumed with her own death wish. Finding that his wife also now wants to kill him for his failure and the number one ranked hit-man known as the Phantom...