News

Koki Mitani is one of Japan’s most celebrated screenwriters, playwrights, and film directors, renowned for his sharp wit, ensemble storytelling, and deep affection for both Japanese and Western comedic traditions. A graduate of Nihon University College of Art, he began his career in theater by founding the Tokyo Sunshine Boys (named after the play ‘The Sunshine Boys’ by Neil Simon) in 1983, where he made a name for himself as a screenwriter and stage director with fast-paced, character-driven comedies like ‘12 Gentle Japanese’ and ‘University of Laughs’, a good number of which have been later made into movies. Expanding into film in the late 1990s, Mitani wrote and directed numerous critically acclaimed works such as ‘Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald’, ‘Our House‘, ‘The Uchoten Hotel‘, ‘The Magic Hour‘, ‘A Ghost of a Chance’, and ‘The Kiyosu Conference’, blending tightly constructed plots with sharp humor and a humanistic tone.

His latest comedy film...

South Korea’s Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (Bifan) has unveiled the full line-up for its 28th edition, which is set to open with Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding and close with Soi Cheang’s Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In.

The festival, running July 4 to 14, will screen 225 films from 49 countries, including 67 world premieres. Titles will also receive online screenings through local Ott platform wavve.

Love Lies Bleeding stars Kristen Stewart and marks the second feature of UK filmmaker Glass, whose Saint Maud won the Best Director Choice Feature award at Bifan in 2020. The film premiered at Sundance before playing Berlin earlier this year.

[Our thanks to Christopher Bourne for the following review.]

Koki Mitani’s latest film The Magic Hour is an entertaining and beautifully designed tribute to movies and movie-making that revels in its artificiality. Early in the film, Natsuko (Haruka Ayase), a nightclub waitress, remarks that the elements of the story – gangsters, guns, cement overshoes, a boss’ moll – all make the town seem like a movie set. At the film’s outset, nightclub manager Bingo (Satoshi Tsumbuki) has run afoul of yakuza boss Teshio (Toshiyuki Nishida) by having an affair with the boss’ girlfriend Mari (Eri Fukatsu). Bingo saves them both from being the proverbial feed for the fishes by claiming to be an acquaintance of Della Togashi, a famous hit man known as the “Phantom Assassin,” whom Teshio would like to meet. Not actually knowing the assassin at all, and unable to find the real deal, he comes up with the idea of asking Murata (Koichi Sato), a stuntman,...

The simple fact that Gama No Abura is the directorial debut of Japanese leading man Koji Yakusho - westerners know him from Babel, Japanophiles from most of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s films and a slew of others - would be enough to generate a whole lot of notice. That it actually looks really damn good doesn’t hurt, either. In production for years now - Yakusho’s a busy guy - the film has finally wrapped up and tells the story of a stock trader (Yakusho) trying to hold together a relationship with his son following a tragedy. Which makes it sounds like dark, serious stuff but not so much ... the freshly released trailer plays far more like a goofy comedy, albeit a very smart one, somewhat along the line of a Koki Mitani film.

Check the trailer out below the break!

When you say "Japanese film", your first word association is not likely to be comedy. But this movie pleasingly defies festival expectations. A madcap farce centering on the production of a radio drama, "Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald" is a frothy, "Soapdish" kind of lark. It's zany and fast-paced, with the frantic comic furor of some of Blake Edwards' high-octane mayhem.

While it's not likely to attract notice among mainstream audiences, this deliriously funny film was a hit with festival audiences at last year's Chicago International Film Festival. Cities with significant Asian-American populations could make this one an art house sleeper.

The comic craziness is set against the deadline atmosphere of a Tokyo radio station, where the production "team," including some voice-over artists, is putting on a live radio show. It's a swoony melodrama, much in the style of those golden oldies from American radio such as "Pepper Young" and "Stella Dallas". This scenario is especially drippy, the outcome of a dramatic contest sponsored by the station in which the single entrant, not surprisingly, was the grand-prize winner.

The script is stilted silly, but it's taken deadly seriously by its housewife-writer, a shy, deferential young woman, and it's regarded as high art by the assorted vocal players, each of whom only has one quibble with the script -- it doesn't pay proper justice to their particular character.

In short, the "team" is a wild and idiosyncratic group, from the obsequious producer to the prima donna female star. Included in the mix are a bitter security guard who was a former sound man and the writer's insecure, car-salesman husband. This mix of oddballs, not surprisingly, will ring true to anyone who has ever ventured near the entertainment industry.

Screenwriter-director Koki Mitani's eye for foibles is evident, and he wisely stokes the character clashes to their believable max. Undeniably, the narrative itself is generally predictable, but it's delivered with such speed and skill that the belly laughs overcome the unremarkable story line.

The players are a well-selected screwball group, including Kyoka Suzuki as the serious-minded writer and Toshiaki Karasawa as the cool-and-collected director. Keiko Toda is terrific as the lead actress, vainglorious and conniving.

Technical contributions are smartly realized, with special kudos to editor Hirohide Abe for the fast pacing.

WELCOME BACK, MR. MCDONALD

Lighthouse Entertainment/Group/Fortissima

Producers: Chiaka Matsushita, Hisao Masuda, Takashi Ishihara, Kanjiro Sakura

Screenwriter-director: Koki Mitani

Based on the play "Radio No Jikan" by Mitani and the Tokyo Sunshine Boys

Directors of photography: Kenji Takama, Junichi Tozawa

Editor: Hirohide Abe

Music: Takayuki Hattori

Sound mixer: Tetsuo Segawa

Art director: Tomio Ogawa

Color/stereo

Cast:

Kudo: Toshiaki Karasawa

Miyako Suzuki: Kyoka Suzuki

Ushijima: Masahiko Nishimura

Nokko Senbon: Keiko Toda

Ben Noda: Takehiko Ono

Suhuru Hosaka: Shiro Namiki

Furukawa: Yasukiyo Umeno

Hiromitsu: Jun Inoue

Running time -- 103 minutes

No MPAA rating...