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Ghost stories aren't always horror stories—at least not in the sense that they are supposed to scare us beyond our wits and keep us up at night. For instance, one of our favorite tales around the holiday season is a ghost story that is nothing more than a simple morality play. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol isn't exactly packed with frights and psychological torments as much as it is with lessons about showing kindness to others and not taking the good things in life for granted. Likewise, one of the most revered movies in the history of Japanese cinema is also a ghost story that is not meant to raise our hair, but merely to make us think about where our least likable traits might lead us. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953's Ugetsu goes head-to-head with 1954's Chikamatsu Monogatari when it comes to determining which is his ultimate masterpiece.

Japanese cinema has a long, rich tradition of acting excellence. From the early days of the silent era until the present, Japan has birthed some of the greatest film actors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Many of Japan's best actors have managed to transcend their native borders, obtaining stardom throughout the rest of Asia, Europe, and the United States.

Japanese actors are well-known for their versatility, shining across multiple genres, which include yakuza films, jidaigeki, samurai movies, horror, and kaiju. Toshirō Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, and Takashi Shimura are among Japan's greatest actors, but there are many more who deserve to have their contributions to the medium acknowledged.

Updated on December 29, 2024, by Jenny Melzer: Japanese film has been equally important to the growth and definition of the industry over the last century, with numerous actors contributing their talents to some of the most memorable movies in history. As such, this...

Wes Anderson was expected to attend the Cannes Film Festival this month to world premiere his new movie, “The French Dispatch.” The director last attended Cannes for the world premiere of “Moonrise Kingdom,” which opened the 2012 edition of the festival and remains Anderson’s first and only trip to the Croisette. Anderson took part in The New York Times’ Cannes survey to share a memory about the world’s most prestigious film festival, and in doing so he also dropped an update about how he’s been spending his quarantine.

“I have a 4-year-old daughter so, like so many others in our situation, I am now a part-time amateur schoolteacher,” Anderson said. “Much of what I am reading has to do with ancient Egypt, dinosaurs, insects and the Amazon rainforest. But also: Patricia Highsmith, James Baldwin, Elmore Leonard and a book about plagues.”

Anderson also dropped an 11-film quarantine watch list.

Mubi’s retrospective, Spotlight on Kenji Mizoguchi, is showing in France until May 22, 2020.Above: Kenji Mizoguchi and Kyōko Kagawa on the set of The Crucified Lovers (1954).On multiple occasions, Kenji Mizoguchi was said to have compared himself to Vincent van Gogh, even calling the painter his "artistic model" in conversation with actress Kinuyo Tanaka. One has good reason to take Mizoguchi's word for such self-identification, considering his former aspirations to become a painter. On set, he was a notoriously stringent perfectionist and, if displeased at all with the technicalities of a production, rather cruel towards those with whom he worked. What does it mean to refer to Mizoguchi's films as "painterly," as is so often done? Indeed, the filmmaker wanted to be a painter in his youth, and was an ardent student of the craft: In Patterns of Time: Mizoguchi and the 1930s, Donald Kirihara writes that Mizoguchi even "wept before the Mona Lisa.

Already the sixth entry in the series in three years (and the first of four in 1964), one would wonder if “Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold” would have anything new to offer to the series but right from the credits at the very start, director Kazuo Ikehara has a resounding “hell yes, it does” for you!

On his way back from paying his respects at the grave of a man he regrets killing in a fight from a previous chapter, Zatoichi meets the villagers of the deceased’s village Itakura who are in the midst of a celebration. They are rejoicing the fact that after a long period of hardships, they have finally been able to gather the one thousand ryo to pay their taxes to the local magistrate. However, on the way to the magistrate, the entourage with the chest containing the tax money is pounced upon by three samurais,...

It’s a given that their Main Slate — the fresh, the recently buzzed-about, the mysterious, the anticipated — will be the New York Film Festival’s primary point of attraction for both media coverage and ticket sales. But while a rather fine lineup is, to these eyes, deserving of such treatment, the festival’s latest Revivals section — i.e. “important works from renowned filmmakers that have been digitally remastered, restored, and preserved with the assistance of generous partners,” per their press release — is in a whole other class, one titanic name after another granted a representation that these particular works have so long lacked.

The list speaks for itself, even (or especially) if you’re more likely to recognize a director than title. Included therein are films by Andrei Tarkovsky (The Sacrifice), Hou Hsiao-hsien (Daughter of the Nile, a personal favorite), Pedro Costa (Casa de Lava; trailer here), Jean-Luc Godard (the rarely seen,...

Collecting Masters of Cinema spine numbers 52 to 59 this new box set features eight films from the late period in Kenji Mizoguchi’s career, the years 1951-1956. Mizoguchi passed away in 1956 and this selection of films represent a wonderful selection of Mizoguchi’s most widely acclaimed work.

Each film is given its own disc and there are four highly detailed booklets offering information and essays on the films. Each film also has an introduction by the respected critic Tony Rayns and an accompanying trailer. The introductions are informative and offer a good introduction to the significance of each film but are perhaps best viewed after the film rather than before (if you have not already seen the film in question) as they tend to reveal a lot of details about the plots.

The transfers are mixed but all impressive considering the difficulty in acquiring pristine prints of some of these films.

Black Dynamite

DVD, Icon Entertainment

Most Blaxploitation spoofs – and there have been quite a few – make the mistake of mocking the obvious: the ridiculous characters and situations and the technical shortcomings of the flicks. The makers of Black Dynamite, however, discovered that it's better, and far funnier, to honour the cliches and make a film that truly delivers all the action, nudity, swearing and excitement you'd associate with the genre. These films were always intentionally silly and fun, so why mess with that? The idea behind Black Dynamite was to create a film that appeared to be a newly discovered classic. This a movie you can laugh at and still completely dig. Much of this is down to the lead, Michael Jai White, an actor who has quietly been doing good work since his big push, 1997's Spawn, flopped. Here, in a film he co-wrote, he gives one of the most committed performances ever seen,...

Japanese cinema isn’t all Takeshi Miike, Battle Royale, Takeshi Kitano and Akira Kurosawa you know. Director Kenji Mizoguchi took a more poetic and no less masterful approach to his work which is being celebrated in an amazing boxset collection released by Eureka’s Masters of Cinema label from 23rd January focusing on the man’s 1950s classic-after-classic output.

We’ve been sent over a press release with details of what films feature and what extra features there are. FilmShaft’s Alex Wagner is a big Mizoguchi fan, so imagine he’s excited by this news! So if you’re a connoisseur of Japanese film or a film student wanting to look good in class by saying something like, “well Mizoguchi’s Street of Shame is largely considered by many critics to be one of the greatest films of the 20th century”, this boxset is definitely for you.

Eureka! have...