Plan 75 (プラン75）

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  • Plan 75

12/27/25 (Sat)

Hayakawa Chie’s 2022 work, amazingly her first feature film, is a beautiful and understated rumination on an aging society, an acute issue in Japan. The government has crafted a sweet-sounding plan offering incentives for those 75 and older to, in effect, kill themselves. Those who sign up receive a ¥100,000 cash payment (rendered oddly as $1,000 in the subtitles) and can spend their final hours wining and dining in a lovely facility, where they will then be gassed to death. Cremation and other costs are completely covered as well. While the program is nominally voluntary, the attraction is strong for lonely old people with nowhere else to turn, and there is considerable pressure to ease the burden on society by slipping peacefully away rather than dragging on unproductively for decades more.

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Scam (でっちあげ)

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  • でっちあげ (Scam)

12/12/25 (Fri)

A Miike Takashi film of 2025. An elementary school teacher is accused by a mother of abusing her son. We first witness a home visit by the teacher, who spouts racist comments about the mixed-blood kid and disparages his classroom behavior in outrageous terms. The mother is incensed and complains to the principal, who insists that the teacher apologize just to get rid of her.

Then, in imitation of Koreeda’s far superior Monster, it replays the event in question from the teacher’s perspective. Continue reading →

Shoulderpads

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  • Shoulderpads

12/7/25 (Sun)

A spoofy retelling of the classic Night on the Galactic Railroad by children’s writer Miyazawa Kenji. The selling point here, as seen in the eye-catching poster, is the unusual costume design, nothing but a shoulder pad covering the performers’ neither regions. I’m always suspicious of shows relying on a gimmick, but it had strong reviews at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival (not necessarily in itself the best indicator of quality) and, even better, was only an hour long. Continue reading →

West Side Story (1961 film)

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  • West Side Story (1961 film)

12/3/25 (Wed)

I hadn’t seen this version of the film in decades, so I took advantage of the 10am classic movie series sponsored by Toho Cinemas to see it on the big screen. I especially wanted to refresh my memory after Spielberg’s remake a few years back. Continue reading →

Noh: Sanemori (実盛)，Momijigari (紅葉狩)

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  • Noh: Sanemori (実盛)，Momijigari (紅葉狩)

11/2/25 (Sun)

Sanemori: I’ve seen the more expansive version of this Heike tale in both Bunraku and Kabuki, but Zeami’s Noh version is not done as often, being one of those shows that only a certain level of actor is allowed to play.

A monk in Shinohara notes that a certain man has been listening to his sermons every day. He approaches the man and realizes that he is the only one who can see him. The man tells him the story of Sanemori, a warrior who was killed in the Battle of Shinohara, then hints that he is in fact that very warrior before slipping off. He returns in full battle gear, wearing a rich brocaded kimono, and tells his story. He describes how he had special permission to use the kimono, usually available only to generals, because he wanted to return to the battle in his home province in splendor. The reciters relate further that after he was killed and decapitated, the enemy discovered when they washed his head that the black dye came off to show his naturally gray hair, revealing him to be an old man. He had dyed it to ensure that his enemy took him seriously, but this is taken as a sign of vanity, an attachment that he must discard in order to achieve salvation. Sanemori, “a decayed and withered branch,” asks the monk to pray for his soul.

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Gonza the Spearman (槍の権三)

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  • 槍の権三 (Gonza the Spearman)

10/31/25 (Fri)

The Tokyo Film Festival was screening three films this year in honor of Shinoda Masahiro following his recent death. Shinoda has his highs and lows, and the selection reflected both sides, the former in Pale Flower, an undisputed masterpiece, and the latter in the ridiculous Demon Pond. So I chose this adaptation of a classic Chikamatsu Monzaemon piece, which I’ve seen on stage in both Bunraku puppet drama and Kabuki. Shinoda’s last Monzaemon work, Double Suicide, felt like a way-too-purposeful attempt to look avant-garde and totally cool, so I went to this warily.

The play is beautifully written, but the tangled web of societal obligations makes it hard to take seriously at times. I almost wondered if Chikamatsu was making fun of that. Gonza is a spearman in the employ of a large clan. He is informally engaged to a woman, but Sai, the wife of a famed tea master, wants to marry him off to her daughter. A mixture of misunderstandings and evil intentions leads to accusations of adultery, and the codified structure of society proves impossible to overcome.

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Dark Habits (Entre Tinieblas)

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  • Entre Tinieblas (Dark Habits)

10/28/25 (Tues)

A cabaret singer taking refuge in a convent with nutty nuns – but we’re a long way from Sister Act. Almodóvar’s 1983 film was his third feature but the first to win wide notice. The Spanish title refers to a Catholic service that takes place in the three days before Easter, commemorating Jesus’ suffering and death through a gradual extinguishing of candles and ending in total darkness.

A cabaret singer’s abusive boyfriend dies from some bad heroin that he scored for her. Afraid of the police, she takes refuge in a local convent, the Order of the Humiliated Redeemers. She is given the room of a former woman who ran away to serve in Africa, where she was eaten by cannibals. The latter’s newly widowed mother, the Marquess, has decided to withdraw her support from the convent, leaving it in dire financial straits.

Mother Superior is a masturbating, cocaine-snorting, would-be lesbian with fantasies about the new recruit. She believes humiliation is the only way to redemption (“Man will not be saved until he realizes he is the most despicable being ever created”) and thus gives her followers degrading names: Sister Rat of the Sewers writes trashy novels under a penname based on the stories of former penitents; Sister Sh*t is haunted by guilt from a murder for which Mother Superior lied in order to save her, and often drops LSD (the hallucinogenic view from her perspective is hilarious); Sister Damned is fond of playing the bongo for her pet tiger, a surrogate child; and Sister Snake makes fashionable dresses for the Virgin Mary statues along with the chain-smoking priest, who she secretly loves (he adores the costumes for My Fair Lady but is apparently straight).

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The Killer (喋血雙雄)

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  • 喋血雙雄 (The Killer)

10/25/25 (Sat)

Woo followed his breakout A Better Tomorrow and its sequel with this 1989 thriller. An assassin (Chow Yun-fat) agrees to one final job before retirement (this “final job” trope could be a genre on its own). He succeeds in gunning down an entire gang in a nightclub, but accidentally blinds a female nightclub singer who gets too close to the action. Plagued with guilt, he gets close to her without revealing his identity and vows to himself to get the money for a corneal operation that will restore her sight.

At the same time, the triad boss who hired him for the kill now wants him dead. A bloody shootout ensues in which a child is injured. Even as Chow manages to escape, he brings the child to a hospital. A detective (Danny Lee) on the case is intrigued that Chow would risk his own life to get the child to safety, especially in light of his relation with the blind singer. Sensing human feeling inside the killer, he becomes obsessed with capturing Chow. After numerous betrayals and plot twists, Lee ends up fighting the bad guys alongside Chow until the final climax, where they confront a triad gang at a church in a you-gotta-see-it-to-believe-it battle.

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A Better Tomorrow (英雄本色)

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  • 英雄本色 (A Better Tomorrow)

10/24/25 (Fri)

John Woo’s 1986 flick apparently defied gloomy expectations and proved an unexpected blockbuster, making Woo a major presence, reigniting the film careers of Chow Yun-fat and Ti Lung, and propelling pop star Leslie Cheung to film stardom (he also sang the theme song). Moreover, it changed the game for Hong Kong action films, essentially creating a new genre.

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Infernal Affairs (無間道)

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  • 無間道 (Infernal Affairs)

10/19/25 (Sun)

Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s 2002 classic was not only a big hit in its own right but spawned a prequel, a sequel, a TV series, and adaptations in Korea, Japan, India and America (Scorsese’s Oscar-winning The Departed). So I figured it’s about time I caught up with it. The Chinese title, “The Endless Road”, refers to the eternal sufferings of Buddhist hell, described more fully at the beginning and end of the film. That would have made for a memorable English title, but as it happens they found a terrific substitute. I wish Japanese title-makers were this creative.

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A Look Back: Merrily We Roll Along

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With the release of the filmed version of the 2023 Broadway revival of the cult Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along, the timing seems right for a rerun of this piece from last year. Unlike the Met Live and National Theatre Live productions, the film is not the record of a single performance but shot over three days and edited into one work. While that feels like cheating — it essentially gives the actors three takes to get it right, going against the entire idea of a live show — it does give a wider audience a look at a flawed vehicle that most are unlikely to see in person. Reviews of the film rendering have been mixed, but the production itself, based on the original London showing that I saw some years ago, was solid. It’s also a way for the producers to squeeze even more money out of the show after charging up to $899 per ticket on Broadway. Here is my take.

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Yankee damns Yankees

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  • Yankee damns Yankees

10/12/25 (Sun)

It seems that the 1955 musical Damn Yankees is set to be the next sacrifice on the altar of woke. I was excited to hear that a revival of the show, one of the best of the Golden Age musicals, will be moving to Broadway after an apparently successful run in Washington DC. I saw the last revival twice in 1994 with a pitch-perfect Victor Garber as the devil, and it was a joy. I remember in previews when 104-year-old George Abbott, the original director four decades earlier, showed up in the audience to a standing ovation.

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