'Wife of a Spy' ('Spy no Tsuma'): Film Review | Venice 2020

Mark Schilling Japan CorrespondentThe Tokyo International Film Festival has unveiled a smaller, more compact selection for its 33rd edition (Oct. 31-Nov.

Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a directorial polyglot, no doubt about it, but he’s more fluent in some cinematic languages than others.

Koei Tecmo has officially announced Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires, slated for release in 2021.The company revealed the title at the recent 2020 Tokyo Games Show (TGS) over the weekend. The game will be released on all current- and next-gen systems – PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, Nintendo Switch and PC – sometime in “early” 2021.

Tom Grater International Film ReporterEXCLUSIVE: The North Star Film Alliance (NSFA), an organization set up by Finland, Estonia and Latvia to promote the countries’ film production opportunities, is opening an office in Japan in a bid to foster connections between the regions.There has been growing cooperation between the Japanese film biz and NSFA countries, following the 2017 Latvian-Japanese co-production Magic Kimono, currently streaming on Netflix, which was helmed by Latvian director

2.5 stars (out of 4)There never was a sequel to Lost in Translation. Everyone who saw writer-director Sofia Coppola’s moody and exquisite 2003 arthouse hit must give their own interpretation as to what Bill Murray whispered into the ear of Scarlett Johansson as the two parted ways in Tokyo.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticIf you go back and watch Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation” (2003), you’ll see that it’s lost none of its shimmer — that airily crafted blend of mood and moment, location and dislocation, all wrapped around the delicate tale of two souls who didn’t know they were lost until they found each other in the floating limbo of the Park Hyatt Tokyo.

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired Pathé's Venice-bowing comedy-drama The Duke for a range of territories worldwide, including the U.S. The distributor also picked up the film —starring Oscar winners Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren —for Latin America, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe (excluding Poland, the Czech Republic and the former Yugoslavia), Russia/CIS, Greece, Turkey, Portugal, South Africa, India and Southeast Asia (excluding Japan and China).

Mark Schilling Japan Correspondentdirector whose short films have garnered honors in Japan and abroad, Sato Takuma is celebrating a milestone with the selection of his first theatrical feature, “Any Crybabies Around,” by San Sebastian. Sato set the film in his native Akita Prefecture, at the northern tip of Japan’s main island of Honshu.

In William Olsson’s “Lost Girls & Love Hotels,” Margaret (Alexandra Daddario), is spiraling out of control. An American expat living in Japan, the young woman spends her days fighting off a hangover, barely competent enough to hold a job, and her nights drunkenly talking in bars followed by late-night sexual encounters with strangers.

Chrissy Teigen has debuted the stunning bedroom where she and her husband John Legend are staying at their temporary rental home.

When Brad Pitt signed on in August to star in director David Leitch's upcoming action thriller Bullet Train, it gave Yuma Terada and Ryosuke Saegusa, co-founders of startup Japanese rights management firm CTB Inc, a burst of high-profile visibility for their unconventional business model. Produced by Sony, Bullet Train will be a big-budget adaptation of Japanese author Kotaro Isaka's novel Maria Beetle.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticThe COVID epidemic must be rough for sex addicts — something that lends at least a temporary tinge of nostalgia to “Lost Girls & Love Hotels,” whose promiscuous heroine seems unconcerned even about old-school STD risks.

Endless drunken sex in exotic locales is no kind of fun for the star of William Olsson's Lost Girls & Love Hotels, a sober adaptation of Catherine Hanrahan's novel of the same name. Running away from herself —assuming she has a coherent self to run from —a young American woman remains just employed enough to pay rent in Tokyo while spending the rest of her time drunk and/or in bed with strangers at the quirky pay-by-the-hour destinations that hold such appeal for tourists.

Maggie Lee Chief Asia Film Critic“Prison is the only place that won’t kick you out no matter how badly you behave,” remarks the ex-con protagonist, who gets no second chances in Japanese society. Directed with piercing insight, emotional depth and true compassion by Miwa Nishikawa, “Under the Open Skies” tells a heartbreaking tale of a pariah whose soul is crushed by systemic discrimination and a world of hypocritical conformity.

Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa nabbed another career honor Sunday, winning the Venice Film Festival's best director award for Wife of a Spy, the first period drama of his prolific filmography. Set in 1940 Kobe, Japan, the film stars Issey Takahashi (Kill Bill, Shin Godzilla) as a debonair silk merchant whose cosmopolitan world view is on a collision course with Japan's advancing militarism and stifling social conformity.

Mark Schilling Japan CorrespondentVariety spoke with Kiyoshi Kurosawa the day after the world premiere of his World War II suspense drama “Wife of a Spy” in competition at the Venice Film Festival. A frequent invitee to Venice, Cannes and other major festivals, Kurosawa did the interview via Zoom from the Tokyo office of his Japanese distributor.

Ed Meza @edmezavarJapanese filmmaker Tomoko Kana is revisiting the legacy of nuclear catastrophe in a new feature film project that brings together survivors of Fukushima and Chernobyl.Kana and producer Mari Mukai are looking for primarily German partners for the project, which they presented at this year’s Venice Gap-Financing Market and which will shoot to a large extent in Germany.“A Picture Book” is a very personal project for Kana that reflects her own experiences, according to Mukai,

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefTIFFCOM, the film rights market that accompanies the Tokyo International Film Festival, is to be held entirely in virtual or online form this year.Market organizers announced the change on Monday. The market will keep its previously announced dates Nov.