DAVID BOWIE
metropolis-feb16
metropolis-feb16
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MOVIES<br />
More reviews: metropolisjapan.com/movies<br />
NORTHERN EXPOSURE<br />
BY KEVING MCGUE<br />
The cold weather of February is the perfect<br />
time to get inside the warmth of a theater<br />
and sample Scandinavian films in the Tokyo<br />
Northern Lights Festival, running<br />
February 6-12 at Shibuya’s Eurospace (1-5<br />
Maruyamacho, Shibuya-ku; www.eurospace.<br />
co.jp). One highlight is Swedish director Lukas<br />
Moodysson’s coming-of-age pic We Are<br />
the Best! The winner of the top award at the<br />
2013 Tokyo International Film Festival, it follows<br />
a trio of junior high school girls who form<br />
CINEMATIC UNDERGROUND<br />
We Are the Best!: © 2013 Memfis Film Rights AB<br />
a punk band in the early ’80s. Other selections<br />
include Trespassing Bergman, a recent<br />
English-language documentary on Ingmar<br />
Bergman and the legendary director’s 1953<br />
work Summer with Monika, which introduced<br />
him to an international audience.<br />
Not shying away from difficult topics, the 5th<br />
Death Penalty Movie Week presents world films<br />
that deal with one of the toughest ethical questions.<br />
The works include the Belgian drama The<br />
Son by directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne,<br />
Nagisa Oshima’s 1968 masterpiece Death by<br />
Hanging, and a new documentary on boxer<br />
Iwao Hakamada, who spent nearly 48 years<br />
on death row. February 13-19 at Shibuya’s Eurospace<br />
(1-5 Maruyamacho, Shibuya-ku; www.<br />
eurospace.co.jp).<br />
The Met Live Viewing series continues to<br />
bring the best performances from the venerable<br />
New York opera to Tokyo movie theaters.<br />
Upcoming works include Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs<br />
de perles (“The Pearl Fishers”) with German<br />
soprano Diana Damrau in the lead and running<br />
February 6-12. Puccini’s Turandot led<br />
by Swede Nina Stemme screens February<br />
27-March 4. Spring will see screenings of<br />
Puccini’s Manon Lescaut and Madama Butterfly.<br />
At Shinjuku Piccadilly (3-15-15 Shinjuku,<br />
Shinjuku-ku; www.smt-cinema.com) and Toho<br />
Cinemas Roppongi Hills (6-10-2 Roppongi<br />
Minato-ku; www.tohotheater.jp).<br />
The life of Florence Foster Jenkins—a New<br />
York socialite who pursued an opera career<br />
despite a glaring lack of musical talent—is proving<br />
to be fertile grounds for cinema. The off-key<br />
singer is played by Meryl Streep in an upcoming<br />
biopic and also inspired the recent French film<br />
Marguerite, which transports the story to the cultural<br />
salons of 1920s Paris. Catherine Frot plays<br />
the delusional soprano, renamed Marguerite<br />
Dumont. On from mid-February at Cine Switch in<br />
Ginza (4-4-5 Ginza, Chuo-ku; www.cineswitch.<br />
com) and Yebisu Garden Cinema (4-20-2 Ebisu,<br />
Shibuya-ku; www.unitedcinemas.jp/yebisu).<br />
EIGA<br />
PINK AND<br />
GREY<br />
BY ROB SCHWARTZ<br />
©2016「ピンクとグレー」 製 作 委 員 会<br />
With the reported dissolution and reification<br />
of J-pop institution SMAP, this film<br />
couldn’t come at a more opportune time.<br />
And it’s based on a novel by a different<br />
idol from the same agency, the legendary Johnny<br />
& Associates. Shigeaki Kato, of the boy band<br />
NEWS, published the book on which this film is<br />
based, to much acclaim, in 2012. It’s already been<br />
adapted into manga and now gets its turn on the<br />
silver screen. Unsurprisingly, it addresses the difficulties<br />
of celebrity and the dangers that go with<br />
it. Rengo (Yuto Nakajima) and Daiki (Masaki Suda)<br />
are childhood friends who share a love of acting.<br />
When they both become thespians, Rengo meets<br />
with huge success but Daiki toils in obscurity.<br />
Their friendship survives, but Rengo decides to<br />
take his own life and involves Daiki in the clean<br />
up. The story flashes back to how the two came<br />
to their careers and then, it turns out, Rengo’s<br />
suicide provides an opening for Daiki’s ascent.<br />
Director Isao Yukisada (Crying Out for Love in the<br />
Center of the World) is one of the finest auteurs<br />
working in Japan, and here he weaves an intricate<br />
tale that switches perspectives—from color to<br />
black and white—and tones magnificently. Another<br />
thought-provoking and challenging work<br />
from a jewel of the current Japanese film scene.<br />
Japanese title: Pink to Gray. (118 min)<br />
21