Tokyo Weekender - January 2016

COMING TO A CINEMA NEAR YOU IN JANUARY
JAN 8
BRIDGE OF SPIES
There was a time when it wouldn’t
have been possible for a new
film from industry titans Steven
Spielberg and Tom Hanks to slip under
the radar, but in a way it’s fitting that
Cold War–era historical drama “Bridge of
Spies” has done just that. This film may
not have got the press but it has certainly
earned the plaudits. The director and star,
who collaborated in the past on “Saving
Private Ryan,” “Catch Me If You Can” and
The Terminal, return to tell a true story
of espionage and heated negotiation in
the 60s. Hanks plays lawyer James B.
Donovan, a man tasked with representing
Rudolph Abel, a possible KGB spy.
Representing the enemy, and doing a
better job at it than his superiors or the
public would have liked, puts Donovan
and his family under intense pressure.
Later, when an American U-2 spy plane is
shot down over the Soviet Union and its
pilot is taken captive it’s up to Donovan
to negotiate the exchange. Based on real
events and from a script co-written by the
Coen brothers, “Bridge of Spies” is a smart
throwback to the tense, political Cold War
movies of old.
THE WALK
JAN 23
French high-wire artist Philippe Petit’s
staggering walk between the Twin
Towers of the World Trade Center in
1974 has already been chronicled in awardwinning
2008 documentary “Man on Wire.”
Robert Zemeckis has now given the story
the drama treatment, capturing Petit’s feat
in heart-stopping 3D. Joseph Gordon-Levitt
plays the diminutive Frenchman as he
arrives in New York and assembles a team
in order to accomplish his dream. The film
has fun with the crime caper–like drama that
precedes the main event but the film really
soars once “The Walk” begins. Petit’s suicidal
mission is staggeringly realized as the camera
swoops and soars to capture the tiny walker
trembling above the great city. Not one for
sufferers of vertigo, this is a film where a 3D
screening is highly recommended.
CRIMSON PEAK
Guillermo del Toro has carved out
a niche of his own as a master of
deliciously dark fantasy. “Crimson
Peak” is the director’s take on the gothic
horror films of old; a deliciously macabre
ghost story with the sumptuous visuals of a
period drama. Mia Wasikowska stars as a
young American author, Edith Cushing, who
falls for a dashing and mysterious stranger,
Tom Hiddleston’s Sir Thomas Sharpe. After
marriage the pair move from the New
World to the Old as they set off for Sharpe’s
ancient family estate of Crimson Peak in a
desolate corner of England. Thomas’s sister
Lady Lucille Sharpe (Jessica Chastain) is not
the only sinister presence young Edith has
to deal with inside the crumbling walls of
the mansion; the estate is populated with
gruesome apparitions and terrible secrets.
JAN 8
IT FOLLOWS
JAN 8
One of the most talked-about horror
movies of recent years and destined
for cult-classic status, “It Follows”
was one of 2015’s indie success stories. The
film takes that old familiar horror cliché, sex
is sinful, and gives it a post-modern twist to
create a terrifyingly relatable tale for our
time. College student Jay (Maika Monroe) has
been dating Hugh, which inevitably leads to
a fumble in the back seat of his car. After the
event, Jay awakens to find she’s been tied to
a chair as her lover proceeds to explain that
he was being stalked by a demonic entity that
is passed from person to person via sexual
intercourse. Now the supernatural force is
following Jay and there’s only one known way
to get rid of it. “It Follows” is a slick and stylish
affair that takes the best of classic horror and
gives it a modern overhaul with an awesome
80s synth-inspired score.
JANUARY 2016 www.tokyoweekender.com