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    The Kurosawa You May Never Have Heard Of

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    The great Japanese genre director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, whose latest film is “Cloud,” has mastered the cinema of psychological fright. Here’s why you should watch his work.“Who are you?” the enigmatic young man central to Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 1997 breakthrough horror thriller, “Cure,” repeatedly asks. He’s been accused of hypnotizing people and prompting them to commit gruesome murders.That deceptively simple question might be the paramount concern in the cinema of Kurosawa, the prolific Japanese filmmaker whose unnerving, genre-defying films are often preoccupied with questioning or revealing the true identity of their characters — to us and to them.One could say that Kurosawa is to psychological fright what David Cronenberg is to body horror.Masahiro Toda and Koji Yakusho in “Cure.”Daiei StudiosIn “Charisma” (1999), about a detective stranded in a rural community obsessed with a singular tree, he asks what makes some people special and others just ordinary. In “Cure” (streaming on the Criterion Channel), he ponders whether the victims of hypnosis are innate killers or coerced puppets. And in his chilling 2001 internet ghost story “Pulse” (streaming on Tubi), his young characters wonder if they are alone or just lonely.In each of these narratives, the weight of society influences the individual. Kurosawa seems perpetually interested in that tug of war between our free will and the status quo. The supernatural or eerie elements often read like catalysts that incite an inner reckoning.Haruhiko Kato with Koyuki in “Pulse.”Magnolia PicturesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Cloud’ Review: Buyer’s Remorse

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      In this genre-bending thriller, an online reseller’s tale of vengeance becomes a parable of human greed and disconnection.Just as Yoshii (Masaki Suda), sitting on the bus with his girlfriend, is beginning to dream about a better future early on in “Cloud,” the camera gradually inches over, and the outline of a dark figure suddenly hovers over him. Things go deathly quiet and Yoshii turns, but the figure has dashed off the bus.It’s the kind of breathtaking moment you’d expect from the writer and director Kiyoshi Kurosawa whose breakout masterpiece, “Cure” (1997), showcased his virtuosic control of tension and atmosphere. That consummate formal ability has one ready to follow the eclectic Japanese auteur wherever this taut suspense might take us, even if, in this latest work, it might end up in some disjointed directions.Here, Kurosawa’s story of what might initially appear to be sinister morphs boldly and almost irreverently into a tale of slapstick vengeance that carries with it whiffs of Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games” and Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs.” Underneath all that is perhaps something sinister still, though not from an expected place.As an online reseller who poaches just about any product he can find to sell at a higher price, Yoshii has recently had a windfall, selling a batch of medical devices. He quits his factory day job and moves to a house in the woods with his girlfriend, hoping to expand his business. Yet, eerie instances have him looking over his shoulder, and his dubious reselling practices begin to attract enemies.The gears switch hard in the film’s second half, as Yoshii’s karmic retribution comes knocking. But the gunslinging that ensues is not slick nor even particularly gruesome. This is the story of desperate men, pummeled by failure and itching for violent catharsis; although mostly what they get is clumsy death.That incongruence, in the movie’s eyes, embodies the distinction and friction between the digital world and the real one. Online, everyone represents either cash to be made (at seemingly every turn of real and present danger, Yoshii is still just thinking of his rinky-dink hustle) or a scapegoat for one’s anger. But in the physical world, those visions of revenge play out differently. Often, at decisive moments, these characters take on the persona of a villain, shouting out their machinations like they would on an online forum, only for reality to bluntly knock them over the head.It’s a surprisingly funny film in that way, but also disturbing. For all of his genre-bending on display, Kurosawa is interested in something more real and more dark about humanity’s capacity for greed and bitterness, and the quiet ways that the internet can further mutate those diseases in us.But that subtext gets muddled in the director’s primary desire to construct playful surprises, even if some of which, particularly by the end, can be wonderfully, terrifyingly strange. Ultimately, “Cloud” is constructing a highway to hell for Yoshii in which the demons are not phantom, but us.CloudNot rated. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 4 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Wife of a Spy’ Review: Trust or Fear in Love and War?

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      In this latest work by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a Japanese couple’s relationship is shaped by the forces of churning nationalism that surround it.There are a lot of commonplace story elements in “Wife of a Spy.” Childhood friends divided by the beating of war drums. A glib, secretive husband and a distrustful wife. And so on. Combined with its period setting — the movie begins in 1940, at a silk inspection center in Kobe where a British fellow is picked up for questioning — viewers might therefore expect a fairly conventional dramatic thriller.But the director and co-writer here is Kiyoshi Kurosawa, whose approaches to story and genre are always unusual. Soon into its machinations, “Wife of a Spy” begins to thrum with unusual intensity.The husband, Yusaku (Issey Takahashi), who is in the import-export business and had dealings with the Briton, gets a visit from the military as a result. As it happens, the officer, Taiji (Masahiro Higashide), was a childhood friend of both Yusaku and his wife. While Taiji is initially friendly, at a time when Japanese nationalism is swelling, he is also suspicious and disapproving, telling his old friend that he’s too familiar with Westerners, and is rather suspiciously westernized himself.Yusaku is a camera buff, and soon we see him filming a 16-millimeter amateur movie. It’s a heist picture, in poetic noir style, starring his wife, Satoko (Yu Aoi), and his nephew and employee Fumio (Ryota Bando). But his enthusiasm for shooting isn’t purely aesthetic.On a business trip to Manchuria, Yusaku and Fumio surreptitiously film the pages of a notebook filled with details of atrocities committed there, mostly on captive Chinese subjects, by the Imperial Japanese Army: experiments on human subjects, vivisection and more.Satoko learns, piecemeal, of her husband’s activities on the trip. At this point Kurosawa’s movie starts nodding to Hitchcock’s “Suspicion,” albeit understatedly. Adding to her anxiety is her knowledge that a woman came back from Manchuria with Yusaku and Fumio and that she later turned up dead in the harbor.Initially Satoko believes her husband to be a traitor. But once she understands his heart and his aims, she assists him, and they begin living as a truly committed couple for the first time.While Kurosawa’s last film, “To the Ends of the Earth,” was a slow-brewing journey to a young woman’s epiphany, “Wife of a Spy” is something like linear narrative perfection, with every scene perfectly calibrated. As the couple’s best-laid plans hit increasingly hair-raising and heart-sinking setbacks, the movie’s denunciation of war, and its implicit condemnation of contemporary Japan’s blind-eye attitude toward its wartime crimes, becomes more bracing. And the movie’s finale is a masterful evocation of catastrophe that has a low-key echo of Kurosawa’s 2001 horror masterpiece “Pulse.”Wife of a SpyNot rated. In Japanese and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘To the Ends of the Earth’ Review: Seeking a Big Fish, and More

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘To the Ends of the Earth’ Review: Seeking a Big Fish, and MoreA Japanese TV host is lost in and out of translation in Uzbekistan.Atsuko Maeda in “To the Ends of the Earth.”Credit…KimStimBy More