Japanese cinema must change to help young directors, Kore-eda says

Great that he's stepping up and trying to effect positive change.

It would help if the movies used more actors and fewer tarentos. I quite enjoyed movies like Shoplifters but I just don't like most of the 'comedies'.

I think the Japanese film industry is a microcosm of Japanese society and everything needs to change. The same old,same old isn’t working anymore and Japan is rotting from the top(LDP)down.

I recall about 5 years ago there was a poll that said young Japanese weren’t interested in going overseas because they were satisfied with their lot.

Well there lot has changed since then and not for the better.

What a pity a man with vision like Kore-Eda isn’t the leader of the country.

Kore-eda knows how to tell a good story with very little. Almost all of his movies have the same cast of actors basically playing the same version of social outcasts just in slightly different situations.

When I first started studying Japanese, before streaming, I used to watch any Japanese film I could find that had English subtitles. Most were terrible. My Japanese got better and I never wanted to watch another Japanese movie again. Then I started renting Korean DVD’s from Tsutaya that were dubbed in Japanese because I discovered that Korean stuff was actually good and didn’t make me want to blow my brains out.

If Japanese film wants more international recognition, it needs more filmmakers like Kore-eda.

I'm waiting for a good movie to come out of Japan,

First problem is Japanese actors can’t act. It’s like they have a book on what a facial expression and delivery should be and they all follow it.

Tell me I am wrong.

Japanese movies ....hard pass.

@justasking,

You are right.

So right.

In all of the dramas they all make non-stop eye contact which really doesn't happen very much on a day-to-day basis in Japan.

In fact their eyes appear like saucers in the more 'surprising scenes'.

Never ever happens in real life.

Actually the real reason Japanese cultural products have had less success isn't so much due to Japanese looking only inward, although it is a factor, but the main reason is the Plaza Accord, the Japanese economic bubble and subsequent bursting of that bubble and then decades of economic decline and deflation.