Film Reviews Highlight Cultural Themes

No voices are raised in “Nagi Notes,” in the course of a tranquil week or so spent in a remote rural village in western Japan. No seismic incidents disrupt the film’s mellow day-to-day flow, and though we hear sporadic background rumbles from a military base in the area, no urgent

In Tokyo Story, perhaps Yasujirō Ozu’s most famous movie, an elderly Japanese couple brave the bustle of the hectic capital to visit their adult children. Writer-director Kōji Fukada’s latest feature, his first in Competition at Cannes, is a meticulously detailed reversal that flips that premise in