Here’s hoping that “5 Centimeters Per Second” represents one last hurrah for Shinkai before moving on to new, and equally fertile territory.

Tony Takitani is one of the more poignant and affecting films I’ve seen in a long time, a very powerful movie about longing and loss.

Ultimately, the film is a nostalgic and romantic tale of childhood promises and dreams.

A beautiful, nostalgic samurai film that often feels like a retread of The Twilight Samurai… which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

An entirely logical, if sometimes sorely flawed, follow-up to Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love.

A fun, offbeat little film that showed me there’s more to Hong Kong cinema than heroic bloodshed and kung-fu.

The film moves with such quiet grace and sublimity that I found myself completely arrested throughout.

If you’re looking for a way to pay respects to the memory of Leslie Cheung, you can certainly do far, far worse.

With a longer running time, perhaps something more substantial might have taken place.

2004 promises us some great movies, but by year’s end, I doubt we’ll have experienced anything quite like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

As a result of its small, intimate, and unassuming approach, The Twilight Samurai is simply a masterpiece.

A very simple story of two hopeless people meeting and slowly learning to have hope in their lives again.

At its heart, this film is a wonderfully done piece about healing and reconciliation.

The Scent of Green Papaya concerns itself with being realistic, with finding the beauty in the ordinary.

A subtle and tender film that will resonate with people of faith, if they take the time to seek it out.

This South Korean melodrama’s predictable sappiness belies its earnest performances and some clever time-travel twists.

Of the series’ strengths, the one I love the most is how well it’s able to juggle humor and drama.

A movie about the wonder and mystery of movies, as played out in the life of one man.

This movie is nothing short of a delight, the kind that gets me giggling like a little schoolgirl every time I think about it.

The premise itself, about a man who is slowly dying and the girl that he falls in love with, would seem prone to sappiness.