Synopsis
The only movie theater on the Onomichi seafront is about to close its doors. Its last night of screenings will be an all-night marathon of Japanese war films. When lightning strikes the theater, three young men in the audience find themselves thrown back in time into the world inside the screen.
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Cast
- Takuro AtsukiMario Baba
- Takahito HosoyamadaTorihosuke
- Yoshihiko HosodaDugout
- Rei YoshidaNoriko
- Riko NarumiKazumi Saito
- Hirona YamazakiKazuko Yoshiyama
- Takako TokiwaYuriko Tachibana
- Yukihiro TakahashiGrandpa / Fanta
- Nenji KobayashiKizuma
- Tetsuya TakedaRyoma Sakamoto
Recommendations
- 100
RogerEbert.com
Labyrinth of Cinema is tremendously affecting, frequently beguiling, usually exhausting, and on, and on, and on. - 91
The Film Stage
This mammoth final effort by Ôbayashi, an artist who so often destroyed the conventional boundaries of cinematic space in works like 1977’s Hausu, is a completely humbling viewing experience. - 90
TheWrap
A thrilling, sprawling sensory overload that simultaneously enchants and overwhelms. - 90
Variety
Opening with a riotous bombardment of sound and image that risks confusing and losing some viewers even as it sends others into rapturous delight, Labyrinth of Cinema then makes sense of the chaos and emerges as a touching plea for peace and an exuberant celebration of the artifice and transformative power of cinema. - 89
Austin Chronicle
Labyrinth of Cinema is a chaotic entanglement of ideas and endearing characters, a sweet departure for the luminous artist Ôbayashi was. - 80
The Guardian
Labyrinth of Cinema is indeed labyrinthine, a maze of jokes, film references, quirky back projections, bargain-basement effects and melodramatic confrontations. But at its centre is something deeply serious: a belief that, as the sole country to have experienced a nuclear strike, Japan has a terrifying exceptionalism. This awful truth is marked by a tonal cymbal-clash, both acidly comic and desperately sad. - 70
The Hollywood Reporter
More uneven but ultimately more effective than filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi’s previous anti-war film. - 63
Slant Magazine
Manic, maximalist, and bristling with postmodern bells and whistles, Labyrinth of Cinema is exactly what its title suggests.
