The Japanese films A Girl Missing (よこがお), Patema Inverted (サカサマのパテマ), We Are Little Zombies (ウィーアーリトルゾンビーズ) will continue online at the Row House Cinema through August 13, part of the theater's Japanese Film Week. Tickets and showtime information is available online.
An August 2019 Variety review provides a synopsis of A Girl Missing:
Ichiko is a visiting nurse whose in-home care for elderly artist Tôko Oishi (Hisako Ohkata) has made her a favorite of the family, especially with Tôko’s two granddaughters, the troubled, enigmatic Motoko (Mikako Ichikawa) and the younger, carefree Saki (Miyu Ogawa). Life is pretty good: Ichiko has a pleasant relationship with her nurse colleagues, she enjoys her work, and she’s engaged to Dr. Totsuka (Mitsuru Fukikoshi). Then Saki disappears and is found one week later seemingly unharmed, with Ichiko’s nephew Tatsuo (Ren Sudo) arrested for abduction. She feels responsible, having introduced the two by chance, yet Motoko tells her not to mention her connection to the accused, as it would jeopardize her presence in the family fold.A 2014 New York Times review summarizes Patema Inverted:
An orphaned girl and a fatherless boy bridge opposing societies in “Patema Inverted,” a delightful animated fable from Yasuhiro Yoshiura.And, a Variety review writes of We Are Little Zombies, which played in Pittsburgh in 2019 as part of last year's Three Rivers Film Festival.:
When a scientific experiment goes awry, the laws of physics go nuts, and a subset of humans is forced underground, where gravity has been reversed. In this inverted world of tunnels and caverns, the sky is a terrifying blue-and-white hole for the unwary — like the 14-year-old Patema — to fall into.
Meanwhile, on the surface, young Age and his school friends aren’t faring much better under a totalitarian regime that forbids them to look toward the heavens.
Similar to Juan Solanas’s little-seen 2013 love story, “Upside Down,” this “Can we get along?” movie literalizes a physical attraction that acts as a counterargument to the divided worlds’ insistence on separation.
No pulsating, psychedelic, pop-punk phantasmagoria ought to be as moving and smart as “We Are Little Zombies.” But Makoto Nagahisa’s explosively ingenious and energetic debut (imagine it as the spiritual offspring of Richard Lester and a Harajuku Girl) holds the high score for visual and narrative invention, as well as boasting [insert gigantic-beating-heart GIF] and braaaains, too. The gonzo adventures of four poker-faced Japanese 13-year-olds who bond over their mutual lack of emotion following sudden orphanhood, it reimagines the old “stages of grief” thing as a progression through 13 erratic levels of a video game, complete with mini-games and side quests. And if its manic, 8-bit aesthetic seems hyperactively inappropriate for such a somber scenario — like it does grief wrong — that too, can be interpreted as a generous insight into the mourning process: Who among us, upon being bereaved, has ever believed they’re doing grief right?
