Lots of actor-directors in this year’s J-indies: the 26-year-old Ninomiya Ryutaro not only wrote, directed and edited The Charm of Others but also features rather prominently in its ensemble cast. It’s a film about the relationships and rivalries between the men (overgrown kids, really) in a workshop where vending machines are repaired. The main focus is on the guy who doesn’t fit in with the others: Yoda is a rather taciturn loner, and he’s always getting picked on and bullied by the alpha types in the yard. The exception is Sakata (played by Ninomiya himself), who goes out of his way to try to be friendly to Yoda—and who happens to witness Yoda running into a woman colleague on the street one night. The jock-pack stuff recedes into the background as the film zeroes in on the tensions and ambiguities in Sakata’s friendliness to Yoda, and Yoda’s confused responses. Ninomiya has an eagle eye for quirks of character and deploys it in long takes which privilege the work of his exceptional cast. (He says he wrote the script with the actors in mind.) He has a remarkable control of mood and emotion, not to mention the odd explosion of rage—and the odd episode of corporal punishment.

— Tony Rayns