Wild Style (© 1983 Wild Style. All Rights Reserved.)

Lace up your Adidas for the re-release of early hip-hop film Wild Style (1983; pictured), at Cinema Rise (13-17 Utagawacho, Shibuya-ku; www.cinemarise.com) for three weeks, starting March 21. The plot about a reporter trying to track down a graffiti artist is forgettable—what made it a cult hit and source of countless samples used in songs were the performances by Grandmaster Flash, Fab Five Freddy, and others.

Before the technology existed to add subtitles, silent films were shown in Japan accompanied by benshi—narrators who would translate, explain the story, do voices, and even do sound effects. The art form is still alive and Akiko Sasaki will show you how it’s done with Buster Keaton’s 1926 comedy masterpiece The General at Cinemart Shinjuku (3-8-15 Roppongi, Minato-ku; http://meturl.com/cinemartshinjuku), on March 22 at 10am and 12:30pm.

Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (2-7-1 Yurakucho, Chiyoda-ku; www.ht-cinema.com) has something for multi-lingual cinema fans this month. The German comedy Back on Track, on from March 21, has laughs and heart in a story about a former Olympian who fends off the boredom of a retirement home by training for the Berlin Marathon. And Vanessa Paradis plays a single mother of a boy with Down syndrome in the French-language Café de Flore, on from March 28.