Then again, none of us seem to be Japanese residents so we probably have only seen a small selection of Japanese movies, and probably the cream of the crop (the ones that get exported more than the others). So who knows

Yeah, that's probably the case. In recent years Japan witnessed a shortage of new script writers (that's my theory) so they start to drama-ize a lot of popular mangas/light novels, since they guarantee audience rating. And you know, if the producers just plan to squeeze a few yen from Manga readers, you can expect less effort put into it. And that's exactly how these dramas usually turn out. Often poorly made, low investment, sometimes almost ruining it for the original...

OK, why am I complaining about Japanese dramas on the English forum?

More to the topic, by looking at the Bloody Monday series (yeah, adaption of manga) you can start to see the modern Holywood style of narrating. Of course the antagonists are charming, in an evil way, but that's already drastically different from the Akiro Kurosawa school of narration.

I do know that sometimes things work differently in different contexts. I have been watching a lot of Korean historical dramas recently, and I commented to a Korean friend about how exaggerated the acting seemed to be. My friend told me that this is something mostly limited to the historical dramas; she said if you watch the same actors in dramas set in the modern day, the acting is much more normal. According to her, the exaggerated emotions that I saw are mainly associated with historical dramas, there's a kind of extra theatricality given to it.

Acting-wise, things changed a lot in the 50s, in Hollywood movies. Check out Brando's movie 'Sayonara' to see the two different styles, both classic and modern, together. Brando seems modern and 'naturalistic', the rest of the actors seem more like stage actors and seem a lot different. As a result I find it hard to watch. The Brando style is pretty much the default style for movie/TV acting now (though how many are as good as Brando is another matter!)

Sayonara