Fuji Rock Festival ’26

Posted on July 24, 2026 by philipbrasor

Friday morning

The weather forecast for this year’s Fuji Rock Festival hasn’t been encouraging. Rain pretty much every day, but right now the sun is out and the temperature is quite bearable. It was cloudy last night for the pre-festival party but I only felt a touch of mist around 11 pm.

The crowd wasn’t as big as it’s been for the past two years, which seems to mean the post-Covid “revenge” is over, though I’ve heard that Saturday is sold out. The free party last night, which is thrown mainly to thank the locals for their hospitality, seemed relatively low-key, and you could actually get food and drink without waiting. Even the fireworks, which officially kick off the festival, seemed subdued. There were no big break beats in the Japanese fashion. 

That said, the live entertainment was as rowdy as always. The Mexican band Son Rompe Pera, started things off with a loud raucous set that fortified the group’s cumbia skills with punky determination. I mean, the main instrument was a marimba, played by a shirtless guy who seems to have copped his stage moves from Angus Young. Since the energy level started high and never flagged, there were no heart-stopping moments, but the prefest crowd is always raring to go so the band might be surprised today when they do their regular set at the White Stage and not that many people show up (they come on around lunch). 

The second band I never heard of: FCO, who aren’t part of the official lineup. Apparently, they’re a side gig of one of the members of Tempalay, who are playing the festival. I was pleasantly surprised by the music, which had a solid pulse and some wild, caustic guitar work. I didn’t really care what the acronym stood for but once I found out I had questions.

Saturday morning

Contrary to forecasts, yesterday’s weather was almost perfect: partly cloudy and cool, with only a little drizzle in the early afternoon. 

It being a Friday, the festival was not full, and I only experienced one bottleneck, which, of course, happened near the White Stage. They’ve actually opened up another forest path, supposedly to get around this problem, from the Gypsy Avalon stage to the Green Stage, but it still has to go near the White Stage where it connects to another forest path, so in a sense it’s not really a solution during times when certain shows at the far end of the festival grounds end at about the same time.

Today is sold out, so the bottlenecks will probably be worse. According to the Japan Times, the reason for the sellout is Fujii Kaze, who plays the penultimate show on the Green Stage. This repeats the pattern last year, when that slot on Saturday was filled by city pop veteran Yamashita Tatsuro, who rarely gives concerts these days. By that token, it would seem to be a kind of strategy by the promoter, Smash. The real headliner, Khruangbin, like last year’s headliner, Vulfpeck, isn’t nearly that popular in Japan, but I assume Smash still feels it has to put a foreign act at the top of the bill. Besides, if people are coming just to see Fujii, they have to have time to make it back to where they’re from afterwards.

I saw most of the acts I wanted to see yesterday. Three of them are nominally “ethnic music” groups whose members do not necessarily belong to the ethnicities whose music they play. Les Khmers, which performed in the early afternoon at the newly revamped Orange Echo, plays Cambodian pop of the 60s and 70s, though almost every member is Japanese, including leader Samut Nobe, who apparently was an exchange student in Phnom Penh some years back. I’ve always thought that Japanese kayokyoku (popular song) sounds a lot like other Asian countries’ pop music or vice versa and Les Khmers kind of fortifies that theory. The crowd really jumped, especially when the tempos revved up and Nobe started doing his awkward dance moves. He was helped enormously by a female vocalist who might have been Cambodian (her name was not listed on the festival program) and seemed to have the native moves down. 

Altin Gun definitely has at least one Turkish member, vocalist and baglama player Erdinc Ecevit, but the band is headquartered in the Netherlands and, according to their bio, boasts members from all over. Still the music they play is very much based on Turkish psychedelia from the 70s that’s punched up with a more club-friendly rhythm sense. They’re one of the funkiest bands in the world at the moment, and while they held their own during the mid-afternoon at the Field of Heaven, there was a feeling that they were holding back—just as the music was building toward something monumentally ecstatic, the song would end. It was pretty amazing, but also less than what it could have been.

Antibalas is one of the foremost Afro-funk groups on the planet, and has been for almost 30 years, though they contain no musicians from Africa. Heirs to the rebel tradition of Fela Kuti, they use funk as a means to incite change, and baritone sax player Jake Pinto mentioned the current dire situation in the US. during their early evening set at Heaven. Unlike Altin Gun, they never held back and the field was jumping high during their vocal-less set, which consisted mostly of brand new material. The veteran ensemble, who haven’t played in Japan for nine years, seemed genuinely humbled by the reception. 

As usual when there is too much good stuff on offer I tended to do a lot of running around from one end of the festival to the other and back again. At the far end of the grounds, where I saw the above mentioned acts, I also saw Arlo Parks, whose gently insistent dance music was heavily laden with a therapeutical component that I’m sure most of the audience, regardless of their spiritual wholeness, didn’t get, but they definitely got the groove. The Japanese electronic group Black Boboi, three women dressed completely in black, threw a hypnotic spell over the early evening crowd who had settled in the Orange Court for dinner. They held their own extremely well given the competition on other stages.

At the money end of the festival, Snail Mail delivered her strummy, personal rock songs to an audience that simply got off on the guitars—she’s quite capable on the instrument, even if she has a lead guitarist to do most of the heavy lifting. I’ve always been slightly dismissive of her songwriting, which sounds like what Taylor Swift in her post-pop phase is striving for, but the tunes stand up to scrutiny when played live. I was completely taken by a guy who was standing in front of me, dressed incongruously in a Mexican pro wrestler mask and flowered lounge pants. I didn’t have the nerve to ask him to turn around so I could get a photo of his masked face with Snail Mail in the background (depth of field challenge?). That would have been Pulitzer-worthy.

Like Antibalas, The xx were making their first return to Japan in almost a decade and seemed really stoked to be playing Fuji Rock. As the Green Stage headliner for the day, they had a lot to live up to and delivered more than enough to send the crowd out into the late night maelstrom of obscure bands and DJs in high spirits. By presenting their chillest songs during the first half of their set, they could dedicate the latter half to their dance music, and while Romy got the lion’s share of camera shots on the big screen, it was bassist Oliver Sim who clearly commanded the stage. The guy is truly a sexy beast. Jamie xx’s occasional solo break beats were few and far between, but this is supposed to be a group comeback, right?

Maya Ongaku, a Japanese psychedelic trio, was the first act for the late shift at the Red Marquee, and while I was beyond faded at that point, they held my attention with long-form repetitive melody dumps that never quite fell into jamming, though, as with Altin Gun, they seemed to stop right when they were reaching liftoff. 

But the show of the day was definitely Turnstile. I saw them when they played Fuji two years ago and liked it a lot, but then they were the penultimate act on the White Stage on Sunday, and it took a while for the crowd to warm to their emo-hardcore shtick. What difference two years make! The audience in front of the Green Stage for their late afternoon show was already quite rowdy 15 minutes before they took the stage, and remained raucous yet indefatigably sentimental during the whole of the punishing hourlong set. These people know all the words to the songs as well as their meaning, and the cameras that fed into the giant stage screens were more often trained on the audience than on the group, whose diversity makes them almost faceless. I counted three distinct mosh pits forming spontaneously early on and the band members catered to the feeling, which only grew as the hour stretched on and each emotionally impacted song built on the last one. There was even one guy who must have been a plant, but the moment was too perfect to tell for sure. During “Dull,” when lead singer Brendan Yates talks about “waiting for the call,” a guy at the front of the barricades held up an actual red landline telephone. I mean, who prepares for such things except stoned obsessives? But that’s  what the Turnstile show was, one of the best hard rock performances I’ve ever seen at Fuji, because the band and the audience worked as one. Exhilarating doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Posted in Music | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Review: A Private Life

Posted on July 23, 2026 by philipbrasor

Though clearly a vehicle for Jodie Foster and her Francophone talents, this chamber piece, directed by Rebecca Zlotowski, attempts to split the difference between Christiesque murder mystery and psychological melodrama, and whether it succeeds will depend on how much the viewer wants to invest in each side of the narrative equation. For me, the mystery is underdeveloped. Foster plays Lilian Steiner, an American old-school Freudian psychoanalyst who appears to have lived almost her whole adult life in Paris. Divorced from her ophthalmologist husband, Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil), and barely on speaking terms with her adult son, Julien (Vincent Lacoste), Lillian is a bit of a cold fish. As a professional therapist she mostly cruises, recording all her sessions on mini-discs for later perusal that she never really carries out. As her patients unload themselves on her couch, she can’t be bothered with their travails, wrapped up in her own thoughts and inner conflicts. When she learns that one of her patients, an insomniac named Paula (Virginie Efira), has died, supposedly by suicide, she wakes up, as it were. Why didn’t she see it coming? The attendant guilt sends her down a deep and treacherous rabbit hole as she convinces herself that Paula must have been murdered.

The most likely suspect is Paula’s excitable husband, Simon (Mathieu Almaric), who accuses Lillian of malpractice by over-prescribing the sedatives that killed her. This suspicion is reinforced by Paula’s and Simon’s pregnant daughter, Valerie (Luana Bajram), who keeps pestering Lillian about an aunt whom Paula was particularly close to and who recently died herself. With a sizable inheritance involved and evidence that Simon has a mistress, the likely motive becomes money, but then Lillian, acting way against type, visits a hypnotist (Sophie Guillemin) and learns that in a parallel life she was a man who was in love with Paula during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Though Lillian’s Jewish heritage has been dormant most of her life, it becomes a matter of interest in her investigation as she learns that Paula’s aunt, also Jewish, was persecuted as a girl. 

Zlotowski works her butt off tying all these disparate plot points together into something that mystery lovers might appreciate, but it plays havoc with the story’s more intimate dramatic elements as suggested by the title. Whose private life are we looking at? Obviously, it’s Lillian’s, and as it becomes apparent that her professional approach has been mostly a failure, you are supposed to wonder what is left for her? To say that the movie eventually cops out in this regard—the awkward comic moments give it away—is to realize that it really is just a vehicle for Jodie Foster and her Francophone talents. Why else are there all these heavy duty French stars in supporting roles, including Irene Jacob and Aurore Clement, not to mention the late Frederick Wiseman as Lillian’s mentor, another American in Paris. It’s as if the movie were thought up by the showrunners of that hit Netflix series Call My Agent: More of a stunt than a film.

In French and English. Opens July 24 in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670). 

A Private Live home page in Japanese

photo (c) Les Films Velvet – Buenos Hair – France 3 Cinema

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Media watch: What is the point of the imperial family’s official duties?

Posted on July 22, 2026 by philipbrasor
Princess Kako (Instagram)

Last week the Diet enacted a bill that would reinstate former lines of the imperial household into the chain of succession so that male descendants can be adopted and fill out the ranks of possible future emperors. In addition, female members of the imperial family will be allowed to remain as royals after they marry. The former  measure would help ensure that there would be enough male candidates for the Chrysanthemum throne, since it is the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) intention to not allow a female emperor. Much has been made in the media about how neither the public’s nor the imperial family’s opinion has been solicited in deciding these matters because surveys have shown the Japanese people overwhelmingly like the idea that the present Emperor’s daughter, Aiko, could be Emperor someday. As for the imperial family’s opinion, the Emperor has hinted indirectly that it’s a choice the citizenry should make in accordance with the Constitution, a document the LDP tends to consult only at their convenience. 

The media has paid less attention to the part of the bill that allows female members of the imperial family to remain in the palace after they marry, presumably to a commoner since there are so few male royals on the dating market. These female members, if they were progeny on the male side of the imperial family, could then produce heirs to the throne, but according to several media there’s a more pressing issue at stake. 

Because the imperial family is dwindling, there are fewer royals to carry out komu, or “official duties.” These tasks are distinct from kokuji, work that the Emperor does in line with his hallowed brief: opening a new session of the Diet, or carrying out religious rites associated with the throne. Komu is also distinct from diplomatic activities, such as the recent trip that the Emperor and Empress took to Europe to visit counterpart royalty in the Netherlands and Belgium. 

But what komu is exactly is not properly understood. According to the business magazine President, “komu” refers to activities carried out by members of the imperial family that have been decided by the Imperial Household Ministry (IHM) after receiving requests from outside parties. The IHM decides whether to involve the royals in these public activities based on whether they “contribute to society,” an explanation that’s as vague as they come. In practice, an event organizer makes a request to the IHM for the presence and participation of a member of the imperial family. The IHM studies the event and the organizer in terms of past work and security aspects. If the IHM approves of the event, it then submits a proposal to the Cabinet, which has the final say. If the Cabinet approves, a schedule is formulated.

The events that are more likely to be approved are charity-related or have something to do with international relations. The IHM’s main criterion is whether the tenor and purpose of an event seems appropriate for the imperial family. It should be noted that activities deemed “private entertainment,” such as concerts and sporting events, are usually not approved, since the IHM deems that the royals should buy tickets for them just like everyone else, but it’s difficult to imagine that if the Emperor, who loves classical music, wants to see the Berlin Philharmonic perform Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony at Suntory Hall, he’s going to have wait on line just like any other punter. 

Continue reading →
Posted in Media | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Media notes: Government to Japan’s cinema legacy: Get a job

Posted on July 20, 2026 by philipbrasor
National Film Archive of Japan in Kyobashi, Tokyo

On June 25, the National Film Archive of Japan (NFAJ) announced it was launching a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for its continuing operations and existence. The initial goal is ¥100 million, which is not nearly enough to keep the organization running. According to a recent article in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei), the government cut its subsidy for the archive by more than 40 percent for fiscal 2026 to ¥358.56 million (from ¥682.92 million in 2024), which means the archive will need to raise at least ¥249 million to cover expenses. The NFAJ has said that meeting this target only through admission fees and other revenues will be “extremely difficult,” since fixed costs for the archive exceed ¥400 million. 

The NFAJ is the only institution in Japan whose job it is to preserve and exhibit Japanese films. That means not only collecting films, but storing and digitizing them for future use as cultural and historical artifacts. Without the NFAJ Japan’s film heritage would likely disappear, not only because film stock degrades easily over time, but because Japan’s film heritage is not considered a purview of the cultural agency. Regardless of lip service provided by the government with regard to Japan’s storied cultural uniqueness, it does not actively encourage the preservation of Japanese culture, preferring to assign that task to the private sector. This is true not only for film but for institutions like museums and zoos, which increasingly are called upon to support themselves; and, in a sense, they have an easier time of it since art exhibits, for instance, can easily find corporate and media sponsors, and zoos can publicize their charges—the global popularity of Ichikawa City Zoo’s orphaned monkey Punch is a good example. Film is more difficult since the public’s interest in a movie is by definition fleeting. Only a dedicated archive can keep films presentable so that anyone can see them at a later date, whether they be scholars or members of the general public. It’s assumed that government financial support for the NFAJ will eventually dwindle to zero. 

In a June 30 article Nikkei outlined what’s at stake. Though the public interface for the NFAJ is its theater and viewing facility in the Kyobashi area of Tokyo, its actual archive is in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, where the NFAJ maintains three storage buildings. Film preservation requires strict climate control in terms of temperature and humidity to keep both film stock and negatives viable. The Sagamihara facility spends ¥58 million a year only on utilities, and the air conditioning system there is considered superannuated. There is no budget to update the system. 

Sagamihara also carries out digitization, which is now the standard means for preserving films. Due to improvements of the process, requests to the archive to digitize films has also greatly increased, not only from film production companies, but other commercial and academic endeavors that want to preserve industrial and other films in their possession. But digitization takes time, and since the NFAJ is the only such facility that carries out film digitization in Japan, it can never keep up with the demand. The Sagamihara facility employs only ten people, nine of whom are on yearly contracts. In addition to digitization, the staff inspects and lends out films. Nikkei says that tens of thousands of films in cannisters are waiting to be inspected and analyzed. Generally speaking, when the archive receives a film for preservation, it first makes a physical copy, which is not only time consuming but expensive. Priority goes to new works, which the archive buys in order to keep them preserved from the start, but in the process older films waiting to be preserved often suffer. 

National art museums regularly purchase high-value art, which in turn becomes a financial asset for the museum. The situation is different for films, which have no intrinsic value as an asset, especially copies of films. Consequently, the archive has to pay out of its own funds for all copying and digitization expenses.

As already noted, the archive’s brief extends beyond creative films to documentary footage. One of the NFAJ’s signature accomplishments is its comprehensive digital archive of moving and still images from the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. Scholars and documentarians, including TV production companies, that cover the disaster can have free access to these resources. 

Continue reading →
Posted in Media | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Review: So Long (Ce n’est qu’un au revoir)

Posted on July 18, 2026 by philipbrasor

Guillaume Brac came to filmmaking relatively late in life in that he didn’t study movies as an undergraduate (he went to business school). Consequently, his work has always betrayed a cautious hesitancy with regard to form and style. In his fiction films he comes across as a more subdued Eric Rohmer, leaning heavily on narrative realism and a lot of dialogue. He specializes in the extended human interaction, often while on summer vacation, which is why his latest work, a documentary that’s only a little over an hour in length, focuses on a group of high school students at a boarding school in the Alpine French town of Die as they finish up their last year. All the subjects are anxious about the future and hesitant to leave their friends behind as summer approaches and they enter the world on their own terms. Brac is the perfect fly-on-the-wall observer and captures these young people’s conversations with bracing candor.

For some reason, Brac only interviews the female students, though the school is coed. Many of these girls are from single-parent backgrounds. For them living away from home has turned out to be something of a comfort, and so they are afraid to leave friends who have become their family in all but name. Nours, whose divorced parents raised her on a boat as it traveled the world, says she already feels abandoned a second time as her classmates plan for college. “My father couldn’t handle being a parent,” she says, “so I always felt like a burden.” Jeanne’s own existential crisis is almost anti-natalist, as she assumes she was the product of an unplanned pregnancy. “My parents were educated,” she says, “so why did they decide to have me?”; as if intelligent people would, left to their own devices, not bring children into this terrible world. Diane is still trying to get over losing her sister at a young age, a trauma she’s only learned to confront by discussing her most personal thoughts with the people she met at school. Brac gives us the detailed psychological situation of these girls so that we can draw our own conclusions about their generation, which comes across as thoughtful, intelligent, and completely cognizant of how dangerous the world has become since their parents were their age. This quality is especially apparent in the boys who drift in and out of the frame, especially the dreadlocked, heavily pierced Louison, who speaks insightfully about the hazards of child-rearing and the pointlessness of capitalist striving.

Brac’s photography is invariably gorgeous, taking advantage of Die’s close proximity to mountains, rivers, and forests, where many of these conversations take place. Even in English class, the students discuss heavy philosophical subjects colloquially and clearly, all in a second language. Brac avoids adults as much as possible, and when a figure of authority does enter the picture their purpose seems to be to reinforce our perception that we would be much better off if these young  people were in charge of the world right now, regardless of their emotional vulnerability and uncertain understanding of human relationships. I’m much older than their parents, and I felt privileged to be in their presence. 

In French and English. Now playing in Tokyo at Eurospace Shibuya (03-3461-0211).

So Long home page in Japanese

photo (c) bathysphere productions 2024

Posted in Movies | Tagged | Leave a comment

Review: Obsession

Posted on July 17, 2026 by philipbrasor

One aspect of this hit horror film that isn’t covered enough is its humor, especially with regard to its central supernatural instrument. Our hero, terminally shy, barely-of-drinking-age Bear (Michael Johnston), has a deep crush on his co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarrette), whom he’s known since they were kids. He wants to tell her his feelings but his other co-worker, Ian (Cooper Tomlinson), cautions him about stepping over certain lines, and Bear is intimidated by the remark, making him even more frustrated. So he resorts to a commercial gimmick, a novelty toy called a One Wish Willow, which you’re supposed to break in half as you make a wish so as to make the wish come true. Bear wishes that Nikki love him “more than anyone in the world.” The joke is that this toy seems to be mass-produced, and that the eventual bad outcomes of Bear’s wish are something that could have been predicted according to the merchant who sold him the thing. (“There’s a warning on the box, man.”)

The joke resonates under the surface of the story, which posits the current romantic landscape for Gen Z as a minefield dug by too many inchoate feelings chasing unrealistic expectations. Bear’s wish comes true: Nikki, slowly but surely, starts devoting her time and attention to him, at first with genuinely felt affection that nonetheless spooks Bear but eventually with a disturbing lack of inhibition that totally freaks him out. She becomes not only possessive of Bear’s affections but resentful of anything that may distract him from offering them to her, including other friends and acquaintances—even pets. As Nikki’s behavior becomes more and more unhinged, it’s clear to both Bear and the audience that the real Nikki still exists somewhere, trapped beneath the doting single-minded facade that Bear has conjured out of the ether of hell. For sure, the most terrifying moments of the movie are when Nikki’s true spirit breaks through in moments of panicked terror, scenes that director Curry Barker intensifies by often shooting Nikki in deep shadow. And the sex is void of genuine passion, which, given the general atmosphere, is disturbing rather than merely unfortunate. Of course, the movie contains its fair share of more conventional terrors, delivered with an abundance of gore and violence, but those sequences also come off as jokes, albeit ones you hope don’t turn into running ones. 

For all its formal sophistication and subliminal effectiveness in presenting the traps implicit in navigating modern-day sexual consent, Obsession, with its very small cast and simplistic plot, still feels more like a successful experiment than a fully fleshed-out movie production, but given the fact that it’s the biggest box office hit of the year that’s a drawback only a cinematic sourpuss would tout. Truth be told, maybe getting back to simple will do everybody some good. 

Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku (0570-060-109), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Kino Cinema Shinjuku (03-5315-0978), Shibuya Cine Quinto (03-3477-5905), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Obsession home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2026 Focus Features LLC

Posted in Movies | Tagged | Leave a comment

Review: Dead Man’s Wire

Posted on July 16, 2026 by philipbrasor

It would be easy to dismiss Gus Van Sant’s latest movie as an exercise in 70s cinema style, which he pulls off with his usual skill and aplomb, but his recreation of a real life hostage incident that took place in Indianapolis in 1977 is more than just the sum of its fashion fatalities and needle drops. It’s an incisive and sardonic take on how desperate people turn to the media to make their cases in a world that would rather ignore them. Though this is hardly an original theme, Van Sant has found in his protagonist, a wannabe entrepreneur named Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skaragård), a man whose relative decency and intelligence are completely upended by his pathetic need for validation. The fact that the various players who get sucked into his game seem to sympathize with Kiritsis while understanding that they are complicit in his downfall, is the movie’s most salient aspect.

Kiritsis’s gripe is against a local mortgage company that foreclosed on a loan he took out to buy property he hoped to develop into a shopping center. He believes the company purposely discouraged the parties he was dealing with in order to underhandedly take over the property and do the deal themselves. He arrives on the fateful day for an appointment with the company’s president (Al Pacino, overdoing the regional accent), who, in apparently typical fashion, has taken the day off to fly to a resort in Florida; so Kiritsis meets with the president’s son, Richard (Dacre Montgomery), whom he promptly threatens with a shotgun that he attaches to his neck by the titular appliance. Kiritsis’s demands are simple: he wants his money back and an apology, neither of which the president, contacted in Florida, is willing to provide, thus placing his very own son in a very dangerous situation. Kiritsis compromises by setting up a press conference where his grievances are publicized in detail. However, getting to this point is what the movie is all about, as a rookie TV journalist (Myha’la) rallies her meager resources in order to make her name; the local soul station DJ (Colman Domingo), a hero of Kiritsis’s, tries to use his position as a community leader and token symbol of success to convince Kiritsis he can trust the police (though, being a Black man, he knows that he himself can’t trust them); and various acquaintances of Kiritsis, including his brother and a cop he often drinks with at his favorite tavern, try to do the right thing, which tends to shift from moment to moment.

Thanks to Pacino’s presence, the cinema model that first comes to mind is Dog Day Afternoon, but Pacino’s character in that classic was pathetic in an entirely ridiculous way. Skaragård’s Kiritsis is both more technically savvy about carrying out his scheme, and almost pathologically ignorant of what the most likely outcome of his actions will entail. His optimism in the face of overwhelming opposition to his demands is impressive and terrifying, and while the outcome is predictable, it’s also instructive in ways you don’t expect. Van Sant obviously sees in Kiritsis a kindred spirit. Despite his drawbacks as a human specimen, you root for him, because you know he’s probably right.

Opens July 17 in Tokyo at Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho (03-6268-0015), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Yebisu Garden Cinema (0570-783-715).

Dead Man’s Wire home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2025 Starlight Digital Ventures, LLC

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Review: The Great Arch

Posted on July 15, 2026 by philipbrasor

It seems axiomatic to say that stories about architects are inherently monumental. People who design buildings contend with the future in ways that are different from how other artists work, simply because their creations are supposed to be useful, presumably forever. Novels like The Fountainhead and movies like The Brutalist and Megalopolis present men (always men) who look upon their task as being divine since it affects so many and requires the control of hundreds of people. In a way, the only other artistic vocation that approaches architecture in terms of marshaling human resources for a large work is film directing. 

The protagonist of the French-Danish co-production, The Great Arch, is Danish architect Johan Otto von Spreckelsen (Claes Bang), who in 1983 entered a contest to design a building in the western business district of Paris that would commemorate the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution by tying the great monuments of the city together. When his design, a kind of hollowed out cube, is selected, there is consternation because there seems to be no information about von Spreckelsen available. Even the Danish Embassy doesn’t know who he is. However, since the building is the pet project of then President Francois Mitterrand, his aide, the insufferably obsequeous Jean-Louis Subilon (Xavier Dolan, acting way out of type), tracks the architect down and brings him to Paris, where he proves to be every bit as egotistical and protective of his art as any Ayn Rand character, even if all he’s designed up to that point is a few churches and his own home. The director, Stephane Demoustier, doubles down on the technical aspects of the architect’s demands, which repeatedly run up against the entrenched French bureaucracy. In the beginning he manages to cut through much of this red tape thanks to the support of Mitterrand (Michel Fau), the help of a rival French architect (Swann Arlaud) who deigns to be his project manager, and bullheadedly practical wife, Liv (Sidse Babett Knudsen); but once Mitterrand’s party loses the government, the new right-wing regime considers the project a waste of money and attempts to change the design significantly, a move that von Spreckelsen resists mightily but ineffectually.

The story is chock full of conflict but oddly lacking in dramatic tension except in those scenes where emotions run hot. And while the movie is based on a true story, the tragic outcome presented by the script may not have been so tragic in the scheme of things. There is a strange title card at the beginning of the movie that implies much of what we are about to see is made up, including some of the characters (even Liv is mostly a fabrication, apparently), thus adding up to a weird historical juxtaposition that might have been better served by a documentary. As it stands, I want to know more, because the fiction doesn’t sell the story as well as it should. 

In French, Danish and English. Opens July 17 in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670). 

The Great Arch home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2025 AGAT Films, Le Pacte

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Review: A Useful Ghost and The President’s Cake

Posted on July 10, 2026 by philipbrasor

Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s debut feature, A Useful Ghost, has the opposite effect of being haunting. In tone and pace, it’s closer to the work of Aki Kaurasmaki, with actors striking disaffected poses regardless of what they’re reacting to. Moreover, the first spirit we encounter comes in the form of a household appliance, specifically a vaccum cleaner bought by a home-bound character identified only as the “academic ladyboy” (Wisarut Homhuan) in order to get rid of the dust in his apartment kicked up by a nearby redevelopment project that itself is chronicled in detail as a kind of prelude. Eventually, all these seemingly disparate elements will be brought to bear on the movie’s main theme, but that is almost two hours away. When the vacuum starts coughing in the middle of the night, its new owner calls a repairman (Wanlop Rungkumjad) who shows up a bit too promptly and starts recounting the main story of the movie, which is about another possessed vacuum cleaner, this one by the spirit of a newlywed who wants to reconnect with her widowed husband.

This isn’t the only time that a story is presented within the frame of a larger story, and, in fact, the entire movie consists of characters relating tales that further Boonbunchachoke’s fairly simple idea that capitalism is the handmaiden of political corruption. The newlywed woman, Nat (Davika Hoorne), has actually married into the family of a wealthy industrialist who owns the appliance factory that manufactures the vacuum cleaner she possesses, and her exorcism, so to speak, involves electroshock therapy that allows her spirit to regain human form and look into the dreams of the factory’s workers on behalf of their employers. A powerful government minister then tries to appropriate Nat’s abilities to rid his own family and colleagues of the “ghosts” of those his regime killed in the past for their political views. 

Though Boonbunchachoke never makes it easy to follow one fantastic plotline into another (and often back again) his presentation is so light and amusing that the movie goes down effortlessly, but once it becomes imperative that we understand what he’s getting at the movie becomes laborious if only because the political ramifications are so serious. The ending, though meant to be a release of some sort, feels like a George Romero parody that’s gone off the rails. In the case of A Useful Ghost, the journey and the destination aren’t in sync.

The politics in the Iraqi feature The President’s Cake are more straightforward, though the story is an old-fashioned melodrama. The setting is Saddam-era Iraq on the eve of the Gulf War. Due to international sanctions and the looming conflict, food is scarce and water is rationed. Eight-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef), who is being raised alone by her grandmother, wins the dubious honor, through a classroom lottery, of baking a cake for the president on the occasion of his birthday, a task that presumably every school in the country has to perform (thus giving rise to a few pointed kid jokes about what Saddam is going to do with all that cake). Being even poorer than her classmates, Lamia doesn’t see how she can possibly afford, much less secure, the ingredients necessary, but she tries, an effort that involves an odyssey of sorts.

Accompanying Lamia on her journey is her beloved rooster Hindi, whose status as a meal-in-waiting lends the film a measure of anxious anticipation that is quickly overwhelmed by everyday reality and a plot that gallops along like the Kentucky Derby. On the way, Lamia hooks up with the requisite male scamp, Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem), whose knowledge of the underground economy helps Lamia acquire her wares, but not without frequent suspenseful encounters with criminals, fallen women, and, worst of all, the authorities in their many guises. There are, of course, also Good Samaritans who help Lamia and Saeed on their quest, including a woman who actually teaches the little girl how to make a cake, an endeavor whose double meaning (success! but to what end, really?) is played for all it’s worth. 

Death and destruction is never far away as the Americans launch their attack and Lamia is separated from her grandmother. The President’s Cake is the feature debut of Hasan Hadi, who received invaluable assistance from Hollywood heavyweights like Eric Roth, Chris Columbus, and Marielle Heller that can be seen in the superior production values and ingenious camera placements, not to mention the scary special effects. It’s an accomplished film whose emotional payoffs more than counteract the forced sentimentality of the setups, which feel more and more episodic as the movie progresses. The end may leave you slightly bewildered, but you’ll be glad you and Lamia got there in one piece. 

A Useful Ghost, in Thai, English and Teochew, now playing in Tokyo at Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670), Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Euro Space Shibuya (03-3461-0211).

The President’s Cake, in Arabic, now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Chanter Hibiya (050-6868-5001), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011).

A Useful Ghost home page in Japanese

The President’s Cake home page in Japanese

A Useful Ghost photo (c) 2025 185 Films, Haut Les Mains, Momo Film Co.

The President’s Cake photo (c) 2025 TPC Film LLC

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Review: Bring Her Back and Good Boy

Posted on July 9, 2026 by philipbrasor

The Australian Philippou brothers, Danny and Michael, quickly followup their hit debut, Talk to Me, with Bring Her Back, an even more disturbing horror film that relies less on supernatural spookiness; which isn’t to say its plot doesn’t beggar belief, but rather that the constant sense of unease is based solely on the all-too-human aspects of the story and characters. Peril is present from the start, when teenage Andy (Billy Barratt) and his younger stepsister Piper (Sora Wong) are suddenly orphaned by the death of their father. The Australian foster care system believes it is best to separate the two, who object strongly since Piper, who is partially sighted, has mostly been raised by Andy. A savior in the form of former counselor and experienced foster parent Laura (Sally Hawkins) appears. She agrees to take both siblings into her big remote house after initially rejecting Andy because of something he once did. The idea is that three months down the road when Andy turns 18, he can become Piper’s legal guardian, but getting that far proves to be not just a problem, but a nightmare.

Laura is already taking care of another foster child, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), whose bizarre demeanor, almost complete reticence, and tendency to bruise and self-harm make him an immediately scary housemate. In contrast, Laura is indefatigably upbeat and affectionate to all her charges, though even these seemingly positive attributes creep out Andy and Piper rather quickly. The movie’s mystery is Laura’s reasons for adopting these two because we slowly intuit that she has an ulterior motive—the prime clue is in the title—but one that the Philippous keep at a confounding remove with small-bore horrors that don’t always make sense in the scheme of things. Piper’s wetting the bed on an almost nightly basis initially indicates her mental instability—or maybe it doesn’t, since Laura is revealed to be a seasoned gaslighter behind her benevolent exterior. 

The Philippous keep the viewer intrigued with snippets of what looks like an eastern European pagan ritual, but in general their method of sprinkling clues haphazardly only serve to undermine the integrity of the overall rationale for Laura’s and Oliver’s behavior. Unlike the simplistic spirituality at work in Talk to Me, the more psychological texture of the horror in Bring Her Back is often too dense to comprehend. You want the movie to shut down every few minutes so that you can process the unbelievable thing you just saw before watching the next unbelievable thing. It’s effective, but exhausting.

The rationale behind the short, sharp horror film Good Boy is even trickier, though once it comes into focus the movie feels as if it couldn’t end soon enough. The good boy of the title is a Nova Scotia retriever named Indy, which is the actual dog in real life of the movie’s director, Ben Leonberg. Indy is by far the main reason to watch the film because he’s expressive in ways that make complete sense within the movie’s field of logic. Almost the entire film takes place in an old house in the woods that was once owned by the grandfather of Indy’s owner, Todd (Shane Jensen), who has retreated there by himself after undergoing punishing treatment for a chronic illness that’s never identified, though the most prevalent symptom is fits of violent coughing. Todd’s sister, Vera, whom we only encounter as a voice on the telephone, worries about Todd retreating to what she calls a “haunted house,” thus placing the seed of unease in the viewer’s mind.

The movie is supposed to be told from Indy’s perspective, which means we almost never see a human face, including Todd’s. As Todd’s days in the house accumulate, the dog keeps picking up on strange noises and fleeting shadows that he obviously perceives as threats to his master, and Leonberg’s intentions come into focus as tidbits of information surrounding the house—that the grandfather died of a disease not unlike Todd’s, and that he also owned a very faithful dog—are explained through indirection. There is almost no conventional plot to speak of, but rather a series of occurrences that feel like an extended setup for something monumental. The monumental thing does eventually occur, but it mainly comes as a realization on the viewer’s part and not an actual entity, and thus may feel like a cheat. Good Boy has merit as an exercise in intensifying dread but it doesn’t quite sell its aim of surveying the emotional landscape of a loyal canine. 

Bring Her Back opens July 10 in Tokyo at Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

Good Boy opens July 10 in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551), Cinemart Shinjuku (03-5369-2831). 

Bring Her Back home page in Japanese

Good Boy home page in Japanese

Bring Her Back photo (c) 2025 Rackaway PTY Ltd

Good Boy photo (c) 2025 Whats Wrong With Your Dog, LLC

Posted in Movies | Tagged , | Leave a comment