Author Archives: philipbrasor

Review: Stan & Ollie

Posted on April 20, 2019 by philipbrasor

Jon S. Baird’s loving tribute to the legacy of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy falls into a trap common to biopics of performers. The film focuses on an episode in the comedians’ career that occurred late in life, thus allowing … Continue reading →

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Review: Shusenjo

Posted on April 19, 2019 by philipbrasor

In the press synopsis for his documentary, American director Miki Dezaki calls the comfort women issue “perhaps Japan’s most contentious present-day diplomatic quandary,” which is true to an extent but misleading in terms of scale. The issue of the comfort … Continue reading →

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Review: Beautiful Boy

Posted on April 15, 2019 by philipbrasor

Kudos to director Felix Van Groeningen for managing to fuse two different memoirs about the same topic into a movie that doesn’t become a mine field of conflicting points-of-view. The true story of Nic Sheff’s decade-plus battle with drug addiction … Continue reading →

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Media Mix, April 14, 2019

Posted on April 14, 2019 by philipbrasor

Here’s this week’s Media Mix about the Aegis Ashore anti-missile system that Japan says it will set up in Akita and Yamaguchi Prefectures. The bulk of the column references a conversation between journalists Shunji Taoka and Osamu Aoki on the … Continue reading →

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Review: Lean On Pete

Posted on April 12, 2019 by philipbrasor

It’s tempting to imagine that the British director Andrew Haigh is encountering the milieu of his latest film with the same kind of fresh awareness that the audience encounters it as it watches his movie. There’s something about this depiction … Continue reading →

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Review: First Reformed

Posted on April 11, 2019 by philipbrasor

Though I rarely acknowledge such matters, Paul Schrader was royally screwed last February when he failed to receive the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for his latest film. It was bad enough that Ethan Hawke, who won all sorts of awards … Continue reading →

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Review: Vice

Posted on April 5, 2019 by philipbrasor

The comic challenge for Adam McKay, who made his name with Will Ferrell vehicles, in depicting the life of former Vice President Dick Cheney is not that no amount of satire could make the George W. Bush administration seem more … Continue reading →

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Review: Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool

Posted on April 1, 2019 by philipbrasor

The time frame of Paul McGuigan’s slice-of-life biopic of actress Gloria Grahame isn’t specifically stated, though the first scene takes place in a rundown dressing room in Liverpool in 1981 as Grahame (Annette Bening), long washed-up as a film actress, … Continue reading →

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Media Mix, March 31, 2019

Posted on March 31, 2019 by philipbrasor

Here’s this week’s Media Mix about the effort to increase the number of female candidates in this month’s prefectural and municipal elections. By all accounts, the effort has been unsuccessful, and the column explains various reasons as reported in the … Continue reading →

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Review: Dumbo

Posted on March 30, 2019 by philipbrasor

At this writing, the new CGI live-action Dumbo is being slated as a likely box office smash, thus justifying Disney’s faith in director Tim Burton as the kind of edgy filmmaker they can trust with their family fare. Inherent in … Continue reading →

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