Author Archives: philipbrasor

Review: Brother and Sister

Posted on September 13, 2023 by philipbrasor

This is at least the third new film by a major French director released in Japan this year that focuses on adults addressing their elderly parents’ pending deaths. Being that the director is Arnaud Desplechin, whose metier is family-centered black … Continue reading →

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Media watch: To survive, ex-cons have nowhere to go but back to jail

Posted on September 8, 2023 by philipbrasor

In an essay posted Aug. 23 on Magazine9, activist Karin Amamiya wrote about “someone the same age as me” (48) named Hiroshi Yamada who is currently on death row for the murder of an elderly couple in Nagoya in 2017. … Continue reading →

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Busan International Film Festival 2023 press conference

Posted on September 6, 2023 by philipbrasor

It seemed somewhat telling that the first question from reporters attending the online-only press conference for the 2023 Busan International Film Festival was about the Zoom format itself. Prior to COVID, the press conference, traditionally held the first week of … Continue reading →

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Review: Tell It Like a Woman

Posted on September 2, 2023 by philipbrasor

This omnibus of shorts, all written and directed by women of different nationalities and centered on the unique problems that women face in the world, is predictably earnest in a kind of European way (the production is mostly Italian), but … Continue reading →

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Media watch: Struggling to keep the memory of the 1923 Korean killings alive

Posted on September 1, 2023 by philipbrasor

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake, one of the worst disasters to ever strike Japan, a country that’s had more than its share both natural and man-made. In the days following the quake, which was centered … Continue reading →

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Review: Asteroid City

Posted on August 31, 2023 by philipbrasor

At this point, what’s most impressive about Wes Anderson’s movies is how quickly he makes them. Woody Allen used to be the fastest auteur in the world not named Hong Sangsoo, but Allen’s films were simple in the first place, … Continue reading →

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Review: Daliland

Posted on August 30, 2023 by philipbrasor

Though I had misgivings about I Shot Andy Warhol and American Psycho, I think director Mary Harron did as good a job as anyone could have with the source material—the former, a retelling of the attempted murder of the original … Continue reading →

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Media watch: U.S. draws Japan further into its militarist mindset, this time through history

Posted on August 27, 2023 by philipbrasor

In a recent interview with Asahi Shimbun, Prof. Ritsu Yonekura, who teaches media history at Nihon University, talked about “August journalism,” a topic we’ve covered extensively since we first started writing about Japanese media in the mid-90s. August journalism refers … Continue reading →

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Review: Hit the Road

Posted on August 25, 2023 by philipbrasor

When I think about Iranian cinema, certain adjectives immediately come to mind—allegorical, stark, allusive—but “breezy” isn’t one of them. In that regard, the offhanded narrative style of Pahan Panahi’s debut feature resembles that of no other Iranian director I can … Continue reading →

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Review: Next Sohee

Posted on August 24, 2023 by philipbrasor

The second film by Korean director July Jung, a former assistant to Lee Chang-dong, is conventional in all but structure, but to discuss that structure in detail would give away too much. Nevertheless, Next Sohee continually surprised me, and several … Continue reading →

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