Author Archives: philipbrasor

Review: The Son

Posted on March 15, 2023 by philipbrasor

Though I thought the movie was better than others did, I agree that Anthony Hopkins’ Oscar-winning performance as the titular character in Florian Zeller’s The Father lifted it higher than it probably deserved. Hopkins also appears briefly in Zeller’s new … Continue reading →

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Director Shin Su-won discusses “Hommage”

Posted on March 10, 2023 by philipbrasor

Here is the transcript of my email conversation with South Korean director Shin Su-won, whose latest film, Hommage, opens today in Tokyo and throughout Japan. My article about the movie, which portrays a director, not unlike Shin herself, struggling to … Continue reading →

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Review: A Man Called Otto

Posted on March 9, 2023 by philipbrasor

How many men in the U.S. are named Otto? Though it may sound like a trivial question, it kept nagging at the back of my consciousness while watching Marc Foster’s Americanization of the hit Swedish heartwarmer A Man Called Ove, … Continue reading →

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Review: Blacklight

Posted on March 4, 2023 by philipbrasor

Though they have absolutely nothing in common in terms of approach to craft or onscreen image, Liam Neeson has become the Nic Cage of late boomer movie stars, an actor who seems to take any part offered him regardless of … Continue reading →

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Review: The Fabelmans

Posted on March 3, 2023 by philipbrasor

It’s interesting to ponder what kind of film Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans would have been had he made it earlier in his life. Film critics have broadly divided his output between two schools, the entertainments and the nominally serious … Continue reading →

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Review: Everything Everywhere All at Once

Posted on March 2, 2023 by philipbrasor

I know responsible film critics see movies twice, but life is too short, and the reviews you read here are, for the most part, based on single viewings. With this surprise Oscar contender, however, I made a point of returning … Continue reading →

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Media watch: Korean tourists celebrate uprising anniversary by patronizing former oppressors

Posted on March 1, 2023 by philipbrasor

Today is the 103rd anniversary of the March 1 Independence Movement in South Korea, a national holiday. On March 1, 1919, anti-colonial elements in Korea assembled at various locations to denounce Japanese rule, thus leading to a movement involving 2 … Continue reading →

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Media watch: Feminist icon outed as…a wife

Posted on February 27, 2023 by philipbrasor

The March 2 issue of the weekly magazine Bunshun contained a bombshell scoop of a sort. One of the articles is about Chizuko Ueno, a University of Tokyo sociology professor (graduate of Kyoto University) whose specialty is feminist theory, in … Continue reading →

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Review: Paper City

Posted on February 25, 2023 by philipbrasor

One of the salient points that Edward Seidensticker made in his history of Tokyo was that, in the Shitamachi area of the capital—the “low city” where the hoi polloi lived—the carpenters’ guild was congruent with the fire brigade; meaning that … Continue reading →

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Review: Worth

Posted on February 24, 2023 by philipbrasor

Worth is solidly in the cinematic tradition of lawyer-as-Sisyphus real-life dramas, of which Todd Hayne’s Dark Waters is probably the most pertinent of recent examples. If Worth doesn’t quite match up to the slow burn frustration of Dark Waters it … Continue reading →

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