Category Archives: Movies

Review: Heavy Snow

Posted on December 6, 2025 by philipbrasor

Korean narrative entertainment, both movies and TV dramas, often exploits real world subtexts. Popular actors not only take roles that mirror some aspect of their private lives, but allude to those lives in their dialogue. The two lead actors in … Continue reading →

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Review: Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk

Posted on December 5, 2025 by philipbrasor

The word “documentary” only applies to Sepideh Farsi’s film in a generic way. Though it certainly is a document of the exiled Iranian director’s nine-month WhatsApp video relationship with the young Palestinian photographer Fatma Hassona, its focus on that relationship … Continue reading →

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Tokyo FILMeX 2025

Posted on December 3, 2025 by philipbrasor

I almost missed Filmex this year. I received a message in my Gmail inbox while the Tokyo International Film Festival was going on, reminding me to apply for a press pass. I managed to submit the application just under the … Continue reading →

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Review: Maldoror and Weapons

Posted on November 28, 2025 by philipbrasor

The theme of the cop or private eye whose approach to cases is obsessive to the point of psychosis is a potent one in that its subject is someone whose demand for justice goes beyond reasonable limits. The most obvious … Continue reading →

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Review: Dominique

Posted on November 20, 2025 by philipbrasor

Having not dived too deeply into recent B-movie extreme action cinema, I was not familiar with Ukrainian-American model-actor Oksana Orlan, but apparently she’s a formidable presence in that particular field. Here she fleshes out a role she originated in a … Continue reading →

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Review: Blue Boy Trial

Posted on November 15, 2025 by philipbrasor

The Japanese constitution, like the American one on which it was modeled, guarantees the people the right to be happy, a rather amorphous concept that’s difficult to pin down legally, but usually it is interpreted to mean that everyone should … Continue reading →

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Review: Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere

Posted on November 14, 2025 by philipbrasor

It’s interesting that 20th Century Fox has released two films within the last year each of which portrays one of Columbia/Sony Records’ biggest artists and only one of them has the artist’s name in the title. Is it because Bob … Continue reading →

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Review: Kill

Posted on November 13, 2025 by philipbrasor

The local distributor is promoting this Indian action film as Bollywood John Wick, which is comprehensible shorthand for what the target audience should expect: lots of balletic, well-executed carnage but in an Indian setting; and, for sure, it delivers that … Continue reading →

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Review: The Dream Songs

Posted on November 12, 2025 by philipbrasor

The edit of this 2022 Korean movie intended for release outside of Korea contains opening title cards in English that glancingly refer to the Sewon ferry accident of 2014, a disaster that claimed the lives of hundreds of children who … Continue reading →

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Review: The Bibi Files and Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin

Posted on November 8, 2025 by philipbrasor

Japanese distributors are releasing Alexis Bloom’s muckraking documentary about the House of Netanyahu a year after it was first shown elsewhere. Given the velocity of breaking news these days it would seem to follow that the movie is dated, but, … Continue reading →

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