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Giovanni Fazio

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Giovanni Fazio

Giovanni Fazio has been The Japan Times' resident film crank since 1993. When not at the movies, he is busy recording and playing live with his band Makyo and running the independent electronica label Dakini Records.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Feb 17, 2012

'In Time' / 'Carnage'

Try to imagine a future where the super-rich live in gated, patrolled fortress-communities, completely isolated from the short, brutish lives of the underclass who must toil or die, just a paycheck away from having their life-force literally terminated by the powers that be. No, it's not America under...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Feb 10, 2012

'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo'

On one level, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" is simply an Agatha Christie story for Nine Inch Nails fans. You may think I'm joking, but think about it: an isolated island full of disgruntled relatives in a wealthy family, an unsolved murder with loads of potential suspects, and a sleuth who uncovers...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Feb 3, 2012

'The Hunter' / 'Poetry'

One of cinema's most constant motifs is the flawed, morally corrupt character who in the last reel listens to his conscience and decides to do the right thing. There's a good reason for this: Audiences know all too well how easy it is to be a "good German," and desperately wish it weren't so. You often...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jan 27, 2012

Now here's a counterintuitive marketing strategy: Put heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio on your poster, shot in unflattering white light, looking old, jowly and snarling. Presumably the promoters of "J. Edgar," director Clint Eastwood's biopic of long-time FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, know what they're doing,...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jan 20, 2012

'Road to Nowhere' / 'Two-Lane Blacktop'

Every film buff knows the Terence Malick story by now: a visionary director who made a couple of landmark films in the 1970s, then disappeared for two decades before staging a late-life comeback, which culminated with "The Tree of Life" winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year. Fewer know the story...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jan 13, 2012

Bearing witness to brutality in 'Devil's Double'

"Should I ask him whether it's true or not?" That's the question I had for my editor regarding my interview with Latif Yahia, the Iraqi exile whose story about being the lookalike body-double for Saddam Hussein's psychotic son Uday has been parlayed into a best-selling book and a movie. "Probably," said...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jan 13, 2012

'The Devil's Double' / 'Un Prophete'

It's sometimes funny how filmmakers' careers play out, and how the hand of fortune can give them a boost or a brush-off. Take Lee Tamahori: This Kiwi director had a powerhouse of a breakthrough film with "Once Were Warriors," an unflinching tale of alcoholism and revenge set in Auckland's Maori community,...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jan 6, 2012

'Magic Tree House' hits the big screen at last — but only in Japan

If your fantasy-based series of children's books has hit sales above at least 50 million copies, with translations into more than 20 languages, then you can certainly expect Hollywood to come calling. Such was the case for author Mary Pope Osborne, whose "Magic Tree House" series has 48 books published...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jan 6, 2012

'Perfect Sense'

Will the world end with a whimper or a bang? That may well depend on whether you're at the multiplex or the art house. While blockbusters continue to relish the visual bombastics of Armageddon (the most wanton example being "2012"), a number of smaller films are also delving into the dark dramatic potential...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Dec 30, 2011

Films that make you feel it like the first time

My one wish for the New Year would be to wipe my brain clean of all the movies I've ever seen. With a fresh slate, I could sit back and enjoy, say, some new neo-noir without comparing it to "Chinatown." On a bad day I'll think that cinema is most intense at first blush, that the films that imprint themselves...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Dec 23, 2011

Gus Van Sant's "Restless" is a film about love, an ode to doomed but pure teenage infatuation. But it's also about love of a film, in this case Hal Ashby's cult classic "Harold and Maude." It's one of those cases where the lift (or "homage") is so overt and massive that it's hard to consider "Restless"...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Dec 16, 2011

'London Boulevard'

London Boulevard" starts off with a premise worthy of any British crime film: Hard man Mitchel (Colin Farrell) is just out of prison, after serving time for murder, and he's not eager to go back in. His sketchy South London friend Billy (Ben Chaplin), however, welcomes him back with open arms and pressures...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Dec 9, 2011

'Elle s'Appelait Sarah'

Elle s'Appelait Sarah," like so many films these days, uses the device of multiple narratives. First you've got a story set in the present, where journalist Julia (Kristin Scott Thomas) is investigating a bit of repressed French history: the 1942 roundup of Parisian Jews, where thousands of people were...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Dec 2, 2011

'50/50' / '30 Minutes or Less'

Hey, did you hear the one about my metastatic tumor? Comedy and cancer may mix about as well as champagne and toilet cleaner, but along comes the film "50/50" to attempt just that.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 25, 2011

'Crazy, Stupid, Love'

Crazy, Stupid, Love" — how could you not love a movie with a title like that? Well, if you're the film's distributor, maybe: Warner tamely re-titled it "Love Again" for the local market (just as "Friends With Benefits" was neutered into "Stay Friends"). Clearly they want it to seem more like a...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 18, 2011

'George Harrison: Living in the Material World' / 'Under Control'

Director Martin Scorsese was one of the first to score big with the rockumentary format with his 1978 film "The Last Waltz," which covered the farewell concert by The Band and their musician friends such as Neil Young and Van Morrison. He's kept a hand in it ever since, making boomer rock docs on Bob...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 11, 2011

'Contagion' / 'Moneyball'

Cinema imagines the apocalypse on a regular basis, touching on everything from Mayan calendar-related polar shifts to the ever-popular walking dead. Few films, however, dare to deal with scenarios that could actually happen; that's what makes Steven Soderbergh's "Contagion," which looks at a deadly global...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 11, 2011

Sleeping Beauty

Director: Julia Leigh

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 4, 2011

'Rabbit Hole" / "Another Year"

As the marketing budgets for movies about alien invasions, Nordic gods and talking cars grow exponentially bigger, they increasingly tend to define our notions of what cinema is or could be. This has resulted in a generation or two out there who see little reason to go to a movie about, well, people....

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 28, 2011

'Winter's Bone' / 'Gomorrah'

Nearly one in 10 Americans are out of work, about a million homes are foreclosed on each year and the dollar is at historic lows, but you'd never know it from watching American films. In Hollywood, whatever the topic -NYC rom-com, lesbian parents, ape uprisings, viral outbreak — the American Dream...

You can often see generations of families enjoying performances together at Fuji Rock Festival.

Japan’s summer music festivals are feeling the heat in more ways than one

Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.

The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'

By Tomoko Otake

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