Japan
Movie Review: Godzilla Minus One
4.5 stars out of 5 It’s the waning days of war in Japan, and Koichi Shikishima is a failed kamikaze pilot; you’d think the situation couldn’t get any worse. Ah, but you forgot about Godzilla, didn’t you? Frankly, no one would blame you. In 1998, the American film conglomerate tried to reboot the big scaly […]
Movie Review: Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
3.5 stars out of 5 First things first: Vanna White does not appear in this film. Having just named Drive My Car my favorite movie of 2021, I was excited to see another offering from director Ryûke Hamaguchi. And this time I’d be judging him fully on his own merits, as there wasn’t a Haruki […]
Movie Review: Drive My Car
4.5 stars out of 5When my Golden Books picture book The Christmas Aliens was published in 1998, my friend Dave wrote a joke review on Amazon proclaiming it the “best book since Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase.” I’d never heard of Haruki Murakami but soon picked up that novel and was entranced. Two-plus decades later, […]
Movie Review: The Boy and the Beast
4 stars out of 5 That’s the movie biz for ya: Somebody wins an Oscar for an animated short about a bear, and suddenly everybody’s churning out bear-themed cartoons. Except, this one is feature length, from Japan (anime!), and has dialogue (with English subtitles). Am not entirely sure why I went to see Beauty and […]
Jack Silbert, curator