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.

For Giovanni Fazio's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

‘Django Unchained’

Mar 1, 2013

‘Django Unchained’

Way back in 1992 there appeared a hot new indie flick called “Reservoir Dogs” by a then-unknown video-rental clerk turned director called Quentin Tarantino. This newcomer’s knack was to take a classic genre movie — the heist flick — and pump it full of ...

‘Dark Horse’

Mar 1, 2013

‘Dark Horse’

Todd Solondz never makes comfortable films, and “Dark Horse” is no exception, featuring as its protagonist an overweight, overbearing 30-something nebbish named Abe (Jordan Gelber) who’s a toy-collector nerd and still living at home with his parents. Classic comedy-loser material, in other words, but ...

‘Obey’

| Mar 1, 2013

‘Obey’

Director: Temujin Doran Language: English Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent who left the New York Times after it censured him for voicing opposition to the Iraq war. “Open,” a documentary based on Hedges’ book “Death of the Liberal Class,” is composed of ...

‘Martha Marcy May Marlene’

Feb 22, 2013

‘Martha Marcy May Marlene’

You’re fed up with your family, your upbringing, your school, your social class. You don’t fit in and are reminded of it. The rules and social norms that other people seem to follow so blindly seem to you phony, trite, suffocating. You develop an ...

‘Zero Dark Thirty’

Feb 15, 2013

‘Zero Dark Thirty’

"Money shot" is a term that originally came from the pornographic-movie industry, referring to, ahem, a male actor fulfilling his contractual obligations.

‘Dredd’

Feb 8, 2013

‘Dredd’

This hard-core adaptation of the long-running British sci-fi comic should largely erase memories of Sylvester Stallone's abominable 1995 version.

Feb 1, 2013

Moonrise Kingdom

Wes Anderson is one of those directors who, love him or hate him, has been remarkably consistent. Each film, from “Rushmore” right on down, is an artfully constructed and totally hermetic world unto itself, with flawed or absent father-figures, a closet’s worth of funky-yet-chic ...

‘Pi’ among ‘unfilmable’ books conquered at last on the screen

Jan 24, 2013

‘Pi’ among ‘unfilmable’ books conquered at last on the screen

There are certain novels they say just can’t be filmed, but guess what? Most of them have been. “Dune”? “Naked Lunch”? “The Virgin Suicides”? “The 120 Days of Sodom”? “Ulysses”? All done — “Ulysses” twice, even. Call it the inability of a filmmaker to ...

‘Life of Pi’

Jan 24, 2013

‘Life of Pi’

Director Ang Lee’s adaptation of author Yann Martel’s Man Booker Prize-winning “Life of Pi” feels almost like two films sandwiched into one. In the core, you have the succulent special-effects-driven story of a young Indian survivor of a shipwreck who’s adrift in a lifeboat ...

‘Armadillo’ / ‘Cockfighter’

Jan 17, 2013

‘Armadillo’ / ‘Cockfighter’

If you go to see “Armadillo”, you will be in a cinema watching a war movie. A documentary, yes, but one that’s safely on the screen as you sit back and watch Danish soldiers deployed in Afghanistan. You will watch those same soldiers try ...