Monthly Archives: October 2018

Review: Hotel Salvation

Posted on October 31, 2018 by philipbrasor

There’s an over-familiar quality to this movie about an elderly man coming to terms with his mortality that is both exacerbated and dismissed by its Indian setting. The story’s particulars—a man’s reckoning with the inevitable, his son’s reactionary intransigence, the … Continue reading →

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Review: Norman

Posted on October 29, 2018 by philipbrasor

Norman Oppenheimer (Richard Gere) is a freelance political fixer, and in popular fiction terms such a description conjures up visions of slick men in three-piece suits juggling cell phones and commanding transactions of millions of dollars in fees and payoffs. … Continue reading →

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Review: Searching

Posted on October 27, 2018 by philipbrasor

What’s immediately compelling about Aneesh Chaganty’s thriller is its cleverly curated mise en scene, which takes place on a computer desktop. The story unfolds in a series of screenshots depicting photo files, browser searches, chat messages, Tumblr posts, Facebook timelines, … Continue reading →

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Review: In Jackson Heights

Posted on October 22, 2018 by philipbrasor

Jackson Heights, located in the western part of Queens and serviced by numerous subway and bus lines, has been called the most ethnically diverse neighborhood in the world. Add to this legend the fact that it was the first place … Continue reading →

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Review: Smallfoot

Posted on October 16, 2018 by philipbrasor

Though the sardonic comic style that drives the best parts of this feature has become the default mode for Hollywood animation of late, the physical gags are more in line with the classic Looney Toons shorts of yesteryear, so it’s … Continue reading →

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Media Mix, Oct. 14, 2018

Posted on October 14, 2018 by philipbrasor

Here’s this week’s Media Mix about the Japanese media’s depiction of women doctors, or, at least, one TV drama’s depiction. What prompted the column was the cited article in Shukan Gendai, which openly defended the Tokyo Medical University’s practice of … Continue reading →

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Review: I Kill Giants

Posted on October 13, 2018 by philipbrasor

Barbara, the preteen protagonist of this earnest work of empathy, played by newcomer Madison Wolfe, is one of those troubled free spirits who channels her anxieties into flights of fancy that threaten to spin out of control. She wanders forests … Continue reading →

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Review: The House with a Clock in Its Walls

Posted on October 12, 2018 by philipbrasor

Though based on a best-selling kids’ story written in 1973, The House with a Clock in Its Walls feels overly determined as a film, as if it were conceived and developed from scratch by a bunch of Hollywood executives. Some … Continue reading →

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Review: A Quiet Place

Posted on October 2, 2018 by philipbrasor

The jump scare has become a tired cliche of horror films, a method that was never that necessary in the first place. Suspense and terror are often more potent when the viewer is allowed to perceive threats in an organic … Continue reading →

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