Monthly Archives: August 2023

Review: Asteroid City

Posted on August 31, 2023 by philipbrasor

At this point, what’s most impressive about Wes Anderson’s movies is how quickly he makes them. Woody Allen used to be the fastest auteur in the world not named Hong Sangsoo, but Allen’s films were simple in the first place, … Continue reading →

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Review: Daliland

Posted on August 30, 2023 by philipbrasor

Though I had misgivings about I Shot Andy Warhol and American Psycho, I think director Mary Harron did as good a job as anyone could have with the source material—the former, a retelling of the attempted murder of the original … Continue reading →

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Media watch: U.S. draws Japan further into its militarist mindset, this time through history

Posted on August 27, 2023 by philipbrasor

In a recent interview with Asahi Shimbun, Prof. Ritsu Yonekura, who teaches media history at Nihon University, talked about “August journalism,” a topic we’ve covered extensively since we first started writing about Japanese media in the mid-90s. August journalism refers … Continue reading →

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Review: Hit the Road

Posted on August 25, 2023 by philipbrasor

When I think about Iranian cinema, certain adjectives immediately come to mind—allegorical, stark, allusive—but “breezy” isn’t one of them. In that regard, the offhanded narrative style of Pahan Panahi’s debut feature resembles that of no other Iranian director I can … Continue reading →

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Review: Next Sohee

Posted on August 24, 2023 by philipbrasor

The second film by Korean director July Jung, a former assistant to Lee Chang-dong, is conventional in all but structure, but to discuss that structure in detail would give away too much. Nevertheless, Next Sohee continually surprised me, and several … Continue reading →

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Review: Meg 2: The Trench

Posted on August 23, 2023 by philipbrasor

The enduring commercial viability of shark movies, almost fifty years after Jaws, mirrors the enduring commercial viability of zombie flicks, though no one, as far as I know, has ever compared the two. As terrifying adversaries go, both sharks and … Continue reading →

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Review: The Wolf House

Posted on August 19, 2023 by philipbrasor

Presented as an old film restored by the Chilean directors/animators Joaquin Cociña and Cristóbal León about a German colony with a very bad reputation, The Wolf House is a disarming excavation of proto-fascist tropes served up as surreal art. Based … Continue reading →

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Review: Crimes of the Future

Posted on August 17, 2023 by philipbrasor

David Cronenberg’s return to “body horror,” a genre he invented, after two decades of comparatively conventional, though by no means less disturbing, dramas has the same title as one of his earliest movies, so at first I wondered if he … Continue reading →

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Review: QT8-The First Eight

Posted on August 12, 2023 by philipbrasor

Though not strictly a hagiography, this thorough explication of the films that Quentin Tarantino made under the auspices of Harvey Weinstein presents America’s most celebrated auteur of the last three decades as a complete success on his own terms and … Continue reading →

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Review: Barbie

Posted on August 11, 2023 by philipbrasor

Greta Gerwig’s very popular movie, written with her life partner and fellow filmmaker Noah Baumbach, isn’t the first one to center on a toy or, for that matter, a very recognizable toy. Usually, however, the toy is a brand name … Continue reading →

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