Monthly Archives: February 2025

Review: Anora

Posted on February 28, 2025 by philipbrasor

What’s refreshing about Sean Baker’s movies isn’t so much their realistic take on the lives of sex workers and others who survive outside of what could be called polite society, but rather how those characters’ status informs their outlook in … Continue reading →

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Review: Revolver and Project Silence

Posted on February 27, 2025 by philipbrasor

Korean cinema’s special facility with genre movies has allowed it to veer from reliable formulas even while exploiting those formulas to the max. Revolver is a shakily plotted crime noir that sticks so resolutely to a single idea that it’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Movies | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Review: Tatami

Posted on February 26, 2025 by philipbrasor

As political thrillers go, Tatami represents for multiple national purviews just as a film project. It’s a U.S.-Georgia co-production because most of the money was raised by Americans (one of whom is Israeli-American) and the movie was shot and set … Continue reading →

Posted in Movies | Tagged | Leave a comment

Media watch: All public toilets are not created equal

Posted on February 23, 2025 by philipbrasor

Inbound tourists invariably rave about Japan’s superior security and hospitality, and while you often hear them comment positively about smart toilets, it’s usually in the context of how surprisingly common they are. However, we’ve almost never heard anyone talk about … Continue reading →

Posted in Media | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Review: Dogs and War (Inu to Senso)

Posted on February 22, 2025 by philipbrasor

Japanese filmmaker Akane Yamada makes movies about domestic animals, often those caught up in disaster situations. She did one about the pets that were abandoned or otherwise unhoused following the Tohoku earthquake of 2011, and apparently received pushback from people … Continue reading →

Posted in Movies | Tagged | Leave a comment

Review: The Brutalist

Posted on February 21, 2025 by philipbrasor

The title of Brady Corbet’s movie about the hopes and dreams of a Hungarian immigrant to mid-20th century America refers to the contemporary architectural movement that the protagonist, László Toth (Adrien Brody), follows, but it also may describe Corbet’s own … Continue reading →

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Review: No Other Land

Posted on February 20, 2025 by philipbrasor

This Oscar-nominated feature documentary, directed by two Israelis and two Palestinians, did not start out as a documentary. Since 2019, the directors have jointly and sometimes separately recorded the actions of the Israeli military, as well as Israeli settlers, in … Continue reading →

Posted in Movies | Tagged | Leave a comment

Review: Memory

Posted on February 19, 2025 by philipbrasor

I’ve only seen two films by the Mexican director Michel Franco, one in Spanish set in Mexico and the other in English set in Southern California; and while I can see why one critic calls him a “shock auteur,” the … Continue reading →

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Review: The Promised Land

Posted on February 15, 2025 by philipbrasor

Historical epics have not gone out of style, but the prerogatives of big, crowd-pleasing stories set in the past have become less refined in the era of the MCU blockbuster, which makes this Danish movie all the more remarkable for … Continue reading →

Posted in Movies | Tagged | Leave a comment

Review: September 5 and Captain America: Brave New World

Posted on February 14, 2025 by philipbrasor

Having watched the ABC Sports coverage of the hostage ordeal at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games live while I was in high school, I am surprised after seeing this recreation of the event that the entire thing lasted only 17 … Continue reading →

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment