Monthly Archives: December 2025

Best albums 2025

Posted on December 31, 2025 by philipbrasor

Since I typically wait until the last minute to compile this list I get to see other people’s beforehand, and the most common comment I read in the last month was that this was one of the best years for … Continue reading →

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Best movies 2025

Posted on December 29, 2025 by philipbrasor

With each passing year it gets more difficult to adhere to the qualifications for this list. It used to be simple: Any movie released theatrically in Japan for the first time. At some point I started eliminating films that were … Continue reading →

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Review: Sew Torn

Posted on December 20, 2025 by philipbrasor

Yet another acclaimed short subject expanded into a feature, Freddy Macdonald’s crime comedy definitely feels over-extended, but its main problem is that it’s weird for no good reason. First of all, it takes place in a small Swiss village where … Continue reading →

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Review: Magazine Dreams

Posted on December 19, 2025 by philipbrasor

Though a bona fide indie, this sophomore feature by Elijah Bynum comes across as a fairly big production owing to its star, Jonathan Majors, who at the time it was made was riding high as box office contender, having scored … Continue reading →

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Review: A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

Posted on December 18, 2025 by philipbrasor

I would normally advise filmmakers to steer away from ironic movie titles unless their movies were explicitly comedies, but I’m really not sure if the title of Korean-American director Kogonada’s romantic fantasy is supposed to be ironic. Certainly there are … Continue reading →

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The Passion of Shiori Ito

Posted on December 16, 2025 by philipbrasor

I first saw Shiori Ito’s documentary, Black Box Diaries, about her struggle to bring the man who raped her to some kind of justice, in Oct. 2024 at the Busan International Film Festival. At the opening night reception, the American … Continue reading →

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Review: By the Stream

Posted on December 13, 2025 by philipbrasor

It’s such a delight to see Kim Min-hee again in a leading role. Though everyone knows that Kim is filmmaker Hong Sangsoo’s partner in both life and commerce, she’s also one of Korea’s best actors, and since becoming Hong’s most … Continue reading →

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Review: Eddington

Posted on December 12, 2025 by philipbrasor

A lot of critics have labeled Ari Aster’s latest provocation a modern Western owing to certain superficial signifiers—cowboy hats, a desert-adjacent setting—but to me it’s closer in spirit to Breaking Bad, and not just because the titular town is in … Continue reading →

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Review: Shelby Oaks

Posted on December 11, 2025 by philipbrasor

As the old truism goes, write what you know, advice that YouTube movie critic Chris Stuckmann follows for the opening 20 minutes or so of his debut horror feature. Making fairly good use of the found footage device that made … Continue reading →

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Review: The Shadow’s Edge

Posted on December 10, 2025 by philipbrasor

Though I wouldn’t take it as an accurate representation of the Chinese authorities’ feelings about the A.I. revolution, this expensive-looking Hong Kong actioner by Larry Yang, set in Macau and presented in Mandarin rather than Cantonese, does raise questions about … Continue reading →

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