Author Archives: philipbrasor

Review: The Odyssey and Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?

Posted on September 11, 2026 by philipbrasor

At this point, it seems impossible to talk about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey without addressing his faithfulness—or lack of it—to the original text, which is more than 3,000 years old. It’s an issue I can’t rightly address since I don’t … Continue reading →

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Review: Bob Trevino Likes It and Linka Linka

Posted on September 10, 2026 by philipbrasor

One of the nicer touches in Tracie Laymon’s reportedly semi-autobiographical movie, Bob Trevino Likes It, is the perpetually cracked screen on the cell phone used by the protagonist, Lily Trevino (Barbara Ferreira). As the title suggests, Lily spends an awful … Continue reading →

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Review: Starve Acre

Posted on September 9, 2026 by philipbrasor

Folk horror meets generational family trauma in this confusingly intense exercise in sophisticated campfire ghost storytelling. It’s the bleak 1970s in Yorkshire, England, where academically embattled archaeologist Richard (Matt Smith) has moved his wife, Juliette (Morfydd Clark), and possibly schizophrenic … Continue reading →

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Review: Numakage Public Pool

Posted on September 5, 2026 by philipbrasor

Frederick Wiseman, who died in February, was not only America’s greatest documentary filmmaker, but an anthropologist of rare insight. Though he is mainly famous for perfecting the so-called fly-on-the-wall observational doc, it was his wide-ranging approach to his institutional subjects … Continue reading →

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Review: The Voice of Hind Rajab and 2000 Meters to Andriivka

Posted on September 4, 2026 by philipbrasor

Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania has already proven herself to be an imaginative creator of documentaries with Four Daughters, a film in which she showed the real-life subjects of her story coaching actors who would play them in recreations of … Continue reading →

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Review: Backrooms

Posted on September 3, 2026 by philipbrasor

Horror movies work best when their scares are rooted in identifiable psychological unease. Kane Parsons’ Backrooms, one of the most discussed American horror movies of the year, based on Parsons’ own internet photo postings and YouTube series, has a brilliant … Continue reading →

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Review: The Gullspång Miracle

Posted on September 2, 2026 by philipbrasor

The “truth is stranger than fiction” documentary is almost a movie genre unto itself, though its appeal is mostly ironic: no self-respecting novelist would ever countenance a story this outrageous or unbelievable. This Swedish film, the first feature-length doc by … Continue reading →

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Review: Nightborn

Posted on August 28, 2026 by philipbrasor

Though I’m sure there were cinematic treatments of the horrors of new motherhood before Rosemary’s Baby, it was Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Ira Levin’s bestseller that first interpreted the phenomenon as a literal horror story, and we’ve have many variations … Continue reading →

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Review: Shelter

Posted on August 27, 2026 by philipbrasor

One of the problems that critics of AI encounter when they complain about its effect on movie-making is that a lot of green-lit content in Hollywood already feels as if it’s been produced by a computer program. I have little … Continue reading →

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Review: The Drama and Enzo

Posted on August 21, 2026 by philipbrasor

Since the only film other than The Drama I’ve seen by Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli is his last one, Dream Scenario, I don’t have much insight into his approach except the feeling that he definitely likes his comedy to be … Continue reading →

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