Author Archives: philipbrasor

Review: The Girl with the Needle and Nosferatu

Posted on May 14, 2025 by philipbrasor

As a movie addressing the psychological torment that can accompany and follow the act of childbirth, Denmark’s most recent contender for an international feature Oscar doesn’t hold anything back, but because it’s set in a time and place that feels … Continue reading →

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Media watch: The spouses’ tax and pension exemption faces its reckoning

Posted on May 10, 2025 by philipbrasor

Every five years the government reviews the national pension system, which, like national health insurance, is roughly divided into two plans: one for regular salaried employees and another for everybody else. However, the pension system for salaried employees, known as … Continue reading →

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Review: Queer and Lee

Posted on May 9, 2025 by philipbrasor

Daniel Craig doesn’t look anything like William S. Burroughs, the Beat Generation author whose autobiographical novel is the source for Luca Guadagnino’s sweaty drama, but he does attempt to mimic Burroughs’ laconic Midwestern drone, albeit with a slight lisp. The … Continue reading →

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Review: Caught by the Tides

Posted on May 8, 2025 by philipbrasor

Made during the pandemic, Jia Zhangke’s latest is a clever collage of used and unused footage from previous features, as well as new footage that was shot under strict circumstances. The result is a film that attempts to review the … Continue reading →

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Review: Paddington in Peru

Posted on May 7, 2025 by philipbrasor

It would be difficult to outdo Paddington 2 for comic inventiveness, especially since the third installment of the series doesn’t feature Hugh Grant (spoiler: he shows up in a brief post-credits bit) or Sally Hawkins, who has so far played … Continue reading →

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Review: Cesium Fallout

Posted on May 2, 2025 by philipbrasor

It says something about the ambitions behind China/Hong Kong’s most recent developments as a commercial movie power that this star-studded actioner is being promoted as the territory’s first “radiation disaster blockbuster,” as if it were a kind of requisite milestone … Continue reading →

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Review: Youth (Hard Times) and Youth (Homecoming)

Posted on April 26, 2025 by philipbrasor

Earlier this week, in a review for another movie, I wrote that Chinese fiction films rarely tackle work as a central theme. In a sense, Wang Bing’s monumental three-part documentary, Youth, says probably everything that needs to be said about … Continue reading →

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Review: The Beast and It’s Not Me

Posted on April 25, 2025 by philipbrasor

Though Bertrand Bonello only borrows part of the title and the basic dramatic premise of Henry James’ 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle, in which many literary experts believe the author was describing his own personal fear of intimacy, … Continue reading →

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Review: Heretic

Posted on April 24, 2025 by philipbrasor

Hugh Grant further solidifies his post-rom-com resurgence as the extremely creepy Mr. Reed in this fairly intellectual horror movie that puts religious belief on trial. Though not particularly scary as modern-day horror movies go, there’s enough substance in the elaborate … Continue reading →

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Review: All Ears and Joika

Posted on April 23, 2025 by philipbrasor

For a communist country, the Peoples’ Republic of China produces relatively few non-documentary feature films that focus on work. The theme that has dominated post-Sixth Generation cinema is the personal and psychological costs of a social system that has been … Continue reading →

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