Author Archives: philipbrasor

Review: To Leslie

Posted on June 22, 2023 by philipbrasor

Andrea Riseborough’s surprise Best Actress Oscar nomination, reportedly the result of a concerted campaign on the part of her and her PR team, will likely draw a lot of movie fans who might have overlooked To Leslie otherwise. It’s an … Continue reading →

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Media watch: Local politicians ask for crackdown on foreigners

Posted on June 20, 2023 by philipbrasor

A group of politicians belonging to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party recently submitted a “letter of opinion” to the city assembly of Kawaguchi in Saitama Prefecture. In the letter, the group demands tighter police surveillance of immigrants in the city, … Continue reading →

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Review: The Blue Caftan

Posted on June 19, 2023 by philipbrasor

Maryam Touzani’s Moroccan drama is all about beauty: Beautiful people making beautiful things in the pursuit of beauty for its own sake. The opening credit sequence features billows of colorful satin fabric shot with eye-popping attention paid to the tactile … Continue reading →

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Review: Marlowe

Posted on June 18, 2023 by philipbrasor

Since Liam Neeson has reinvented himself as an action star so successfully in his old age, it shouldn’t be surprising that he is the oldest person to ever play Raymond Chandler’s iconic mid-20th-century L.A. private eye on the big screen, … Continue reading →

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Review: Klondike

Posted on June 17, 2023 by philipbrasor

Maryna Er Gorbach started filming Klondike in 2020, before Russia invaded Ukraine, but it’s obvious where her loyalties lie. Set in the Donbas region of Ukraine in 2014, when local separatists aided Russian forces in taking over the area, the … Continue reading →

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Review: The Flash and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Posted on June 16, 2023 by philipbrasor

Though it was often called something different, the multiverse has been a fixture of science fiction novels and superhero comics for many years, and at the moment it seems to be an inescapable feature of any sort of fantasy feature … Continue reading →

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Review: The Card Counter

Posted on June 15, 2023 by philipbrasor

In a recent New Yorker profile The Card Counter was described as the second work in a trilogy of films by Paul Schrader about “the man in the room.” As the article points out, almost all of Schrader’s scripts, whether … Continue reading →

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Review: The Assistant

Posted on June 14, 2023 by philipbrasor

Dehumanizing by design, Kitty Green’s debut fiction feature (she has already directed a number of documentaries, mostly on Ukraine) about the punishing workload foisted upon a young female employee of a movie production office in downtown New York doesn’t necessarily … Continue reading →

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Media watch: My Number card system could be Trojan horse for individual-oriented society

Posted on June 11, 2023 by philipbrasor

The government’s scheme to get everyone in Japan, Japanese national and foreign resident alike, to apply for a My Number card has been plagued by problems. The aim of the My Number system is to assign a unique number to … Continue reading →

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Review: M3GAN

Posted on June 9, 2023 by philipbrasor

Though hardly significant, Gerard Johnstone’s comic horror film arrives at a moment when the debate about the meaning of artificial intelligence is finally getting a serious airing, owing mainly to the emergence and popularity of ChatGPT. M3GAN has nothing to … Continue reading →

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