Author Archives: philipbrasor

Review: Masters of the Universe

Posted on June 5, 2026 by philipbrasor

Disclosure: I came to this reboot of the Mattel toy franchise with almost no knowledge of its history or that it had a dedicated fan base cultivated in the 1980s. The reason is that I was busy doing other things … Continue reading →

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Review: The Testament of Ann Lee and The Moment

Posted on June 4, 2026 by philipbrasor

At first, director Mona Fastvold’s decision to fashion a biopic of Ann Lee, one of the founders of the Evangelical Christian movement Shakerism, into a musical sounds willfully counterintuitive, but, in fact, the Shakers were quite a musical bunch. As … Continue reading →

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Review: Sirât and Adam’s Sake

Posted on June 3, 2026 by philipbrasor

Much of the power of Oliver Laxe’s Sirât comes from its disorienting intentions. The viewer is dropped fully into an alien, forbidding environment that is nevertheless programmed, at least temporarily, for pleasure, and the feeling of being out of one’s … Continue reading →

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Review: Materialists

Posted on May 29, 2026 by philipbrasor

As a filmmaker, Celine Song is nothing if not self-aware. Her first film, the lauded Past Lives, referenced her own story as a Korean immigrant to North America in order to plumb the depths of romantic longing as portrayed stereotypically … Continue reading →

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Review: The Forbidden City and Keeper

Posted on May 28, 2026 by philipbrasor

A popular item at international fantastic film festivals for the last year, The Forbidden City presumes to mount an action-packed kung fu extravaganza set in Rome, and for most of the first half lives up to the promise, but it’s … Continue reading →

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Media watch: Lawyer bashed for trying to prevent refugees from being bashed bashes back

Posted on May 27, 2026 by philipbrasor

On May 20 Saitama District Court began hearing a defamation lawsuit brought by a lawyer named Kim Yeong-gong against someone he says directed “hate speech” at him in a blog post in 2024. Kim is demanding ¥7.2 million in damages. … Continue reading →

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Review: Boys Go to Jupiter

Posted on May 22, 2026 by philipbrasor

Since the mid-90s, American animated features have stuck to a seemingly successful pattern: stories aimed at children spiked with visual and verbal jokes that can still appeal to their parents. Needless to say, adults of a certain professional sensibility are … Continue reading →

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Review: Oxana

Posted on May 21, 2026 by philipbrasor

A biopic with a built-in provocation, this French-Ukrainian-Hungarian co-production purports to tell the life story of Oxana Chatchko (Albina Korzh), one of the co-founders of the feminist organization Femen, which made headlines in the 00s by staging anti-sexist and anti-authoritarian … Continue reading →

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Review: EPiC and The Choral

Posted on May 15, 2026 by philipbrasor

What made Baz Luhrmann’s biopic of Elvis Presley so monumental wasn’t what it revealed—if you really want to know about Elvis’s life read Peter Guralnick’s two-volume biography—or its dodgy insights into Elvis’s personality, but rather the way it appropriated Elvis’s … Continue reading →

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Review: The Botanist

Posted on May 14, 2026 by philipbrasor

When most people hear of Xinjiang they probably think of the Uyghur people, who make up a sizable portion of the Chinese province’s population. In that case, they may also think about how the Chinese government has suppressed their culture … Continue reading →

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