Category Archives: Movies

Review: The Legend of Ochi and Pilot

Posted on April 3, 2026 by philipbrasor

Having mostly passed through the 80s in a blur of distraction, I wasn’t fully up on current pop culture at the time the way I was in the 70s and 90s, and so the 80s revival has never really felt … Continue reading →

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Review: The Bride! and Anaconda

Posted on April 2, 2026 by philipbrasor

It seems unfair that The Bride!, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s very original take on Mary Shelley’s creation, is released within spitting distance of Guillermo del Toro’s more faithful version, especially given that the latter has gotten more love. Though Frankenstein is not … Continue reading →

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Review: Sound of Falling and Hallan

Posted on April 1, 2026 by philipbrasor

Multigenerational stories that focus on an extended lineage are usually called epics, a term that could apply to Mascha Schilinski’s second feature, Sound of Falling, except that the unifying force over the years depicted isn’t strictly a family but a … Continue reading →

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Review: Chain Reactions

Posted on March 28, 2026 by philipbrasor

Documentary filmmaker Alexandre O. Philippe has made a tidy living out of studying scary movies, having already put The Exorcist, Psycho, and Alien under the microscope. This 2024 feature takes on what many believe to be the Rosetta Stone of … Continue reading →

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Review: Young Mothers

Posted on March 27, 2026 by philipbrasor

The Belgian filmmaking brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, extend their usually focused attention on a single troubled individual in their realistic style to take in a quartet of teenage mothers who are in the early stages of coping with their … Continue reading →

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Review: The Thing With Feathers

Posted on March 26, 2026 by philipbrasor

It’s been difficult to take the famous title epigram, adapted from a poem by Emily Dickinson, seriously ever since Woody Allen had fun with it in one of his New Yorker humor pieces. For Dickinson, the thing with feathers was … Continue reading →

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Review: What Does That Nature Say to You

Posted on March 21, 2026 by philipbrasor

One of the most common figures of romantic stories down through the ages is the unreliable artist-lover. Extrapolated into narratives, such characters often end up being secondary to the protagonist, who is usually a woman and falls for the artist … Continue reading →

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Review: Project Hail Mary and Jules

Posted on March 20, 2026 by philipbrasor

According to reports, Andy Weir, the author of the novel Project Hail Mary, did deep research into the science behind the story’s science fiction, in particular the viability of the sun-consuming microbes called astrophage that trigger the titular extraterrestrial mission. … Continue reading →

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Review: Small Things Like These and Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

Posted on March 19, 2026 by philipbrasor

According to Tim Mielant’s drama Small Things Like These, based on a novel by Claire Keegan, Ireland in the mid-1980s was stuck in a time warp. By the end of the decade the country would be enjoying an economic boom, … Continue reading →

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Review: Marty Supreme

Posted on March 13, 2026 by philipbrasor

It feels more like providence than serendipity to note that the recently sundered Safdie Brothers filmmaking team has now produced two movies about real-life sports figures whose forceful personalities up-end their competitive effectiveness. However, in the case of Benny Safdie’s … Continue reading →

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