Category Archives: Movies

Review: The Family

Posted on July 29, 2022 by philipbrasor

In most cinematic worlds, the bureaucracy is a cold and sometimes malevolent thing. At best it’s portrayed as a necessary evil, a facilitator of the social contract that has the dirty job of making contentious interactions work, even if that … Continue reading →

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Review: Jurassic World Dominion

Posted on July 28, 2022 by philipbrasor

The narrative idea that has made the Jurassic Park/World franchise so ludicrously successful from a financial point of view is not really the presence of dinosaurs in our world, but rather the insatiable desire of “science” to fiddle with the … Continue reading →

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Review: A Serbian Film

Posted on July 22, 2022 by philipbrasor

Originally released in 2010, Srdan Spasojevic’s purposely repulsive meditation on his country’s spiritual rot is being rereleased in Japan in a sparkling renovated 4K version that seems hardly necessary given what the viewer has to watch, and yet much of … Continue reading →

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Review: Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache

Posted on July 21, 2022 by philipbrasor

Because of its function as a recording medium, cinema’s entire history is fairly well represented. Pamela B. Green’s documentary purports to bring to the public’s attention a woman filmmaker whose pioneering accomplishments, because she was a woman, have mostly been … Continue reading →

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Review: Boiling Point

Posted on July 14, 2022 by philipbrasor

For those of us who never go out to indulge in haute cuisine, the desperation that director Philip Barantini brings to this study of a particularly bad night-in-the-life of a restaurant owner-chef isn’t going to make as much of an … Continue reading →

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Review: Wanda

Posted on July 9, 2022 by philipbrasor

American actress Barbara Loden’s directoral feature debut was released in 1970 to a handful of theaters and disappeared quickly, but over the years it has retained an odd notoriety for its frank depiction of a poor woman’s lot in middle … Continue reading →

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Review: The Alpinist/The Summit of the Gods

Posted on July 8, 2022 by philipbrasor

The appeal of mountain climbing, even to those who have absolutely no interest in partaking themselves, is special. The old colloquy of why one would want to scale a peak and then the intended interlocutor coming back with “because it’s … Continue reading →

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Review: X

Posted on July 7, 2022 by philipbrasor

The idea of blending porn and slasher pic has surely been thought of before, but as far as I know it hadn’t been realized as a feature film, and director Ti West deserves credit for thinking through the concept with … Continue reading →

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Review: The Protege

Posted on July 3, 2022 by philipbrasor

Though it’s obviously conceived as an action vehicle for Maggie Q, this freelance assassin thriller sports enough of a pedigree to give publicists an easy time with the name recognition: directed by Bond veteran Martin Campbell, written by Equalizer/Expendables scribe … Continue reading →

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Review: Escape From Mogadishu

Posted on July 2, 2022 by philipbrasor

Action movies the world over usually require at least one elaborate chase scene, and no one does it better than Korean filmmakers, regardless of whether the pursuit is vehicular or on foot (you’ve gotta be pretty skilled to navigate those … Continue reading →

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