Category Archives: Movies

Review: Young Plato

Posted on May 27, 2023 by philipbrasor

Pedagogical films, whether documentary or dramatic, always focus on the teacher-student dynamic; specifically, the way educational professionals address the personal foibles of their charges in order to impart knowledge that the charges have difficulty accessing because of those foibles. The … Continue reading →

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Review: Aftersun

Posted on May 26, 2023 by philipbrasor

Charlotte Wells’ debut feature uses nostalgia to interrogate the fraught relationship between a 31-year-old father, Calum (Paul Mescal), and his 11-year-old daughter, Sophie (Frankie Corio). The bulk of the film takes place in the late 90s during a vacation in … Continue reading →

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Review: Creed III

Posted on May 25, 2023 by philipbrasor

Though I enjoyed Creed II, I blamed the fall-off in visceral and dramatic involvement on the absence of Ryan Coogler at the helm, though it may have had more to do with the usual expectations. Coogler rebooted the Rocky franchise … Continue reading →

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Review: The Apartment With Two Women

Posted on May 13, 2023 by philipbrasor

Kim Se-in’s debut feature won the New Currents and Audience awards at the 2021 Busan International Film Festival, as well as the festival’s Actress of the Year prize for Im Jee-ho’s performance. The Apartment With Two Women also won the … Continue reading →

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Review: The Desperate Hour

Posted on May 12, 2023 by philipbrasor

It’s because I’ve lived away from the U.S. for so long, but whenever I watch an American middle-brow thriller or even a romantic comedy I get overly distracted by the production design; specifically, the degree of near-luxury in which purportedly … Continue reading →

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Review: Armageddon Time

Posted on May 11, 2023 by philipbrasor

Though I thought The Lost City of Z was a worthy tour de force, it’s good to see director James Gray return to his native New York City (the less said about his previous film, the sci-fi melodrama Ad Astra, … Continue reading →

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Review: Tár

Posted on May 10, 2023 by philipbrasor

Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) isn’t the first cinematic protagonist whose entire being seems designed to be disagreeable, but it’s difficult to tell if writer-director Todd Field, making his first movie in almost two decades, wants the viewer to pick up … Continue reading →

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Review: EO

Posted on May 5, 2023 by philipbrasor

It’s no spoiler to say right at the outset that Jerzy Skolimowski’s impressionistic take on the life of a donkey ends with the claim that absolutely no animals were harmed or otherwise inconvenienced during its making, even if there are … Continue reading →

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Review: One Fine Morning

Posted on May 4, 2023 by philipbrasor

Hot on the heels of Francois Ozon’s Everything Went Fine (though I acknowledge that in some territories the release order was the reverse) comes another French movie about a woman struggling with her father’s end-of-life arrangements. And while the circumstances … Continue reading →

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Review: I, Olga Hepnarova

Posted on April 29, 2023 by philipbrasor

Tomas Weinreb’s and Petr Kazda’s fictionalized reimagining of the last woman to be executed in Czechoslovakia, in 1975, maintains a brutal fascination for its subject, played with unstinting sad-sack bravura by Michalina Olszanka, with an almost comical attention to detail. … Continue reading →

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