Category Archives: Movies

Review: Ballad of a White Cow

Posted on February 17, 2022 by philipbrasor

According to various human rights groups, Iran is believed to execute the most people per capita of any country in the world. The list of crimes subject to capital punishment seems endless, everything from murder to homosexuality to apostasy, and … Continue reading →

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Review: Los Bando

Posted on February 13, 2022 by philipbrasor

For such a small film with modest comic goals, the Norwegian road movie Los Bando takes on a lot. Ostensibly, it concerns the ambitions of a group of small-town teenagers who yearn to play rock n roll and intend on … Continue reading →

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Review: The Rescue

Posted on February 12, 2022 by philipbrasor

Though conventional Hollywood action films are most viewers’ go-to source for visceral entertainment, you really can’t beat a good documentary that thoroughly examines an incident involving extreme danger. Because it was produced by National Geographic, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy … Continue reading →

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Review: Blue Bayou

Posted on February 11, 2022 by philipbrasor

As a movie about anti-Asian racism in America, actor Justin Chon’s directoral debut takes a heavy-handed approach that doesn’t do its theme any favors. The bad guys are bureaucrats and employers who clearly see the main character, Antonio (Chon), as … Continue reading →

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Review: The United States vs. Billie Holiday

Posted on February 10, 2022 by philipbrasor

As the title so starkly conveys, the theme of Lee Daniels’ biopic of the woman who many believe to be the greatest jazz singer of all time is the constant struggle Billie Holiday endured just to exist, but the story … Continue reading →

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Review: Lansky

Posted on February 5, 2022 by philipbrasor

It was inevitable that Meyer Lansky get the gangster biopic treatment, and considering Lansky’s special place in the annals of the American underworld, Eytan Rockaway’s version of that life is disappointingly generic. A Jew and proud of it (but devoutly … Continue reading →

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Review: Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Posted on February 4, 2022 by philipbrasor

It’s difficult to believe that the producers of the latest Ghostbusters reboot didn’t receive some kind of studio pushback for the subtitle of the movie. Obviously, the word “afterlife” can have some clever connotations when it comes to ghost stories, … Continue reading →

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Review: Crescendo

Posted on January 29, 2022 by philipbrasor

German-Israeli co-productions have emerged as an almost distinct subset of middlebrow art house cinema. Invariably, all the movies in this category deal either directly (Plan A) or indirectly (The Cakemaker) with the two countries’ fraught relationship owing to history, but … Continue reading →

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Review: Rockfield: The Studio on the Farm

Posted on January 28, 2022 by philipbrasor

If you assess music documentaries by how many interviews with rock stars it contains, Rockfield, which is about the titular Welsh recording studio built on the premises of a working farm, will probably be right up there at the top … Continue reading →

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Review: Silk Road

Posted on January 23, 2022 by philipbrasor

Writer-director Tiller Russell’s highly dramatized recreation of the rise and fall of the darknet website Silkroad.com takes a novel approach to the classic protagonist-antagonist dynamic in that the two main characters are really antagonists. In fact, it’s safe to call … Continue reading →

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