2023 seems to be a pretty good year for Malaysian films with a string of releases that are, if not great, at least interesting. This one was fully crowdfunded and then released for free on YouTube, allowing it ignore government censorship concerns. It’s effectively a dystopian action thriller that pushes racial segregation to its most extreme. It’s clever in how its appropriates the word ‘Pendatang’ and it slyly critiques how racism is manufactured by elites for their personal gain. I was disappointed however in that it’s not that well made and its scenario is really more about life under a totalitarian police state than about racism. It’s a valiant effort but it doesn’t really say much about life in modern day Malaysia.
At over seven hours long, this is by far the longest film we’ve watched. Even staggering it out over the course of a week, experiencing it in its entirety was quite a trial especially as it is an artistic film that isn’t always easy to understand and is entirely in black and white. I added this to my list because Béla Tarr is perhaps Hungary’s greatest director and this title often named among the greatest films ever made. The themes of desolation and hopelessness are obvious but it’s hard for someone unfamiliar with Hungary to place the circumstances under which the story takes place. I will say that this is easily one of the most pessimistic films I’ve ever encountered and it really is unique. Sitting through seven hours is still a big ask though.
Ken Liu is unfortunately better known for his translations of Chinese science-fiction into English but he does write stories of his own. I regret to say that I haven’t read them myself but given his reputation, I was eager to find out what a television series based on his stories would be like. I am pleased to report that the series, casting uploaded human intelligences as gods, is utterly fantastic. The technical details are reasonably plausible, it’s appropriately global in scope and best of all, every character acts rationally in pursuit of their goals according to their individual psychologies. It’s such a perfectly conceived and executed project that I have a hard time understanding how it ever got made.
I was a big fan of the first film and really wanted to catch this in the cinemas but was just too busy at the time. In the end, catching this on Netflix might have been wiser after all as this film is just too long and keeping up with its frenetic pace with so many characters and the dynamic changes of art style is quite exhausting. It does look great but it’s too overwhelming even for me. I was let down too by stale story beats like playing up Miles Morales being too busy as Spider-Man to attend to his real life or being forced to sacrifice the few to save the many. That said, it does have some decent character building moments as well so the verdict is kind of mixed. It definitely isn’t as good as the first film to me but I’ll still be looking out for the last part of what now looks like a trilogy.
It would probably be unwise to take Hayao Miyazaki at his word that this will be his final film and I’m not terribly fond of the quality of his later ones anyhow. Still, it would only be fair to watch at least one of his films properly in the cinema and so here we are. This one does finally feature a boy as the protagonist and apparently that’s because it’s semi-autobiographical. It also starts strongly with a firm grounding in reality but eventually veers off into the most fantastical and dream-like of Miyazaki’s worlds yet. There are all kinds of possible interpretations but none are terribly solid or boldly stated enough and so this is again mostly an exercise in pure imagination.
David Fincher’s latest thriller is streaming on Netflix and while it’s as slick as his other films, it hasn’t made much of a splash and feels a little pointless. As its tagline suggests, it amounts to being competence porn and while it does start with the protagonist making a mistake, it only goes to show that even the most skilled and well prepared of professionals are subject to the vagaries of random chance. It’s a very satisfying procedural to watch as it shows every detail of the work of a professional hitman. But it’s not saying anything that is interesting and its subtext, that in the end, it’s the rich, white dudes who get to life, makes for a sour conclusion however true to life it may be.
My wife insisted that we catch this in the cinemas and indeed it seemed like a good idea to support an artsy Malaysian film that’s enough good to win plaudits internationally. Indeed I really like how this is mostly set in Pudu, Kuala Lumpur and seemed to feature the lack of official identity documents in Malaysia as its driving theme. It’s the feature film debut of Lay Jin Ong who also wrote the script. However he was also a producer for Shuttle Life, film that I excoriated some time ago. This is far better than Shuttle Life but it falls into the same trap of being too old-fashioned where it counts and operates according to the principle that misery equals high art. Worst of all, it pulls a bait and switch in that it’s actually not at all about migrants in Malaysia nor the lack of identity papers.
