I first heard about this film from the news about it being a surprise sleeper hit in China and decided to watch it as it is about the history of Chinese migrants to Southeast Asia. Arriving in the cinema, I saw that plenty of other Malaysian Chinese had the same idea and this is a huge hit in Singapore as well. It’s overly long, heavy-handed in its sentimentality and glosses over the reasons for so many migrants leaving China. But it’s well-made enough to be a tear-jerker, its predominant use of Teochew lends it authencity and to us Southeast Asians, it feels like acknowledgement.
It continues to astound me how perfectly Chloé Zhao grasps the tenets of Western culture despite being Chinese. What could be more central to the canon of Western culture than William Shakespeare? Adapted from a recent novel, this film further takes the bold step of not placing the playwright nor his plays at its center but instead Shakespeare’s wife and children. The result is a stupendously creative reimagining of what the plays might mean and one of the most emotionally affecting film I’ve seen in a while.
This French science-fiction film has only middling reviews and after watching it, that feels fair. It’s very loosely based on the Henry James’ novella The Beast in the Jungle but has none of its elegance. It takes its time to very clunkily make a trite point that captures little of the essence of its inspiration. At its best, there are brief moments that recall the surreality of David Lynch. But these are outweighed by the mediocrity or downright cringiness of many scenes. This one gets a thumbs-down for me and not just because of the facile anti-AI messaging.
It’s been a long time since I’ve watched a proper Hong Kong action movie though this may not quite qualify. It’s set in Macau and mainly uses Mandarin with a odd smattering of English. It’s even adapted from a Hong Kong movie from not too long ago. It’s overly long, is too hung up on twisty plot points and escalates the scale of the action to absurd levels. Nonetheless it genuinely is an spectacular action flick, probably Jackie Chan’s best in years, and with Leung Ka-Fai turning in a fantastic performance as a scarily threatening villain.
This horror film has enough of a hold on the public imagination to be regularly talked about even years after its release. I hesitated to watch it as the reviews are middling and director Ari Aster’s work is inconsistent for me. In the end I’m very glad I did despite it being too long and psychologically less complex than it needs to be, as this is one of the rare horror films that can aspire to break out of the confines of its genre. The setting featuring intense, unrelenting sunlight and bright, cheery colors instantly marks it as being unique, proving that horror doesn’t have to exist only in the dark.
This series has been on my radar for a while due to it supposedly being about the succession of a company and the fact that it’s loosely based on the Murdoch family. As usual, I like to wait until the whole series is complete and so here we are. The bad news is that this is not really about business as all as it tends to gloss over the day-to-day of corporate life. Instead it’s all about the family drama. The good news is that it’s very good at it and all of the characters are villains that you’ll love to hate. I do worry that the pattern will become too repetitive but for now I enjoy it and will be down for the second season.
As a film that is all about a hiking trip, Good One invites comparison with Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy that I so loved. I didn’t much care for it at first. It felt that there was little hiking compared to everything else, sitting around a campfire, by the river, in the car. But of course I’m a clueless guy just like the two men on the trip with the lone girl and missed the character dynamics until the issue was shoved straight into my face. This was the directorial debut of India Donaldson and I do still think the pacing issues are real. But it brilliantly dissects how men are sometimes blind to everything but their own problems.
