Reviews
late night reviews and rants about film and other media
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review
Wife of a Spy
Even if it never explicitly mentions Unit 731, that this film addresses the Imperial Japanese Kwangtung Army's biological experiments on prisoners of war--with one particular harrowing scene of (not actual historical) archive footage--is quite subversive as one released in the height of Japanese historical revisionism as state policy. This is the Godzilla-1-era of Japanese Showa Nostalgia era of cinema, after all.
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Audition
Baffled by the amount of people that take Asami's character and what is depicted at complete face value, whereas what is fiction and what is reality is very clearly deliberately blurred to remain ambiguous.
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Arco
Loved the environmental metaphors, the bumbling trio of loveable up-to-no-goods, the brilliant French comic inspired artwork, the retro future designs, and even made me sympathetic to the working class robots.
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The Invite
I went in blind, more or less expecting a slightly more satirical Marriage Story (2019) so this was a fun surprise.
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Erupcja
Nice little character study exploring the immediate surrounding impact of someone that mythologizes their own emotional immaturity and fear of commitment.
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The Legend of Hei II
Maybe I'm reading too much into this but it feels like a metaphor for geopolitical tension and arguments for peaceful co-existence and mutual cooperation between China and the west.
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The Odyssey
Christopher Nolan first and foremost makes cinematic spectacles and I was spectacled. Still can't write a woman to save his life though.
review · Berlinale
The Weight
Wonderfully suspenseful action-adventure film that harkens back to the classics without falling into the pitfalls of the racial and gendered insensitivities that have historically plagued them.
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Living
This remake of Kurosawa's 1952 Ikiru had to be set in a fictonalized, historical post-war London because at its core, more so than a timeless and contemplative exploration of finding meaning in one's live, I find this story to be one of hope and the power of ordinary people to change society for the better--even when bureaucracy and middle-management labor might reduce one's own personhood.
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Kokuho
Narratively doesn't reach uncharted territory and definitely has some flaws in its plot progression but I'm just a sucker for these types of stories and it more or less hit the same notes for me as Shōwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjū did. Could have definitely benefited from developing its female characters though.
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Art College 1994
The big dreams and endless philosophical meandering of an early 20s student.