Tag: Drama

Tokyo Story Raids Again | Godzilla Minus One (2023) Review

December 2, 2023

The question isn’t about potentially overstating Godzilla Minus One with hyperbole, but rather which hyperbole to choose from? So far, I have “In terms of improving upon source material, Godzilla Minus One may be the greatest remake of all time,” and “I didn’t expect a Godzilla movie to make me cry, but here we are.” In terms of the first, I’d had the sense that I wanted to go into this one knowing as little as possible. I wasn’t as fixated on the advent of a new Godzilla movie as I had been for, say, a new Predator, because we were just recently gifted with a great installment. So, going in, I knew that Minus One took place directly after World War II – and that was pretty much it! Would this be a remake of the original, down to Serizawa and the Oxygen Destroyer? And most importantly, what would the titular monster mean this time? … More Tokyo Story Raids Again | Godzilla Minus One (2023) Review

Beautiful Violence | Raise the Red Lantern (1991) Review

September 22, 2023

All of the great films I’ve seen this year – John Wick: Chapter 4, Dragon Inn, Ran – left me thrilled or excited or breathless but intact. It’s been a long time that I’ve been this shaken by a movie. The credits rolled and the Blu-ray disc whirred inside the PS4 and I clicked around for a bit, first on the trailer by accident and then on an interview with film historian Tony Raynes. I had no idea what he was saying. I just sat there, responded to a couple of texts, and realized that as much as I’d been planning on writing a review for Raise the Red Lantern – this site would be incomplete without it! – doing so would mean lingering in that head space, and returning to that world. … More Beautiful Violence | Raise the Red Lantern (1991) Review

Search: WWW | Recommended Korean Drama

June 12, 2021

“Give me Cha Hyeon,” Ga-kyeong says, and as the scene whips between reaction shots and the music swells, I’m bouncing the iPad on my knees, making a positively indescribable noise. Search: WWW often shocked me like this, inducing so much excitement and even dread, then clocking me square in the stupid grin. It was urgent somehow, to even process my experience with it — but I couldn’t. Perhaps it left me feeling so much that my thoughts were annihilated. I’d like to recommend it, but where do I even start? … More Search: WWW | Recommended Korean Drama

“Warrior” Couldn’t Be More Relevant in 2021

March 18, 2021

Just as some believe anti-violence in film can be achieved by sickening the audience with ultraviolence, any cinematic depiction of racism necessarily traffics in the imagery and narratives of racism. And necessary they may be in turn, all the brutal historical dramas which bring atrocities to vivid life beg the question: isn’t there another way? Perhaps there have been or could be movies about racism that forgo such descriptions as “confrontational.” Instead, we could have two strangers from opposite sides of the track building a new and honest relationship with nary a slur slipping out. Sometimes you want that, and that’d be nice. But sometimes, you want to see a racist guy kicked through a wall. … More “Warrior” Couldn’t Be More Relevant in 2021

Fashion Empire | The Royal Tailor (2014) Review

September 17, 2020

A lot of the Korean pop culture I’ve witnessed so far eschews context, even before exportation to America. There’s a propulsive energy to movies like Parasite and The Handmaiden, like “Wowzer, where did that come from?” and you’ll see highly-paid and highly-respected Korean celebrities doing absurd things in the name of cinema (or variety shows). A film like The Royal Tailor doesn’t stop to observe its absurdity, doesn’t replicate the audience to lie prostrate before it and be judged, and this allows the earnest deliveries of lines like “I’ll make sure your clothes never see the light of day!” The magic trick, then, is that this line is a gut punch. … More Fashion Empire | The Royal Tailor (2014) Review