Desire is vast; it’s also a double-edged sword. Much like love, desire, as Euripedes put it, doesn’t win the game. It changes it. In Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog (adapted from Thomas Savage’s novel of the same name), wealthy brothers Phil and George Burbank (played by Benedict Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons) meet a… Continue reading ‘The Power of the Dog’: Desire is a Double-Edged Sword
Much can be said about Jonathan Larson’s short-lived life. He’s best known for the musical Rent, which success he tragically failed to see after a sudden death. A gifted playwright, Larson spent his 35 years of life dedicated to writing and composing musicals about grief, love, and a bucket load of questions: Fear or love?… Continue reading ‘Tick, Tick… Boom!’: An Ode to Life’s Urgency to Create
Florian Zeller’s The Father is more than just your typical family drama. Family drama isn’t even an apt description for it. Anne (Olivia Colman) visits her 80-year-old father, Anthony (Anthony Hopkins), who’s living in an apartment alone in London. He had just chased off the recent carer she’s hired for him after accusing her of… Continue reading ‘The Father’: A Devastating Study on Losing Oneself
Sujata Day’s charming debut tells the story of Monica Chowdry (played by Day herself) and her family in the Pennsylvanian suburbs. Monica spends her days taking care of her mother and struggling with the failure of living up to her potential since her big spelling bee win. She occasionally teaches a bunch of kids whose… Continue reading ‘Definition Please’: A Charming Debut on Sibling Love and Identity
There’s something to be said about the state of cinema last year. With the industry scrambling to adjust to the pandemic, gone were the corporate blockbusters inhabiting the big screens and the usual blockbuster noise making rounds on your social media feed. For a year as long as 2020, the months without these behemoth blockbusters… Continue reading ‘Wonder Woman 1984’: An Empty, Tone-Deaf Spectacle
There’s a familiar line from Patrick Stump’s 2011 song “Porcelain” that goes, “No, I simply can’t resist my imagination, no amount of patience validates my preoccupation, let me say this, you look better famous”. It’s sung with a sneer guised in disappointment. The kinetic sound feels starry as the narrator pleas for the subject to… Continue reading ‘Fan Girl’: An Effort in Breaking Porcelain Images
Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow opens with a discovery. A woman walking her dog along the woods unearths two skeletons lying side by side, then proceeds to tell us the story of Cookie (John Magaro) and King-Lu (Orion Lee). Cookie is a cook traveling with a pack of fur trappers. He meets King-Lu, a Chinese immigrant,… Continue reading ‘First Cow’: The Tenderness of the American Dream
From the beginning of The Half of It, our protagonist, Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis), warns us that this is not a love story. Or at least not the kind where everybody gets what they want. Ellie Chu, a Chinese immigrant and straight-A student, lives with her father in the small fictional town of Squahamish. In… Continue reading ‘The Half of It’: A Love Story in More Ways than One
It's always the pain in our childhood that defines us later in our lives. It's the weight of the memory in our hearts that we carry around, like ghosts. And then at times, it manifests into our own relationships and how we handle it. Eventually it comes to a two-way decision: do we exorcise it… Continue reading ‘Happy Old Year’: On Decluttering Ghosts
“It’s nice to have a friend again,” Violet Markey (Elle Fanning) says to Theodore Finch (Justice Smith) as they drive over to their next project. Violet, who's recovering from a car accident that took her sister’s life, holds Finch’s hand across the driver’s seat. They smile at each other. Brett Haley’s adaptation of Jennifer Niven’s… Continue reading ‘All The Bright Places’: Sincere But Too Shallow For Its Own Good
Sine Liwanag 