Netflix, with its string of endless content, delivers a heartfelt documentary about two women, Terry Donahue and Pat Henschel, and their secret relationship of nearly seven decades. Directed by Donahue’s great-nephew Chris Bolan, A Secret Love dives into these women’s love story, from how they met around the end of World War II to how… Continue reading ‘A Secret Love’: Seven Decades of Lesbian Romance
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
“I believe that free will leads you to your destiny.” These were the words of Victoria Beckham in her interview with Vogue for their highly popular video series 73 Questions. I believe she simplified an age-old debate about what destiny really is: do we really have control over our own, or do we simply rely… Continue reading Putting Matters Into Your Own Hands: On Destiny and ‘I Lost My Body’
At first glance I didn't think I would empathize with Alan Yang’s Tigertail, a film about an immigrant father who has lost touch with his family, himself, and his purpose. As someone who grew up in a typical Filipino family and has lived in the same place almost all my life, Tigertail presents a story… Continue reading ‘Tigertail’: An Ode to the Forgotten
If you take a deep dive into Netflix’s catalogue, you’re bound to find some obscure movie that will make you ask why it never landed on your homepage. It has a decent cast, an interesting trailer, and a title you wouldn’t be able to make sense of before watching the film. So why did you… Continue reading ‘Earthquake Bird’: A Mild Mystery
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
Right off the bat, I still think To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is better than P.S. I Still Love You. To All the Boys has the capacity to be re-watched multiple times. It’s one of my go-to feel-good films whenever I’m down. The sequel, however, pales in comparison. Lara Jean’s (Lana Condor) life… Continue reading ‘To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You’: P.P.S. Do I Still Love This?
When does love end? We’re taught that one’s ultimate goal in life is to find the one, get married, and live the happily-ever-after described in storybooks. We are taught that love is a sacred entity that exists between two people destined to be together (‘til death do they part). But we are not characters written… Continue reading ‘Marriage Story’: Love, Loss, and Everything in Between
Movies should be judged on its own merits, but sometimes discourse around it seeps into the film well before one’s first viewing. As I pressed play on Dead Kids a week after its release, I was already (painfully) aware of its stellar social media reception and, subsequently, the arguments being made on the state of… Continue reading ‘Dead Kids’: Being Neon-Lit Does Not Make a Movie Good
