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Safe Haven 2013
Another Sparks-based film, another bizarre ACAB angle. Bad Police feature prominently in his narratives, often terrorising poor southern families and communities (read small business owners). When Katie flees Boston she brings its depravity and violence to Southport. These stories contrast big bad, drunken cops from the Big City with the Altruistic Country Cops who are basically ur uncle. So it's not all ACAB, more city-sceptic.
Anyway, if I were to only read/watch Sparks-based work I would think that 1 in…
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Nomadland 2020
Is critique enough to make a decent film? Sometimes, it depends. Where some may lack a comprehensive politics, they at least mount a critique of the status quo. In Nomadland, I can hardly make out such a critique. The performances are impressive, and the intentions to represent the vulnerable are commendable. Though, the production through to the cast and crew seem to undermine any meaningful political critique attempted.
Zhao uses actually-existing communities, places and people to flesh out the narrative.…
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Fast & Furious 2009
This is where I end my F&F journey. I don't think I can introduce The Rock into my Paul Walker universe. This franchise is so empty of ideology and politics I can't even complain about it so to you I say... SU CUH?
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The Girl Next Door 2004
It begins like many others, our lonely, nerdy protagonist realises that he's never really *lived* and sets out on a journey of actualisation via sexual conquest. But The Girl Next Door is total enigma within the naughties genre of desperate, horny, dramadies. What sets this film apart is its depiction of sex work/ers and its (very) limited critique of paternalistic narratives so engrained in our film culture.
Elisha Cuthbert plays the bubbly and confident Danielle, who Matthew sees as a…
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Memories of Murder 2003
I wish I knew my Korean history better, it might bring out a clearer analysis of this film. In particular, I'm thinking on the institution of the South-Korean police force in the 80's. I see Joon-ho as portraying the officers in the midst of simultaneous identity crises. Park, an inept grifter who has little interest in solving the case, his blunt and violent side-kick Cho and do-gooder Seo all must come to terms with their position in the force. Of…
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Sicario 2015
In 'All That is Solid Melts Into Air', Marshall Berman situated the modern subject within "a maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal, of struggle and contradiction, of ambiguity and anguish." Berman captured this sentiment in works of literature, philosophy and architecture, Denis Villeneuve puts it to film. Villeneuve's characters are affixed to the same intense, contradictory and transformative processes of modernity. Though, there exists an essential distinction between Berman and Villeneuve. In Baudelaire's prose, Marx's theory and Moses' expressways, Berman…
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