Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Luce 2019

  ★★½ Watched 17 Aug 2019

  Julius Onah's Luce is a provocative story about a model high school student, Luce, who becomes a poster child for American achievement. Luce's parents adopted him from war-torn Eritrea, and following years of therapy and counseling, see their son's success as a star athlete and intellectual debater. Yet, Luce's status as the star student is called into question when his teacher, Mrs. Wilson, reads his essay about ethnic cleansing and discovers illegal fireworks in his locker. With these discoveries, the…

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  After the Wedding 2006

  ★★ Watched 16 Aug 2019

  There are some films that address the most ambitious themes of humanity - birth and death, love and betrayal, wealth and poverty, coincidence and providence - in a way that demonstrates the sheer grandeur of these events in characters' lives, and by extension, our lives. Such films help us understand the grace that sculpts the best moments in life, as well as the brokenness that is embedded in our everyday experience. Yet unfortunately, some films merely use these themes as…

Popular reviews

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  Ash Is Purest White 2018

  ★★★★½ Watched 06 Apr 2019

  There is a classic Chinese saying that underscores a helpless and fatalistic reality: that humanity, left to drift too long in a particular environment, will have developed such deeply-seated intuitions required to survive in that environment that they are unable to change themselves ("人在江湖，身不由己"). Someone's character, thus, is symptomatic and inseparable from the setting that encircles them; under this premise, the construct of self is a function of expectations, preferences, and injunctive norms within a given reference network. 《江湖儿女》 offered…

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  Long Day's Journey into Night 2018

  ★★★★★ Watched 22 Apr 2019

  Bi Gan once said in an interview that no good film is without magic, and his film 《地球最后的夜晚》is a real testament to this. Marked by staggering points of elevation, every shot, frame, and spoken word within this film makes incarnate not only Bi's maximalist vision for cinema, but all the kindred spirits - both auteurs and authors alike - who have hitherto inspired his missional calling. Stasis meets flux, ephemera encounters continuity, harmony converges with discord. The film is all…

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