The ironies of this movie are unsubtle, with the title "Happiness" immediately belying this quality. This is a movie about sadness, the deep darkness of unresolved personal issues that eat up the characters, hollowing them out until all that remains is their complex, their personal nightmarish worldview that makes happiness unattainable. The horrific qualities are accentuated by the oversaturated colors, gaudy late 90s aesthetics, and sickly music which is at times militantly upbeat melodramatic, and surrealistic. Each characters problem is…
Favorite films
Recent activity
AllRecent reviews
MorePopular reviews
More-
Oppenheimer 2023
Barbie’s partner summer movie event, released on the same day to a crowd primed by hybrid marketing, triumphantly succeeds as the definitive codification of the U.S. imperial creation story. The sensationalism and drama Nolan employs ensures a temporary apotheosis of the event and the man within the collective U.S. consciousness. One is reminded of an obscure, regionally distributed film from an eastern European country, glorifying one of its old politicians or heroic military units, which seems so parochial as to…
Translated from by -
Oldboy 2003
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
The main character violates the main taboo in Western society. What's clever about this film is that he completely breaks out of the framework of what is considered heroic by our specific moment precisely by operating along the logic of the hero in our society, namely, the logic of vengeance. There is a core chauvinist belief in the righteousness of vengeance. This is why the film ostensibly could be classed as a 'revenge film'.
The quintessential films of this type,…Translated from by
