comedy-drama
Sunny Dancer is a spirited, thoughtful, and emotional songbird of a film, coming away with our hearts in its hands.
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In the 13 years I’ve been doing this, I’ve only brought my mom to one screening, and I’m kicking myself for not doing so until Next Goal Wins. This one’s for her. I’m convinced that the cinematic underdog story needs to be told every so often, if only to keep the “I can beat the big […]
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Many are the films looking at love at the beginning of two young, upwardly-mobile strangers’ lives. All throughout the years, whether by Howard Hawks or Nancy Meyers or Marc Lawrence, they’re all about the discovery of not only themselves as people, but who they can be as a couple. Much like Meyers’ own Something’s Gotta […]
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As we continue to dig out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s obvious that the cinema world will have something to say about what we’ve gone through and what we’ve become. There have already been more than a few pandemic-based films of varying quality – some shot on Zoom, some shot with traditional methods – but […]
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Plenty are the films about the comedy of errors that is parenthood and subsequent family life, but what about those whose paths and choices have taken them a different route? Where are the movies about the single folks who, either by choice or by circumstance, don’t get married or have children? If there are stories […]
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Forget the title; We Are Little Zombies (Japanese title: Wî â Ritoru Zonbîzu) is not a horror movie… at least in the conventional sense. Those expecting sloppy gore effects and masticating brains would do well to find their joy somewhere else, but for your sake, don’t turn that dial just yet. There’s more to this […]
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The High Note goes down as smooth as you’d expect, like a comforting mug of hot chocolate. It’s sweet, frothy, and relatively harmless, with little edge to cause any unease or sour aftertastes. With our stomachs full of similar male-fronted films, a female perspective – from both in front of and behind the camera – […]
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The (not pejoratively) dry, black-humored Lucky Grandma is quite a charmer, thanks largely to veteran actor Tsai Chin, whose illustrious career has spanned six decades. Once a Bond Girl in You Only Live Twice (and coming back for 2006’s Casino Royale, too!), Lucky Grandma brings her back to the action arena… sort of. Don’t be […]
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In The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, it is written: “What we do now echoes in eternity.” A modern-day update of that would be a line from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s final soliloquy in Hamilton: “What is a legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.” We have a choice as to what kind […]
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Before we get any further, I feel like I have to explain the middling rating given to webseries-turned-feature-film Ktown Cowboys right away, instead of getting to plot points and themes. As a person of Filipino descent, I understand the characters’ struggles for self-definition and cultural identity. The film’s intentions are laudable, being about five Korean-American […]
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