I write about and programme films too.
I was the festival director of the 2nd Hong Kong On Screen Film Festival.
I am open to freelance work. If interested, please contact me here.
Cannes 2024: More Than a Masterpiece, ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’ Is Activism in Real Time
NEON
It isn’t just the context that solidifies the film; the dramaturgy is brilliant as well. When blood has been shed and torture has been used halfway through the film, the Hollywood directive would be to keep escalating the film’s stakes and making it bigger. But perhaps Rasoulof knows within his limited resources that he can’t top the footage of the large-scale demonstrations, hence his ingenious decision to downsize the conflict and bring it back to the family unit. By doing so, he makes the entire nation’s divide intimate and personal. The escalation of the film will certainly remind people of fellow Iranian Asghar Farhadi’s snowballing dramas, yet Farhadi’s stakes always feel artificial and manipulative. In The Seed of the Sacred Fig, even when characters make nonsensical decisions, they serve a more illuminating, greater point, and the second half’s genre-flavored implosion only feels like a logical conclusion to the state’s iron-fisted patriarchy.
‘Boat People’ Confronts the Ideas of ‘Civil War’ with More Complexity and Issues of Its Own
Janus Films
When even the photojournalist’s most basic tool can be taken away, is there anything that can’t be? Hui cautions us not to take our fundamental rights for granted, for the dictatorship’s reach knows no bounds. And while she has set us up into believing Akutagawa’s photos are sacredly fulfilling his noble task, the state officials have been thinking ten steps ahead with a plan to impound them before his departure. The dictatorship giveth, and the dictatorship taketh away.
There’s another, bigger subversion that shows Boat People’s sobering intelligence. The film’s true value is that it’s a Vietnam movie unlike the many Hollywood productions made about the War, and one of its most defiant yet bleakest traits is its subversion of the “white saviour” narrative. When Akutagawa sees the true horrors of the impoverished citizens, what can he do to help? All he can do is to stuff them with money, paying for their food and insultingly leaving large sums — like it’s nothing — to fulfil their dashed entrepreneurial dreams, seemingly lifting them out of poverty. If this feels like the white saviour narrative of many Hollywood films, Hui has a trick up her sleeve. It is another character, not Akutagawa, who successfully makes their way onto the boat and fulfills the true destiny and identity of the “boat people.” Instead, Akutagawa ends the movie in one of the film’s most horrifying, violent episodes.
Late ‘Parasite’ Star Lee Sun-Kyun’s Talents Shine in This Horror-Comedy
CJ Entertainment
What truly elevates his performance, though, is how it plays into the thematic subtext of the film. Sleep depicts a modernized nuclear family in which the woman is the breadwinner and masculinity is softened—Hyun-su literally ducks behind his wife when embarrassed. But when Soo-jin gradually loses her mind, the film ultimately reaffirms the patriarchy as the reasonable, responsible rock of the family, and Sleep relies on Lee’s performance to deliver this ideology. Lee can be a perfect, cute dreamboat when following his wife’s orders, but just by lowering his voice a few notches, he can easily transform into an imposing, masculine threat. The reason he works as a monster in this horror film is because the audience knows even the gentlest, most respectful husband can be the greatest threat to his wife when left together in a house, and Sleep and Lee tap right into that fear. The scariest moments of this horror film do not feature any possessed monsters wreaking havoc, but when the wife sees the husband quiet, alone, in a mood, and Lee doesn’t need to lift a finger to achieve that. Lee is the reason Sleep's horror works.
Remembering Leslie Cheung: Symbol of a Lost Hong Kong
Janus Films
While the rest of the world moved on, Cheung just froze in time. Hong Kong barely makes movies anymore, and its pop music can no longer inspire fanbase fights as intense as Cheung’s. Andy Lau is still miraculously playing action heroes at the age of 60, but there are no new movie stars. Those who remain have either sworn allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party or gone on self-exile. Democracy, rule of law… all those defining features of the city have been brutally stripped away. But Cheung hasn’t. He never fully made the transition to a China-controlled Hong Kong. The cultural and sociopolitical peak of Hong Kong was ephemeral, but our memory of Cheung—the lovable, British-educated gent—is permanent.
Interview: Ann Hui Discusses Style, Purpose, and Expression Across Her Illustrious Career in Hong Kong Cinema
Golden Scene
In many of the interviews I’ve read, including Keep Rolling, interviewers often ask you about your personal life or thoughts, but rarely about your craft and style. What kind of philosophy or thought process do you have about filmmaking elements such as cinematography and editing?
My thought process begins at the scriptwriting stage. I believe how you shoot your film is inseparable from the structure and story of your script. However, sometimes I come across ideas during different phases of the script’s completion, such as an idea for structure. In this case, I will talk to the screenwriter about it.
May December: Todd Haynes Elevates Tabloid Scandal into a Profound, Personal Interrogation
Netflix
This is most evident in the visual conceit most used by Haynes in this movie: mirrors, us as mirrors, and thus, characters directly looking at us. Haynes’ longtime DP Edward Lachman wasn’t able to shoot this film due to back injury, and Kelly Recihardt’s DP Christopher Blauvelt stepped in … Haynes proves his skill of the highest caliber as he frequently uses lines, divisions, and reflective surfaces to command the audience’s attention and advance the story and themes. When characters stare directly at us in place of mirrors, we are the lens, and the lens is us, so when Elizabeth rehearses a monologue declaring love at the audience-lens-mirror, she’s talking about how much we love her, her work, her star power, despite knowing the immorality of it all, whether it’s the statutory rape of a child, or the artifice and grey areas involved in making a film. May December reveals itself to be about the fallibility of our art form and how loose our craft’s basis is – topics miles away from the premise of a scandalous rape.