Letterboxd — Your life in film

It’s cute, but I struggle to pinpoint anything special about it. I really liked the casting. Haley Lu Richardson and Ben Hardy do have chemistry, but I was more interested in their characters’ respective struggles within their own families. She being a product of divorce and still holding onto anger, sadness, and disappointment on the eve of her father’s second marriage. He being terrified of the fact that his ailing mother will soon die due to lung cancer and not…

Leave it to Kogonada to tell a story about a cyborg that stopped working suddenly to underscore what it might mean to be human, to be able to care, to love, and to go on when important parts of us are shed amongst the wind. 

This film is a gentle reminder that we all come with expiration dates. I, like Yang, the “techno-sapien” of interest, do not fear death or even that there could be nothing afterwards. To die need…

It is ironic that the least compelling part of this horror film is the corpse that has been brought back to life. And it should be retitled “The Angry Black Girl and Her Monsters,” plural, because there is more than one monster shown here: how the police is trained in the United States—to kill rather than to subdue, to fear rather than to be in control of their emotions and thus any challenging situation; how hard drugs ravages poor communities,…

I saw this for the first time back when it came out. Although more than a decade has passed since, my opinion about it upon second viewing hasn’t changed: there is great build-up, there is violence at home, violence at work, and then… nothing. The theme about “bad people” needing to be punished is crystal clear to those who have managed to stay awake (the pacing is rather languorous), but the delivery is so obvious. The ending is supposed to…

This movie was made in a factory line. The human interactions are forced, the dialogue is wooden, and the action sequences are uninspired. I’m not a film director, but even I know for a fact that you do not shoot a hand-to-hand combat between hero and villain only from the waist up, especially during the climax. Not to mention that the massively talented Iko Uwais is completely wasted here. I don’t know if it is the lighting, the cosmetics, or…

What I loved most about this movie is its ability to place us right in the middle of the human conflict, both internal and external, in a most convincing way despite the occasional sudden tonal shifts, that it aspires to be both a road trip movie and a romantic drama, how it can be corny at times yet somehow it feels right.

Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur are precious, electric, and beautiful—together and apart. She is a hairdresser and he…

This movie shines brightly in parts but quite dim in others, particularly when the heroine, who decides to break into a morgue to obtain an iPhone which contains incriminating information about her younger brother, fails to use the numerous chemicals and dangerous instruments around her to obtain the upper hand from a murderous and corrupt coroner. And she’s supposed to be a student of forensic medicine? In survival stories, I don’t like it when the character we are supposed to…

I think this independent sci-fi horror had the potential to be great. Two-thirds of it is very interesting: a technology that allows scientists to actually see (although not clearly—yet) the contents of their subjects’ dreams is something that is, in my opinion, not unattainable in the future. But instead of exploring what this specific technology can do; the moral and ethical dilemmas that come with it; and the technology’s implications across creeds and cultures, the movie completely falls apart in…

I have to give it to this movie. On the surface, not a thing about it compelled me. I liked the dark atmosphere because it is set on Halloween, but the acting is unexciting, the protagonist rekindling his life purpose doesn’t show anything new or surprising, and the theme between what can be proven versus faith and the supernatural is not written sharp enough.

However, for some reason, in order to try to beat the renowned Hercule Poirot to the…

While watching this movie, I realized why so many quirky comedies of today fail to click with me: they tend to rely on furthering the plot rather than deeply exploring the character that the plot just so happens to revolve upon. In comedies these days, events have to happen which must work their way to the supposed big laughs. In this film, life just… is. And life can be funny depending on your chosen perspective. 

I loved Parker Posey’s portrayal of Mary,…

With a title like “Massacre at Central High,” you might think it is some kind of horror film, a slasher movie to be exact. I appreciated that this movie has a lot more going on than students getting murdered in school where adults are nowhere to be found.

I think the message, or one of the messages, it wishes to impart is the fact that although you can remove the very element that prevents society from functioning on an even…

Even though this slasher film is considered to be filled to the brim with clichés by today’s standards, I found that there are decisions made here that are still fresh. Like how the killer is not made to wear a mask. That his identity is revealed less than 10 minutes in. That we see him moving from one place to another—even the manner in which he escapes from the scene of a crime—instead of just appearing and disappearing out of…