Tag: Film

REVIEW: Drive My Car

Nellie Shih Leave a comment

Drive My Car is a Japanese film based on a short story of the same name from Men Without Women, a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami. The film follows theater actor Yūsuke Kafuku as he directs a production of Uncle Vanya by Chekhov two years after the death of his wife.

I have had some exposure to Murakami’s work, having previously seen the film Burning, which is based on another of Murakami’s short stories, and having read part of his novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I really enjoyed Burning, how slow and meandering it felt while building and maintaining a quiet sense of tension and mystery. I found out Burning was based on a Murakami story after I realized Drive My Car reminded me of it, in terms of pacing but also the way in which the female characters were perhaps quite evidently written by a man. I have only read part of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle because I thought three manic pixie dream girls was maybe too many, but after watching the entirety of Drive My Car, I do want to return to the novel and see what Murakami has to say. 

It turns out that Murakami’s works are worth sticking out to the end – especially Drive My Car. Once we get past Murakami’s formulaic introductions of a lone, troubled male protagonist, and the sultry and promiscuous women in his life, we uncover a central theme of grief. Though this overall message of the film is not particularly revolutionary or unheard of, it is the way in which it is expressed that makes it worth noting. I ended up reading the short story after watching the film, and I really liked how writer-director Ryusuku Hamaguchi emulated the almost nonchalant delivery of the short story’s message. Though the film has more dramatic moments, it’s the slow buildup to get to these moments that feels faithful to the source material. The film feels like a natural development and continuation of Murakami’s original story. 

Furthermore, the film reminds us that when our words fail us, we can find and express ourselves through art. For Kafuku’s wife it is through her screenplays, and for Kafuku and his scene partners, it is through performance. And the film also reminds us that we can find solace in knowing we are not alone in our grief, even if it is through a temporary companionship. Drive My Car doesn’t move you to tears, but I like to think it doesn’t need to.

REVIEW: Belle

Himaja Leave a comment

I REALLY wanted to like Belle.

I’ve loved many of Mamoru Hosoda’s other movies: Summer Wars, Wolf Children, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and of course the O.G.: Digimon Adventure 1999 (my childhood). My gut reaction after watching Belle was to go back and rewatch all of those instead.

Belle is an animated film adaptation of Beauty and the Beast that follows a high school student named Suzu who escapes the insecurity and loneliness of her real life through ‘U’, a dazzling virtual alternate universe where she can be someone completely different. Her virtual persona quickly rises to extreme popularity and she has to navigate these dual versions of herself while going through the trials and triumphs of high school, love, friendship, and grief.

Let’s start with the Good:
[1] The animation was BEAUTIFUL. I mean OH MY GOODNESS can we sit and appreciate how far animation has come in the last decade? The depictions of the alternate Digiverse ‘U’ were so effective at showing how vast it was, how many detailed moving parts there were within it. The characters truly came alive on screen as people with blood, sweat, and tears.
[2] The sound design was also incredible. Suzu’s singing features prominently throughout as a metaphor for her confidence in herself and her love for her mother. The songs were all super catchy and well written and lingered in my mind long after the movie ended.

Alas, now we must go onto the reasons this movie was not my cup of tea, despite the great art and sound:
[1] The story was a big bowl of confusion soup. In a sci-fi movie about the metaverse, I expect the plot to be a little out there, but some things in this movie just go beyond logical human behavior. After the umpteenth weird sideball I could no longer suspend my disbelief. The story felt weak and underdeveloped.

[2] This movie wanted so bad to be a character-driven film, and it almost got there! At the beginning, the writing was strong – the main character Suzu had a powerful backstory that set the audience up to understand her struggles and root for her. And listen, I admire an aspirational storyteller. But if stories are onions, this one had about 10 too many layers. There’s a random scene that’s supposed to nod at Beauty and the Beast but it doesn’t make sense given the characters and doesn’t mesh with the rest of the story. Near the end of the movie the tone suddenly goes from adventurous to extremely serious and then back to playful so quickly I got whiplash. Not even the most masterful chef could fold that many plotlines into one and tie them up with a neat little bow. But that is what this movie tried to do and the result was a cliche ending that didn’t seem resonant with the important questions posed at the beginning of the movie: How do we continue living with joy when we’ve lost the irreplaceable? How do we learn to love ourselves? How do we rediscover our love for the things we loved as children? I’ve heard Hosoda described as a “maximalist” storyteller and here I’d have to agree — there was too much, and as a result there wasn’t enough.

All in all, if you’re an anime connoisseur then I would say give this a watch for the dazzling animation. But life is short, and in my humble opinion Hosoda’s Summer Wars is much, much better — spend your two hours in that world instead.

REVIEW: Schwarze Adler (Black Eagles)

Himaja Leave a comment

Last Friday the German Department hosted a free curated screening of the 2021 independent documentary film “Schwarze Adler” (translated from German: “Black Eagles”). The space they held it in at North Quad was great – it was huge, with floor-to-ceiling windows spanning the length of one wall, whiteboards and cushy chairs spanning the other, and a big blank wall up front to project the film onto. The physically-distanced chairs they’d set up in the room were fairly packed with people coming for the event.

Watching this documentary was a pretty emotional experience for me (which is why it took me so long to write this review!).

Steffi Jones, former defender for the national team

Seeing footage in 2021 of fans at a soccer game doing the Hitler salute will do something to your psyche. I’m privileged — some people don’t have the choice of whether to turn away from the screen, because they live through this every day. Imagine being a player on a professional sports team where the only difference between you and your teammates is that your skin is a shade darker. You’re trying to focus on the game you’ve trained for for most of your life when you suddenly hear 1000s of fans in the stands surrounding you, most of which are from your own country where you were born and raised, yelling at you to go back where you came from. That’s an experience that was recounted by every single German soccer player interviewed in this documentary.

The way fans treat athletes is something worth having a whole discussion on. Cheering for your favorite players and booing when the other team scores is all good fun. But when that morphs into jeering, chanting hateful racial slurs, and hurling insults at players, that’s when it becomes absolutely cruel. Michigan football games are not immune to this behavior. We put athletes on pedestals, but they are not made of titanium, they’re made of flesh and blood! They’re humans just like us and when fans dehumanize them, they deprive them of so much: joy from being on the field, joy from being with their teammates, and the focus they need to stay in the game.

Gerald Asamoah, former forward

Many of the players in the documentary talked about how hearing those shouts of “go back to your country” and “kick out the negro” would affect their playing, and they thought about it for the whole rest of the game. At one point one of the players, Gerald Asamoah said he had “never seen such hate anywhere else before.” One of his fellow teammates of color left Germany to play for Ghana because of the experience. Another player, after being subjected to it for half a game, picked up a small red crate on the sidelines and threw it down in a fit of anger. His teammates said nothing to him — the referee just handed him a yellow card. Another recounted how sad it made him when he saw that not only were the parents chanting slurs, but their small children were too.

Almost all of the players also made connections between the way they were treated to Germany’s dark history. “How can you show this behavior when we have seen exactly where it leads?” I think the same could be said of racism in our country. The U.S. has an equally dark history, it’s just that it’s usually glossed over in our history textbooks.

When the credits began to roll, I was feeling kind of hopeless and defeated. I know that’s not the right response to world issues, but I couldn’t help it. But then one of the professors from the German department got up to say a few words.
Here’s what she said, paraphrased:
“Don’t be disheartened. These thoughts of racism have accrued over centuries and it will take time to undo them. Martin Luther King Jr. was only assassinated 52 years ago so really we’re just at the beginning of the work to undo it. And don’t feel bad if you are not the one who goes out and marches and shows up in a big way. The small acts matter to. Every act of kindness, and every act that does something to acknowledge the humanity in others matters.”

So go out and show up in a small or in a big way this week, and know that we have a long way to go but every act matters.

REVIEW: Don’t Look Up

avameester Leave a comment

Filmmaker Adam Mckay ditches all subtlety in Don’t Look Up, weaponizing comedic satire to lunge straight for the throat of his target— which is, seemingly, almost everyone with media power. Don’t Look Up follows the story of two astronomers, played by Leonardo Dicaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, who discover a deadly comet speeding straight toward Earth and desperately attempt to convince the world of the event’s urgency. Facing the insurmountable obstacles of political corruption, corporate greed, and the happy-go-lucky culture of the celebrity world, the two struggle to make sense of the media’s ignorance as inevitable death approaches.

Don’t Look Up has an impressive range of talents under its belt, demanding the attention of anyone who previews it. Meryl Streep, Timothée Chalamet, Cate Blanchett, Jonah Hill, and Ariana Grande, to name just a few, bring to life an array of caricatures. Bubbly talk show hosts, self-absorbed celebrities, and money-hungry politicians take turns looking science in its fiery, unyielding eyes and denying it outright, engaging in nonstop arguments with the only two voices of reason— and somehow always coming out unscathed.

 

The film is fast-paced and blood-boiling, ensuring that you want to tear your hair out and scream at Meryl Streep’s uncharacteristically smug face for the entire 138-minute runtime. The dialogue teeters between over-the-top ludicrosity and sobering realism; it clearly points fingers at real-life media personalities and politicians that exhibit similar attitudes and refuses to water down their ignorance. Some scenes lean too much into the caricatures and come off as corny, but the premise remains intact and believable. The plausibility of the “comet” situation and media reaction mirrors the harrowing reality we live in; as an obvious allegory for the accelerating climate crisis, Don’t Look Up reminds us of exactly how and why the environment is heading towards total decay and which systemic problems are to blame.

 

Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rotten and pitying 55%. To be fair, Mckay’s Don’t Look Up lacks nuance and bold ideas, instead infusing what we already know with a sense of existential dread and powerful anger. The comedic route is also a less effective form of delivery than a more serious satire that could delve even deeper into its criticisms. However, my agreement with the critics’ ratings ends there; as designed for a mass audience, rather than an audience of knowledgeable film enthusiasts, Don’t Look Up is a perfectly accessible and entertaining vessel for an urgent message. Grim comedy and familiar faces make the plotline easier to digest, easing the anxiety of the catastrophe. Overall, Don’t Look Up is not intended to be an innovative cultural masterpiece, and that’s okay. At its best, it is a sobering and well-scripted analysis of the twisted hierarchy of power that we live in, given credibility by its parallels to reality and a star-studded cast. At its worst, its comedy detracts from its effectiveness and the film leaves us feeling hopeless.

 

Don’t Look Up pleads for the world to listen to its vindication of America as we know it, and I believe it should be listened to. Packed with enough cynical cleverness and lively dialogue to keep you on your toes for the whole two and a half hours, it’s undoubtedly a worthy watch. Grab some popcorn and a few friends and check it out exclusively on Netflix.

REVIEW: Cowboy Bebop: The Movie

Nellie Shih Leave a comment

Cowboy Bebop: The Movie follows the crew of bounty hunters aboard the Bebop as they chase after a biological terrorist who intends to wipe out the human population of Mars with an unknown pathogen. The film takes place between episodes 22 and 23 of the original anime series, and was released three years after the original series’ conclusion. 

I have never seen the original Cowboy Bebop series, but I still very much enjoyed the film and felt like I was keeping up with the story, characters, and world. The film throws you right into the world without much exposition, but I prefer that a film won’t drag out an introduction. There were some moments where I was unsure if I was missing some context or if I was just a little confused about the storyline, but nothing was too big of an obstacle in my overall comprehension of the film. The film does not rely heavily on the lore of the original series, which allows new audiences to enjoy the film alongside long-time fans. 

I was most impressed by the film’s soundtrack, art, and action. Yoko Kanno, the original series’ composer, returned to score the film and perform the soundtrack with her band. The soundtrack elevated the atmosphere of the film, whether it was upbeat rock instrumentals in action sequences or subtle, more moody music as the crew chases after the bounty. 

As for the art, I thought the backgrounds were particularly worth noting – they were all incredibly detailed and drawn from interesting perspectives and angles. I liked the use of bold but less-saturated, almost matte colors. I also really enjoyed the character designs, specifically for Spike and Ed. I found Spike’s ridiculous height to be amusing, especially in the montages of him walking through crowds. I think his design is very clever, with his long and lanky stature contrasted with his suave and easy going demeanor. On the other hand, I loved Ed’s ridiculous way of moving around – the way she flails her limbs and entire body around while moving can be likened to a wet noodle. I loved how the animation showcased both that Ed is a child and a genius – for example, there is a scene where she is hacking into a database to retrieve crucial information for Spike as sea creatures swim across the screen and attack the windows that pop up. 

The action sequences are perhaps the most impressive, not only because of the accompanying score but of the moves the characters use in their fighting styles. None of it is overly gorey, but there is just enough gore that you recognize how brutal the fights are. I’ve found that in recent action or superhero films, there is a lot of mindless fighting and shooting at faceless and nameless CGI antagonists, but the action in Cowboy Bebop feels more believable – you can better understand what it would be like for Spike to slam your face into a handrail than if he was shooting at you while flying through the sky on alien spacecraft.

Though Cowboy Bebop isn’t the genre I typically gravitate towards, I had a very enjoyable time watching it. I am interested in exploring the series, but for the time being I thought the film did an excellent job of introducing me to the world of the series.

REVIEW: Licorice Pizza

Himaja Leave a comment

In all whopping 134 minutes of this film, neither the word “Licorice” nor the word “Pizza” made an appearance. According to the movie’s Wikipedia page, the name comes from “a former chain of record shops in southern California.” I’m convinced that in reality they had no idea what to name it and chose something random, which is fine by me. “Licorice Pizza” is much more memorable than “134 minutes of vignettes strung together concerning the messy lives of two messy young people in Encino, CA in the 1970s to the tune of some BANGIN’ David Bowie tunes.”

This movie was hilarious. Pure comedy, but it wasn’t the in-your-face kind. I could not stop grinning throughout the entire thing. It was just so nostalgic.

Let’s start with the good:

Many coming of age films are bittersweet for me because they make me feel like I haven’t lived enough life. On-screen teens often go on wild romps through their towns, make messy and theatrical mistakes, and lie side by side underneath the stars talking about life. I never went on wild adventures or made many sparkling memories in high school. Those movies have me leaving the theater feeling a little bit of regret, like I’ve missed out on something in my life.

This movie, conversely, made me feel like there’s a lot of life left to live and a lot of new things to learn – and I can’t wait to live and learn. It made me feel like a main character. After the first conversation between the protagonists, I felt as though I had known the characters my entire life. I could relate to so many of the feelings and emotions and beliefs underneath their actions. The camera angles, the story, and the dialogue all create this perspective in the movie that invites the audience to experience all the messiness and stupid decisions WITH the characters with empathy, rather than looking down at them with ridicule. We bemoan messiness in our own lives but then love to see it played out on the screen, which makes sense. No one likes watching a movie about perfect people without flaws. That’s why the Mr. Rogers documentary is only 95 minutes long.

The visuals were stunning and so warm. The 35 mm film made an extremely noticeable difference and it felt like I was transported back in time. And the actors looked like REAL PEOPLE. They had blemishes on their faces! In the gorgeous closeups, you could notice their slightly crooked teeth! It was glorious!

Now for my critiques:

The ending of the movie felt rushed and left me feeling unsatisfied with where the characters’ development left off. I would say the ending is the weakest part of the screenplay.

There’s a 10-year age gap between the main characters. They discuss this in the movie but don’t outright condemn it. I don’t really understand the need for such a large gap to the movie’s plot, and it’s something that made me uncomfortable.

There’s a weird few scenes where a white man does an impression of a Japanese woman’s accent for comedic purposes. They were not that funny and could’ve been completely cut out of the film with absolutely no difference! So they should’ve been cut out! That’s my 2 cents about the matter.

Overall, I would recommend anyone go see this movie for the dreamy 70s CA filmography, well-written characters, and fantastic soundtrack. The film is not without its flaws, but I would say the enjoyable parts outweigh them.