A savage look at food and sex, helms this black comedy about Japan's sizable and often beleaguered Korean-Japanese community. Motomi Hayashi (Eri Yu), a producer who is thoroughly dedicated to her career, returns to her abode to discover that her porn star sister (Ichio Matsuda) is going to make a film about her family's first reunion in 20 years. Motomi is less than thrilled with the prospect, seeing as all is not well at the Hayashi household. Motomi's father recently got canned from his longtime job at a Pachinko parlor, while her mother secretly plans to mortgage the house to finance her affair with a younger lover. Motomi grows more uneasy when she learns that the porn director in charge of the undertaking is known for mixing fact with fantasy.
I first saw Dear Evan Hansen on the Broadway stage. Apparently, I was so blown away by the magic of theater that I didn’t pick up on the questionable dynamics. The story's clumsy handling in the movie brought those issues to light.
Tarantino's alternative history of the 1960's uncritically repeats the era's sexist and racist stereotypes.
An aspect of She-Ra that I find refreshing is even though a large portion of the cast is on the LGBTQ+ Spectrum, being gay is never mentioned. While this might initially sound like a negative thing, in the show’s land of Etheria being on the gay spectrum is shown to be so common and normalized that straight isn’t the default. As much as there is to appreciate about narratives revolving around the obstacles that may come from being non-heteronormative, it’s nice to get immersed in a world where no one bats an eye at all to any sort of differing identity.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie comes on the heels of its billion-dollar grossing predecessor, and seeks to do absolutely nothing other than repeat its success. In this, the film is eminently effective. If you have seen the previous film, you can expect something extremely similar in this package. That is, a barrage of references to Nintendo intellectual property wrapped in a plot that provides the thinnest layer of emotional payoff for the characters.
Disclosure Day asks us to question humanity's role in the universe but falls victim to the same assumptions of centrality.
"65" (2023) is the latest Dino flick to try and answer "what else can we do with dinosaurs?"
