Hong Sang-soo's Hat Trick
In The Novelist's Film, Hong explores the meaningful things people share and inspire by virtue of simply engaging with one another.

What if your first true love was someone you’d been told you must hate? Set in a world very like our own, this Romeo and Juliet is about a generation of young people born into violence and ripped apart by the bitter divisions of their parents. The most famous story of love at first sight explodes with intense passion and an irresistible desire for change, but leads all too quickly to heartbreaking consequences. Erica Whyman directs, with students from our Associate Schools playing the Chorus, alongside the professional cast.
In The Novelist's Film, Hong explores the meaningful things people share and inspire by virtue of simply engaging with one another.
The Bluff unravels its mystery slowly, opening on the capture of a ship captain named Bodden (Ismael Cruz Córdova) and the swift execution of his entire crew. Then, viewers are treated to a tranquil British settlement in the Cayman Islands in the 1850s, where a mother bakes a coconut birthday cake for her son in a house suspiciously rigged with makeshift tripwires and burglar alarms. As it turns out, that mother is Priyanka Chopra’s quick witted and resourceful ex-pirate Mrs. Ercell Bodden, and her husband’s captors are on the way to the island to hunt her down for abandoning them and stealing their loot. The pirates of the Libertas land on the beaches of Cayman Brac, and the scenes that follow show a Viking-esque slaughter of half the island.
Asha, the main character, is a biracial woman who discovers the power of magic wishing dust.
Mirrorball is full of passion and love for the medium of cinema and is indeed a fitting love letter to La La Land.
Desi’s “straight man” to Lucy’s playful exuberance subverted people’s expectations of what a Latino man could be and added respect and nuance to the way onscreen marriages between men and women were portrayed.
Coolie promised style, action, and Rajinikanth’s mass presence, but did it deliver on substance? Here’s my full review on whether Lokesh Kanagaraj’s film lives up to the hype.