After Women’s Story, Peng returns to the most straightforward representation of women’s issues in Shanghai Women, a film about three rural women. As the first work in Peng’s Shanghai Trilogy, Shanghai Women describes the problem that women encounter trying to secure urban (residential) space through the story of women from three generations.
Disguised as a cosmic highway horror, Alexander Ullom’s It Ends is a beautiful, albeit terrifying, metaphor for learning that if you want to survive adulthood and become your own person, you have to learn to let people go.
Mala tripped over in a company Diwali party, which led to unexpected visits and realizations.
Honey Don't! is a chaotic queer noir that's part detective story, part midnight movie madness. Margaret Qualley is fantastic as the wise-cracking private eye Honey, with Aubrey Plaza and Chris Evans adding their own dry humor to the mix. The mystery itself is pretty loose, but the film makes up for it with crackling sexual tension, weird side characters, and razor-sharp dialogue. It's messy and uneven, but in the best possible way.
Tran Quoc Bao succeeds in telling us a story about martial arts, human decay, and friendship. The originality shown by his filmmaking is admirable and brings fresh air to the classic Chinese martial arts genre.
Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion is a fan-favorite, as are some of the more science fiction angled movies like 28 Days Later or World War Z. I recently watched the 1995 Wolfgang Peterson-directed movie, Outbreak for the first time, which is currently available on Netflix.
The original series is now on Netflix, you should definitely give it a watch. And if you’ve already seen it, watch it again.
