When I was a cook, people would send their food back to the kitchen sometimes because it didn’t meet their expectations. The same can be said about filmmaking. Movies often fail because of bad marketing. Such is the case with ‘Slanted’. The short trailer and descriptions probably had people expecting a horror/comedy. Trust me. There’s nothing humorous about this film.
If you liked ‘Get Out’, ‘Slanted’ is on another level showing the perspective of ‘Joan Huang’ (Shirley Chen), a Chinese adolescent wishing to be White. Desperate to fit in with her high school classmates, she goes through the gamut of bad decisions trying to fit in. This culminates in undergoing “ethnic modification” which doesn’t just change her skin tone or the shape of her nose but alters her DNA and transforms her into another person(McKenna Grace).
It’s only fitting the clinic where she receives the procedure is tucked away behind an old Afrocentric barber shop. She walks past the sketchy storefront and emerges into a bright, well-lit waiting room where she meets ‘Willie Singer’(R.Keith Harris), a middle-aged White man and the inventor of “ethnic modification”.
This is probably where the misperception of ‘Slanted’ being a comedy comes in. As ‘Willie’ describes this sci-fi-esque procedure, he has a demented smile which shows up in the trailer. With no context, it looks comedic. Almost immediately after her the procedure her face begins to deteriorate - hence the horror.
During the second half of ‘Slant’, ‘Jo Hunt’ slowly begins to realize being White isn’t what she thought it would be. She experiences a grass-isn’t-always-greener-on-the-other-side epiphany and has to come to terms with her issues of identity and self-acceptance. She does this with the help of her parents(Vivian Wu/Fang Du) who are completely devastated by her change.
The writer(Amy Wang) put the onus squarely on the homogeneity of the good ol’ US-of-A which is probably why it is misperceived as lacking. Let's be clear, this film is on a well-defined path of exemplifying how anyone who is not of European descent is made to feel less than. If there was any confusion about that, there is a ‘commercial’ of sorts halfway through the film that sings out,”It’s good to be White”.
Throwing shade on conservatives isn’t the film’s only goal. Liberals are also shown the mirror of their selective allyship when Joan’s father is injured while cleaning the home of Harmony, (Elaine Hendrix) a White woman. With all of the ethnic art adorning the walls of her home in the background, she is overflowing with compassion for Brown folk a continent away but fails to show it for someone right next to her.
An insecure Chinese-American teenager undergoes experimental surgery to appear white, hoping to secure the prom queen title and peer acceptance.
The “gay best friend”, an age-old trope, has been done in countless films and television series. Ranging from one-note (Sex and the City's Stanford and Mario) to nuanced (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt's Tituss), the gay best friend exists to support and advise the main protagonist, with their conflicts swept to the side.
Since Season 2 of Peacemaker is currently airing, let’s revisit the movie that started it all.
Juno is extremely funny, very well-written, and contains great performances. The film is also about a very important topic, one that is extremely relevant now: women’s reproductive rights. Is this Oscar-winning film spreading a pro-life or pro-choice message to its audience?
In Tall Girl, Jodi learns to stand tall and find confidence within.
Growing up without a dad, I got a lot of my fatherly advice from the prototypes I saw on the silver screen. It’s these characters and films that gave me a glimpse into a dynamic I had never known but also made me realize that I was missing out. Here are my top 10 paternal films.
Strangers in a crowd, exchanging glances, looking away, continually managing to run into each other then part ways, end up at the same diner, find they've rented the exact same vehicles, and are then made to travel together to learn once more whether they can both find genuine adoration and companionship again. This really does, in so many words, sum up the foundational gist of of this new feature film from writer Seth Reiss ("The Menu") and director Kogonada ("The Acolyte", "After Yang"). Yet, it's all only the set-up for the REAL wonder of everything that happens before, during, and in the aftermath of a magical, meaningful journey.
