MIND-ALTERING SUNDANCE 2024

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Once again, in its continued tradition running 40 years strong now, Sundance films exactly do not fit into that tiny range of experience that capital seems to require of us to replicate itself. I'm probably off course by making this over-simplified conclusion at the outset of this post, yet do find that the requisite skills neoliberal culture seems to value above all others, including working overtime, war mongering, and stepping over others to get ahead, can be boiled down to the rather simplistic and leave us empty. No wonder people are unhappy even when they "make it": we're starving for more on spiritual, physical, and intellectual levels. 

Sundance films explore the realms outside of our window of restricted vocations, interactions, and culture. The categories Sundance films explore aren't inherently complex, but since they're just a bit outside the norm, it's a breath of fresh air.

Monday Jan. 22, 2024

Malu (2024) was delivered by Brazilian director Pedro Freire who explained before the screening I attended that back in the day, when he rented films from video stores, he grew to love Sundance films because the laurel stamped on each film's cover ensured that the story would at the least be well scripted and well acted--his two favorite things--and that he wept when he found that Malu was selected for the festival this year. The film traces the story of a woman pitted between her 20-something daughter and conservative aging mother. Malu lives straddled between the past (failed communist revolution) and the future (unrealized dream of creating a theater company) with neither emotional nor intellectual reserves to manage the present in spite of the charm and gravitational pull of her personality. 

Malu director and cast, Sundance, 2024

In the evening I attended the Midnight Short Film Program--Sundance’s violent and un-categorizable fare--featuring 6 of the 53 short films submitted to Sundance out of 12,098 (including one of mine lol). The buzz of the crowd even before entering the theater was palpable. Once inside unfiltered anxiety, fear, and joy melded together throughout the welcome, screenings, and Q&A session. My favorite film of the fest--the singular "The Rainbow Bridge" (Simakis), which comically and nearly savagely presents a pet owner who discovers how to connect with her dying pet on a celestial plane so that she can say goodbye in a language they can both understand--typified the collection of films here with loglines that search engine algorithms can't quite quantify. 

Sundance programming is at it’s best when the out of this world meets a community there for it. I left the theater after the Midnight Shorts wondering “do I know too little or do I know too much?” and before settling on “probably neither," the realization that followed on its heels was “anything is possible." It's a certainty the films revealed by pulling ideas out from under the rug where concepts of infinite possibility can unwittingly be swept.

Tuesday Jan. 23, 2024

Love Machina (Sillen) documents the love story of Bina Rothblatt, currently in the process of downloading her memories into an AI system, and her partner Martine. The idea is that if we can create eternal versions of ourselves, then maybe we can love our partners forever. But part and parcel are questions surrounding consciousness, sentience, and immortality--not to mention the structural and systemic biases built into the foundation of systems and platforms from which AI is being built.

Winner (Fogel), featuring the pitch-perfect performance of Emilia Jones (who plays Ruby in CODA), tells the story of Reality Winner, a woman who at great personal cost sent private NSA documents to mainstream journalists which proved Russia interfered with the United State's 2016 elections. The film shows important events that preceded and those that followed this explosive event covered in the press, based on a smart, well-paced script. 

Presence is Soderbergh’s horror-drama of a spirit which haunts a house from the perspective of the haunting presence. Once the idea that first-person point of view will be used exclusively to tell the story, and after a handful of lines fall flat in the first 20 minutes or so, the film is an intriguing whodunit and quite enjoyable. The music is what particularly stands out in a film which rewards patient attention.

Wednesday Jan. 24, 2024

Never Look Back (Lawless) traces the radical life of the singular, remarkable camerawoman Margaret Moth, war correspondent extraordinaire. Extraordinaire in this case refers to a person instilled with a will to live with fearlessness which, while perhaps not replicable, does indeed provide a model of living to the fullest to inspire each individual within their own capacity. And Margaret Moth had the coolest 80s jet black punk hair, just saying. 

I had tickets at the beginning of the festival to the Napoleon Dynamite 20th anniversary screening yet nearly thought of giving them away (because I've seen it so many times!). But as the date approached I kept thinking: what if the cast and crew are there? And they were! Director Jared Hess stated via a recorded message that at the film's first screening at Sundance 20 years ago there were no opening credits--the film just opened with Napoleon standing in front of his house. 

Napoleon Dynamite cast, Sundance, 2024

It was so awesome to re-live the film with so many passionate fans. We clapped for each new character introduced and voiced multiple cheers for Napoleon's antics and groans for Uncle Rico's behavior. It was an unforgettable night for all. Even the principal and Trisha were there! I may or may not have cried during the screening. And after the screening I may or may not have been photographed with Lafawnduh (Shondrella Avery) kissing my cheek, but I’m not the kind of guy who gets kissed on the cheek after a film screening and then tells.

Thursday Jan. 25, 2024

Richard Linklater returned to Sundance with Hit Man, staring Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick) and Adria Arjona (Andor), which I think of as a modern-day Fight Club (Fincher, 1999) in terms of the way the main character lives two identities. In this case, and based on an actual story, a college professor spends his off hours (I’d like a professor gig that has enough time for a part-time job, just saying) as an undercover contract killer for his city’s police department. The false identity Glen Powell's character creates bleeds into his “real life”-- the result? He has to pay for the repercussions of his transgressions, or does he?  

And so, are we re-entering an age of schizophrenic films just as we did at the end of the late 1990s, pre-9/11? At that time my supposition is that Generation X had endured sufficient time to take stock of the effects of global capital on the local psyche--and within this space for introspection filmmakers represented their meditations across cinematic genres. And Linklater was in the thick of it then, so maybe like those of us who experienced the late 90s he persists in producing what was then part of our daily lives: picking up the pieces of psyche’s fractured by the impact of living to make money in a society that, no matter how we went about doing so, we could not seem to escape the realization that we were contributing to structural and systemic inequality. 

Does Hit Man reveal the return of the repressed or are we at a new juncture in time--that is to say, is 2024 a moment when we have had enough time (since the pandemic, since Black Lives Matter, since Me Too) to take stock of all that we've inherited and all that persists, or is this the 1990s returning in a new dress? (And just as with today's return of 1990s fashion, accompanied and intermixed with the 80s and 00s haphazardly?)

Little Death (Begert) channels Fight Club directly during the first half--it's like watching Fight Club if it were written from a right rather than left-wing ethos and with the assistance of AI. The second half (thankfully) is something altogether different--the film radically changes course, as if two separate movies were crammed into one--which was Little Death's best quality.

So when I say "mind-altering Sundance" films in this blog's title, it’s not that these films are beyond the possible range of human experience in terms of gender, race, and class; rather, our cultural range of experience is limited and Sundance proves that. Moreover, their films become the new normal during the time folks are in attendance. The window gets cracked open a bit wider.

Park City photography © by James Wicks, 2024

Sundance Film Festival 2023, Thursday 1/26: Fantastic Machine

Fantastic Machine (Danielson & Van Aertryck, 2023)

One amazing thing you can do at Sundance is accidentally go to the wrong theater, have the wrong QR code scanned so you get in, be surprised that the film is starting later than you expected, and then be totally stunned when the Sundance programmer let's you know that you're about to see Fantastic Machine rather than Mami Wata.

Then, when you're just starting to roll with it, the delightful directors thank the audience for being so responsive and vocal in previous screenings and that each one of us in attendance is a member of "a generous people"--which you never expected to hear ever in your lifetime as a citizen of the United States--confirming that yes, you're gonna stay and see what the Fantastic Machine is.

It's a movie camera, of course! A history of it, by way of sick narration and the most iconic images ever recorded...that horse with all of its feet off of the ground, yes pictures of earth after the moon landing, yes the moment when BBC television was first broadcast. 

At each evolution of the motion-picture camera--from nickelodeon to documentary war footage to television to news journalism to YouTube--there is a moment of optimism: more information, more education, more voices heard, the possibility for more harmony as we understand our neighbors across the globe. And at each evolution the reality that follows: media conglomerates, market capitalism, isolated voices in a sea of content, "fake news," and algorithms that dictate what we see online. It's a beautiful, tragic, compelling story. 

And we're in it. In the end, we need communities that engage and discuss it, media literacy, and more community.

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Also of note was Shayda (Noora Niasari, 2023) a debut film by an Iranian filmmaker who depicts her experience as a child immigrant to Australian and her mother who moves them both to a women's shelter to escape an abusive relationship. The film allows each character to breathe: inhale...exhale. It allows us to access their space for a moment to experience both a mother-daughter relationship and a precarious journey.

A Winter Day Outside of Park City, Utah

Possessor (Cronenberg, 2019): Sundance 2020

Sundance Film Festival promotional image for Possessor

Possosser (Cronenberg, 2019) was described by the delightful Sundance programmer at my screening yesterday as the biggest mindf*** of the festival, and next she informed us that since the director was not present “none of our questions would be answered.” Both proved to be true.

The film details the life of an assassin (Andrea Riseborough) who works for a firm (its head portrayed by Jennifer Jason Leigh) that links its assassins via a mind-meld machine into an unsuspecting individual who carries out the murder assignment and then commits suicide so that the corporation might get away scot-free. By portraying a hit carried out relatively smoothly within the first five minutes, the story-tellers implant (pun intended) a template of the film’s notion of normalcy before the second hit goes horribly wrong.

Possessor fits into a recent iteration of film that takes a spiritual notion, both in terms of theology and film tradition, and strips away all of the platonic notions of forms/ideas and focuses on the material alone. For example, the shape of the Stranger Things narrative revolves around the idea that an ominous, powerful force can be explained via scientific calculations, even while conveying its story via stylistic techniques that historically were used to evoke the demonic or satanic as representative of dark, evil properties—a haunting score, distorted unintelligible voices, and the like. 

Similarly, in Possessor the notion of a spiritual entity inhabiting a human body is represented as an entirely scientific, rational achievement. Meanwhile, the soundscape alludes to horror films which intentionally set out to portray spiritual phenomena. What fascinates me is the way the absence of a spiritual realm within the scientific, existentialist worlds of these films successfully reproduces the very sense of spiritual darkness that previous filmmakers conveyed by accentuating its existence.

I also found in Possessor perhaps the best filmic exploration of our current social experiment: social media.

Painting with very (extremely) wide brush strokes for a moment, people once lived in relatively isolated communities in which fireside narratives were retold in ways that sustained belief systems that clashed with the point of view of others upon intersection. True, entirely simplistic, but I mention this only to contrast it with the present in which the most entrenched views (hi there, Twitter) are seemingly in constant, persistent, continual contact with alternate points of view. 

The trial for many these days is the struggle to maintain a sense of identity within certain communities that attempt to pass down their own stories, but at the same time continually and inevitably encounter compelling counter-narratives. While I personally remain hopeful for a future in which this trial results in a solution and the arrival at perhaps a new home (following Campbell’s heroic journey model), Possessor focuses on the anger and rage this situation—constantly encountering multiple ideas that may appear at once threatening and equally viable—causes.

Moreover, these notions are not an abstract concepts in Possessor, but actual, lived experience. By portraying an individual placed into the body of another gender, ethnicity, and class, the film viscerally represents what it is like to embody an entirely different perspective. It is no wonder that the protagonist tends to avoid firearms when her/his bloody rampage commences, for pulling a trigger seems incapable of the type of catharsis repeated hacking gestures (with a knife or some other bludgeoning weapon—you have to see it) provides.

If the film is any indication, our social experiment has a few rough patches to undergo before the majority become used to encountering the other. After all, we’re physically linked.

Sundance Film Festival 2019, Thursday 1/31

Hala (Minhal Baig, 2019)

Minhal Baig's film Hala depicts the experiences of a young woman during her senior year of high school in the U.S. Hala is a bright thinker and student, a skater, and a good friend whose day to day decisions are shaped by the framework of her family's Pakistani American experience. Director Baig mentioned at the screening that film is an empathy machine, and indeed numerous scenes are coupled with dramatic soundscapes that heighten the all-or-nothing importance high school experiences are imbued with. Just as an action film goes all in on explosions, or a romcom goes all in on scenes on top of famous landmarks, this film shows how riding the bus on the way to school can be filled with the entire sum total of a high school student's existence. And why not? It's worthwhile to feel the emotions Hala undergoes and witness the way she navigates her life's predicaments while she learns new insights along the way.

Photo by James Wicks, 2019.

Sundance Film Festival 2019, Wednesday 1/30

Hail, Satan? (Penny Lane, 2019)

The rapid rise of The Satanic Temple is documented in Penny Lane's incredible and important documentary. Using a light-hearted soundtrack and comical soundbites that bring to light the absurdities of the Christian right in the U.S., the film begins with a publicity stunt the TST initiated in 2013 and traces the growth of the movement to the present. While focusing primarily on the national rise of the TST from the 1950s to the present, we are also allowed access to individual stories, personal accounts of the ways the cultural hegemony of the Christian right ostracized people in the past, and strives to keep the other out by maintaining political power today.

Hail Satan?, 2019

The TST appears to be disruptive because it is cognizantly adding new idols to be placed next to old idols already established and in place. The film makes it painfully obvious that it is hard to let go of cultural artifacts and ideas that are attributed with meaning, and that mockery is uncomfortable for whomever is the recipient. At the end of the day, everyone--regardless of political and religious perspective--who watches it is faced with a choice of working together across ideological lines, or maintaining divisive views accompanied by violence and all of its dark corollaries.

Native Son (Rashid Johnson, 2019)

Rashid Johnson's first film Native Son has one of the best character portrayals of the Sundance Film Festival this year: Ashton Sanders, who plays protagonist Bigger Thomas. Additionally, the editing is unbelievably effective. Certain events are slowed down, allowing contemplation, while narrative economy at other junctures drives the narrative forward at pace. The trust the director has in his ability to allow the story to flow translates, at least in my case, to an audience who is more than willing to trust the storytellers (all of the crew deserves credit for the soundtrack, editing, characterization, costume design...) and go along for the ride. In terms of the adaptation of Richard Wright's great American novel, I wouldn't have minded if more creative license were to be taken to alter plot details so that the story could match the absurdity and tragedy of the present in even more ways. Yet without a doubt, the horror of double consciousness is captured here and the tragedy that Native Son is still relevant today is represented clearly.

Sundance Film Festival 2019, Tuesday 1/29

Director Chinonye Chukwu at Windrider, 2019

Clemency (Chinonye Chukwu, 2019)

I loved Clemency, a slow-paced, dark (both thematically and in terms of its over-exposed film), and lucid portrayal of the weight of responsibility on a warden in charge of inmates on death row. The soundscape, mise-en-scène, and editing are superb. Shots early in the film are slightly tilted so that the angles generate tension rather than tranquility as I attempt to depict in these hasty film notes below:

Clemency film notes, 2019

By delving into the life of the warden, portrayed perfectly by Alfre Woodard, and her interaction with activists, lawyers, family members, and an ostensibly falsely accused inmate (Aldis Hodge), the pressure of the prison system in the U.S. is tangible in all of its complexity in terms of race, class, and gender. While an incredibly slow film in comparison with mainstream releases, I hope the topics this narrative suspend find their place in broad dialogue.

Luce (Julius Onah, 2019)

Julius Onah's Luce is an adaptation of a play that portrays an incredibly successful African-American high school student who was adopted from Africa at age 10 by two white parents. The cast is perfect: Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer, Tim Roth, and Kelvin Harrison Jr. The challenges and privileges each character in the film experience, the messy contradictions each character is caught within, and the way each character walks right up to the line without resolution is worth further contemplation. Poignant and relevant questions will ensure this film sees a wide release even though it is nearly un-classifiable as (all three) a coming-of-age, thriller, and high school film.

Luce, 2019

Sundance Film Festival 2019, Monday 1/28

Bedlam (Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, 2019)

Bedlam covers the disastrous management of mental illness in the U.S today. Director Ken Rosenberg mentioned before the film that when he set out to document this crisis, he did not know that he would be a participant in the narrative. Yet indeed, mental health issues impacted his older sister and thus the director's participation in his subject matter directly. This story of the U.S. mentally ill begins with the housing of patients in state-funded asylums and "progresses" to today when these citizens are on living in the streets, filling ER beds, incarcerated, or living at home under the full-time care of families. We have an epidemic on our hands.

Bedlam, 2019

This Is Personal (Amy Berg, 2019)

Amy Berg's latest documentary describes the woman's march movement from 2016-18 and outlines the work of two incredible activists Tamika D. Mallory, and Erika Andiola. Berg deftly interweaves the local narratives alongside the national narrative in a way that is both informative and personal. The documentary allows Mallory and Andiola's stories to move from 2D internet click-bait to 3D personalities. The ending of the narrative oddly focuses on one particular issue at the expense of the entire story, so my guess will be that the doc will be re-edited before release. I hope This is Personal receives widespread attention.

This is Personal, 2019

The Nightingale (Jennifer Kent, 2019)

Jennifer Kent's revenge thriller, almost universally characterized as brutal, is set during British-colonialism in Tasmania. The protagonist Clare's family is murdered in an almost unfathomably disturbing way. Although the story develops slowly (there is no narrative economy in the vein of Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse), each detail justifies Clare's desire to track down and kill each of the perpetrators. Like Kent's 2014 film The Babadook, the rhythm of the editing is singular to the director's vision to the joy or dismay of her audience, depending on their preference. And once again, clear thematic elements, in this case including the savagery of colonization and the need for inter-racial harmony, guide the story to its conclusion.

Film Reviews: Taiwan Cinema Toolkit 臺灣電影工具箱

Created by the Taiwan Ministry of Culture and selected by the Taiwan Film Institute, the Taiwan Cinema Toolkit 臺灣電影工具箱 is a collection of films available for non-profit public screenings. Each film offers a unique insight into Taiwan's rich cinema history.

Links to my reviews of films from two of these collections are below--I'll keep adding films to this page until all of the films are reviewed. -- jw

2016 Taiwan Cinema Toolkit  (32 films)

1. The Farewell Coast 惜別海岸 (Wan Jen 萬仁, 1987)

2. Super Citizen Ko 超級大國民 (Wan Jen 萬仁 , 1995)

3. Connection by Fate 超級公民 (Wan Jen 萬仁 , 1998)
4. It Takes Two to Tango 跨海跳探戈 (Wan Jen 萬仁 , 2013)
5. Love and Duty 戀愛與義務 (Bu Wancang 卜萬蒼, 1931)
6. Storm Over the Yangtse River 揚子江風雲 (Li Han-Hsiang 李翰祥, 1969)
7. Four Moods 喜怒哀樂 (Bai, Hu, Li, Li, 1970)
8. The Young Ones (Li, 1973)
9. Love in Chilly Spring (Chen, 1979)
10. Deng Nan-guang's 8mm Movies (Deng,1935-1941)
11. Civil Disobedience (Chen, 2013)
12. Face to Face (Chung, 2013)
13. Attabu 阿罩霧風雲 (Hsu, 2013)
14. Sock’ n Roll 台灣黑狗兄 (Ho, 2014)
15. Money and Honey 麵包情人 (Lee, 2012)

Showcase, 2016 (22 films)

Boy (Waititi, 2010): A Film Interview with Alexandra Taylor

Below is an interview with Alexandra Taylor, a former student of mine who is currently studying Digital Media Content Creation at University of California, San Diego. She is a writer interested in stories that explore the human condition and inspire compassion.

JW: Is there a universal quality to this film--can film viewers say "how did director Waititi know that childhood is like this?"--or do we find a distinct, New Zealand coming-of-age experience represented here?

AT: Boy is a classic coming-of-age film told through a unique cultural lens. Waititi inspires the inner child within viewers by bringing to life the characters’ imaginations. Whether it is Boy pretending his father is Michael Jackson, Rocky expressing his anxiety through drawing or Boy’s friend Dallas painting himself to look like a "moldy Smurf," viewers can recall their own unbridled and unaffected imagination through these characters. At the same time, Waititi conveys issues like poverty and domestic violence present in many New Zealand homes--an issue which he has openly criticized in the past.

JW: Why is deception and impersonation at the core of this film? The father Alamein appears to be a big shot motorcycle gang leader, and the titular character consistently acts older and more experienced than he is.

AT: I’m fascinated by dysfunctional families and father-son relationships. Every parent-child relationship is a performance in which the parent pretends to be a hero and the child impersonates them. As we see in the film, the illusion eventually fades and reality takes over.

When Alamein reenters Boy’s life he must fill an immense void left by his absence, for which he’s emotionally unequipped. Alamein rejects adulthood, likely because he never had a father himself (his mother is barely present but there is no mention of a father) and thus he risks encouraging the same behavior in his impressionable son. When Boy realizes the truth about his father, he either must come to terms with his limitations or internalize his issues. Boy must learn that adulthood comes not from becoming a comic book hero but by accepting one’s self and developing the capacity to forgive others.

JW: My favorite scene is the dance number at the end, a combination of Michael Jackson and Maori Haka. What is the role of pop culture, and specifically Michael Jackson, in the film?

AT: Mine too! Pop culture permeates every aspect of the film, from Boy’s obsession with Michael Jackson to many of the characters’ names (Rocky, Dynasty, etc.). By weaving Michael Jackson with rural Maori life, Waititi immerses us in the cultural climate of New Zealand in the 80’s. Boy also sees Michael Jackson as a hero figure in the absence of his father and often merges the two in his mind.

JW: OK, I have to ask you about Boy's younger brother Rocky. Are Rocky's unique artistic talents (I love when he roller skates holding the sparkler when he confronts his father) the key to unlocking Boy's heart, allowing Boy to confront the world with eyes that see more clearly?

AT: The roller skating scene is one of the most compelling moments for me. For most of the story, Boy torments Rocky for his eccentricities and quiet disposition while he refuses to interact with their father. But unlike Boy, Rocky has a strong sense of self and doesn’t change himself for his father’s approval. There is a pivotal scene in which Alamein, in a drunken rage, puts their lives in danger. The two brothers react differently, and Rocky’s artistic temperament grants him a greater capacity for empathy. Their personalities complement each other and Rocky’s emotional strength keeps Boy afloat. By the way, do you think it’s a coincidence that Rocky’s name is the same as the famous fictional boxer? I don’t think so. But this Rocky is a lover, not a fighter. I love Waititi’s cheeky sense of humor.

JW: What is your favorite scene in the film? And how does the comedic tone of Boy inform your writing?

AT: Waititi’s comedic voice is iconic. One of my favorite scenes is the one in which Boy offers Alamein and his gang a cup of tea. Humor to me is in the little, almost imperceptible details of life. Waititi brands this humor as the “comedy of the mundane,” in which ordinary subjects become ridiculous. Waititi makes light of human frailty. In Boy, this allows Waititi to explore tragic themes like death, violence, alienation and rejection in a childlike way. Whether he’s writing an absurdist vampire mockumentary or a rom-com parody, Waititi’s comedic tension is a fresh departure from the sardonic humor of pop culture today.

It’s too difficult for me to be very serious without feeling affected and self-important. Good writing comes from the heart, and what comes from my heart is identifying humor in the face of darkness. It’s what brings us together. And it’s fun.

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In Bruges (McDonagh, 2008): A Film Interview with Eddie Matthews

Below is an interview with Eddie Matthews, a former student of mine who is currently a Ph.D. in Creative Writing student at Swansea University in Wales. His previous degrees are from Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. He has a soft spot for artistic works that promote empathy.

JW: When did you first watch In Bruges? Did you have the feeling at the time that this film would stay with you for some time?

EM: I first watched it in high school at a friend’s house. His room was a converted garage that felt like a bunker (albeit a comfortable one). I was starting to realize my love of film as being beyond just a way to pass the time on a weekend night in a small town. I discovered the visual language of film resonated with me in a way that other art forms didn’t.

When I first watched In Bruges, I didn’t know what to make of it. I found it undeniable interesting, but didn’t think it’d be something I would revisit. It was so different from anything I’d ever seen and I chalked it up to one of my friend’s arthouse films that he watched to ease his insomnia. Turned out to be my favorite film to date.

JW: Describe the way the story unfolds. Why is it important that the story takes place in an environment in which the protagonist/s are foreigners?

EM: The premise is that two Irish hitmen are flying under the radar in Bruges, Belgium after one of them botches his first assignment. It’s both their first time there. The story follows the priorities of both characters on a quasi-holiday in a medieval city that the older hitman, Ken, finds fascinating, and the younger hitman, Ray, finds agonizingly boring. Other characters incite conflict while they wait for the impending authority to decide what to do, their boss--Harry.

Alienation is a theme lingering throughout the film, one which is emphasized by McDonagh’s distinctive command of language. Ray feels adrift in a city that lacks the pub ratio of Dublin and seems to be entirely comprised of medieval museums and cathedrals. Ken takes an increasingly paternal role in Ray’s life, as he continues to mourn the loss of his wife and balances his dedication to Harry (the boss) and his affection for Ray--someone he believes he can save.

JW: What is the significance of the consistent yellow/golden tinged hue that permeates the lighting of the film? How would you describe the style of In Bruges?

EM: A gothic color palette tinges every frame of In Bruges. The yellow-gold offsets the dark browns, blacks, and greys that the architecture is comprised of in the city and personify the stark morality of the Catholic Church. The blend of yellow with black (the two most contrasting colors) underscores the binary world that the Catholic Church preaches to its Irish constituents—heaven/hell, sin/grace, fidelity/adultery.

Against these yellow-black tinged scenes drifts a fog that obscures the actions and meanings of the characters in the latter part of the film. This fog is symbolic of the non-binary moral nature of characters’ decisions--Ken deciding to protect Ray (a known murderer); Harry willing to put others in harm’s way so that he may punish Ray for an unforgivable sin; Ray choosing not to kill himself, but risking the safety of others by staying in Bruges. The visual choices work in tandem with the characters’ motives and the repercussions of those motives.

JW: As a writer, how do you see this film in terms of the way it is crafted--is there an overlap between the narratives you write and the way this movie delivers narrative details?

EM: This film is crafted impeccably in terms of tone. The dark humor of In Bruges combined with a mix of satire and reverence for Catholicism is difficult to pull off in a way that resonates beyond a micro-population of characters who enjoy Tottenham FC digs and Irishmen hyper-protective of the Vietnamese. It works because of McDonagh’s authorial voice and because every line builds toward the finale while also building bridges toward other interpretations that seem like tangents upon a first viewing. McDonagh teases out exposition in an engaging way. From the first line, you know the situation--he mixes vagueness and specificity in a way that draws you in immediately. You don’t meet Harry until two-thirds through the film. He uses Checkhov’s gun, but delays the bang until it matters most.

In my stories, I try to give the same amount of scaffolding that McDonagh does here, enough that the viewer/reader will trust you enough to keep going, but not too much that they wait for the action to get going. A little disorientation helps.

What I learned from McDonagh that I try to incorporate into my work is that his dialogue is distinct, his characters’ voices are unmistakable, even when you don’t have Colin Farrell’s brooding eyebrows hovering over them. He always chooses the more interesting choice and I think that’s the biggest lesson as the writer. Ask yourself: what is the most interesting choice for this word/line/scene/character/story? Then proceed.

Wonder Woman (Jenkins, 2017): A Film Interview with Emily Anthony

Here is an interview with Emily Anthony, a former student of mine and a recent graduate from the University of Leeds in Leeds, UK, where she obtained her MA in Writing for Performance and Publication. She is a creative writer and an avid pop culture fan who enjoys exploring and analyzing the Marvel universe, Star Wars, and many other popular franchises. Be sure to check out her blog at: https://emwrites627.blogspot.co.uk/

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JW: I know you are a huge fan of the Marvel Universe. So what brought you to the movie theater to see Wonder Woman? What kind of expectations did you have?

EA: I’ve seen quite a few of the DC films, and with the exception of The Dark Knight, I can’t say I’ve ever been impressed. I knew I had to see Wonder Woman on principle--anything I can do to support female-directed films with female-leads is of utmost importance to me--but I waited a while after it came out, a little so I could see the reviews and a little because I just didn’t have a lot of faith. I didn’t get excited until I started seeing great review after great review touting the incredible visual aspects of the film as well as the solid representation of a female superhero.

JW: What scene/s in the movie will retain their place within the best portrayals of a superhero on screen, and which scene/s do you think fall short of what Marvel has accomplished (assuming you're still in the Marvel camp even after this film)?

EA: I’m definitely still in the Marvel camp! One amazing film isn’t enough to make me forget about Batman vs. Superman...or Suicide Squad...or Man of Steel...Anyway, there are a few scenes in this film that I believe absolutely will retain their place within the best portrayals, most notably the scene in which Diana crosses No-Man’s Land all on her own. That scene is regularly mentioned as exactly what a superhero SHOULD be: a hero, using their powers to help others and inspire the values of freedom, valor, and integrity to make the right choice.

I watch superhero movies because I like fun, exhilarating, hyperbolic adventures exploring the vast capacity of human nature, not because I want to watch someone with super strength kill a bunch of aliens to find the magical McGuffin of the week. A less-often remembered scene that I also feel holds its place is the invasion of Themyscira, Diana’s home, by the German forces. Diana not only saves the life of the downed pilot Steve Trevor (a job very stereotypically seen with the gender roles reversed) but she also watches her mother, aunt, and fellow Amazonians bravely battle the invaders, learning a valuable lesson about the reality of war and the evilness of it, before stepping in to fight as well to save those she loves.

And the most amazing thing to me about this scene is that it’s bright and colorful! That’s what I associate with Marvel films, the ability to be visually bright and appealing, rather than constantly dark and gritty. I think Wonder Woman could have kept that thread throughout the film, rather than immediately delving into the foggy depths of twentieth-century London, but I don’t believe Marvel would have done the final battle any better. It would have been much brighter and more entertaining, but Marvel’s weakness is often the climactic battle scene as well.

JW: Do you think that Wonder Woman is a game-changer in terms of the ways women are represented on the screen within the superhero genre? 

EA: Absolutely. And if it isn’t, then there is unmistakable and irrefutable evidence supporting the rampant sexism in Hollywood (as if there wasn’t enough already). I’ve been shaking my head for years at Marvel every time they announce a new phase without any news of a female-led superhero film. They do have a Captain Marvel film slated for a 2019 release, but I don’t think they’ve made enough of an effort to make representations of women a priority, especially as Captain Marvel’s original release date of 2018 was pushed back to make way for yet another Spiderman film (don’t get me wrong, I like Spiderman, but the world didn’t really need a third iteration of the swinging super-bug, at least not before ANY female-led superhero films were released).

Basically, for Marvel, DC, or any other studio making a superhero film in which women are represented in any capacity, Wonder Woman is now the bar they must meet or exceed. It wasn’t perfect. There was plenty of room for improvement. However, it is by far the greatest representation women have had in this genre so far, and anything less than what Wonder Woman gave us is now unacceptable.

JW: How have you participated within, or analyzed, fan communities and their responses to the film?

EA: I always avoid reviews from critics, as more often than not I find myself disagreeing (case in point: Birdman won an Oscar and I couldn’t figure out what was happening at any point of that film). So I turned to Tumblr, audience reviews, fan blogs, Twitter, and YouTube to find out what other female superhero fans felt about this film. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and the sheer amount of other women saying exactly what I felt was both heartwarming and heartbreaking.

Mostly what I’ve discovered is that female superhero fans are blown away by this film, in awe of the trope reversals and general feminist message of the film, and are now looking at other franchises with renewed hope and expectation. The majority of the non-female fans I’ve witnessed also enjoyed the film but are more critical of it, and that’s entirely fair. I think the difference lies in the basic facts of representation. Male viewers have a lot of representation in superhero films, and can pick and choose which heroes and films resonate most with them. Female viewers have Wonder Woman. I look forward to that changing, now that we’ve proven to the studios that a GOOD female-led superhero movie can make the profits they’re looking for. I only hope they’ll continue to hire female directors and writers as well!

Exploring the Transnational in Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Café Lumière

Key topics within transnational studies include immigration, mobility, temporary and permanent forms of displacement, and cultural flow. Within film studies the transnational approach may be used as a corrective to the national paradigm by calling into question singular national allegiances (linguistic, "common blood," language, race, soil...). It is an approach that might critique certain premises of globalization (that the "capitalist world-economy has no single political center", etc.) and its many guises (imperialism, hegemony, commodification, racialization, gender discrimination).

What happens when we view Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Café Lumière through such a lens? It seems fitting to do so, for Café Lumière, in terms of capturing on film various flows of culture, is a transnational film: a Taiwan director "pays homage to one of the masters, Yaujiro Ozu, commemorating the centenary of Ozu's birth" (as stated on the DVD cover) by making a film in Japan with characters who are connected in interesting ways to Taiwan, Thailand, and China. During the course of the film, the main character Yoko, a young Japanese writer, researches the work of a Taiwanese composer named Jiang Wen-Ye who recorded music in Japan in the 1930s.

The slow pacing of the film, a celebration of the mundane at times, suggests that the film, in a Daoist sense is an attempt to describe The Way, or it is trying to find or depict "IT" as the Beat Poets might say -- or, perhaps this is too much of a stretch, but this quotation that David Bordwell cites in his blog post here seems to describe the style of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's film, especially when: "A moment comes when everything is exactly right, and you have an occurrence—it may be something exquisite or something unnameably gross; there is in it an ecstasy which sets it apart from everything else." -- Gilbert Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts, 1924. Hou succeeds in capturing these moments "when everything is exactly right," moments when, as Roland Barthes wrote, there is a "presence" as both the signifier -- created by a previous system of knowledge -- and the signified overlap.

This overlapping of cultural signifiers occurs in multiple ways, but the one I am thinking about today are those moments in which there may be little difference between the two spaces in the film: the Japan of the film's imagery, and the potential that careful descriptions of these locations could at the same time serve as appropriate descriptions of a place or places that the film does not represent: Taiwan. Is Café Lumière a film -- like Wong Kar-Wai's Happy Together (1997) which is set in Argentina yet might be taking place in Hong Kong -- a film which is set in Japan yet seems to be set in Taiwan? And if so, in what way/s could this dual set of meanings lead one to reflect on Taiwan's heritage of Japanese colonialism?

Café Lumière's final scene -- set in Japan, or is it Taiwan?

Buddha Bless America (Wu, 1996): Film Review

Buddha Bless America 太平天國 (1996), directed by Wu Nien-jen 吳念真, represents the disruptions and complexities of a postcolonialism as well as any film I am aware of.

The film is set in Taiwan during the Cold War during the 1960s, and it focuses on a local community of residents who are relocated to a small elementary school while the United States and Nationalist armies jointly conduct military exercises on the community's farmland.

The story traces the impact of this event on the lives of a middle-aged man named Lin who initially supports the intervention, but over time becomes disillusioned while retaining a positive overall image of the U.S. At the same time, his son is removed from his regular school routine and hangs out with his friends day and night -- they watch the U.S. military exercises and observe the behavior of men at a brothel built specifically for the foreign troops; meanwhile, his grandmother strives to maintain her family's dignity while her fading memory leads her to blur the lines between concurrent events and events that occurred previously during Japanese colonization.

In a memorable scene she stands her ground and uses a wooden broom to prevent U.S. tanks from ruining her farm property.

The way the film presents a type of psychological colonization on the local populace is effectively conveyed throughout the film by the stylistic use of music and the passage of time -- in another powerful scene, slow-motion is used to portray a grandmother and then a boy walk in front of the camera while a light bulb sways in the foreground and men fight in the background -- leaving a lasting impression.

Pacific Rim (Guillermo del Toro, 2013): Film Review

We know before walking into the theater that we're about to see huge monsters fight against giant robots, and we know that it's going to be awesome because Guillermo del Toro is at the helm.

But what else can be done to provide intrigue to a standard movie type? Pacific Rim (though not perfect -- the current IMDB score of 8.0 is spot-on) does not fail to impress in this regard:

1) each Jaeger robot is operated by two pilots who must synchronize their psyches in order to be successful, enabling narrative conflict since Jaeger pilots must find a compatible partner to share the most hidden aspects of their unconscious experience;

2) the Kaiju monsters are not only physical beings, but access earth's topography via an almost demonic/spiritual, extra-dimensional wormhole at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

While the film's dialogue, and a handful of awkwardly presented facial expressions, do not present that shoe-shine polish we might expect from Marvel film productions, this deficiency is made up by -- not only the visuals and special effects -- but also the following concepts:

3) the Jaeger operation is run by neither the military nor the business community entirely ("we don't need them") which, perhaps like a film production crew, seems to present a kind of socialist utopia (albeit apocalyptic) in which operations work only if it is all for one, one for all;

4) allegorically, the film presents two of a society's options when facing conflict: to either behave defensively (by building walls), or behave offensively (by building Jaeger's) -- this is a broad-scale observation, but it's a broad-scale film;

5) the main character Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) looks exactly like a thin, muscular version of director Guillermo del Toro -- it's the directors' doppelganger having all of the fun. And for the duration of the film, so are we.

Yi Yi (Yang, 2000): Film Review

Edward Yang 楊德昌 (1947-2007) is the master par excellence of presenting infinite complexity within the commonplace: hidden, yet present if one will ask a question or look a little closer (in urban reflections, by way of new perspectives & backward glances, reflected in a mirror, through a window across a balcony... in spite of verbal miscommunications), like the rhythms of nature.

It is not difficult to describe Yang's film Yi Yi as one of the best films of all time. The film, which begins with a wedding and ends with a funeral, presents multiple moments of contemplation...

 

NJ contemplates life with and without his high school sweetheart.

... within settings equally, if not more complex, than those of contemporary Taiwan director Hou Hsiao-hsien... like this image in which Nancy is floating, alienated in space within her office -- hovering psychologically and seemingly suspended physically above the cityscape of Taipei:

Yang's use of perspective reminds one of Velázquez's "Las Meninas."

The film's seamless parallel editing of Wu Nianzhen's character NJ and his high school sweetheart Sherry with his daughter Ting-Ting as she goes on her first date effortlessly displays how the repetitions of life -- the inability to start over, the weight of time, and the presence of memory -- all serve as a corollary, by extension, of Taipei's history without ever forcing such associations in a heavy-handed manner.

Yi Yi's films best scenes involve NJ and the Japanese businessman Mr. Oto. At one point Mr. Oto  states: "You are like me.. We can't tell a lie... Risk is high when you do anything for the first time... Why are we afraid of the first time?... Everything in life is a first time... [yet] we are never afraid of getting up in the morning... Why?" ... the delivery is perfect in this, perhaps one of the most moving portrayals of genuine souls caught at the intersections of transnational capital.

And of course, young Yang-Yang (a representation of director Yang himself?) takes pictures of the backs of everyone's heads to help us see what we don't see: that we only grasp half of reality at best, even with all of our images in a visual culture.