Screen Anarchy

An older lesbian couple, Angie (Patra Au Ga Man) and Pat (Maggie Li Lin Lin) have been together for over three decades and have shared a lovely home in Hong Kong for much of that time. As they hold a gathering at their place for a Mid-Autumn Festival celebration, a broader family dynamic is introduced. While Angie’s parents still don’t fully accept their relationship, referring to them as “best friends”, Pat’s relatives – her brother Shing (Tai Bo), his wife Mei (Hui So Ying), their son Victor (Leung Chung Hang) and daughter Fanny (Fish Liew Chi Yu), along with her husband and kids – seem to be fully involved in their life. There is a sense of true love and affection not only towards Pat…

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com…]

The foul mouthed holiday film is now, more or less, a cinema tradition.   From Terry Zwigoff’s Bad Santa to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation to Harold Ramis’s The Ice Harvest, there are plenty of these anti-Christmas yet still kinda Christmas movies across all genres. Smart-ass action movies like Die Hard, most of the work of Shane Black, but also gruesome slasher pictures like Black Christmas, edgy Amblin’ movies like Gremlins, and even Stanley Kubrick’s unclassifiable psychodrama Eyes Wide Shut. There is something about subverting that supposedly wholesome and giving holiday spirit into some alternate kind of energy that filmmakers keep coming back to.   Dito Montiel’s effervescent yet surprisingly violent black comedy noodles around in this this space, to mixed effect. It is set in the…

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com…]

Following the loss of his father, a grieving twenty-year-old struggles to hold his family together as an unspeakable darkness plagues his older brother.

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com…]

It’s not being provocative — at least not intentionally — to suggest families, biological and otherwise, can seriously f*ck you up. Parents can fail their children. Children can fail their parents. Whether realistic or the opposite, expectations in either direction can lead to heartbreak, despondency, or even trauma, the latter potentially rippling out into adulthood and beyond, invisible to the naked eye, negatively impacting the interior lives of both or either parents and their children. Add substance and alcohol into the mix, along with the emotional volatility and financial insecurity that it implies, and the outcome can be grim for both the substance-alcohol abuser and anyone within their inner circle. That idea animates writer-director Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio’s deeply felt, richly textured, feature-length, Sundance Award-winning debut,…

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com…]

For Gen X’ers and Millennials, Superman in live-action form started and ended with Christopher Reeve. Across four films and a decade (1978-1987), Reeve embodied Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Depression-era, comic-book creation, a secular savior, a super-powered alien from a doomed planet, an immigrant raised by kind-hearted adopted parents on a Kansas farm. As the Big Blue Boy Scout, Reeve represented “truth, justice, and the American way,” can-do optimism, never-surrender positivity, and American exceptionalism writ large. Reeve, of course, was none of those things. What he represented to so many and who he was in the real world diverged the moment he stepped off a soundstage, slipped out of his red-and-blue tights, and changed into his street clothes, but for Reeve, it was a role…

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com…]

Sebastian Stan, Adam Pearson, and Renate Reinsve star in director Aaron Schimberg’s newest film.

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com…]

Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry lead the voice cast for director Josh Cooley’s animated prequel.

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com…]

Viggo Mortensen and Chiara Mastroianni star in Lisandro Alonso’s new film.

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com…]

A special agent is dispatched to investigate a distress call from a round-the-world cruise, only to find the ship eerily abandoned and haunted by a malevolent force that twists sanity into terror.

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com…]

I have not seen all of Hong Sang-Soo’s feature films, but I have seen many of them. Starting somewhere in the late 1990s, it took me years to figure out how to watch them. Had this one been made earlier in his career (now spanning over 30 films at this point) it might have saved me some time. No matter, I enjoy doing the work. But for those looking to enter his particular world and worldview, I cannot think of a better entry point than By The Stream.   Like Woody Allen or Wes Anderson, Hong Sang-Soo (hereafter, HSS) often makes iterations of his pet collection of themes and narrative beatsl only he does it in very minimalist style. Typically involving little in the way…

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com…]