Umma
Sandra Oh has always had range, and her demonstration of it for viewers has always been spectacular. However, the feat she’s pulled this month will be tough to trounce. Oh has folks turning red one Friday and blanch white the next. And she pulls off the jaw-dropping swing in an on-screen mold as traditionally restrictive as “mother to a teenage daughter.” That said, whereas Mrs. Lee in Turning Red strives to adapt whenever possible, Amanda (Oh) in Umma refuses to. Continue Reading →
Crazy Rich Asians
The director-writer & star of Asia talk death, love & the immigration experience.
A mother, her rebellious teen daughter, and an illness. It’s a story that’s been done and redone so many times that it’s basically become a subgenre. But in Ruthy Pribar’s feature directorial debut Asia, a tender and devastating character study about motherhood and loss, everything about the subgenre gets rejuvenated. Not because it breathes a new life into it, but because it tells the story in an understated way, with a level of realism that recalls the works of the Dardenne brothers more than it does The Fault in Our Stars.
The titular character, Asia (Alena Yiv), is a 35-year-old single mother who immigrated herself and her daughter from Russia to Israel years ago to start a new life. By day (and sometimes night), Asia works tirelessly as a nurse. But when she’s not taking care of her patients, Asia likes to spend time at a bar, drinking alone and flirting with strangers, or having sex with her colleague in his car as if she’s still a teenager. Continue Reading →
Ich bin dein Mensch
Watch afterEverything Everywhere All at Once (2022),
Dan Stevens stars as a seductive but malfunctioning robot companion in Maria Schrader's refreshing, tender exploration of longing.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Berlin Film Festival.)
It’s nearly impossible to not think of Spike Jonze’s romantic drama Her while watching Unorthodox creator Maria Schrader’s third feature I’m Your Man. Granted, both movies focus on a relationship between a lonely, messy human being and an AI. But where Jonze’s film tells the story from the male gaze, Schrader flips the narrative and gives the room to a complicated female character. The result is not only refreshing but also more tender and meditative, exploring love, loneliness, and longing over the technological ethics that tend to occupy these kinds of films. Continue Reading →