1420 Best Film & TV Releases Translated Into Mandarin (Page 58)

Watching the first cut of Richard Kelly’s ultra-ambitious Donnie Darko follow-up is like riding a wave of mutilation. Southland Tales, director/writer Richard Kelly’s apocalyptic epic of a world gone berserk in the run-up to a paranoia-riven presidential election, is at long last a little closer to completion. Thanks to the fine folks at Arrow Films, the 158-minute cut of the picture that played at Cannes – as opposed to the 145-minute theatrical cut – is now widely available for the first time. Compared to the theatrical cut, The Cannes Cut lays out Kelly’s bigger picture more clearly and deepens the (famously odd) ensemble’s work. For good and ill, The Cannes Cut is still Southland Tales. It’s one of the great whatsit movies of the early 21st century, an artifact of the mid-to-late Dubya years that captures the specific tenor of the United States’ anxieties and fears from that time in amber. It’s a kinky, surreal Armageddon wounded by its early-aughts-sour-bro treatment of its ensemble’s leading women. It is, in other words, an extremely 2006 movie. In its best moments, it describes and invokes the overwhelming sensation of being alive at a time when everyone and everything has come undone. Continue Reading →

For a film constantly trying to surprise viewers with its seemingly mad-libs format of world-building, it's odd to see such a mundane story driving Bliss, the latest film from Mike Cahill. Stop me if you've heard this one before. A pretty boring guy named Greg (Owen Wilson) is living a pretty boring life, and let's just say things never seem to really go his way. But all that changes when he meets a stunningly beautiful woman named Isabel (Salma Hayek), who convinces him there's much more to life than he previously imagined. It's the age-old love story ripped straight from the kind of light, Blockbuster rental shelf section circa 1999.  Continue Reading →

In the wide world of algorithmically-derived Netflix teen romantic comedies, surely one of the finest was 2018's To All The Boys I've Loved Before, the syrupy-sweet story of adorable bookworm Lara Jean Covey (an always-radiant Lana Condor) and her shockingly-resilient relationship with too-good-to-be-true-except-he-is jock Peter (Noah Centineo). The film did well enough to spawn an entire trilogy based on Jenny Han's YA romances; while the second, To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, still had its fair share of charms, it started to show the cracks in the sunny, conflict-free firmament of Lara Jean's fairy tale romance. Now, the trilogy closes with To All the Boys: Always and Forever, and this time, the decision isn't between Peter and some other boy: it's between Peter and the rest of her life. Continue Reading →

A decade after their 2011 hit film Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo are back as co-writers and costars in Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar. Their new comedy romp follows Barb (Wiig) and Star (Mumolo), two Midwestern middle-aged suburbanite gal-pals looking to get “their shimmer back” on a trip to the ocean oasis of Vista Del Mar. The wide-eyed duo discovers sea-shell bracelets, hooks up with mysterious Edgar (Jamie Dornan), and accidentally becomes embedded in a murder plot involving super mosquitos. Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar plays like a five minute SNL sketch that stretches into an hour and forty-five fever dream peppered with talking crabs, musical numbers, and culottes.  Continue Reading →

Rebecca Hall adapts Nella Larsen's novella about Black social mobility (and its corresponding resentments) to haunting effect. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.) Nella Larsen's 1929 novella Passing is a fascinating text, a frank but elegant discussion of the intersections of race, class, and gender as cold and delicate as its subject matter. It makes sense, then, that Rebecca Hall's adaptation is similarly airy and ominous, an intimate portrait of resentment and racial/social mobility set amid the stifling backdrop of 1920s New York. Continue Reading →

When it comes to suffering, no one does it like Catholics. Consider Opus Dei, the secretive branch of Catholicism that still allegedly practices self-flagellation, or the hardcore worshipers who recreate Christ’s crucifixion every Easter, rather than dyeing eggs or baking a ham. Even when mortification of the flesh isn’t involved, no other religion promotes the idea of misery as the pathway to salvation. Rose Glass’s nightmarish Saint Maud digs deep into the pathology of that mindset, and is something you won’t likely forget for a long time. Continue Reading →

A quick look at the best in short features at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. With 50 short films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the programming represented a wide breadth of filmmakers, styles, and world regions. Comprising four shorts programs, two documentary sections, and an animation spotlight, these 50 films display the variability of style and substance in up-and-coming filmmakers in 2021. A few stood above the rest, though, defining the festival as a mixture of heavy topics, comic relief, and an inordinate amount of personal, affected storytelling.  The following seven shorts are listed in alphabetical order.  Continue Reading →

In the endless battle for our eyes and souls between Netflix, Disney+ and HBOMax, too often left out of the discussion is Shudder. As far as niche streaming services are concerned, no one is doing it better than them, with a vast collection of classic, international and original horror. They’re also not afraid to push back against horror fans’ often narrow minded definition of what “horror” actually is. After Midnight may confound and frustrate some, but deserves some praise just for trying something a little different. It doesn’t always work, but it tries. Continue Reading →

The romantic drama is all beautiful, dreamy surface, and no depth. Judged solely from the description in the Sundance Festival program notes, viewers may go into Ma Belle, My Beauty expecting a film that suggests what might have resulted if Eric Rohmer had decided to make a movie based on a letter to Penthouse Forum. That notion does sound intriguing, I suppose, but it's a promise that writer-director Marion Hill's debut feature cannot quite live up to in the end with her romantic melodrama that seems to have everything going for it except for an interesting story or characters that you give a damn about. In the French countryside, newlywed musicians Bertie (Idella Johnson) and Fred (Lucien Guignard) are settling into their new lives after relocating from New Orleans but all is not as picture-perfect as it initially seems and not just because of the discovery in the opening scenes that their not-at-all-symbolic swimming pool is leaking water and requires extensive repairs. While Fred, who is originally from France, settles back into his groove easily, Bertie finds herself in the grips of a mild but persistent depression that has begun to affect her singing to the point where she cannot find the desire to do it. Since she and Fred are due to go out on a tour with their band pretty soon, this is a problem. Continue Reading →

Before its release, Sia’s Music has generated controversy regarding the handling of its titular autistic character, including the decision to cast neurotypical actor Maddie Zeigler in the role. Sia’s responses to these critiques have only enflamed the hubbub, but tragically, those concerns are immaterial. Not because Music does a good job of handling the perspective of an autistic person, but rather quite the opposite. Continue Reading →

I never feel the need to apologize for loving a movie. I might be more inclined to defend that love, but not apologize for it. When I see a movie so beloved and come out the other side largely unaffected, though, I feel bad. Is it my fault? Is it just that I’m a cold person? I shouldn’t feel bad for being in the minority, but maybe I should feel bad that I didn’t feel a ton else. I kind of do, to be honest. Of course everyone’s tastes are different. Of course I’m far from likely to always agree with the majority. Continue Reading →

Jerrod Carmichael's grim bromance straddles a delicate balance of tones between comedy and dark thriller, buoyed by a couple of strong performances. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.) On the Count of Three, the directorial debut from comedian Jerrod Carmichael, walks a tonal tightrope. It’s obvious from the first five minutes that this tightrope exists, and from the first 15 minutes, that it’s not always walked to perfection. Following lifelong, struggling best friends who agree on an end-of-day suicide pact, On the Count of Three combines Carmichael with the recent indie explosion that is Christopher Abbott. Playing Val and Kevin, the two characters spend their final day rewriting old wrongs, revisiting old foes, and seeing if they still can hop on a BMX bike and not shatter their ankles. Continue Reading →

Patch Adams is full of shit. I truly can’t think of a better way to describe it. I could come up with some convoluted metaphor and tell you that watching Tom Shadyac’s 1998 catastrophe is like going to a restaurant and having the waiter spit on your food. I could call it “Jojo Rabbit for the Clinton Era” or label it a “misguided crowd-pleaser.” But I won’t do any of that because I – unlike Patch Adams – refuse to bullshit you.  Continue Reading →

Based on an Aja Gabel short story and directed by Chad Hartigan, Little Fish follows a married couple as they try to hold onto what they love in a world ravaged by a pandemic. In a lot of ways, there are eerie similarities with our present reality, but the main difference is that the virus in this film slowly takes away memories – functioning very similarly to Alzheimer’s. In the midst of a flurry of pandemic-themed media coming out which tries to reflect the situation which the world is presently in, Little Fish manages to distinguish itself from the crowd with its brilliant leads and emotional resonance. Continue Reading →

Robin Wright makes her directorial debut in a tender and understated drama about a woman who isolates herself from the world after an unimaginable loss. The pain of losing our loved ones is unimaginable. It’s overwhelming and often hard to overcome. Though healing is not impossible, there’s no timetable when it comes to processing this loss. It may take weeks or months or even years for people to finally be okay again and move forward. Robin Wright’s directorial debut, Land, understands this really well. The movie delves deep into the pain and the complicated feelings that people have to face when they’re dealing with the death of their loved ones. It’s an understated character study about grief and loss, and a moving celebration of human connection and resilience. Working from a script penned by Jesse Chatham and Erin Dignam, the movie follows Edee (Wright), a woman determined to isolate herself from everyone in the wake of a devastating tragedy. When we first meet her, she’s already on her way to a remote cabin in Quincy, Wyoming. She wants to abandon everything, staying away from everyone who wants her to get better, but never allow her to process the deep sadness she’s been feeling for a while. Before arriving at the cabin, she ditches her phone and even calls a local to get rid of her rental car, leaving herself with only a bunch of canned foods and a box of her most personal possessions. But Edee is not cut out for this kind of living, so the plan she’s made seems foolhardy. Continue Reading →

Even before COVID drove us all to become perpetually cloistered, it seems technology was driving our work and personal lives to the digital realm. Even as the need for physical connection was driven down, Millennials and Gen Z still flock to large cities with sky-high rents. In this increasingly digital and expensive existence, writer, director, and cameraman Ben Hozie (The Lion's Den) gives us PVT CHAT -- a drama that ponders the treachery of online obsession, and our transactional existence in late-stage capitalism.  Continue Reading →

The most profound thing that’s shared in Rodney Ascher’s latest mind-expanding documentary comes at the beginning. One of the film’s “eyewitnesses”, Paul Gude, gives a brief history lesson on how humans understand themselves based on the highest form of technology at the time.  Continue Reading →

Arjitpal Singh's drama about a rural family in the Himalayas struggling to get by leans on strong performances and interlocking class critiques to overcome some clunky narrative structure. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.) Since 2012 when Anusha Rizvi’s Peepli Live became the first Indian movie to ever debut at Sundance, the film festival has seen a more consistent inclusion of films from Indian filmmakers. This year’s edition saw two movies from India – one narrative and one documentary. Both deal with underrepresented and economically disadvantaged communities in the country and focus on women. While the documentary (Writing With Fire) is a tale of inspiration and community perseverance, the narrative feature, Arjitpal Singh’s Fire in the Mountains, is more frustrating and somber. Continue Reading →

Erin Vassilopoulos' thrilling debut merrily plays with the film noirs of the past while spinning it into something vibrant and new. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.) Superior, Erin Vassilopoulos' feature debut that expands on her 2015 short by the same name, is a vintage doppelganger adventure, a fun dreamlike neo-noir that pays homage to a prior era in filmmaking while also existing as an unparalleled art piece in today's modern world. A little Brian De Palma's Sisters, a little like a Belle and Sebastian vinyl, Superior wears its influences on its sleeve while also creating something brand new.  Continue Reading →

Netflix’s new romantic drama Firefly Lane, based on the 2008 novel by Kristin Hannah, follows the multi-decade friendship of brash and bold Tully (Katherine Heigl) and smart and nerdy Kate (Sarah Chalke). They meet at age fourteen living on Firefly Lane. From there they spend years cultivating their journeys: Tully is a journalist with a wildly popular daytime talk show, and Kate took a break in her career to marry fellow journalist Ryan (a stilted Ben Lawson) and raise a daughter.  Continue Reading →

Two Of Us begins with an ethereal game of hide-and-seek, le cache-cache, in French. Unlike the English name which has a linear cause-and-result, beginning-and-end structure, literally translated as hide-hide, the French name suggests an unending cycle of hiding. Everyone is hiding. The threat of revelation or exposure lurks everywhere. And this is most certainly true in Two of Us. Continue Reading →