86 - SBS OnDemand is really good 🎬
Hey there, !
Welcome to a series of short reviews on movies I've watched in the last month or two :D
Didn't realise the Oscars were just announced so this is a happy coincidence for my backlog!
Minari (8/10) - a poignant look at a Korean-American family that moves to a farm and tries to live the American dream. It's a beautiful story with some great acting - from the little kid to the grandma - and is an example for me of a simple story told extremely well. The Korean aspects of the film felt very natural without being alienating; it's the same as when I watched the habits of white person families in 80s films (you don't take off your shoes when you're in the house? How come you get to call your parents by their first names??). The strict parents vs. the happy-go-lucky grandma (who also won an Oscar!) was a great Asian stereotype that I loved to see! Brought to mind the time that my paternal grandmother stuffed a fistful of coins into my hand before she left to go back to Hong Kong and told me to hide it when I was like 4. memories
Saw this in cinema - I think it can be rented on Prime(?)
Nomadland (7.5/10) - a cinematically beautiful film telling the story of Fern, a 'houseless' nomad who roams the United States looking for seasonal work and odd jobs after the town she lives in loses all of its workers and becomes a ghost town. It's a story about finding purpose in your life, the life of being a restless spirit, and how to deal with the isolation of a world that's moved on. Apparently, the crew lived out of vans, and actually had actual grey nomads be part of the film itself! I enjoyed the film (again, it's incredibly beautiful in terms of the cinematography), but I felt it could have been shorter - there were multiple points at the end of the movie that I thought 'okay, that's it'...and it kept going. Well deserved Oscar for Frances McDormand, and for the movie as well.
Saw this in cinema, but should be accessible on Disney+ soon apparently!
Fist of Fury / Enter the Dragon (9/10) - I did an entire detailed study in VCE on Bruce Lee, but hadn't watched any of his films until recently. These two did not disappoint whatsoever - fantastic martial arts films that Bruce Lee himself wrote and produced, both dealing with injustices against Chinese people which I realised on reflection has been a central part to modern day martial arts movies as well (e.g. with Ip Man (Japanese people bad), Ip Man 2 (White people bad) and Ip Man 3 (Other Chinese people bad?)). Considering these movies were made in the 1970's, they've held up extremely well - the racial stereotypes are obviously quite stupid (the traitorous Chinese person is always a little camp, and extremely conniving looking?), and the filmography is so-so at times, but the action is choreographed in the most bad-ass way, and the comedy - I seriously did not expect it, but there are multiple scenes that have laugh out loud scenes. Both these films made 1000x their budgets, and I can see why - they hold up even today! It was also really fun to see the origin of Kung Fu Hustle references (fighting styles, music, and key scenes!).
Saw this on SBS OnDemand - what a great service!
Dogman (7.5/10) - Based on a true story of a pet groomer who murdered a criminal acquaintance - this Italian film is a gritty examination of what will push a man to the edge. It reminded me of The Art of Self-Defence which had similar themes, but in this one, the mild-mannered pet groomer who tries to placate his bully at every turn is forced into a corner, and lashes out (like a dog, get it?). Though the story is a little unbelievable, the main character has an outstanding performance playing this demure yet buzzing guy who's ready to pounce but doesn't have the balls to do so. Apparently it was his first ever role in a leading role - he knocks it out of the park and I reckon if you want a character study this is definitely one to watch!
Saw this on SBS OnDemand
A Prophet (9/10) - if you liked the Godfather, this film is like the Godfather 2, but French, and with Don Corleone building up his empire from inside a prison. Un Prophet details the story of a petty criminal who rises to become a mob boss from inside jail, and has the same kind of raw, intense action you'd expect from a crime film like the Godfather. The main character uses his 'outside days' to help run errands for a Corsican mob boss, but ends up building up his own empire. It's honestly a long film - nearly 2.5 hours - but it's a ridiculously good watch - the tension gets ratcheted up and up and up, and you get to see a gritty progression of this initially scared guy making harder and harder decisions about what he needs to do to get to a better place in his life. There's a lot of race-related tension as well (between Muslims and Arabs and Corsicans and Jews), something I wasn't really aware of re: France (or maybe it's just a prison thing?), but it's interesting nonetheless. Highly recommended! Saw this on SBS OnDemand
Line Walker (6/10) - this Hong Kong film is based on a very successful TVB drama of the same name with a stacked cast for the film version. It has many many parallels with the much superior Infernal Affairs, but I just cannot get over the fact that one of the main characters (second from the right here) absolutely sucks at acting. His facial expressions are so bland, and his acting is so...well, unreal. There are some really good twists, but they don't seem to be set up very well (for me). I still enjoyed watching this because of the action and the 'trying to work out who's the mole' which, I think, is the mainstay of any film that has come out since Infernal Affairs :D The HK people really love their police/mole films...
Seen on Netflix
Give me some recommendations of things to watch! Always on the lookout for good movies :D A few I have on the to-watch list include: Gran Torino, booksmart, Green Book, Saving Private Ryan, Shoplifters, Days of Being Wild (any of the Wong Kar Wai films tbh) and Children of Men. So many films to watch, so little time!
Chat soon :)
P.S. I noticed that I named last week's post '84' when it should have been '85'. Numbering has been resolved for this post :D
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✔️ Real Life Recommendations
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On the Move - a memoir by Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and wonderful storyteller of such books as 'The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat' and 'Musicophilia'. I haven't read many of his books, but I loved reading about him - biographies are a great way to understand someone's life and how they got to where they are. There was a lot of drug use, a lot of angst about his sexuality in his early life, some top-notch squatting, and then some fascinating descriptions of his work. If you've heard of Oliver Sacks, this is a great book to read!
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Tailor Store - a fascinating start-up for men's shirts that purports to tailor a shirt for you, based on an app scanning your body. I tried it, and though the app scanning is a little goofy, I got two shirts for a wedding I was recently at, and the shirts fit perfectly. Like honestly, I've never had a shirt fit exactly to my measurements, and this one did. SO GOOD. They start from $100 a pop (so yeah, can get pricey), but it's like magic - it fit perfectly first time around, and you get to customise literally everything about it - I made so many decisions about things I had no idea about (the cut of the shirt, whether the collar needed pins or not, the cuff type, the buttons, the contrast, the 'placket') and it was so cool to get. When I'm rich everything's coming from this store.
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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Sperm whales in the 19th Century shared ship attack information - whales are smart
If whales are so smart, why did they hang around to be killed? The answer? They didn’t.
Using newly digitised logbooks detailing the hunting of sperm whales in the north Pacific, the authors discovered that within just a few years, the strike rate of the whalers’ harpoons fell by 58%.
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Capitol Records Building Morse Code - sometimes, people do things for fun and others never really know about it...apparently this has been going on for years and no-one really noticed...
Prior to a Katy Perry album release, it was changed to “Katy Perry. Prism. October 22, 2013,” a message left for anyone to read, but no one noticed.
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How Egypt is growing forests in the middle of the desert - ever since I learnt about desertification, I wanted to learn about how to fix it. Australia re-irrigated would unlock so much goddamn land! Looks like a pretty long endeavour though:
The project, of which only 15% has been completed, stretches over nearly 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles). It is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2030. The forest will extend over 100 million hectares (247 million acres) at an estimated cost of $8 billion.