by ·Comments Off on After Yang (2021, Kogonada)

Colin Farrell is oscar-nominated for Banshees, and I think we should give Colin 3 or 4 oscars, but Yang is also very beautiful in this (Justin Min of nothing else). Colin lives with Jodie Turner-Smith (Queen & Slim) and their girl Mika, and unfortunately Yang was an out-of-warranty refurb technosapien and unfixable, so he’s being donated to research, which, if these things are so proprietary-secretive, should be against the license agreement. Colin tries to understand Yang’s chosen memories and discovers his hang-out buddy, clone Haley Lu Richardson. A major Lily Chou Chou reference, for some reason, and Yang had a Pentax camera if that’s anything. A weepy movie: “His existence mattered – and not just to us.”

by ·Comments Off on Columbus (2017, Kogonada)

A lovely little almost-romance set in an Indiana town with unusually interesting architecture. A few familiar indie-drama tropes collide as a guy who has escaped his family has to return when his dad falls deathly ill (the twist being it’s not his hometown, but a place he doesn’t know), meeting a girl with smarts and ambition who feels compelled to stay home and care for her addict mother. Jin (John Cho) claims not to be interested in architecture, but his dad’s an expert and Casey (Haley Lu Richardson: Split, The Edge of Seventeen) is fascinated, so Jin helps her realize her goals while she keeps him company during his Columbus purgatory stay. It kinda sounds like nothing special when writing out a description, but the movie’s particular carefully-framed look and feel (David Ehrlich described it as Garden State meets Ozu) set it above the usual Sundance fare.