Category: Film

Sketches on THE BOY AND THE HERON, or, “How Do You Live?”

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A few nights ago, on Christmas, 2023, my circumstances rhymed and riffed off of a similar night a little under a decade ago, improvised by the jazz of life, like jazz, seemingly haphazard and slapdash yet structured, written or unwritten ahead of time, on time, in time. March 1st was a frigid day in 2014, and I was in a different city, in Chicago. As I did on the night of Christmas, 2023, I’d taken a commuter train into the city alone to see a Miyazaki film.

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Shang-Chi: Finding Meaning in Marvel Milestones (Or, the Purpose of Legend and Superheroes)

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The Sunday matinee before Labor Day seemed as good a time as any to watch Shang-Chi, and so at one o’clock that afternoon I sat alone in the dark sanctity of the cinema for the first time in over a year and wondered about the film with cautious excitement, that now-all-too-familiar Marvel Studios fanfare heralding the coming of Hollywood’s first Asian superhero film.

A little over two hours later I came out of that theater and morosely walked the whole way home with a weight strapped to my chest, thinking to myself and wondering why I wasn’t happier about what I’d just watched. After all, there was a lot to love about the film, and I’d expect nothing less when Disney and Marvel Studios has so clearly and adamantly reminded me of my status as a member of the target audience; perhaps the feeling I had was that of someone being aimed at down the sights of the proverbial gun.

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Getting to the Good Part: Lady Bird and the Coming-of-Age Montage

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Among the long list of films in Hollywood’s history and even among Hollywood films today, Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut Lady Bird is a bit of an oddball in a lot of ways. And that’s a very good thing.

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