#which means michelle yeoh is done in the movie

[diver5ion]

[tygerbug]

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - James Gunn and company stick the landing with a brilliant conclusion to Marvel's only coherent stand-alone trilogy of films. It genuinely feels strange that these are Marvel movies, since from the start they've largely felt like their own thing. Sure, to get caught up on this one you'll have to watch two Avengers movies, a Thor movie and a holiday special, and maybe even the silly animated "What If?" But otherwise, this series is mostly untouched by what's happened to The Avengers, and feels like it could have been a standalone series, like the FOX X-Men films, and the Sony Spider-Man films.

The cameo roles in this series are clearly done as a favor to James Gunn rather than to Marvel. Linda Cardellini has a voice role here, despite already having a role in Marvel films elsewhere, as do Judy Greer and Tara Strong (replacing the absent Miley Cyrus). And it's not hard to imagine some earlier Marvel film having some other role for the sort of actors Gunn casts in small roles, like Nathan Fillion, Ving Rhames, Michelle Yeoh, Peter Serafinowicz, Maria Bakalova, Djimon Hounsou, John C. Reilly, Glenn Close, Benicio Del Toro, Lee Pace, Alexis Denisof, Kevin Bacon, Seth Green, Sylvester Stallone, Don Johnson, and so on. He has a tendency to cast older star actors like Kurt Russell who could have populated a hypothetical 90s MCU, or even David Hasselhoff who actually did.

The Guardians films, outside of their Avengers crossovers, feel like a universe unto themselves. The tone is darker, and more violent, with a focus on comedy. At exactly one point in the film, Chris Pratt's Peter Quill, AKA Starlord, says fuck. At other points in the film, actors say "screw" when they clearly mean "fuck." Lloyd Kaufman turns up in these things. Most of the film is about torturing a raccoon, and it's full of strange creatures and body horror that sometimes seems antithetical to selling Happy Meal toys. The villain, Chukwudi Iwuji, as The High Evolutionary, is nastier than MCU villains tend to be, and there's no attempt to humanize him. Which is, to be clear, great. We like a real villain.

The visual style of the film is also distinctive. No muddy greys and browns here. There's bright colors and high contrast, and lots of interesting design. It is certainly in the running for the best-looking Marvel movie, and avoids the samey visual look of some other Marvel productions.

The cast, as ever, is stacked with actors who could have carried a film like this on their own. It's easy to take this cast for granted, but these are all stars, and the movie knows it. Zoe Saldana, who has almost casually starred in a large percentage of the most succesful movies ever made. Bradley Cooper, as the voice of Rocket, a CGI character who might be the real star here. Pom Klementieff and Dave Bautista, delightful as Mantis and Drax. Karen Gillan as Nebula, bringing a steely terminator's edge to a role far away from what she did in Doctor Who. Vin Diesel as Groot, even. Elizabeth Debicki returning as Ayesha.

Oh, and Chris Pratt as Peter Quill AKA Starlord. When we meet him here, he's been drinking away his sorrows over the loss of Gamora. Pratt is a controversial figure these days, due to his apparent right-wing beliefs, and at first there seems to be something wrong with Peter int his film. His trademark charm is entirely absent, at first, and he's not as funny a character in this as he's been previously. But that charm comes back, as Pratt tries to remind Gamora and the audience why we liked Peter Quill in the first place. He's not as big an asshole as he's been at times, and is almost likeable as he finds a certain peace in himself by the film's end.

Will Poulter turns up as Adam Warlock, a cosmic Marvel hero introduced as a secondary villain here, and manages to do something amusing with the character. As with the Nova Corps in the first film, this is a pretty significant Marvel character that James Gunn is using, apparently for his own purposes rather than due to any connection to the MCU. As with the Howard the Duck cameos, it feels like Gunn is doing his own thing. At one point Starlord appeared in the MCU Avengers animated shows without the personality that Chris Pratt gave him, and it felt very strange. Starlord is a very different character here than he was as a Space Cop in the comics, as are Yondu, Mantis, Groot, and so on.

Indeed these movies have very little to do with the Guardians of the Galaxy comics as they initially launched. The films are instead based, loosely, on the Guardians team that launched in the comics in 2008. That team included Adam Warlock and Phylla-Vell, a version of Captain Marvel who technically appears here as a child. But James Gunn has successfully put his own spin on these characters. Rocket Raccoon would probably have been the most recognizable character for old-timers, along with Adam Warlock, but he was never really a headliner until now. Nor was Groot, who was once an old Jack Kirby monster in the comics, and might as well be a different character now entirely.

Mantis, powerful as a C-tier Avenger in the comics, is a less powerful but more memorable character in these. She and Dave Bautista's Drax are socially awkward in different ways, and always doing something funny or interesting. This film also finds the dignity in these characters and sees a certain tragedy in the way they underestimate one another, suggesting that even though they're a memorable onscreen team, they need to move apart in order to grow as people. These films really care about these characters in a way which isn't cliched, telegraphed or predictable.

There's a sense of history here, that the journey these characters have gone on has meant something, over the course of three films, at least four other Marvel appearances and a holiday special. A photo of Stan Lee turns up, as does the actual Michael Rooker. It does have one thing in common with the Avengers films - an assurance that this is still the Guardians of the Galaxy even with a different lineup of characters, and that some of these characters will return.

It won't be the same, though, will it? It's hard to imagine another blockbuster film letting actors like Pom Klementieff be as memorably eccentric as they are here. This trilogy genuinely feels different and special. It had its own cast of characters, some of whom we saw very little of. (Sylvester Stallone makes only brief appearances, but a long history is implied every time.) It left me wanting more, but I'm glad that we got three solid movies with this cast, and that James Gunn - who was briefly fired due to some trolls on Twitter - got to return and do it right.

[thehours2002]

Omg I felt SO crazy seeing everyone rave about EEAAO because after watching it my main reaction was ‘huh’. I mean it had way too much going on and also the blatant homophobia was such low hanging fruit which irritated me but it’s like no one else picked up on it?! Idk I too was excited something fun and intriguing and grand from a non marvel entity with—Asian Americans at the helm no less—but it reminded me of Eternals which wasn’t good either but had a lot of critique brushed off with ‘it has important rep therefore it’s good’ which. Like no. Obviously all the racist ‘critique’ about this film is inane bullshit but I wish people who actually cared tried to think past the rep=job done thing and actually get to the meat and potatoes of what they’re watching and engage with that on a critical level because that’s how the good shit actually gets made. Sorry for the essay but I just rewatched it for class and can’t stop thinking about how shoddily plotted and executed the emotional crux of it was. Like Michelle Yeoh and Stephanie Hsu did their best with the material but they really deserved so much better!

solidarity! didn't watch eternals but i agree with your main points that eeaao had some really weird homophobia in it for a film that centers around a mother's acceptance of her lesbian daughter. it especially pissed me off that the stupid hot dog fingers gag was in the one timeline where jamie lee curtis and michel yeoh were lovers... and for what. then for key that unlocks the puzzle to be just "be kind" was really unsatisfying for me. if anybody saw black no more at playwrights horizons it reminded me of the big message reveal moment literally being the lights illuminated in the house and the protagonist essentially saying "don't hate." and, like, as i've said before these are not bad messages, but they're ones i find generally uninteresting.

anyway, i'm just glad this film did well so that we can hopefully get more mainstream movies that tell aapi stories that are actually good.

[eightyonekilograms]

You may have heard this from a couple different directions already (I saw one review saying as much, and the person whose recommendation to @etirabys made us go watch it said the same), but Everything Everywhere All At Once is phenomenal, go see it as soon as you can and as unspoiled as you can. This is one of those films that restores my faith in movies, after so much jaded cynicism at the hacky, predictable scripts. where a director and screenwriter just go "fuck it", take a great high concept, and go as far with it as they can. It's both really funny and very moving, the acting is rock-solid, and there were multiple points where I was thinking "wow, I genuinely don't know what the next scene is going to be", which is a rare and delightful thing.

Quasi-spoilers elaborating on my positive feelings below the cut. They don't really spoil the movie but possibly wait until after you've seen it to read them to keep the surprise.

There was a review of a Rick and Morty episode a while back that mentioned how wonderful it is that audiences now have concepts like multiverses just built-in as part of their cultural vocabulary. The first movie/book to have a multiverse must have had to spend a bunch of time explaining it to the baffled audience; now they can just go "oh yeah, the multiverse is real", and everyone basically knows what means, and so you can jump right into pushing the concept as far as it can go.

It's trendy lately to make the villain of your movie into a nihilist and have the conflict thus be a struggle against nihilism. This is almost always done terribly. EEAaO is one of the rare times when it isn't: the villain makes sense, their motivation makes sense (as in, 'yeah, I'd be like that too if I was in your place'), but the struggle against them makes sense too.

Along those lines, I don't know if the film is completely airtight as philosophy - when you make genuine existential despair the bad guy, any comeback that has to fit in the space of a 2.5-hour movie will have to be a little hokey, but it works well enough, and I'll take a movie that swings for the fences any day instead of the stale, warmed-over pablum we usually get when movies try to have philosophy in them.

Again, the acting is great. Michelle Yeoh is awesome, but of course she is - it's Michelle Yeoh. But actually the knockout performance is that of her character's husband. He literally zaps back and forth between ass-kicking and being an adorable puppy softboi, and makes them both work. Every time he switched personalities I wanted him to go back to the other one! And he's apparently the kid from Indiana Jones?? Who has been out of the acting business for decades until just now??

Also again, it's really fucking funny in addition to the great drama? The gags they get out of the multiverse brain-switching concept are great, and a few of them even pay off with real touching moments later on in the film.

Eti says the movie hits harder if you have capital-A capital-P Asian Parents. Can't speak from direct experience, but I believe it.

[thrillorarc]

i really don’t mean to be rude or weird but i’m fairly sure that one of the daniels, daniel scheinert is jewish and that character’s name was likely his creative choice. the character is super minor and in good faith most people who don’t know that jenny slate is jewish probably wouldn’t immediately guess that was why the character was named that. and that jenny slate took the role as a decently well known jewish actress probably indicates that it wasn’t meant to perpetuate violence. first gen east asian people can be bigoted as well and it’s framed in the film as a sign of michelle yeoh’s character’s callousness

This isn’t weird or rude and I appreciate the context. I am in no way advocating a boycott or whatever because the movie looks fantastic, I didn’t even mention the movie title in the post I made except as context in the tags which I should have known people would see but I just wanted to vent. I’ve done a lot of “research” on this because I didn’t want to be in bad faith but a couple things. 1) we don’t actually know if he’s Jewish. He could be, but his last name isn’t a definite indicator. But also even if he is, that doesn’t take away accountability. Jewish people (especially men in Hollywood) can perpetuate antisemitism and have in order to fit in to the dominant society (ie Matt Stone and the dude who made the Harley Quinn show), and that internalized antisemitism is quite often most aggressive towards women. And big nose is a Jewish woman. 2) I know michelle yeoh’s character is meant to be in the wrong and originally there was a scene where she and big nose share a nice moment, but that scene was cut. Any fulfillment of that arc, any act of giving big nose humanity was cut. I know that there wasn’t bad faith behind the decision, I’m not calling anyone involved in the movie or the movie itself antisemitic, but that’s a really shitty antisemitic aspect that I don’t think should be justified away — especially in the theatrical cut. Calling a Jew “big nose” is part of a very long history of race making in Europe that allowed for Jews to be written off as subhuman. It was part of the reason we were ostracized and killed. It’s existence now is the preservation of incredible acts of violence and I think it’s okay for me, as a jewish person who was socialized as a woman, to see the danger in its use. I also understand that it’s not a purposeful act of violence and that there is good faith. It just fucking sucks.

[gerec]

MORE THOUGHTS ABOUT SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS !!!

Heads up that this entire post is riddled with spoilers, though I'm going to try to keep them hidden under the cut :D

**SPOILERS***

The movie starts off with an absolutely banging prologue, which is basically 15 mins (roughly) of set up that tells the story of Wenwu and the Ten Rings. It's spoken entirely in Mandarin, and we get back story about Wenwu - how the Ten Rings made him immortal, and he's used them for a thousand years to amass a vast organization that covers the globe. Then we get his meeting with Jiang Li who turns out to be Shang-Chi's mom, and their first meeting is that gorgeous bamboo fight in the trailers that is absolutely SWOON WORTHY and the sexiest, most romantic stuff EVER SEEN in the MCU. This entire segment is actually my favorite part of the movie lol, and actually reminds me of the way X-Men Apocalypse is structured, with that sequence with En Sabah Nur in ancient Egypt kicking things off (incidentally that was my favorite part of XMA too lol).

There were a LOT of close-up shots of Tony Leung's face (I know because I was LOOKING); they did not let an ounce of that man's on-screen presence/charisma go to waste.

I enjoyed Simu Liu as Shang Chi, but I don't really have a strong opinion about his performance. He was great in the fight scenes, charming in his scenes with Katy, and had good sibling chemistry with Xialing. He's weakest in his scenes with Tony Leung, mostly because TL sets the bar so high it's pretty much impossible to match his ability to deliver nuance or convey his state of mind.

There's quite a bit of flashback that's interspersed throughout the movie, which I LOVED; they really enhanced the story and the relationships by showing what happened at various times between Wenwu, the kids and their mother. I especially loved the way they would show the same scene from different POVs, or shift it about 1 min before or after to show us new information as the story progressed. It's my favorite story telling conceits just A+++.

I've said this before but it's worth repeating...the action IS great, and the sequences are some of the best ever in the MCU. BUT I didn't walk away thinking it was the best thing EVER, simply because I grew up watching kung fu movies so the bar is pretty fucking high lol. It's probably why I liked the bus scene more than the scaffolding fight scene; there's a lot of ingenuity and use of space in the first scene that I hadn't seen before, whereas I feel like I've seen a variation of the second scene in a hundred Jacky Chan movies.

People who were under-utilized in the movie - Michelle Yeoh as Shang-Chi's aunt and the actor who played Death Dealer. There was so little screen time given to their characters, and except for one short fight (Jiang Nan with Shang-Chi, and Shang-Chi with Death Dealer) we didn't get to see them in action. I would have much preferred cutting down on the big CGI monster mash to focus on more one on one battles, possibly even between these two characters!

The battle between Wenwu and Shang-Chi in Ta Lo (the climax) is so emotional and so well done; they were really able to use the action to tell the complicated relationship between father and son. In fact, it's truly excellent until the requisite monster mash (giant bat thing called Dweller in Darkness shows up and starts throwing down with the big white dragon Great Protector) and then it just deteriorates into a loud, jumbled, hard to see mess of CGI. Maybe because I'm Chinese the imagery of a big dragon in flight wasn't new or all that impressive, so I'm going to assume that ymmv with the third act depending on how you feel about CG monsters. Incidentally my kids both loved it :D

Though I understand it completely from a story telling perspective (it's a great and resonant ending for Wenwu to sacrifice himself for his son) and also from a casting perspective (no way Tony Leung is going to come back and play the same character again in anymore movies lol) I was still disappointed that his character was killed off. He was SUCH a wonderful, interesting, COMPLICATED antagonist, and Marvel really needs to stop killing off their best villains in one off movies lol.

Everybody always makes such a fuss about the post credit scenes I mean...sure we saw Carol Danvers and Bruce Banner but did they really contribute anything to the scene itself lol? I AM curious about the second scene with Xialing taking over the Ten Rings organization though...I hope that sets up some conflict for the siblings in the future to work through.

This movie wouldn't be nearly as good if they hadn't gotten Tony Leung to play Wenwu; he's really that awesome/central to the story. Seriously A+++++++++ to Marvel for getting him onboard.

[randomingoftherandomness]

Hi, I’m sorry to bother you with this, but I was wondering about your distaste for S*a*g C*i. I’m not very familiar with the comics or the characters. Your post caught my attention because I try to be knowledgeable about the media I consume, especially coming from Marvel/Disney(being Jewish Rromani, I’ll never forgive them for what they did to Wanda). I tried googling information about it but couldn’t find much. I was just curious if your post had a deeper meaning or if it simply isn’t to your taste. Obviously feel free to ignore this if you don’t feel like getting into it or don’t want to answer.

Hi! First up, thanks for taking the chance to ask and being willing to listen. I appreciate that a lot.

I am going to preface this by saying that I am part of the Chinese diaspora. I have never read the comics in full but I have seen enough to formulate my own thoughts. All my opinions made here are my own and I’m not looking to debate or be persuaded or to shift my point of view. I have my mind about these things and you have yours. I do urge you to keep opening avenues of discussions as I should not be the only person being asked.

Also, heads up, I will block any sort of argumentative bs-ery.

SC is obviously made with the perspective of the Asian American lens in mind and I have seen it been pointed out that it isn’t meant to be ‘representative’ but let’s be real here. How many people in the tag have already been hyping it up as Asian rep and stuff? I’m just saying. I just want to say that the experiences of Asian Americans do not reflect those of the diaspora. Yes, we can relate to a certain extent, but to generalise and distill all experiences of all members of the diaspora into that of Asian Americans is unacceptable.

My issues with SC (not gonna bother with spelling the name out and we are going into the whys) are as follows:

I would recommend starting out by reading this article on cbr.com that goes a little further into detail on the history of the character

The tl;dr is this; SC started out as an insensitive East Asian stereotype character created to capitalise on the 1970s fervour for anything Kung Fu. Sure, Marvel has done their best to retcon some of the less stellar parts of his origins, but the funniest thing is (legend. big bro. uncle Tony) Tong Leung, a renown Hong Kong actor has been casted as The Mandarin while Simu Liu, a Canadian Chinese actor, was casted as SC. Make of that what you will.

Okay deadass I’m not saying Simu Liu won’t do a good job because at this point all we have to work on is a teaser trailer but I’m all saying that is, was Arthur Chen Feiyu not available or something?? Idk. He didn’t pick up the phone?? Did Marvel even ask?? This is nonsensical salt and I digress

Then there’s the name. What kinda hell name is S**** C**??? This is some Cho Chang level bullshit. Yeah, sure we can say, oh they just want to make sure the branding is right. Ok. This coming from the studio that amalgamated the characterisations of Ned Leeds and Ganke Lee. Sure, Jan.

Full disclosure, I did like some of the vibes given out by the teaser. There were some very wuxia and xianxia inspired shots and scenes and if I do watch, I’ll be very keen on these bits. Awkwafina already looks like she is set to be etched deep into my heart and Uncle Tony looks to be gearing up to kick this out of the park because goddamn he looks good in that armour. Haven’t seen Tan Sri Michelle Yeoh’s character, but I’m sure she will be kicking ass and taking names for sure too because I am very sure veterans like her and Uncle Tony will look good doing wire works. But this isn’t a movie about them, is it? It’s about SC and right now with this teaser trailer, nothing about SC makes me want to froth at the mouth to watch.

Yes, I am saying that that subway scene does not impress me. We live in a world with stunt teams from China can work on a peanut budget to make conversations flow in a fight scene. Do better.

Again, I am very aware that this teaser is to hype people up. I know. I am still waiting for the proper first trailer to drop. I have actually deliberately kept myself oblivious to the production of this movie so as to not give myself any sort of preconceived notions. When that first trailer drops, then I will formulate my thoughts again.

Okay, I know it’s a teaser but some of the cgi just looks... very uncanny valley? It looks unfinished, is what I am getting at here. For a mega conglomerate verging on industry monopoly, even a teaser trailer should look 1000% better than this. Every beat of this should be flawless. It should look on par with the trailer. People who follow will know that I won’t ever fault a product because of shitty cgi (re: Word of Honor) but when you are the people behind the Live Adaptation of Mulan (which I hate) and Raya and the Last Dragon (which I categorically DETEST because that shit is bullshit mishmash of SEA cultures with fucking made up words being painted as *representation* and that is some fucking bullshit and as someone from SEA I’m sorry Queen Kelly Marie Tran BUT NO) I will hold you to the fucking standards of the high heavens as the House of the Devil Mouse deserves. Do fucking better.

I am not clairvoyant but I can already see how it is going to go when this movie doesn’t “do as well as expected” in Asia; you’ll hear people going on about how the Asian Asians don’t support these types of stories, how we don’t put effort into hyping movies and shows that push for representation. But can I ask whose representation are we talking about? I saw it with Crazy Rich Asians and Mulan, I saw it with Raya. Whose rep are we talking about? If someone out there, some little child sees themselves in these media products, sure, great! Empower these next generation for the push for a better hope. But whose rep are we pushing for? Because I definitely do not see myself in the Asian American lens of representation and I’m very sure I won’t ever and I know that I am not alone in this.

Hollywood needs to do better. To borrow the words of a friend, excusing mediocrity for ‘cultural appreciation’ is no good.

This rant has gotten long enough and I’m so sorry to everyone seeing this on your dash. I have a lot of salt today.

[ace-and-ranty]

 Crazy Rich Asians is a goddamn good movie, but I just read the book, and what interests me now is what a good adaptation it is, as well.

For one, it completely changes the genre of the story. Listen.... the book is not a love story. The book is exactly what it says on the tin, it’s an exposé on rich crazy asians. It has more of an ensemble cast, it follows various plotlines, and it is overall much, much more interested in talking about social expectations and wealth in this culture than it is in telling Nick’s and Rachel’s love story.

Which is not a criticism! If a steak tastes like steak and not cake, that is not a flaw. The book is a damn good steak.

But the movie is 100% cake.

They took one of the book’s plotlines, extracted it from its context, and made it into a center piece against a backdrop of wealth and social expectations. The book’s main subject become background for a love story. 

(Full disclosure: I personally liked the movie better for it. Love stories are the best.)

And it’s interesting how they did it. It was nothing, like, astoundingly groundbreaking, but it was so meticulously well done. I could go on for days. They tightened it with a freaking bow to fit into a movie format, and if you excuse me, I’m going to go fawn all over Movie!Eleanor again.

I mean, give me Michelle Yeoh or give me death.

[seekinghappenstance]

Sunshine (2007)

Cast: Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Rose Byrne, Michelle Yeoh, Cliff Curtis, Troy Garity, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, Chipo Chung

Director: Danny Boyle

Similar to my last review, In the heart of the sea is a story about whalers-turned-castaways learning how to survive in the cruelest way after a shipwreck caused by a monstrous giant whale, while, Sunshine is all about survival and a team of astronauts being saviors to mankind. The 2007 sci-fi film is just as intense as the adventurous film, In the heart of the sea, but this post is not a comparison essay and I want to focus more on the plot and characters from Sunshine. 

In 2057, humans have faced the coldest catastrophe on the earth as the sun has entered the phase of solar cooling. The sun has become inactive; the earth is freezing cold; leading to a global calamity. At this rate, a crew of eight pilots is ready to aboard spaceship Icarus II to take on the mission to jump-start the sun by dropping a bomb that is as powerful as nuclear bomb to reignite the sun, hoping to restore the heat and light energy that emits from the sun back to the earth. While on the space journey to the sun, the crew discover a distress call from Icarus I when they past Mercury. Icarus I was the first batch of astronauts to attempt the mission which they had failed. The crew members believed that there is no signs of life on Icarus I since it has been years that the original crew members did not make back to earth. However,  the crew members dispute whether course should be changed to commandeer Icarus I, in order to collect the payload which gains them 2 chances once they failed to restore the energy of the sun at first attempt. Engineer Mace (Chris Evans), however, opposes the idea. Eventually, they decide to navigate Icarus II to Icarus I when Captain Kaneda (Hiroyuki Sanada) asked Physicist Capa (Cillian Murphy) for his advice which he suggested to rendezvous with Icarus I. Little do they know what really awaits them is the unimaginable danger that makes everything seems bleak and hopeless.

These people are travelling in space to reach the sun which is pretty much unbeknown to human. Travelling in space should be a phobia. I have watched several sci-fi movies that take place in space and spaceship but Sunshine is extraordinary and underrated. As bad things happen one after another; from Navigator Trey (Benedict Wong) forgets to realign sun shield causing huge damages to spaceship and Captain Kaneda perishes in the line of duty trying to make repairs for external part of spaceship to oxygen gardens and oxygen reserves being destroyed by reflected sunlight and insane and atrocious intruder and former Icarus I captain, Pinbacker (Mark Strong) infiltrating Icarus II. All these chain reaction of events are bombarded and affected to all crews because of the sense of responsibility to safeguard a second chance of life for a planet which turns out to be rewarding to human race and rueful yet vehement to the crews of Icarus II. 

Of course, I was expecting some oxygen quantity dwindling is going to happen on spaceship which leads to hosting a democratic and contentious “Trey deserves to die” voting session. they agree to kill Trey who is still unconscious after being sedated, for fear of that he would commit suicide. When Mace decides to kill Trey, he discovers that Trey has committed suicide which everyone assumes. However, the truth of the death could be done by Pinbacker who sneaks in Icarus II (which confirmed by the intelligent computer) and tries to stop the mission by killing everyone. As soon as the computer has detected the fifth unknown crew member, I thought it would be an alien but it’s actually an insane and disfigured captain. As much as I enjoyed this movie, I still wouldn’t think a person could be alive without putting on spacesuit. I mean what about space radiation? extreme temperature? Pinbacker can’t be the lucky survival just give us aliens.

On the bright side, the existence of Pinbacker didn’t really much bother me as I was completely stupefied by the cgi which was beautifully contrived and created. I love the flames gushing from the sun, it just seems real. No wonder the sun got Searle enamored almost completely hypnotized, eventually, he died after exposing himself to the unshielded sun to stare for one last time at the observation room. 

Some argues that Pinbacker has never really existed and concludes that Capa is delusional as he may suffer from mental distress after the death of Captain Kaneda which causes him to hallucinate. Some of the theories also suggest that Pinbacker is real and his existence is just another way for the director Danny Boyle to convey a certain message, most probably his views on God and atheist that relate to spiritual content as Pinbacker can be seen to appear on video saying “ We are dust, nothing more. To this dust we will return. When He chooses for us to die, it is not our place to challenge God ”. At the end of the movie, Capa has successfully and finally reached the bomb control after being interfered by Pinbacker a several times, he then watched the sun slowly ignite and illuminate at the edge of the sun. The earth has been showered in daylight, again. Beautiful story. Beautiful ending. Sunshine does rack up tension and fear but this film always gets the loudest comment about how outlandish the movie is. It is not outlandish but rather whimsical as I would think. The earth will get cold in 2057? hell nah global warming is still the real issue. But using “earth became cold” as a theme is brilliant. Something used to be warm turns cold and something used to shine now fades, this is scary.

[notnicky]

Asian August: Asian/Asian American Representation in Hollywood

In recent years, I’ve seen a lot of talk about how and why diversity and representation matter so much in the media. Despite agreeing wholeheartedly, I always felt that when people talked about “representation”, they weren’t really referring to the representation of Asians in the media. In all my 19 years on this planet, the first real story about Asians that was presented in western media was “Fresh Off the Boat”, so it’s not an exaggeration when I say I was jumping with joy when I heard that a Warner Bros. was adapting Kevin Kwan’s best-selling novel Crazy Rich Asians into a major motion picture. 

The night Jon M. Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians came out in theatres, I bought tickets for my family. We got the absolute worst seats you could possibly get – all the way up front and in the back corner – but I couldn’t care less because I was finally getting to see people who looked like me on the big screen. We rushed into the theatre and to our seats as the commercials and trailers played before the movie began. As I adjusted my lounging seat, I mentally prepped myself. It was just sinking in that I was finally going to see a movie whereby people who looked like me would be the majority. The majority. Soon, the lights dimmed and silence fell over the room. We were watching history. When the legendary Michelle Yeoh stepped into the frame in the very first scene, I felt a sense of happiness and pride that I had never felt before. I wasn’t quite sure what it was until I realized that this is what it felt like to be represented. 

That feeling didn’t go away. Not for a single second throughout the entire two hours. I cried. A lot. Not because there were heartbreaking scenes, which believe me, there are plenty of. No. I cried because I couldn’t believe my eyes. From the montage of local Singaporean dishes being served in the busy food court to the extravagant, sweeping shots of Marina Bay Sands, I was watching a massive part of my life be portrayed so beautifully on the big screen. I swooned as I listened to Henry Golding and his smooth-as-silk British accent woo every single member of the audience. I laughed my ass off watching Awkwafina and Ken Jeong hilariously improvise one line after another. And I sat there in awe, watching Constance Wu and Michelle Yeoh skillfully play a game of Mahjong while delivering beautiful monologues about love and family in Asian culture. 

I’ve seen plenty of stories about love and overcoming obstacles in the name of love. It’s a universal experience. However, I never felt as though I could completely relate to the way those stories were told in mainstream and big budget movies. Whether it was the obstacles a couple faced, or how those said obstacles were overcome, there was always something that felt unfamiliar to me. Crazy Rich Asians was the first time I understood every single step of the journey the characters went through. Sure, I’m Asian, but I’m definitely not crazy rich. However, even though I couldn’t relate to Astrid’s ridiculous shopping habits or the Young’s extravagant mansion, I could certainly relate to the core idea that was delivered throughout the movie. The idea of love and family and how different those two individual concepts are, as well as when they interact, in Asian culture compared to Western culture. For the first time in my life, I felt as though the interactions between each and every character in the film were ones that I had either experienced myself or were extremely familiar with. As someone who grew up with Chinese culture, I completely understood Eleanor’s attitude toward Rachel as well as why she made the choices she did. I understood her reasons and motivations because I understood the culture. Those who felt as though Eleanor’s actions and attitude toward Rachel were harsh and unnecessary definitely did not grow up in a traditional Chinese household. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like I was on the sidelines, observing part of a story, but rather in the dead centre where I could see and understand every aspect of it.

In addition to Crazy Rich Asians, a film adaptation of Jenny Han’s YA novel To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is also currently streaming on Netflix. Han’s story centres a Korean-American high schooler, played by the extraordinary Lana Condor, who writes love letters which are mysteriously sent out, leading her into a less-than-ideal situation which dramatically changes her life. As someone who was a massive fan of the books, I was extremely excited to watch the story come to life. Not only because I was going to have a brand new, quality romantic comedy to watch, but also because it was one with a teenage Asian American girl in the forefront of it all. Having watched every single rom-com to ever exist in this universe, I was finally seeing someone who looked like me have the love story I had always dreamed of. No longer did I feel as though I couldn’t have the crazy love story that rom-coms showed us because I didn’t look anything like the lead. Both Crazy Rich Asians and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before made me feel as though I was worthy of and able to have that love story that only white people ever seem to experience in romantic comedies. 

If my point still isn’t clear, I’ll spell it out for you: representation matters. And just to make it even clearer, ALL representation matters. Now, in August, we’ve got two brilliant romantic comedies with Asian/Asian American leads, but that is not to say Asians are suddenly just as represented as Whites. Not in the slightest. We didn’t reach a goal, we simply progressed toward it; there is still a long way to go. Many people seem to believe this is a “one and done” deal. It isn’t. Just because we got a lot of Asian representation this month doesn’t mean we’re going to be happy with it and wait another 25 years for more Asian representation. Some people believe that just because we got two minority-led movies means there shouldn’t be any more movies with different minorities at the forefront because “minorities have been represented enough”. Guess what? One representation of one minority doesn’t represent all the minorities that exist on the planet. Furthermore, within each minority, there are many different types of people with many different stories. Not all Asian people are represented in Crazy Rich Asians or To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. These two films represent more of the Asian American experience, but not necessarily the experience of Asians in Asia. It’s a good step but there’s still a very long road ahead. Simply having two stories about Asian people isn’t representative of all Asian people, and therefore there is still a long way to go before people can even begin to think there is enough representation of minorities in the media. 

The way I felt watching Crazy Rich Asians and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is a feeling that every person deserves to experience. Everyone has their own story. Our stories make us who we are. Shared stories allow us to feel heard and understood. One day, though it may not be as soon as we hope, I know everyone will eventually be able to share their story and find stories that represent who they are.

[suspected-spinozist]

More lightning reviews! 

BlacKkKlansman (2018): I’m starting to think I’m the only person in America who didn’t love this movie. I mean, I didn’t hate it, but - it’s fine. It’s completely fine. It is an utterly, resoundingly adequate piece of filmmaking. There’s a note of defensiveness in all the glowing reviews: some people might think it’s didactic, but. But the didacticism isn’t the problem! The two most didactic scenes - the lectures by prominent black activists that bookend the film - are also the most cinematically innovative and genuinely moving. It’s when Spike Lee tries to tell a story that he really runs into problems. Sure, there are some funny moments funny, and his portrayal of the clan hits the right balance of doltish and horrifying, but it’s all surface. There’s something compelling about John David Washington’s total opacity, but it can’t sustain a film. The relationship between the two cop partners which should be at the center of the film barely exists (though it’s unfair to blame this on Washington or on Adam Driver, who’re clearly doing their best to compensate for the lack of material). The girlfriend is wooden (and it’s impossible not to compare her to Tessa Thompson’s character in Sorry To Bother You). I understand why this story is being told now, but there’s very little to justify it being told as a piece of narrative cinema. 

Stella Dallas (1937): I’ve never been a huge fan of maternal melodrama, but, having seen Stella Dallas, I’m - honestly still not a huge fan of maternal melodrama. This is another film that looses out by being impossible not to compare to a different, better movie: if I’m going to watch something about a single mother painfully negotiating her upwardly mobile daughter’s class anxiety, it might as well be Mildred Pierce. It’s still worth watching for the one reason I chose to watch it, viz. Barbara Stanwyck’s performance. It’s competently done for the thing that it is and I’d watch her in anything, anyway. 

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952): Really great kinda noirish straight drama from Vincente Minelli! The plot follows an unscrupulous producer and the three people - a director, a writer, and an actress - who he promotes and eventually betrays. It’s told as a sort of connected triptych from the perspective of each of the three in turn. I’d have put Lana Turner’s segment - by far the most intense - at the end instead of in the middle, but otherwise it’s a smart choice: all the perspective shifts force the audience to do some real emotional detective work. More than any other Hollywood movie about Hollywood, it captures the intense and contradictory mentality of the early days of the studio system. The movie business in the 20s and 30s was pretty much the gold rush if the gold rush had been about inventing a new art form. The first great studio heads were driven and selfish and greedy, but they genuinely believed in the value of the films they were making. If you read anyone’s memoirs from that era, you’ll get a sense of quasi-religious intensity around the extremely commercial project of making movies. It’s also beautifully photographed; the opening shot of a crane shot is particularly stunning. 

Crazy Rich Asians (2018): Calling it now, best movie of 2018. Impeccable romantic comedy, smart visual storytelling, gorgeous food, consistently wonderful performances. Everyone’s talking about Awkwafina, and she’s great, but Michelle Yeoh is the real mvp. 

Eighth Grade (2018): The single most excruciating experience I have ever had in a movie theater. The film is exquisitely observed, and Elsie Fisher’s performance is stunningly natural and vulnerable, which sucks, because it brought me right back to what has to the worst year of anyone’s life. It’s easy to focus on the social media element, since that’s such a dominant part of the story, but all the screens just made me realize how tangential they are to the core experience of being thirteen. (I’m on the other side of a micro generational divide, here: I got my first laptop and my first smartphone in high school). Lots of surprisingly smart work with light sources for a first-time director. 

[halfacat]

Thoughts on Crazy Rich Asians

Let me just say: IT’S ABOUT TIME ASIANS GOT THE SPOTLIGHT!!!! Holy hell, I’ve been waiting for this moment for the past eight years and dreaming of something like this happening for all my life. Asians are hot, Asians are cool, and Asians are worthy. 

With that said, I am hyped for Crazy Rich Asians. I am currently reading the book right now, and I’m having a lot of fun. It’s a dumb book, but it’s dumb in the best way possible: it’s luxurious, dramatic, emotional, and crazy, and I AM HERE FOR IT. It’s less than seven days until CRA hits theaters and already, the reviews are awesome (which, naturally, makes me tear up). And with the reviews coming in, so are the people who are not so excited for this movie...

1) According to Rotten Tomatoes, CRA is at 100% with 17 reviews. Obviously, this rating will fluctuate the more reviews that come in, but 100% with 17 reviews? This movie is looking BOMB. And yet, people are complaining about the rating: how obviously the movie has to be Fresh or else the critics will be deemed racist or how CRA is getting the same treatment as how Black Panther did. I have just one thing to say: Yes, this movie is about Asians and with an Asian cast, but can’t a movie be Fresh just because it’s a good movie? Why do we have to politicize everything? I get that the title is “Crazy Rich Asians” but it’s just a title! Should “Black Panther” just be Panther? It would’ve still done well in the box office regardless! Also, CRA is a rom-com so can’t we just enjoy it as it is?

2) ASIAN MEN! *heart eyes* Okay, but there has been controversy surrounding the casting of Nick Young. Why is Henry Golding, a hapa, playing Nick Young, a full ethnically Chinese character? Golding is half-white, and Hollywood has a knack for picking white characters for their lead roles. With a perfect opportunity to cast a hot Asian dude, why cast only half of one? I agree that the casting may not have been the best BUT just because Golding is half doesn’t mean we should discount his Asian heritage. Asian people are Asian, and some Asians are more “Asian” than other are, but that’s alright. Henry Golding is charming, cool, and hot, and I am confident that he will play an impeccable Nick Young. And honestly, if people aren’t ready for a full Asian love interest, then at least they can go halfway if that’s what it takes for them to understand that Asian men are hot as hell.

3) Asian representation! Asians in general have always been portrayed as weak, nerdy, smelly, and weird. We are constantly fetishized, hypersexualized or desexualized (no in-between), and seen as either sex objects or the laughing stock. Our facial features (specifically those of East Asians’) are always mocked. People don’t think Asians suffer from racism but we do. Unfortunately, we are seen as white people so the public is less inclined to care. We are always overlooked in entertainment (i.e. Doctor Strange, Ghost in the Shell, Aloha, etc, etc.) and when something good comes along that protray us as something else other than ninjas or geeks or ancient masters or sex toys, people have the gall to say to make fun of us STILL. For example: “CRA is racist! There are no white people!” By the racists’ logic, every movie that features little to no POC is considered racist...

4) But, where are the other Asians? Both the book and movie have been criticized for its lack of South and Southeast Asians, groups that are prevalent in Singapore, which is already a Southeast Asian country. CRA should be “Crazy Rich East Asians” because only East Asians are features. (By that logic, shouldn’t it be “Crazy Rich Ethnically Chinese”?) People are confused as to why the characters speak in British accents but are from Singapore...why not Singlish? I agree that there should have been more diversity in Asians (because we have problems with that already). HOWEVER, not to excuse the plot at all, but Kevin Kwan created a story about Chinese people in Singapore. He wasn’t obliged to write about the minorities, and that sucks, but who are we to tell him what to write about? Not everything can include everyonem and with CRA, it focuses on the Chinese elite that are very narrow minded - that is the point! Also, Kwan is writing about the crazy rich Asians, and already, that excludes much of the population in the world anyway. But yes, like I said before, I do wish more Asians were included, but for right now, I’m just so, so happy that Asians, specifically East Asians, are getting some real appreciation in the modern Western world. Like what Constance Wu tweeted, “I know CRA won’t represent every Asian American. So for those who don’t feel seen, I hope there is a story you find soon that does represent you.” Honestly though, how many Hollywood films can you say had an East Asian lead that wasn’t a stereotype? How many Hollywood films can you say even had East Asians in it that actually talked and did stuff? How many Hollywood films can you said has East Asian love interests? 

5) CRA is not the best Asian representation. It is Asian representation, and LOADS BETTER than the usual portrayals of Asians, but it’s not the best. I mean come on, pipe smoking moguls? Evil psychobitch mother-in-laws? CRA is basically a Korean drama. Am I complaining? Not really. I’ll be lying if I said I didn’t wish a different film was used to highlight Asians. Then I remind myself that CRA is a step. Not a huge step, but a step towards a more inclusive Hollywood. 

~~~

UPDATED 8/15/18:

6) The actresses are white-worshippers. Constance Wu has been seen with a white boyfriend, Gemma Chan has dated Jack Whitehall, and Michelle Yeoh is married to a Frenchman...these women are not Asian! Oh, but they are. Since when did our dating preferences decide whether we were more a race than not? If they really are white washed then sure, we can be wary. But Wu has always been an advocate for Asian rights and Yeoh is an Asian legend, and Chan isn’t tied down to her race either. Asian women have a bad reputation in the dating game and are seen as white-worshippers. This is true only for some Asian?Asian American women. I have seen and know more than fifty Asian and Asian American women who are either dating or engaged or married to Asian and Asian American men. Take that.

7) It’s just a rom-com but with Asian people...That’s the point! Since when has Hollywood ever casted an Asian man as the lead for a blockbuster? Since when were Asians seen as worthy of love, attention, and sexual attraction? Since when were Asians viewed as people with passions and emotions and desires? Crazy Rich Asians changes all of that. 

~~~ 

I’m relieved that we are finally getting the spotlight for once, and a spotlight in which people can laugh and swoon over. Besides for a select few Asian led films (i.e. Joy Luck Club), CRA is a milestone in Hollywood history. Sure, it may not be the best portrayal of Asians or be that inclusive for other Asians, but it’s progress, and we have to recognize that! Racists, let us have our moment. South and Southeast Asians, I know it’s all East Asians but I promise, CRA is a nod towards the right direction. Whatever your thoughts on this book or movie or casting or actors or wahtever, please set them aside because CRA happening and Hollywood allowing it to happen is just amazing. 

I’m so overwhelmed right now. I’m here for all this representation, and I know that CRA will pave the way for other POC to shine like how Black Panther did. Please go watch this movie, guys. We need to break box office records and show that Asians do matter. Let’s support! 

[firehawk12]

Crazy Rich Asians (2018): The Flawed But Necessary Asian-American Cultural Milestone

(Apologies!  I keep forgetting to update my Tumblr... repost from my Medium account)

There is so much to unpack before you can even talk about Crazy Rich Asiansin any meaningful manner and understand why so much of the Asian-American community has gotten behind the film via the so-called #goldopenmovement.

I think the easiest way to begin is to imagine what life would be like if you had no sense of belonging within the culture you inhabit. Books, music, television, film, theater, fashion — none of it reflected who you are and how you were necessarily different from everyone else. For the last half-century, this is essentially how Asian-Americans (and by extension, Asians-Canadians) lived their lives.

I can only write on my behalf, but I knew at an early age that I would never really be considered a “Canadian”, because as much as we like to pretend we’re in some kind of post-race multicultural utopia, I still feel foreign despite having lived in Canada for essentially my entire life.

But obviously that’s not necessarily unique to my experience — certainly a lot of people feel alienated within their own homelands because they don’t look like, act like, or otherwise inhabit the space of normativity that defines “Canadian-ness” (or “American-ness”).

But I can’t really claim to be “Chinese” either. Certainly I am racially and ethnically Han Chinese, but culturally I am as far removed from being Chinese as one possibly can be as a “Canadian Born Chinese”. I can functionally communicate in Cantonese, read Hanzi at a grade school level, and I’ve never actually been to China or Hong Kong, and my Chinese cultural references are old John Woo and Stephen Chow movies. There is a cultural void that I’ve felt for most of my life, and it comes from — as Crazy Rich Asians explains — being a “banana”, where my race and my cultural context have created the extreme feeling of alienation that is familiar to most, if not all, minorities living in North America.

So this is where we land on the North American notion of the hybrid identity that has developed over the last century. I’m not Chinese, I’m not Canadian, but I exist in some undefined border — the liminal space between the two — as a “Chinese-Canadian”. But what does that even mean when there is no culture that defines Chinese-Canadian identity? I don’t want to deny the great cultural contributions of artists such as Mina Shum or Wayson Choy and many others (Double Happiness is still a foundational text for me in terms of being able to articulate the fact that I don’t have an identity whatsoever), and I mean no offence when I suggest that these artists aren’t household names (and I’d much rather re-read Choy than yet another Atwood novel…).

I came to Double Happiness when I was in my teens, already feeling the anxiety of not having an identity and being unable to articulate it because there was simply no outlet for me to express my inability to connect with the greater culture around me. I saw myself in Sandra Oh’s Jade, a woman who would never be Chinese enough for her parents or other Chinese people, but who isn’t Canadian enough to be accepted by Canadian society as an actress (I’m sure this was something that Sandra Oh had to fight against during the early parts of her career). I think it was at that moment that I understand that I would always feel like an outsider in my own homeland, not necessarily because I was marked with a visible difference, but because it took so long for me to see myself reflected in the culture that I consumed.

This isn’t necessarily a unique Chinese or even Asian-North American experience. As I wrote several years ago when I began to unpack the importance of yet another seminal Asian American cultural moment — the debut of Fresh Off The Boat — both the “real” and fictional Eddie Huang embraced hip hop because he was able to relate to a culture defined by alienation. Meanwhile, Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese ends by having the main character admit that he can never be white and escape “Chin-Kee”, the specter of Chinese-ness that haunts his every waking moment, and accept that being Chinese is a part of what defines him even if he doesn’t necessarily explain how that acceptance manifests itself.

But the fact that I can make references to a hit ABC sitcom and an Eisner award-winning graphic novel in order to try to articulate some notion of Chinese-American identity is precisely why it is so crucial to have a culture that represents the unique situation of being neither Chinese and neither American (or Canadian).

I love James Hong and respect him for his long career and the work he has done in order to help insert a Chinese face into American culture, but my entire identity in the early 90s was essentially tied to this clip:

The fact that I can’t remember any other “role models” from my childhood except James Hong putting on that accent and annoying Jerry, Elaine, and George is perhaps a sad reflection of my limited worldview as a child of the 90s, but also a condemnation of what happens when there is no one for you to look up to.

We are so hungry for representation because we live in a cultural vacuum, where the only other cultural reference you can make is to The Joy Luck Club or how fucked up it was that people thought this was okay:

It’s interesting because Hari Kondabolu’s attempts to address the problematic nature of Apu from The Simpsons touches on this exact same anxiety, where being South Asian is defined entirely by a single cultural touch point that can influence your life forever (that’s even before addressing the indignity of being represented by a white man putting on an accent in a bout of modern brown-face). Thankfully between The Mindy Project, The Big Sick and Master of None, South Asian-American representation has certainly improved in the last few years.

That’s not to say that East Asian-American representation, both on screen and off screen, hasn’t improved either. In film alone, Justin Lin basically built up one of the most improbably popular blockbuster franchises in recent history out of nothing — made more miraculous when you think about how the Fast and Furious films were culturally diverse before Disney decided that maybe their superheroes didn’t all have to be white men.

But even so, it’s been contingent on the Asian community to just accept things the way they are and not raise too much of a commotion about cultural representation. So when Tina Fey decides to double down on her racism with an episode of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt about how Asian-Americans humourless internet trolls who don’t understand comedy, we’re just to accept the fact that she above criticism. When Ghost in the Shell ends by explaining a Japanese girl had her brain carved out and placed into Scarlet Johansson’s body, we should be grateful that they mentioned the character’s Japanese origins at all. When Scott Buck refuses to address Iron Fist’s Orientalism, we just have to accept that no one is allowed to change the origins of a character because comic books are sacrosanct.

All of that explains why Crazy Rich Asians is such an important film for the community. With all of this cultural baggage on their backs, I respect the sacrifice Kevin Kwan and Jon Chu made when they eschewed an easy Netflix deal in order to bring the film to theaters even more than I did when I had initially read the interview.

It’s not that there haven’t been countless great Asian-American films made between The Joy Luck Club and Crazy Rich Asians. Justin Lin’s own Better Luck Tomorrow, or Only the Brave, or Saving Face, or Eat With Me, or the recently released Gook to just name a handful are great films in their own right for telling stories about Asian Americans that simply aren’t reflected in the culture otherwise

(Edit: I’ve been told that I’ve been remiss in not including the Harold and Kumar trilogy in the above list. Apologies to John Cho and Kal Penn!)

But the only way to get the culture to pay attention — not just the people consuming it, but also the people producing it — is to make the biggest impact possible and even in 2018 with streaming services and video on demand, the path to cultural relevance is still through a major movie studio that can both promote your film and widely distribute it across the world. It’s unfortunate, but that’s why people still point to The Joy Luck Club and don’t mention any of the smaller independent films that have come out since then. The fact that the last film before The Joy Luck Club to feature an all Asian cast to be distributed by a major movie studio was Flower Drum Song in 1961 (which is a film/musical that probably has as much, if not more, cultural baggage associated with it than even The Joy Luck Club) points to the significance of Crazy Rich Asians and why it has become a moment for Asian-Americans.

Kevin Kwan made another important production decision that drives home how much is riding on this film’s success. During pitch meetings, Kwan recounts meetings where producers suggested that having a white actress in the Rachel Chu role would make for a more successful film — to pull a quote from the interview, apparently he was told that “it’s a pity you don’t have a white character” — makes his decision to option the rights to his book for a dollar in order to maintain creative control a moral stance against Hollywood producers who don’t see any value in Asian actors.

Certainly the film’s fish out of water story could have easily been adapted so that Rachel Chu became Rachael Churchill (starring Scarlett Johansson or Emma Stone, of course) and many of the beats would have been the same. But his film is so powerful precisely because Rachel (Constance Wu) is Chinese-American. She isn’t Chinese, as Nick’s mother Eleanor (performed with perfect stoicism by Michelle Yeoh) constantly points out throughout the film, and that’s actually not a problem for her. In fact, the film goes out of its way to show how her Chinese-American identity helps her navigate the precariousness of Singapore’s socialite lifestyle, allowing Rachel to be proud of being a “banana”.

Are there problems with the film? Undoubtedly. The fact that the one time South Asians are shown in the film involves using them as comedy propspoints to narrow focus of the film and how much it ignores of the realSingapore. Or how Oliver (Nico Santos) is queer, but is never actually shown with another man, perhaps because gay sex is technically still a criminal offence in Singapore. Of course, the title itself points out that the only poor people shown in the film are the servants who presumably slink back to their cramped government subsidized high-rises after they are done serving the crazy rich Asians who employ them.

Even if you ignore the social issues, the film itself isn’t perfect either. It has the feel of an adaptation where they didn’t want to cut any of the cast, but had to cut all of their supporting stories in order to get the film to hit the 120 minute running time. And I mean this with utmost respect to Jon Chu’s career, but I still haven’t forgiven him for what he did to Jem and the Holograms a few years ago and there are times when the film feels just as workmanlike and banal as that failed outing. You’d think the climatic moment where Nick chases down Rachel in order to propose to her (again) would be wonderfully cinematic, but it’s perhaps the least exciting visual moment of the film. Similarly, the much written about Mahjong battle at the end was a great moment in spite of the direction, not because of it.

There is a lot wrong with the film. That’s unavoidable. Do I wish a studio picked up George Takei’s Allegiance and I was writing about about a big budget film about a Japanese-American family torn apart by the forced internment policies of a racist United States? That would have been great.

But in a way, this is very much like Fresh Off The Boat (and not just because of Constance Wu). When the real Eddie Huang quit narrating the show because it deviated so far from the harsh reality of his childhood experiences as a Chinese-American growing up in Florida, I totally sympathized with his decision and understood his rationale. Fresh Off The Boat isn’t an unvarnished look at the Chinese-American experience, nor is it ever going to touch on issues of race in a meaningful way. For better or for worse, it’s just not that kind of show nor is it trying to be. But the producers of the show were able to include an episode where the entire B-story was in Mandarin, a first for a family sitcom in America.

Crazy Rich Asians is very much in the same position as Fresh Off The Boat. It’s telling the world that Asians and Asian-Americans are just people like everyone else, facing similar problems as we try to carve out an existence in the world and live our lives. We fight with our in-laws, we get cheated on by our husbands, we have rivals who try to sabotage us, we deal with friends that we only talk to because we grew up with them and not because we have anything in common with them, we even deal with racism from time to time (although most of us don’t have the money to humiliate a racist by buying their place of employment).

It’s not the Asian-American of Do The Right Thing, let alone BlacKkKlansman, but I have to hope that if this movie is a success, then those types of stories will come in time. Maybe they’ll make a spin-off featuring Nico Santos’ Oliver called Crazy Rich Gaysians and have his character confront Singapore’s endemic social and structural homophobia. Or maybe they’ll make a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead-like movie about the two guards where they discuss the existential crisis of life defined only by serving as a backdrop to the stories of the rich. I believe that we can get there eventually, we just need to use Crazy Rich Asians as the push to get us there.

Anecdotally, the movie feels like it is appealing to more than just Asian-Americans desperate to be represented on screen. When the credits started rolling at my screening, a couple of Jewish women (who went out of their way to build a connection with me by telling me that Jewish culture and Chinese culture are connected by Mahjong and Chinese food at Christmas) told me that they had a great time watching the film. And in the moment of hesitation I felt when they unknowingly asked me to represent my entire race and culture by asking me if I liked the film, I told them that I did.

Maybe I don’t like the film for all the same reasons that they did, but that’s the point. Crazy Rich Asians is a film that is miraculously both culturally specific and broadly appealing. Even if you don’t care about any of what I wrote and just want to watch a good romantic comedy, you would be hard pressed to find one as good as this one in recent years. But if you are that Asian-American who has been waiting for over two decades to feel like you belong to a culture that has largely ignored you and taken you for granted, you will be witnessing a moment of cinematic history. That alone is worth the price of admission.

I didn’t have any place to put this, and it’s such a minor point that really isn’t worth including, but as a former teaching assistant I felt compelled to at least mention it.

So the film is supposed to take place during Rachel’s spring break. We see early in the film that she has a TA (that she tortures), so it’s possible that she dumps all her papers on him and tells him to grade everything while she’s having an adventure in Singapore. That’s perfectly fine, but it seems clear that she ends up staying in Singapore for much longer than a week (there is at least 3 days of flying time depicted in the film).

This means that there is no way she gets back in time to teach her class, assuming she even goes back after getting engaged, which means the poor TA is stuck holding the bag with a bunch of undergrads who will probably blame him for their grades not being in or for class being delayed.

Won’t anyone think of the poor teaching assistants who don’t have billionaire partners to sweep them off their feet?

[popwasabi]

“Crazy Rich Asians” Review: Support This Movie So I Can Stop Being Angry

Directed by Jon M. Chu

Starring: Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan, Awkwafina

 “Crazy Rich Asians” might be the first film I’ve ever been nervous about seeing.

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust that director Jon M. Chu would properly represent Asian Americans in a way most Hollywood films don’t but I found myself worried not about whether I would like the movie but whether others would. You see, in the theater full of mostly Asian people I saw it with there was a row of five middle-aged white people right in front of me and my mind immediately went to the gutter thinking “will these people laugh at anything that isn’t a stereotype in this movie?”

(White people be all like: “Why do Asians all look the same?”)

Obviously that’s an unfair assumption to make but Hollywood makes it for them all the time. Rarely producing films that give being Asian any nuance or depth beyond being smart, martial arts masters or more infuriatingly submissive enablers of a white protagonist over their own stories.

A part of me didn’t care about enjoying it so long as it made an impression on Hollywood and larger film-going audiences; I needed this film to succeed because it could mean so much more for representation and inclusion down the line.

Luckily, from what it looks like, the film is trending well and in the end managed to warm my cold dead heart with its whimsical rom-com charm, even if parts of it devolved into the predictable.

Based on the bestselling book by Kevin Kwan, “Crazy Rich Asians” follows the story of Rachel Chu as she and her boyfriend Nicholas Young travel to visit his family in Singapore for his brother’s wedding. Unbeknownst to her, Nick hasn’t been completely forthcoming about his family’s lifestyle and as it turns out he is part of the richest family in Southeast Asia. Now Rachel finds herself in a battle to establish herself in front of his matriarchal mother and prove to her that she’s worth it to Nick.

In writing this review over the last few days it’s been very hard to convey how I’ve felt about this film without going on an angry tangent about Asian representation as a whole in popular cinema. It’s pretty much impossible for me not to talk about it so I’m going to try to talk about this as briefly as possible before I get into the film itself and where it stands personally for me.

(Me trying to avoid writing 10,000 words of pent up rage over the first couple drafts..)

There have definitely been better movies to come out, even in recent years, about the Asian/Asian American experience in the west and more than a few starring all Asian casts, writers and directors. Last year’s, much smaller film, “Gook” for instance gets much more personal about race and the ugliness of society.Even as far as comedies go “Seoul Searching” (which is on Netflix) is a funnier more relatable take on the issues and themes raised in this movie.

(Also, if you didn’t know already, Justin Chon is a GREAT actor and needs to be in more movies. Or at least directing them.)

But as many in the media have pointed out already, this is historic in that it’s the first MAJOR film of this kind since “Joy Luck Club” and to finally have a film featuring this type of cast, director and story with big corporate backing is huge for representation whether you find the film underwhelming or not.

Over the last couple years, whitewashing has become a more recognized topical issue in Hollywood than ever before as Asian American audiences are speaking up more loudly about problematic casting and writing choices that Hollywood and apologists find all kinds of excuses for. Despite plenty of evidence to support otherwise that “bankable” stars don’t guarantee box office draws and that Asian Americans are the largest movie-going demographic per-capita in the country, Hollywood still will place relatively unknown white actors in lead roles on huge box office productions (look at the history of Hollywood trying to make Armie Hammer a thing) while simultaneously telling people like myself that people who look like me can’t be mainstream draws.

If for nothing else, cast more Asian Americans because it’s the right thing to do. The representation and inclusion is waaay overdue and if I have to hear “Just make your own movie” or “People from (insert Asian country here) don’t care” one more God damn time I will tear my fucking hair out! Kevin Kwan had to FIGHT to keep the role of Rachel Chu in this movie Asian and Asians from the mainland and Asians in America, or more broadly in the West, don’t have the same lived in experiences. Not even close!

(Me failing often to maintain my decorum in polite company when these topics are brought up...)

One of the weirdest and most shocking revelations I had coming out of this film is that it was one of the only films I could recall seeing an Asian couple engaging with each other romantically in a Hollywood film for more than five minutes at a time ever. That’s. Fucking. Nuts!

I hope that with the commercial and critical success of this movie what’s left of the skeptics will come around finally (especially the ones in Hollywood) and stop with the dismissiveness. They probably won’t but hey maybe it’ll shut them up for a while at least…

(It gets me through this shit...)

Anyways, now that I’m (mostly) done ranting, as far as the movie goes this is a solid date-night romantic comedy that I’m sure everyone regardless of background can enjoy.

“Crazy Rich Asians” is fairly predictable, albeit with some minor twists, but it still manages to tell a story we’re all pretty familiar with in a unique and often dazzling way.

The first thing that pops out immediately about this film is its visuals as the movie displays a wide array of hues and colors that make the cinematography and the literal richness of the plot truly pop. Its visual eye-candy in the best way, even if it comes across as shallow at times, and if nothing else will keep your eyes glued to the screen as the films moves through its lush scenery.

The soundtrack also helps highlight this between the pop songs and Cantonese renditions of them and director Jon Chu does a great job of splicing it all in together with this group of characters and making their performances even brighter through it.

The cast is the true strength of the film, of course, featuring multiple well-known Asian actors and actresses as well as a few newcomers, who I hope breakout in Hollywood through this film. Constance Wu is delightful, sassy and strong-willed as Rachel Chu and helps shed the stereotype of the meek and submissive Asian women in this story by standing up for herself and not hinging her existence on a man, even one she loves. On the other side of things Henry Golding looks every bit like a star in the making and is charming as Nick Young (even if he is a bit of a Gary Stu character) while also smashing stereotypes about asexuality and unattractiveness in Asian men himself. The two of them have great chemistry onscreen and make a very believable romantic couple and it’s hard, even for an eternal cynic like me, to not be like “Awwwww true wuuuuuv” while watching their romance play out.

(*sniff* It’s so extra yet it’s so beautiful ;_;... *sobs at the extra-ness of the romance*)

There’s a hilarious cast of characters who support Wu and Golding alongside them as well. The always enjoyable Awkwafina plays up her role as the funny best friend very well, the Daily Show’s Ronny Chiang gets in some nice quips and Ken Jeong plays the perverted weirdo perfectly.

The indomitable Michele Yeoh does a great job as the menacing matriarch Eleanor Young but manages to keep it from getting too cliché as the writing adds some nice shades of grey to the character. Her love, even if misguided, is well acted alongside Golding and the two make for an interesting mother/son dynamic that I’m sure plenty will be able to relate to.

The real surprise star, and honestly the most interesting part of the story, actually comes from English actress Gemma Chan who plays Nick’s cousin Astrid. The sub plot involving Astrid and her husband sets up a unique and powerful message about the give and take in relationships and its reflection upon femininity and masculinity. Chan puts in a short but nonetheless thoughtful and sincere performance here and I look forward to seeing more of her in the sequel and hopefully other major film productions.

(That look you give when someone tells you a film starring a dozen or so Asian actors and actresses can’t be a huge box office success)

The film doesn’t have many profound things to say otherwise, it’s again a fairly by the numbers rom-com with a heavy dosage of opulence porn and not to mention some problematic elements, but the one message I hope white audiences take from this film, other than everything I mentioned earlier *gets back on soapbox*, comes from Rachel’s mother at the very beginning of the film.

In the lead up to Nick and Rachel’s big Singapore trip Rachel’s mother warns her about what people of the mainland will think of her when they see her. She states that she may look Chinese and speak Cantonese but, pointing to her heart, they see her as American.

This speaks to a lot of what growing up in this country feels like sometimes for us Asian Americans. That despite many of us being three or four generations deep now in this country we’re seen as foreigners and people from “our country” see us the same way. It’s a deep struggle for our identities and the perpetual foreigner syndrome is a real issue for many of us. Yes, as adults it’s easier for us to shake these insults and micro aggressions but that doesn’t mean it’s still not fucking annoying. Hopefully when white film-goers see this scene they begin to understand that we are as much Americans as anyone else and that seemingly harmless but nonetheless insulting comments like “no, where are you really from” need to be done away with.

(”Where are you from?”---->”Oh I’m from LA.”----> “No, I mean where are you from?”---> “Uhhh California?”----> “No where are you really from?”----> “The United States?...”----> “No where are you REALLY from?”--->*me^*)

I won’t stand here and tell you that Asian Americans have had it worse in this country than other minorities but stereotypes and poor cultural representation, or lack thereof, does contribute to a wide array of issues for us and hopefully this film helps hammer away those regressive viewpoints.

TL;DR “Crazy Rich Asians” is a good date movie and, if nothing else, support this movie so I can go on less rants about Hollywood shitting on Asian Americans.

It may be, at least on the surface, a pretty straight forward romantic comedy but its little nuances and unique commentary on this demographic of people (Even if it talks about a small section of it) makes it a film worth supporting.

Hopefully in the future this film will feel pretty ordinary as representation and inclusion become more accessible things for not just Asian Americans but for people of all backgrounds but until then this is a nice, waaaay past-due, coming out party for Asians across this country and abroad.

 VERDICT:

4 out of 5

*Me awaiting the inevitable “Well actually...” comments that’ll come from this review*

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Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

While Marvel’s Phase 4 has been mostly backward-looking for its first outings, in terms of reusing character, Shang-Chi is finally here to change things up. The MCU’s first martial arts fantasy epic is certainly different and unquestionably bold, but does it work, and will Marvel fans take to it as one of the strongest origin stories so far? How does it stand as a new branch for the MCU to nurture in other words?

For the most part, Marvel’s MCU origin stories have been particularly strong. Even ignoring the usual issues with over-emphasis on exposition, comic book movie fans love to see new superheroes take up the mantle. It’s traditionally been in MCU sequels where struggles have been more obvious – apart from Captain America’s seemingly bullet-proof sub-franchise of course. In that respect, Shang-Chi had reason to be confident, even with a vastly different focus to the other MCU kickstarter projects. But at the same time, with the expectations of fans built on 24 movies and billions of dollars, aiming for something different was never going to be completely straightforward. Particularly with the issues presented by the industry at the moment.

Related: Why Shang-Chi’s Avengers Cameo Looks Different From Endgame

Early box office results suggest Shang-Chi is going incredibly well and a 90%+ Rotten Tomatoes review score into opening weekend is always a very good sign. That is a testament to what Simu Liu and director Destin Daniel Cretton have achieved. That said, though, Shang-Chi has some teething issues, even for a movie that is very good overall. In the interest of balance, here’s everything that worked incredibly well in Shang-Chi and the few areas where it perhaps missed the mark.

As with any MCU origin story, there’s a lot of necessary exposition in Shang-Chi. The majority of this is conveyed via flashback, which works, and could have been a little jarring was the narrative importance of the past not been handled well. That typically means there is less space for character, which is often particularly true of a movie with such major fantastical elements and action set-pieces, but not in Shang-Chi. Simu Liu positively radiates charisma, even as he guards his character (to protect his secrets), promising an awful lot more in the MCU’s future. Awkwafina’s Katy is not just the audience’s eyes in Shang-Chi’s world, but she’s also the breakout character (the same way Ratcatcher was in The Suicide Squad and Michael Pena’s Luis was in Ant-Man). The fact that she returns in future, as set up by the end, can only be a good thing. Add to that, the performances of legends like Tony Leung and Michelle Yeoh – not just in combat, but in quieter moments – and it’s a truly great group.

Speaking of Tony Leung, his Wenwu – wrongly named The Mandarin or “The Real Mandarin” throughout the marketing – makes a strong claim to be one of the best human MCU villains alongside Michael B Jordan’s Killmonger. Even faced with being overshadowed by a colossal winged demon in the final act, Leung’s dramatic chops back up his stunning martial arts work to create a bad guy who is not only empathetic but compelling in his cause. He is in pain, haunted by his own part in his wife’s death, and corrupted by the power of the Ten Rings and what lies beyond Ta Lo’s portal. Though he also had a more traditional hunger for power before meeting Shang-Chi’s mother, he puts that one-dimensional motivation aside to be a man pushed to desperate, catastrophic measures by his grief. To contrast that with how Iron Man 3 originally portrayed the supposedly same character is night and day.

While the dynamic between Wenwu, Shang-Chi, and Xialing is great, Shang-Chi is best when it’s examining their personal story. Unfortunately, the shift in gears in the third act that sees them arrive in Ta Lo and face the impending arrival of the Dweller-in-Darkness feels like a similar situation that undermined how good The Avengers was. Suddenly adding the Dweller as the final act “big boss”, plus an army of otherwise unmentioned flying soul sucker drones is very much like Whedon’s use of the Chitauri army to escalate matters for the heroes in his final act back in 2012. That’s not to say there aren’t impressive moments in the battle – and who doesn’t want to see what amounts to the MCU’s first kaiju on kaiju battle? – but there’s not quite enough tension when the personal story is ripped away.

Related: Is Shang-Chi Officially An Avenger Now?

The benefit of adding a martial arts master to the MCU is immediately obvious as soon as Shang-Chi gets into its combat groove. The opening fight sequence on the bus careening down San Francisco’s famous hills is remarkable and it’s far from the best. Elsewhere, Tony Leung, Simu Liu, Andy Le, Fala Chen, Meng’er Zhan, and young Arnold Sun (a revelation as teen Shang-Chi in training flashbacks) all put together gravity-defying martial arts set-pieces that are unlike anything seen in the MCU. So far, the MCU brand of martial arts has looked more like the bruising style of Florian Munteanu’s Razor Fist, but here there’s balletic grace mashed up with the physical drunken boxer humor of Kung Fu Hustle (referenced lovingly not only in a poster in Shang-Chi’s wall, but also in the casting of Yuen Wah as Ta Lo Master Guang Bo. The slow-motion can get a little over-indulgent, but there’s no doubting the obscene skill involved.

Despite the mastery of the fight choreography and the incredible environmental designs that go into Ta Lo in particular, some of Shang-Chi‘s CGI is on a par with the worst moments of Black Panther‘s notorious early trailers. There’s more than one regrettable ragdoll sequence, including part of the otherwise excellent bus fight, and while the Great Protector battling the Dweller-in-Darkness is a fun spectacle, some of it is too muddied by an attempt to presumably hide the heavy effects work involved. The moment that sees Shang-Chi run up the otherworldly beast, in particular, is near-impossible to follow.

The MCU has been accused before of being too focused on shoe-horning humor in to meet the expectations of the lucrative family audience, and even some of the best Marvel movies too have clunking gags in them. Shang-Chi, though, brilliantly balances humor and heart and drama. Awkwafina’s Katy and Sir Ben Kingsley’s return as Trevor Slattery take care of much of the leg work, but Simu Liu’s comic background helps a great deal, though his jokes come less frequently than his “sidekicks”. There’s never any attempt to really undermine heavy, dramatic moments with humor, which is where Marvel stumbles a lot and crucially, Shang-Chi being an insider on his lore means there’s no reductive mockery of the mythology behind his powers and his family.

Shang-Chi is a stand-alone almost to the same degree as a Phase 1 movie, and that’s great, but there are obviously expectations to tie it back to the rest of the MCU, and – as ever – use its end as a stepping stone to what comes next. Had that ended with Wong’s recruitment of Shang-Chi and Katy and the impromptu, hilarious karaoke sessions, that would have been perfectly fine, but then Shang-Chi‘s mid-credits scene goes too far. Captain Marvel and Bruce Banner’s inclusions feel too much like big-name appearances for the sake of familiarity, particularly because both add very little to the discussion on the Ten Rings other than a bemused shrug. They’re there so that Marvel can remind the audience that there’s always something bigger coming, but it didn’t need to be done this way when Wong’s mysterious tease of what he needed Shang-Chi for was satisfying enough.

Related: How Marvel Retconned Its Iron Man 3 Mandarin Controversy

Now that there are 25 MCU movies and a number of Disney+ Marvel shows to throw into the mix, the requirement to do Marvel homework before each release is getting to the point where casual audiences simply will not do it. Luckily, Shang-Chi exists on its own merit strongly and without the crutch of the rest of the franchise, meaning any pre-watching is limited. Yes, there are nods to the post-Endgame world in posters about Snap Anxiety, and Wong and Tim Roth’s Abomination appear, but the only substantial link is to Trevor Slattery’s arc in Iron Man 3, and he is played in such a way that he’s no more than a jester brought along to help Morris become the next most memeable Marvel character. His arc is entirely explained within Shang-Chi anyway, so that serves as all the required reminder. The reason this is such a big plus for Shang-Chi is that it has to be how Marvel moves forward when establishing new MCU IPs, like X-Men, Fantastic Four, Blade, and whoever else comes along: not everything has to be tied to the nostalgia machine. Shang-Chi proves it’s still possible to strike out onto a new branch without everything being a set-up for when the next cameo will happen.

While Tony Leung’s Wenwu is great (particularly in how he retcons Iron Man 3‘s Mandarin mistake), and the fight sequences involving both are hugely entertaining, it’s difficult not to feel that both Razor Fist and – even more so – Death Dealer aren’t rather undernourished. The former’s complexity is as limited as you might expect from someone who drives around in an SUV with his own name spraypainted on the side (even when it’s achingly hinted for about two seconds that he fears for his master’s mental health), and the latter is a plot device killed off for effect. Neither is given anything like the charisma to hide their lack of development and backstory and it’s a real shame. At least Razor Fist’s likely return might afford more of an opportunity.

Not only is Shang-Chi a great stand-alone, but it is fundamentally different from what MCU fans have seen over the past decade. While it has the same hallmarks of familial conflict and daddy issues as lots of previous Marvel movies, it balances that with martial arts, new mysticism, a dragon, a giant kaiju-like demon, and the suggestion that more lands like Wakanda can exist beyond portals to other realms. There can be no accusations of deferring to type or Shang-Chi being somehow formulaic, and after 24 films, that is an impressive thing to be able to state. It also makes forthcoming new creative endeavors – like Eternals – that have a similar burden of expectation to be new and exciting a lot easier to back to succeed with the audience. The start of Phase 4 has looked backward a little more than some may like, but Shang-Chi is bold and unafraid to be wildly different to its stable-mates, and that should give future MCU creators cause for confidence.

Next: Every Upcoming Marvel Movie Release Date (2021 To 2023)

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The Weekend Warrior 9/3/21: SHANG-CHI, CINDERELLA, WORTH, MOGUL MOWGLI, YAKUZA PRINCESS, YEAR OF THE EVERLASTING STORM, and More

There’s only one new wide release this week but I’m not gonna say this movie title five times, because it’s so freakin’ long, that I can only really say it once. But it’s a good one! There’s also so many limited releases that as always, I just couldn’t get to all of them. (Word of warning: This column was finished under the influence of Churches' excellent new record, Screen Violence.)

Marvel Studios’ second movie of 2021, SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS (Marvel/Disney) stars Simu Liu as the “Master of Kung-Fu” from the comics, making his very first appearance in any live-action form that I know of. I have to say that I loved the comics as a kid and was truly bummed when I sold my whole collection, knowing that a lot of the great run of the comics from the ‘70s and ‘80s that have never been reprinted. That being said, this is Marvel’s first solo character introduction going all the way back to Brie Larson as Captain Marvel back in March, 2019, and before that, you’d have to go back November, 2016 for Doctor Strange, since Black Panther was introduced in Captain America: Winter Soldier.

Shang-Chi is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, who broke onto the scene with indie films like I Am Not a Hipster and the better-received Short Term 12, which also introduced much of the world to Larson, and then the two of them made an adaptation of The Glass House. Cretton then directed Michael B. Jordan, and again, Larson, in Just Mercy for Warner Bros., which grossed $36 million in early 2020 but never quite achieved the Oscar hopes some were expecting. Still, all that work with Larson paid off, because it got him a meeting with Kevin Feige and Marvel for him to pitch this.

Granted, Simu Liu is a bit of an unknown quantity, having not made too many movies and being best known for the sitcom, Kim’s Convenience. On the other hand, his co-star Awkwafina has been building quite an impressive career from her roles in the 2018 hits, Crazy Rich Asians and Ocean’s 8, plus her starring role in the indie, The Farewell, for which she won a Golden Globe (but really should have gotten an Oscar nomination). She’s taken that success to put it into her Comedy Central show, Nora from Queens, while also providing her voice for lots of animated movies, including this year’s Disney animated movie, Raya and the Last Dragon. Most who have seen the movie early have mentioned that her comic chemistry with Lu has stolen the movie and oddly, her “best friend” character Katy seems to be heading towards a larger part in the MCU.

If we look at movies based around characters who received solo films before appearing anywhere else in the MCU, we get the aforementioned Captain Marvel movie, which had an insane $153 million opening weekend, doing even better than the Distinguished Competition’s own solo female movie, Wonder Woman, even though the latter was definitely better known. Captain Marvel ended up grossing over $400 million domestic and over a billion worldwide. The Doctor Strange movie that preceded it, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, didn’t do quite well but still opened with $85 million and made $232 million domestic. A year earlier, Marvel Studios’ attempt to make Ant-Man a thing led to one of their bigger disappointments with that opening with “just” $57 million and grossing $180 million domestic. (That also cost $30 million less than Doctor Strange and $45 million less than Captain Marvel, but when you get to those budgets over $100 million, every dollar counts to making back that budget.)

As with many MCU movies, Shang-Chi has been receiving rave reviews with a strong 92% on Rotten Tomatoes from over 140 reviews (at this writing). My review of this is over at Below the Line, and I loved it, too. The big selling point for Shang-Chi is that like Black Panther was to African-Americans, this character is to Asian-Americans, being able to see the first Marvel movie starring an Asian-American, as well as a mostly Asian cast that includes the great Tony Leung and Michelle Yeoh (who also starred in Crazy Rich Asians).

There are a few factors to bear in mind, and not just the COVID Delta variant one that we’ve been hearing so much about -- there’s no denying that things are getting worse, and hopefully this can be quelled before there’s another shutdown. This weekend is the four-day weekend with Labor Day on Monday, which has never been a great weekend at the movies, partially because schools have either started or are about to start and people just stop going to movies, despite there having been plenty of early September hits like Warner Bros’ It. September is definitely a new month for Marvel to release a movie, but with all the delays due to COVID, it’s a good (I’m not gonna use the term “experiment) to see if Marvel really can withstand the proverbial 12-month release calendar rather than their movies needing to be released over the summer or holidays or any other month.

Unlike the recent Black Widow, which had a substantial $80 million opening, Shang-Chi is not being released simultaneously on Disney+ via Premier Access, which presumably will mean more people will have to go see the movie in theaters during its 45-day run before heading home, but the question really is “Will they?” Besides Crazy Rich Asians, which did incredibly well among non-Asians, there haven’t been a ton of movies with Asian casts that have done well just due to the fact -- I mean, look at the recent Snake Eyes from Paramount Pictures. It didn’t get nearly as good reviews, but it’s another superhero movie with a mostly Asian cast, and that community didn’t get behind it at all. Maybe we can say the same about Raya but that also was released much earlier in the pandemic.

With that in mind, I do think Shang-Chi is good for a four-day opening between $53 million and $57 million, although I don’t think we can expect this to have the same impact as a Marvel movie with a well-known character or actor in the lead.

This weekend’s four-day box office should look something like this:

1. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Marvel/Disney) - $55.6 million N/A

2. Candyman (Universal) - $13.2 million -40%

3. Free Guy (20th Century/Disney) - $11 million -16%

4. Paw Patrol: The Movie (Paramount) - $7 million +6%

5. Jungle Cruise (Walt Disney Pictures) - $4.5 million -10%

6. Don’t Breathe 2 (Sony/Screen Gems) - $2 million -30%

7. Respect (MGM) - $1.8 million -20%

8. The Suicide Squad (Warner Bros.) - $1.3 million -35%

9. The Protégé (Lionsgate) - $1.4 million -43%

10. The Night House (Searchlight) - $800k -39%

Hitting Amazon Prime Video on Friday (as well as select theaters in New York and L.A.) is Kay Cannon’s musical CINDERELLA (Amazon), which was originally going to be released theatrically by Sony Pictures in January, but it then became one of the first movies to have its production be shut down by COVID, so everything was delayed, and then Sony just decided to sell it off to Amazon, but considering everything going on, that may have been the wise choice, since I have a feeling more people will see this on Amazon then would have gone out to theaters with COVID, school starting, etc. Either way, you can read my interview with Kay Cannon over at Below the Line.

The movie stars pop star Camila Cabello In the title role of the musical was the brainchild of James Corden, who is no stranger to musicals. In fact, he seems to appear in almost every single one, or is that me? The nice thing is that you already know the story, as that hasn’t changed much, although Cannon definitely gives it a more modern spin in terms of Ella being far more feisty and a truly modern woman despite living in times where women aren’t allowed to do their own thing. Ella wants to be a designer, and she’s already making progress as she sews beautiful dresses in the basement where she’s kept by her stepmother (Idina Menzel) and taunted by her stepsisters (Maddie Baillio and Charlotte Spencer). One day, she meets the Prince Robert (Nicholas Galzitine) in the woods and has such an effect on him that he decides to hold a ball and invite all the women in the land in order to find a princess.

Like I said, pretty much the same story that we’ve seen in so many adaptations and quite a few musicals, and really, what probably will stand out more than anything is how talented Cabello is, considering that this is her first acting role in a major feature, and she kills it. I wouldn’t say that I love all the song choices, but I did love most of the arrangements, and there are so many great standout moments like “Shining Star” performed by Billy Porter as Cinderella’s “Fab G” (replacing and gender-switching her Fairy Godmother) and Menzel’s performance of her own song she wrote for the movie is a definite showstopper.

Obviously, casting the likes of Menzel and Porter means you have a couple ringers, but Minnie Driver is also great and even Pierce Brosnan kind of makes up for his horrific singing performance in Mamma Mia! This time, he gets something more in his range. And James Corden is in it, but it's such a small role that even those who truly hate him don't have enough time to do so.

It’s probably a cliché to say that this Cinderella won’t be for everyone, and I’m sure many critics had their knives out for it sight unseen. Personally, I know tons of fans of musicals and movies like Into the Woods, and yes, the Pitch Perfect movies, who will really enjoy what Kay Cannon and her talented cast and crew have done with the story. Kay Cannon’s Cinderella is a movie that’s more about fun entertainment than anything particularly cerebral, and in days like these, maybe that’s all that is needed sometimes.

There's a ton of other interesting indie films out this week… some of them are even good!

A movie that many (hopefully) will view with interest is Bassam Tariq’s MOGUL MOWGLI (Strand Releasing), co-written by and starring Riz Ahmed, which premiered all the way back at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2020. Besides it being of interest due to Ahmed’s presence, Tariq is also rumored to be directing the new Blade movie for Marvel Studios, starring Mahershala Ali, so many will (hopefully) be checking out this movie for that reason alone. (It certainly grabbed my interest.)

In the movie, Ahmed plays Zaheer who raps under the pseudonym of Zed, but he’s a Pakistani living in London at odds with his parents and the Muslim traditions put upon him. Just as he’s about to go on a major tour that could give his career a much-needed push, he suddenly loses the ability to walk and is diagnosed with a muscular disease that will involve stem cell therapy.

Okay, yes, this is another movie involving Ahmed as a performer who is hit by a debilitating condition much like his Oscar-nominated turn in Sound of Metal, but this is a very different movie that also deals with culture and religion and other things that just had much of an impact on me. Zaheer is told by his doctor that after the procedure, he would be unable to have kids, so he should freeze his sperm, and there’s a scene that I personally experienced when I was told the same before my stem cell transplant.

As much as this is very much a family drama, there’s also an interesting almost horror element to Mogul Mowgli as Zameer is constantly being plagued by hallucinations and nightmares, but there’s also some light humor in the fact that his main competition, another Pakistani rapper named “RPG,” is a bit of an idiot. But this really is Ahmed’s show, and heck, I might go so far to say that I think Ahmed’s performance in this movie is even better than his performance in Sound of Metal if you can believe that.

Mogul Mowgli proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Riz Ahmed’s Oscar nomination was no fluke. He is clearly one of the best actors we have today, and he also shows that lacking the right material, he’s just going to write his own. It's opening at New York's Film Forum on Friday, and I'm not sure where else.

Brazilian filmmaker Vicente Amorim’s action-thriller YAKUZA PRINCESS (Magnet) -- which has played a couple recent genre festivals like Fantasia in Montreal -- really should be my kind of movie. Based on the Manga of the same name, it’s set in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where I used to live as a kid, believe it or not, but it’s also one of the largest Japanese communities outside Japan. In this environment comes newcomer Masumi as Akemi, who was orphaned as a child and left in Sao Paulo, but she later learns she’s the heiress to the Yakuza crime syndicate. She ends up meeting a badly scarred-up stranger with amnesia (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) who believes an ancient katana sword might bind their fates.

Like I said, this should be my kind of movie, because I love Yakuza films and crime films set in the world of Japanese crime, and as I said, I lived in Brazil, so that country still hold a place in my heart. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of amazing Yakuza films from the great Takashi Miike, and this one is just so erratic in terms of pacing and tone that it really took me quite some time to really get into it.

Unfortunately, this movie at its core feels like another Kill Bill wannabe where Amorim relies so much on being super-stylish and throwing in lots of fast editing to make up for the lack of originality or any real substance.

The writing in the movie isn’t great, at least at first, but it’s also far too obvious how new and green Masumi is as an actor, because she delivers her lines and swordplay with very little charisma, and Rhys Meyers isn’t much better. In fact, the film’s best parts are the ones in Japanese, but that’s in the second half where the movie slows down considerably. There is the expected amount of gory swordplay and people being shot in the head, but there’s also way too much unnecessary exposition, much of it in bad English.

There’s just no way around that this is a movie that tries to jump on a genre bandwagon that has been handled so much better by Japanese filmmakers, while this just fails to keep the viewer interested beyond its soundtrack and the score by Lucas Marcier and Fabiano Krieger, which is pretty fantastic. Sure, it’s pretty violent and gory, but at times, it relies too much on viewers really only being on board for that. Other times, it feels like a patchwork of elements that don’t necessarily work together but also feels so derivative of so many better films.

Essentially, Yakuza Princess is yet another overly stylish action movie that’s better when everyone is fighting rather than talking. I had a hard time staying interested, and I’m not sure if that would have been exacerbated if I saw this on the big screen vs. a screener. Unfortunately, you'll only get to see on the big screen in certain regions, because it's mainly being released VOD.

Hitting Netflix on Friday after a week at New York’s Paris Theater is Sara Colangelo’s drama WORTH (Netflix), starring Michael Keaton, Stanley Tucci, and Amy Ryan, which premiered all the way back in January 2020 at the Sundance Film Festival. In the movie, Keaton plays Kenneth Feinberg, an opera loving lawyer and college professor who is commissioned to start the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, which has to come up with the amount of money that the families of those who died in the terrorist attacks will receive.

As you can probably expect, this movie is a laugh a minute… no, I’m kidding, this is a well-written and acted, but also often rather dry drama that’s about a serous topic, but it also feels like it comes so late after 9/11 that it doesn’t feel as relevant anymore, even with the anniversary coming up soon.

The movie is very much a spotlight for Keaton, who sports a heavy Massachusetts accent but still delivers a solid performance as the man with the unenviable task of trying to calculate the payouts for the people who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks. But Keaton doesn’t just deliver himself, he also brings out the best from everyone else in the cast, not too surprising from Ryan or Tucci, but there are also lots of pleasant surprises, including Shunori Ramathan and some of the actors playing the people who lost family members.

More than anything else, the movie is very much about the excellent script by Max Borenstein (who mostly has written a bunch of Godzilla and King Kong movies, oddly enough), and in that sense, it reminds me of Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight or the recent The Report, which are both solid movies but also very dialogue-driven ensemble dramas. Colangelo does a fine job with the film's pacing, which much have been a difficult task.

The only real problem with Worth is that it's so filled with crying and drama it's pretty hard to take for two hours straight. Basically, it’s one of those very good movies that you really have to be in the right headspace to get through it.

Michelle Civata's THE GATEWAY (Lionsgate) is a crime-thriller set in rural St. Louis with Shea Whigham playing Parker, a social worker who is trying to protect his client, a single mother (Olivia Munn) with a young daughter, whose husband was just paroled from jail with a drugdealer (Frank Grillo) trying to get him back on the payroll.

I wasn't sure about this one at least as it started, even with such a solid cast, which includes Bruce Dern as Park's estranged father, and it certainly started out a bit erratic with some scenes and characters working better than others. What works in the movie's favor is Whigham is such a good actor who rarely gets juicy roles like this one where he can be at the center of the story, and The Gateway shows that maybe this shouldn't be.

Despite a woman as director and co-writer, the whole thing comes off as fairly macho, clearly influenced by filmmakers like Scorses, but the fact that there's heart and real characters at the center of the movie that doesn't offer some degree of action -- gunfights, car chases and such -- does make The Gateway far better than it could have been.

Unfortunately, things start to fall a bit in the last act, although there are some great scenes between Whigham and Dern, and I generally like what the movie is trying to say about family. Because of that, The Gateway ends up being a decent indie crime thriller that doesn't veer too far from others but gives Wigham a long-deserved leading role to show his stuff.

The Gateway will open in select theaters, and be available via Apple TV and other digital platforms Friday and then be available on DVD and Blu-ray on Tuesday, September 7.

Sean King O’Grady’s thriller WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING (IFC Midnight) stars Sierra McCormick as teenager Melissa, who ends up trapped with her family in a house after trying to shelter from a storm… and boy, did this movie remind me of this awful recent movie called John and the Hole that IFC released last month. And this one really isn’t much better, despite starring great actors like Vinessa Shaw and Pat Healy.

Honestly, I have no idea why anyone would read the script by Max Booth III (based on his own novella, no less) and think, “Boy, this would make an interesting movie,” but this is the age we live in where everyone is trying to make something cool and woke for the kiddies, and in this case that comes in the form of Melissa’s goth girlfriend Amy (Lisette Alexis) who shows up (in flashback) as so that they can do some incantations which may be causing all the weirdness. It’s as if the filmmakers thought that throwing in a bit of The Craft might save it.

I probably was most disappointed by Healy, since I’m such a fan of his work, but he isn’t given much to do except rant and rave and yell a lot, and he really comes off like an asshole, which is not a great look for him.

O’Grady throws all sorts of things at the family like a not particularly scary stupid looking rattlesnake that has them screaming horribly and some kind of… werewolf or something? (I don’t know ‘cause we never see it. We just see its tongue which Melissa rips out.) Honestly, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen worse acting, which just makes the family even more annoying.

With a really stupid premise that is barely able to carry a movie, if you’re gonna call your movie We Need to Do Something, then for EFF’s sake, DO SOMETHING! Man, this movie frustrated the hell out of me.

Also out on Friday is the anthology film, YEAR OF THE EVERLASTING STORM (NEON), which features an amazing roster of filmmakers, including David Lowery, director of the recent The Green Knight, Jafar Panahi, Anthony Chen, Laura Poitras (CITIZEN4), Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and others, taking a semi-documentary approach to share their thoughts on living in a pandemic… I watched the Panahi and Chen segments but never got to the rest, but if I do, I'll add my thoughts on the film as a whole when I have a chance. The movie opens at the IFC Center in New York this Friday and then in Los Angeles at the Laemlle Royal next Friday.

I wasn’t able to get to Safy Nebbou’s WHO YOU THINK I AM (Cohen Media), based on the best-selling novel from Camille Laurens, but it stars the great Juliette Binoche, a single mom and middle-aged professor who is ghosted her 20-something lover so she creates a fake Facebook profile for 24-year-old avatar named “Clara” who is friended by her ex’s roommate. This opens at the Quad Cinema in New York on Friday as well as in L.A. at the Landmark, and I hope to get to watch it soon.

Another movie I’ve been looking forward to seeing since it premiered at Sundance but just haven’t found the time is Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.’s WILD INDIAN (Vertical), starring the great Michael Greyeyes as a native American man who decades earlier covered up a classmate's murder, but now has to deal with a man who wants vengeance for the secret he's trying to keep as he tries to protect his wife (Kate Bosworth) and boss (Jesse Eisenberg) from that secret. Sounds pretty amazing and man, I wish I could just fit in more movies with everything I have going on right now.

Chad Michael Murray plays the title role in Daniel Farrands' TED BUNDY: AMERICAN BOOGIEMAN (Voltage/Dark Star PIctures), which hits VOD and DVD this Friday, but unlike last week's No Man of God, which deals with Bundy already in prison, it deals with Bundy still on the prowl and the law enforcement agents who eventually brought him down including detective Kathleen McChesney (Holland Roden) and rookie FBI profiler Robert Ressler (Jake Hays). I haven't had a chance to watch this yet, but it would have been nice if they released the two movies in chronological order, no?

A great doc that played at the Tribeca Festival a couple months back and will hit Showtime this Friday is Sacha Jenkins’ BITCHIN’: THE SOUND AND FURY OF RICK JAMES (Showtime), an absolutely fascinating look at the controversial funk and soul star whose catchy dance music of the '70s led to drugs and worse offenses in subsequent years. This is a fantastic doc that I wish I could watch again, but I don't have Showtime. Waugh waugh...

Others that came out this week or weekend:

AFTERLIFE OF THE PARTY (Netflix)

STEEL SONG (Gravitas Ventures)

SAVING PARADISE (Vertical)

Next week, the new horror movie from James Wan, Malignant, as well as Paul Schrader's The Card Counter, which I think might be going wide next week, too.