The original title is 江湖儿女; “Sons and Daughters of Jianghu”. During the movie, I felt fortunate that I was familiar with Jianghu, which was also mentioned in the movie several times. I’ve heard of the word Jianghu (江湖, or 강호 in Korean) growing up in 80s and 90s mostly from Hong Kong action cinema. In […]

If you just watch the trailer, Saint Maud seems a bit like Stephen King’s Misery. Someone wants to take care of a person but in fact, they want complete control of the person’s life; it’s a familiar story. However, Saint Maud is more than that; it’s about Maud’s tragic delusion and her failure of saving […]

For some viewers, the Dardenne brother’s movies don’t seem dramatic enough because they are so documentary-like and realistic that they often don’t even have any music at all. However, the raw and realistic approach pulls the audience immediately to the characters’ world where things are dire and difficult. And this unfortunate experience that the characters […]

One of the joys of watching a movie is to have empathetic experience and be emotionally involved in characters’ journey deeply. For the entirety of this movie, I felt alienated and left out, which is far from those joys. Mainly, this is because of the complexity of the plot. As a scientist and an engineer […]

When I took a short film course in an academic commune in Seoul back in 2000s, I learned about the nature of cinema as a medium and the power of the camera. In a way, films are very similar to plays in that they have actors who play their parts based on a script. However, […]

When I came out to mom about 10 years ago, she was shocked, sad, and upset. Out of shock and sorrow, she said she never loved dad and the reason why she married was to get out of grandma’s pressure. She said she was going to divorce immediately. The movie’s unhappy couple reminded me of […]