Thoughts on River

    On Tubi, I watched River, a 2023 Japanese sci-fi comedy directed by Junta Yamaguchi and written by Makoto Ueda. The film takes place in a old winter ryokan, or Japanese inn, in Kibune, outside of Kyoto. The lead character, the waitress Mikoto (Riko Fujitani), is standing by the Kibune river behind the ryokan, then goes back to work, cleaning up a table with the head waiter, but then finds herself back when she started at the river two minutes ago. She feels like this is deja vu, but when this happens for a third time, she and the waiter get confused, both experiencing the same feelings, and then the staff and guests, also being perplexed, realize that they are all stuck in a time loop that keeps repeating itself every two minutes. Their area is the only one affected, and as they are able to retain their memories and not have their mind reset every two minutes, they try to work together to solve the problem. 

    But as the resets keep happening, people start panicking, like two businessmen who are seated eating rice and getting sick of the rice and worrying they will eat it forever; a guest who was in the baths who keeps running out in just a towel with shampoo in his hair; and a novelist who is struggling with finishing his draft, at first welcoming the break but then becoming hysterical. 

    Each reset is filmed as one long take for two minutes, and the staff are frequently running up stairs and through corridors, or going to a separate inn building across the road, and given that they have such a short time before resetting, it's more stressful whenever someone figures out new information but wants everyone to meet in a particular place, where they may not have time to get there to hear everything before the loop happens again.

    I liked how this differed from other time loop films because it had more people stuck in the loop, as opposed to movies that usually have one or two people stuck in it and trying to figure things out and trying to act normal to others unaware of the loop. With everyone in the same predicament, and being able to remember things, it helps keep the story fresh by not repeating the same scene over and over again, with each scene being different based on the latest information they learned. The staff also still have to do their jobs and think of their guests, whether it's bringing in lukewarm sake to the businessmen because there wasn't enough time to make hot sake, or having the man in the baths coming out in a robe in the later scenes so he isn't half-naked in a towel around everyone.

    There is a romantic subplot between Mikoto and a young chef who are dating, and their story plays into Mikoto worrying that by her wishing by the river that it would stop flowing, like a way of stopping time, that she is responsible for the time loop, and she is trying to figure out a conflict with her boyfriend while also trying to end the loop. 

    It works well when everyone learns to be cooperative with each other and stops panicking, and the cause of the time loop circles back to a minor reference early on in the movie that pays off later in an interesting way. I heard of this movie from the Critically Acclaimed podcast, hosted by two film critics, William Bibbiani and Witney Siebold, and they did an episode in 2025 ranking the coziest movies ever made, and I thought this movie sounded really good, and luckily it was streaming on Tubi to watch. So I'm glad for their recommendation, this was a really interesting movie to watch.

Thoughts on Is God Is

     At the Village East Cinema in Manhattan, I saw Is God Is, a 2026 Southern Gothic revenge film written and directed by Aleshea Harris, adapted from her 2018 play of the same name. The film was co-produced by Tessa Thompson and Janizca Bravo, and stars Kara Young and Mallori Johnson as Racine and Anaia, twin sisters in their twenties who are covered in burn scars, Racine's scars along her left arm and Anaia's scars on her face and upper chest. They survived a domestic violence act as children when their abusive father (Sterling K. Brown) had broken his restraining order and came to their home, choking their mother (Vivica A. Fox) unconscious and setting her on fire in front of the girls, leaving the girls to be burnt in the attempt to save their mother. 

    The girls grew up believing their mother had died, and since their father had abandoned them, they were raised in a series of foster homes, ostracized and called ugly by everyone, especially Anaia because of her facial scars, and work as janitors in an office, applying ointment to each other as a daily ritual at home. Racine is the more outspoken, adventurous one, always defending her sister, while Anaia is more reserved and has a casual relationship with a boyfriend who doesn't want to look at her during sex. Racine often teases Anaia, calling her a "little bitch" in a way to mean she's a coward. The sisters are so close and intuitive with each other that they often exchange silent conversations with knowing looks, with the dialogue of their conversation appearing on the screen.

    Racine receives a letter from their mother, thought to be dead, and the twins travel to her home, where she is bed-ridden and taken care of by a team of healthcare aides, who braid her hair as she explains to them what happened. She tells them that she is dying, and that her deathbed wish is for the twins to avenge her by killing their father, for all the pain and suffering he has left behind, knowing he moved on with another woman and had more children. Their mother, who Racine calls "God" because she created them, convinces them out of their hesitancy by showing her legs to them, not visible to the audience but most likely burned beyond recognition. The sisters agree to their mother's wish, and set off to find their father to enact justice.

    The film is a road trip story, where the sisters encounter various characters who had been left hurt in their father's wake: an evangelical preacher named Divine (Erika Alexander) who is still devoted to their father even though he abandoned her while she was pregnant and her son, their half-brother, is now an adult; the lawyer Chuck Hall (Mykelti Williamson), a man who cannot speak anymore due to their father's violence, communicating by whiteboard, and pays a dominatrix to beat him to train him to be able to fight their father; and eventually their father's third family in the finale.

    I liked how this film was bright and loud and funny, while still being serious about all the abuse and pain and trauma that this one man caused to several Black women throughout his life, and how they felt denied in their revenge and anger, and wanting to see him suffer.

    Kara Young and Mallori Johnson are both excellent in the leads, with Young just popping off the screen as a charismatic star, and Johnson having a more reserved sensitivity to her performance. I liked seeing the supporting cast of well-known names (including Janelle Monae as their father's abused wife in a gilded cage), but Sterling K. Brown as their father was chilling, in playing the father with a soft voice but a psychopathic violence, excusing his past actions as "I was young and didn't know better," despite being an adult then and continuing to harm people on a path of destruction.

    I heard of this movie from a Bluesky tweet from the YouTuber Princess Weekes, who loved the film, and I'm glad I took her recommendation, this was a little gem of a movie.

Thoughts on Desk Set

    On Criterion last Sunday, I watched Desk Set, a 1957 romantic comedy directed by Walter Lang and written by Henry and Phoebe Ephron, adapted from the 1955 play of the same name by Walter Marchant. The movie centers on Bunny Watson (Katharine Hepburn), a documentalist who works in the reference department of a television network in Manhattan. She and the other librarians (Joan Blondell, Dina Merrill, Sue Randall) all answer phone calls from the general public asking about obscure trivia questions from their reference library, and the women have all memorized facts and can tell people things immediately, or know exactly what section the reference material it is in. The women have bonded with each other, and are close with other secretaries in the building, working like a network to look out for each other. 

    Methods engineer and efficiency expert Richard Sumner (Spencer Tracy) comes in for a meeting with the boss Mr. Azae (Nicolas Joy), but arrives a day early for his appointment, so he spends time in the reference department, arising suspicion from the librarians. It is eventually revealed that Sumner has developed a giant computer system called Electromagnetic Memory and Research Arithmetical Calculator, with the acronym EMERAC, nicknamed "Emmy." He and Mr. Azae have been in talks to install the computer in the reference department, as a faster way of generating results from the public questions, and the librarians fear that this machine will replace them and put them out of work. This also made me think of the film Hidden Figures, where the women "computers" at NASA work as mathematicians but aren't valued, and a giant IBM computer in the 1960s threatens to replace them.

    Bunny is dating rising network executive Mike Cutler (Gig Young), but is frustrated that after seven years together, he hasn't proposed to her yet. Richard finds Bunny to be smart and captivating and is intrigued by her, especially when he interviews her about her ability to calculate facts and information very quickly, like asking questions about train arrivals and number of passengers at stops.

    I wasn't as into the romantic comedy parts of the movie, although I did like the scenes where Bunny impressed Richard with her sharp intelligence. But I was really into the scenes with her and her coworkers, like with Joan Blondell as being a co-leader with Bunny, with her older age and seniority, and I've always liked her as a great comedic actress of the 1930s. 

    As an archivist, I related a lot to the reference environment and being able to memorize random facts and niche trivia to ramble off to people, and was amazed at how prescient the film was with the librarians fearing that the computer would take over their jobs, like the fear today with A.I. being used to replace people in the tech industry and leading to massive layoffs.

    The finale, where Neva Patterson as Miss Warriner is trying to handle the phones and enter information into Emmy at the same time, and taking too long to deliver the answers and getting the wrong results from Emmy was hilarious, and an excellent scene of comedic acting from her, especially when she just freaks out on everybody out of sheer frustration, it was awesome.

    I really liked this film, and I had recognized the last name of the writers, and was correct in realizing they were the parents of the journalist/screenwriter/director Nora Ephron, who would reach mainstream fame with her romantic comedies Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and Julie & Julia, and writing the screenplays for When Harry Met Sally . . ., Silkwood, and Heartburn.

    This was a really good movie, and I'm happy I watched it.

Thoughts on Memoir of a Snail

     On Hulu, I watched Memoir of a Snail, a 2024 Australian stop-motion animated tragicomedy film written and directed by Adam Eliot. The film centers on a twin brother and sister, Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and Grace (Sarah Snook), who come of age in 1970s Melbourne, being separated by being orphaned in youth, and largely following Grace's life as a lonely misfit.

    The twins' mother had died in childbirth, and they are raised by their French father Percy (Dominique Pinon), who was once a juggler and street performer but is now a paraplegic alcoholic. Grace develops an affinity for collecting snails, which her late mother was fond of as well, and her brother protects her from bullies who tease her for her cleft lip. When their father dies from sleep apnea, the children are split into different foster families and separated on opposite ends of the country, with Grace in Canberra and Gilbert in Perth. Grace is raised by a nudist swingers couple who are kind but often absent to pursue their own adult lives, and Gilbert is raised by a Christian fundamentalist family who abuse him and force him to do grunt work of putting stickers on their apples for very little pay, which he is expected to give to the church collection jar weekly.

    Grace, while receiving letters from Gilbert and hoping to be reunited, makes friends with Pinky (Jacki Weaver), an eccentric and kind older woman who has lived a colorful life despite setbacks (both her husbands died by accident; she got fired from many jobs; she lost her pinky finger while dancing), and she becomes Grace's foster mother when her foster parents retire to join a nudist colony. She acts as a supportive rock for Grace, as Grace grows up and becomes an obsessive hoarder with her snails and snail-related collectibles, wearing a snail hat with eyes on wires on top.

   This film was incredibly touching to me. It has a very dark, weird, sepia-toned look to it, and it's a film meant for adults, not a children's film. As Grace and Gilbert grow up, they face more challenges and struggles, and I related a lot to Grace wanting to cocoon herself at home with her favorite things, especially as her trauma has kept her from really living her life. Pinky's words to her at the end of the film (Pinky dies as an old woman right at the beginning of the film, then the film starts at the twins' childhood to get to how Pinky came to be in Grace's life) really resonated with me:

    "No, I won't tell you the horrors I remember, but do want to tell you what it's like to feel imprisoned, caged. It was simply dreadful. But in the years since, I've learnt that the worst cages are the ones we create for ourselves. You have created a cage for yourself, Gracie. Your cage has never been locked . . . but your fears have kept you trapped . . . Start anew. A bit of self-pity's OK, but it's time to move on. There'll be pain, but that's life. You have to face it head-on. Be brave."

    The film was loosely based on Eliot's own life, and was Oscar-nominated for Best Animated Film. Eliot had won an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film for his 2003 short film Harvie Krumpet. The lead actors are great in the film, but especially Jacki Weaver, who was fantastic as Pinky and brings a lot of heart to this wonderful oddball character who acknowledges that life is hard, but doesn't want to dwell on looking backwards. She will help Grace by making comparisons to snails, saying that snails only move forward, and don't go backwards over their own paths.

    I'm glad I checked out this film, it was a strange little gem to watch.

Thoughts on The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

    On Criterion, I watched The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, a 1972 West German New Wave psychological romantic film written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, based on his play of the same name. The film centers on the title character Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen), a fashion designer who lives in a luxurious apartment in Bremen, and the whole film takes place in the apartment. She is rich, very thin, and lounges around in gowns and wigs, ordering around her silent personal assistant Marlene (Irm Hermann), who keeps a taciturn expression.

    Petra is twice-married, her first husband having died in a car accident when Petra was pregnant with their daughter, Gaby, and she recently divorced her second husband because of his controlling nature. Through her cousin Sidonie (Katrin Schaake), she meets Sidonie's friend Karin (Hanna Schygulla), a young 23-year old woman, who just returned to Germany after having lived in Sydney for five years with her husband. Petra is immediately attracted to Karin, telling her she should be a model, and the two develop a quick relationship, with Petra offering to financially support her while she trains to become a model. They talk about their lives, Petra having grown up happy and comfortable while Karin came from a traumatic background. Petra projects an obsession onto Karin, being enraptured by her, while Karin is flattered by the compliments but doesn't feel the same for Petra.

    The film is more of a melodrama, and Petra's obsession with Karin does feel over-the-top, especially when she's only known her for a short time, but codependency is a big part of the story, as Petra feels lonely, often at home with Marlene at her beck and call, and clings to Karin's youth and beauty, despite that Petra herself is only 35 and still very beautiful and young herself.

    The film is set in the then-present of the 1970s, but has a 1930s look, with the women having short, styled hair, wearing cloche hats and long gowns, projecting more of a 1920s-1930s glamour to them, it did confuse me at first to figure out the time period of the story.

    I found Marlene more fascinating in her silence, especially when observing this doomed sapphic affair from a distance but unable to comment on it to stay professional, but judging it all the same.

    I liked the film, but the melodrama was too much for me, and made me talk back at the screen like, "C'mon, Petra, get it together" when she's moaning over wanting Karin to love her back or wanting her to return. It was a nice film to watch, but not really for me.

Thoughts on No Other Choice

     On Hulu, I watched No Other Choice, a 2025 South Korean black comedy thriller directed by Park Chan-wook, co-written by Park, Lee Kyoung-mi, Don McKellar, and Lee Ja-hye, based on the 1997 novel The Ax by Donald Westlake. The film centers on Man-su (Lee Byung-hun), a veteran employee of 25 years at a papermaking company, who lives a happy life in his childhood home that he bought, living in bliss with his wife Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin) and his children Si-one (Woo Seung Kim) and Ri-one (Choi So Yul). When his company is bought out and he refuses to fire his fellow employees, he is laid off, and promises his family that he will find another job in the paper industry within three months.

    Thirteen months later, he hasn't found a new job, and his family is in dire financial straits. His house will be foreclosed in three months; Mi-ri has taken a part-time job as a dental assistant, and Ri-one, who is an autistic cello prodigy, is recommended by her instructor for advanced lessons that the family cannot afford. Man-su has been trying to get a job as a manager with another papermaking company, Moon Paper, a Japanese-owned company expanding in South Korea, and is jealous of his competition, and is driven to stalk and murder them in order to win the job.

    His competition are all ordinary middle-management types who aren't better off than he is. Beom-mo (Lee Sung-min) is an unemployed alcoholic with an actress wife A-ra (Yeom Hye-ran, in one of the film's standout performances outside of Lee Byung-hun) who resents his sloth attitude; Si-jo (Cha Seung-won) works at a shoe store and isn't happy, but is fine to have a job and get by; and Seon-chul (Park Hee-soon), who works at Moon Paper and may get promoted. The scenarios are over-the-top and ridiculous, and the movie, at nearly two and a half hours long, does extend past a point where it feels like three victims is one too many, where Man-su desperately wants a job to be a cog in the capitalist corporate machine, romanticizing how important paper is to create cigarette filters and books and other items, where he feels he doesn't have any other purpose in his life outside of his job and his family, and his obsession reveals more that he's just a horrible and demented person.

    I really liked the dark comedy, and how the film keeps repeating the line "no other choice," taking on different meanings for it. The cinematography by Kim Woo-hyung was fantastic, like the zoom-out tracking shots that looked unique and impressive, layering characters in superimposed images, or other playful ways of filmmaking that I enjoyed.

    I was disappointed that this film didn't get an Oscar nomination, though there were a lot of great international films that got nominated or short-listed. I'm glad I watched this and checked it out.

Thoughts on Portrait of Jason

     On Criterion, I watched Portrait of Jason, a 1967 documentary directed by Shirley Clarke, where she and her then-partner, actor Carl Lee, interview Jason Holliday, a gay Black hustler and aspiring cabaret performer, who tells stories about his life and his friends in a very charming, bon vivant kind of way, getting drunker throughout the 12-hour shooting of the interview in December 1966 at Clarke's Chelsea Hotel penthouse apartment in New York City. 

    His personality is loud, and as a gay Black man living in the 1960s, it's important that his personality takes up space, because he has had to live with racism and homophobia, and his attitude is a performance to protect his more vulnerable self. He tells stories of sex work and musician friends and his abusive parents, and he easily slips into impressions of Katharine Hepburn and other stars, putting on a show for Clarke and Lee.

    Throughout the film, the production keeps being interrupted, with off-screen talk from Clarke and Lee, the screen going to black with the audio heard, fading in and out of focus, re-starting shots, etc. It is interesting to watch a documentary from the 1960s that leaves all the messy bits in, as well as in the last third of the film, where Lee keeps antagonizing Holliday and telling him he's full of shit and cursing at him, trying to get him to open up about painful parts of his life, even as Holliday is very drunk and crying and being broken down emotionally. It's rough, as that part of the film becomes more raw and vulnerable to watch. It feels more exploitative, and yet Clarke left it in anyway, as if to feel more "real."

    I've read other reviews that explore this film in a much more insightful way than I can, bringing up themes of classism (Clarke came from a wealthy family and made this film where she enabled an addict hustler for a film to show white "intellectual" audiences); racism (Holliday came up in the Jim Crow-era South), homophobia, and blurring the lines between performance and reality.

    I really liked this film and found it fascinating, to watch for two hours, with an interview with a man who was interesting, and luckily lived a long life (he died in 1998 at age 74). The film was added to the National Film Registry in 2015 by the Library of Congress for its historical and cultural importance.