taiwanese new wave movies always felt very warm, romantic, and pro-human (not misanthropic) to me. even though the critic buzzword for all of them is "alienation." it's more like the romance of crushing loneliness... that is why i love tsai ming liang's movies. only someone with severe difficulties relating to other people despite having a very heavy heart could really understand.
the feeling of your empathy reaching out and not finding anything. the feeling of wishing someone would talk to you.
vive l'amour is the most genius and purest culmination of these concepts. it is about 3 people living in the same apartment without knowing it. extreme distance despite extreme closeness. really struck me having watched it when i just moved into a dorm in the city (much closer to lots of new people) and yet was the most isolated and alone i had ever been in my entire life. the contradiction between closeness and distance makes the distance hurt even more. there is a lot more than this going on in ming-liang's films but this was what really drew me to them.
i haven't had a movie leave me with existential dread like the irishman did last night. after 3 hours i had successfully self-inserted as the main character and could sense how terrifying it is
to get to the end of your life completely alone and filled with regrets. jimmy hofa (al pacino's character) is the only light in the film. once he's killed you are left to sit quietly with frank and wonder where it all went wrong.
i watched smile 2. i hadn’t seen the first but i did watch a video reviewing it and knew how it ended. i thought the whole scary smile thing was really corny but after a while you do get over it. this movie has a very similar story and aesthetic to the substance: both center around a famous female celebrity that is experiencing strange things that she can’t share with anyone. the substance was a much better movie overall, but there’s still a lot to like with smile 2.
if you’re someone that likes your horror movies filled with jump scares and plot twists then this is your movie. the smile demon makes whoever it possesses hallucinate so you start to realize very early on that you can’t trust that what is going on on screen is real. this will feel like a cop out to some especially towards the end but i found the mindbending captivating. unlike with longlegs there weren’t any moments where i threw back my head and rolled my eyes or paused to laugh. it all makes sense given the rules in this world. it
the two best scenes in the movie were the
”dream” sequence where she’s back in the wreck that she caused killing her boyfriend. it all looks great. the bones sticking out her leg, her inability to move, her boyfriend mutilated face. it’s like i’m watching a liveleak video in 4k. her cries when she looks over to see her boyfriend were so realistic. my next favorite has to be the mother’s murder scene. so brutal once you realize the mic did it. like i said the whole smile gimmick sucks but the mom stabbing her eyeball out of her own head with a piece of glass overcompensates for it. the realization that the daughter killed her was great, im glad they went with that. i was worried the mom would have just killed herself due to the demon possessing her somehow and that was it.
i also really appreciated the main actress. i didn’t recognize her but it looks like she was in lemonade mouth and does fit that former disney channel star vibe. naomi scott also performs all the songs her self, which is shocked me because the song sounded like something by ellise. the music is generic pop music but it still outdoes itself. the tracks are barely noticeable in the movie outside of a few scenes that don’t outstay their welcome and they’re all on par with “real” female pop singers in the top 50 today. i’m harping on this partially because m. night shyamalan’s trap was made to promote his daughter’s music career and the first hour is just her music. if you want to boost a musician’s career smile 2 is how you do it. give people enough to be curious. in both cases the audience wants to see a horror movie not a musical, the music should be a happy addition. anywho she does great in the role. i can feel her anxiety and fear. she’s not annoying.
now there isn’t really anything this film is trying to say. possibly something about how trauma and mental illness can destroy you if you let it go unchecked and spread to others creating a cycle, but most will find this lacking
if you’re looking for a good gory mindbending pop horror movie that’s not trying to be anything more, this will scratch that itch.
