Back in January, when I first saw Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, the world felt different. The world was different. Coronavirus hadn’t been identified in the States yet. “Social distancing” ...
How do you tell a story entirely through screens? Not the professional movie camera screens that make everything look pretty and well-defined, but the screens we know and look at every day: our cameras, our ...
Way back in 2007, as part of the press junket for Ham Tran’s epic film Journey from the Fall, actress Kieu Chinh was asked if the film “could help the world to better understand what ...
Have you ever met Grace Lee? It’s no surprise if you have. Grace Lee is one of the most common names given to Asian American girls – and why wouldn’t it be? The term ‘grace’ ...
At 13 years old, Ernest (Jeffrey Chyau) is, like any kid his age, struggling with the pains of growing up. But unlike most protagonists in American movies, Ernest is a middle class Chinese American kid ...
There is a chill that runs through Kim So Yong’s In Between Days, frigid air that occupies the space between characters, between film and viewer. The film takes place in Toronto, although it could be ...
When I watched Jennifer Phang’s Advantageous (2015), I was supposed to be working, finishing up a deck to be presented that afternoon. That day, the US had pulled out of the Paris climate accord. Over ...
When Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift first came out 14 years ago, I was ten. Now, I don’t remember much about those days–save the odd holiday or the never-ending studying–but what I do remember is ...
Kim Ji-young (Jung Yu-mi), Born 1982, lives at home with her two-year-old daughter. Having sacrificed her dream of being an author to work at a marketing agency, and then sacrificed her life at the agency ...
At first glance, director Hsieh Pei-ju’s Heavy Craving seems to suggest a drama centered around food–that much can be presumed by the film’s hunger-inducing title. But that pretense suddenly drops as the movie starts off ...