normal. is the most realistic film that I’ve seen during my time at LAAPFF. There’s almost a cinéma vérité-type of reality to the film—where even the most smallest conversations have painfully real awkward flourishes in them that scrub away any witty banter that usually define film dialogue. Director Mragendra Singh captures the banality and frustration […]
In the Land of Lost Angels plunges you into a world of black and white. It’s quite the bold move for director Bishrel Mashbat—especially when it comes to winning over modern audiences who are used to watching films in full color. But for the gritty, seedy type of story that he wants to tell, it […]
Staycation opens on a handjob. Or was it a blowjob? Rest assured that it probably doesn’t matter which it was, since by the end of the film millenial couple Luke (Anthony Ma) and Peggy (Grace Su) do so many lewd acts with one another that it’s hard to keep track (the best of which is […]
How many life problems can be solved through the music of Bruce Springsteen? As Gurinder Chadha‘s joyous film Blinded by the Light might suggest, the answer is, quite frankly, all of them. The film follows British Pakistani teenager Javed (Viveik Kalra), an optimistic kid who wants to become a writer—much to the disappointment of his […]
There’s no doubt that Doris Yeung‘s The Ugly Model is a documentary that tackles a difficult subject matter, but it seems to have lost its way somewhere between its conception and its execution. Doubling as an exposé of the demasculization of Asian American males as well as a semi-biography on its subject, Korean American adoptee […]