arungeorge13

Take Out meets The Florida Project in a Shih-Ching Tsou & Sean Baker collaboration that's full of lively real-life energy and saturated colours. Tsou and Baker co-write, with the former directing and the latter editing, and extract the sweetest (and cutest) performance from Nina Ye, playing a young kid named I-Jing who's told (by her orthodox grandpa) that using the left hand leads to the devil's work. Her mom Shu-Fen (an excellent Janel Tsai) runs a noodle stand in the bustling Taipei night market, while her sister I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma) is an angsty teenager who works as a 'betel nut beauty.' Another key character here is Johnny (Brando Huang), a hawker whose shop is adjacent to the noodle shop, and gradually grows to be a spirited presence in the womens' lives.

Films shot on the iPhone (Boyle's 28 Years Later, Soderbergh's Unsane, Baker's own Tangerine, and recently Neil Burger's Inheritance) have a unique aesthetic to them. A big chunk of the film revolves around I-Jing's little antics with the camera zooming in on her adorably expressive face, and coupled with Taipei's beautifully lived-in settings, the film is a sight to behold, even on smaller screens. The candid beauty of East Asian (and South East Asian, for that matter) countries is just absorbing as hell. The more you've travelled to these places, the more you can relate.

Drama keeps brewing in the household between the three ladies, with money, integrity, and even the family tree being called into question. All three get well-etched characters and arcs. The climactic culmination even brings an unexpected reveal, but life keeps moving. The writing treats ACCEPTANCE as a true virtue, and sometimes in life, that's exactly how it is. The scene where I-Jing and I-Ann go back together to return I-Jing's stolen goods is SO SWEET.. might be my favourite scene in a film all year.

The Shadow's Edge is a Larry Yang directorial that mostly respects the audience's intelligence while also being a fun actioner plus surveillance thriller. Jackie Chan plays a retired surveillance expert who's brought back into the mix after a bunch of professional thieves execute a high profile robbery. Tony Leung Ka-fai plays the chief antagonist, setting the scene for two old-timers to give us the feisty showdown that we sat down for. The action blocks are, for the most part, neatly done, and given the age of the leading duo, it's wise to expect fast cuts.

But before we get to all that, there's also an elaborate plot and character development worth getting into. Chan's Wong and a rookie officer Qiuguo (Zhang Zifeng) have history, while the gang of thieves have an unsual relationship with their mastermind / godfather Fu Lung-sang (Leung). All of this plays well into the tracking, surveillance, and tech-driven screenplay. Since the writing and direction are generally solid, even some over-the-top elements that mostly unfurl towards the end can be forgiven.

Big credit where it's due -- this might be the most fun Jackie Chan flick in years. In the first act and sporadically throughout the rest, he and Leung take the back seat for the younger ones in the ensemble to shine. Zhang Zifeng, Ci Sha, and Jun are all fantastic in their respective roles, wooing us with both their screen presence and arcs. One or two late twists (including a post-credit scene) slightly dilute the overall package, however, there's no denying how enjoyable The Shadow's Edge is, even at 2h 21m. Yep, you get some end-credit bloopers too.

Ven as the American remake of 2003's bizarre South Korean sci-fi comedy Save the Green Planet!, the Yorgos Lanthimos flick has more to offer in 2025 to a world that has seemingly recovered from a pandemic, yet is completely LOST in how to be HUMAN. The three main characters here are a big pharma company's CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma "bald is the new sexy" Stone), conspiracy theorist Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons, in one of his most superlative performances) and his autistic cousin Don (Aidan Delbis, a breakout effort from an actor who's actually on the autism spectrum). Yes, the premise is absurd, but it's also in the absurdist-loving hands of Yorgos Lanthimos.. so, what do you expect?

Surprisingly, Bugonia happens to be Lanthimos' most accessible film thus far. It leans into the bizarre, of course, but more than two-thirds of the film is actually a hostage thriller with plenty of conversational exchanges. This gives writer Will Tracy the opportunity to put out some sensationally sharp satire on the state of corporatism, how the poor continue to get obliterated in modern society, how the ability to make life-altering decisions lay in the hands of a powerful few, how humans are just eventual lab-rats for "experiments," and many such deep perspectives.

The finale can have multiple interpretations too (..not going to spoil it). However, I'll go ahead and admit that I found the "CEO in captivity" portions the most intriguing. Plemons is an unstoppable force here, and equally matched with a red-hot, dominating energy by Stone. DoP Robbie Ryan, collaborating with Lanthimos for the third time since Poor Things), conjures up some intense VistaVision magic, while Jerskin Fendrix's unconventional (and orchestral) score serves as a special ingredient. If you're familiar with Lanthimos' generally nihilistic approach to storytelling, Bugonia should very much be up your alley.