831 Contributions by: Isabella Endrinal (Page 47)

Staff & contributors

Isabella Endrinal is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. She’s now free from the corporate night shift. Previous articles have been published in outlets such as NANG Magazine. She’s currently catching up on some classic films… if she isn’t coping with the fact that the Haikyu anime will end soon.

In depictions of organized crime, we’re used to the stone-cold crime boss, and the conflicted, unwilling crime lord, but Miss Shampoo presents a new version of the gangster– one that’s fallen head over heels in love. The film plays out in hilarious ways, with the humor expected from writer-director Giddens Ko, and Daniel Hong and Vivian Sung are able to inject some heart into their performances with surprising chemistry. That being said, the film is clearly more interested in mocking organized crime, so the film feels more skewed towards Tai rather than Fen. It’s still really entertaining, though Miss Shampoo had so much more it could have shown, had it focused equally on Fen’s perspective.

Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama, Romance

Actor: Bai Jing Yi, Bruce He, Chih-ju Lin, Chu Chung-heng, Duan Chun-hao, Duncan Chow, Duncan Lai, Honduras, Hong Yu Hong, Hsia Teng Hung, Hsin-Ling Chung, Kai Ko, Ke-Li Miao, Kent Tsai, Mei-Man Jin, Teng-Hung Hsia, Tsai Chang-Hsien, Tzu-Chien Kuo, Vivian Sung, Wei-min Ying

Director: Giddens Ko

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The concept of Maaveeran is downright brilliant. As the timid comic strip writer is forced to be as brave as the hero he created, there’s something here that encourages its audience to listen to the yearnings already inside them. It allows for some cartoonish comedy that comes across as earnest. However, there's a certain hesitancy in the writing that makes the film’s second half a letdown. The film sticks too long to its protagonist’s cowardice that there’s so little time to wrap everything up. It’s still entertaining till the end, but a better sense of pacing would have kept the first half’s riveting comedy, and would have made a better case for being a hero.

Genre: Action, Drama

Actor: 'Jeeva' Ravi, Aditi Shankar, Balaji Sakthivel, Dhileban, Madhan Kumar Dhakshinamoorthy, Monisha Blessy, Mysskin, Ravi Teja, Saritha, Semmalar Annam, Sivakarthikeyan, Sunil Varma, Suresh Chakravarthy, Vijay Sethupathi, Yogi Babu

Director: Madonne Ashwin

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Stories like Il Mare and Your Name/Kimi no Na Wa work because, unlike other romances, the conflict is understandably difficult. After all, how the heck can anyone fight against time and space? Love You Long Time takes a stab at the unique time-bending premise, with one main difference: the movie’s main lovers can talk to each other directly through an old pair of two-way radios. There’s no need for the two to depend on physical letters or texts. This difference is interesting – immediately, it allows Director JP Habac to play with cinematography, editing, and acting, to make us fall in love with the couple. Split between 2018 and 2022, the film makes meaningful points about the past and present, the years lost to the pandemic, and separation. However, without spoiling anything, the film’s third-act plot twists don’t land as well as they could have. Having them back to back made the plot nearly incomprehensible, and sadly, doesn’t resolve the conflict driving the film.

Genre: Drama, Romance

Actor: Ana Abad-Santos, Arlene Muhlach, Carlo Aquino, Meanne Espinosa, Patrick Quiroz

Director: Jaime P. Habac Jr.

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Being bitten by a zombie is quite troublesome, but more so if you happen not to turn completely into the creature, keeping human sanity while still trying not to succumb to the creature’s hunger. While this premise isn’t totally original, we haven’t seen this in a steampunk version of Japan, where their successful industrial revolution and urbanification has been halted due to the zombies, named as Kabane here. It’s an interesting end to the alternate history franchise, made much more exciting with bloody fight scenes and intriguing reimaginings of the country, but viewers new to the franchise would be going in blind, and would likely be puzzled with the inconsistency and pacing.

Genre: Action, Animation, Drama, Science Fiction

Actor: Eiji Hanawa, Hideaki Tezuka, Kanae Oki, Kensuke Sato, Maaya Uchida, Mariya Ise, Maxwell Powers, Rikako Aida, Ryota Osaka, Sayaka Senbongi, Shin-ichiro Miki, Shin'ichirō Miki, Tasuku Hatanaka, Toshiki Masuda

Director: Tetsuro Araki

Rating: R

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For the longest time, when a woman loses their husband, they lose everything, as the name, assets, and estate used to be held by and passed on by men exclusively. It was outstanding when Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin was able to keep the estate due to the brilliance of her innovative champagne making techniques, and more so when the champagne house she built lasts past two centuries, so it was a bit of a letdown to see the Widow Clicquot falter in telling this incredible story. The costumes, sets, and score worked well to craft the emotional turbulence Clicquot goes through, and Madame herself is excellently portrayed by Haley Bennett, but her invention and the actual history is mostly brushed aside by the awkward, stilted romances Clicquot supposedly shares with her husband when alive, and her wine merchant when he died. Widow Clicquot deserves better.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Anson Boon, Ben Miles, Cara Seymour, Cecily Cleeve, Chris Larkin, Christopher Villiers, Haley Bennett, Ian Conningham, Leo Suter, Natasha O'Keeffe, Nicholas Farrell, Paul Rhys, Phoebe Nicholls, Sam Riley, Tom Sturridge

Director: Thomas Napper

Rating: R

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While best known for his American action thrillers in the early 2000s, writer-director Lee Tamahori returned to his roots in 2016 with the critically acclaimed Māori-centric 1950s historical drama Mahana. Tamahori continues to explore his people’s stories with The Convert. Set right before Britain colonized New Zealand, the film explores the dynamics between the white settlers and the differing Māori tribes, with much more accuracy and sympathy than older films towards the indigenous community, culture, and characters. It’s shot quite beautifully, with stunning landscapes and decent fight scenes, and the performances, especially that of Guy Pearce, make the film watchable. That being said, the film still mostly stems from the white Thomas Munro, whose perspective mostly comes about by passive observation rather than active participation in the story.

Genre: Action, Drama

Actor: Aidee Walker, Antonio Te Maioha, Dean O'Gorman, Duane Evans Jr., Guy Pearce, Jack Barry, Jacqueline McKenzie, Jared Turner, Lawrence Makoare, Mark Mitchinson, Mark Sole, Matthew Chamberlain, Renee Lyons, Stephen Lovatt, Tania Nolan, Te Kohe Tuhaka, Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne, Will Wallace

Director: Lee Tamahori

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There’s no easy way to talk about racism – it’s a nebulous set of ideas that shift and change and manifests in numerous ways that many people can’t even identify as racism because of how prevalent it is. But Dr. Ibram X. Kendi has been able to write down a fairly comprehensive narrative that outlines key historical moments that shaped the world’s concept of race and Blackness, and this narrative is brought to the screen through vivid animations and strategic sequencing by director Roger Ross Williams in new Netflix release Stamped from the Beginning. It’s a provocative, passionate investigation, and it’s one that should be required viewing.

Genre: Animation, Documentary

Actor: Alexa Rachelle Jennings, Angela Davis, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Ibram X. Kendi, Jennifer L. Morgan, Julian Joseph, Rafa Marinho

Director: Roger Ross Williams

Rating: R

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