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Back to the Feature: Daughter of Shanghai (1937)

Douglas Fairbanks’ 1924 star vehicle The Thief of Bagdad is an interesting, technically impressive, if sometimes underwhelming silent era swashbuckler. Fairbanks is charismatic in lieu of his obvious miscasting for the role, yet there is really only one other performance that stands out and gives the film some much needed colour. And that is a young Anna May Wong at the start of her career playing the fiendish slave girl to the princess who needs saving. She is striking for what the role demands of her, emanating beyond its blunt archetype. Unfortunately, this would be the pattern for Wong for much of the next decade and a half -a scene-stealer captivating audiences but kept at a distance due to the pervasive racism of the Hollywood industry at that time. Wong became a star, as much a household name as many of her white colleagues, but she was never allowed to be THE star as a Chinese-American woman. The system actively blockaded it. Leading parts weren’t being written for Asian women...
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This is Not the Way

I am not caught up with the series this movie is based on. I did watch the first season of Boba Fett Toy: The Show (before Disney literally made Boba Fett Toy: The Show ) and liked it fine, but never bothered to keep up with it afterwards due to the second season’s much-publicized use of extensive CGI ghoul effects and the apparently increasingly insular nature of its references tying into Dave Filoni’s various Star Wars projects, in which I had no experience with or interest in. But The Mandalorian is by a wide margin the most popular of the Star Wars shows on Disney+, enough so that it has permeated the pop culture primarily through the marketability of its very cute sidekick character Grogu (formerly informally “Baby Yoda”).  If Disney were to give any of those shows the cinematic treatment, it makes sense that that is what they would go with. And for parts of this movie, I would say that impulse proves apt. For most of the movie however, it does not. The Mandalorian and Grogu...
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I Love Boosters is a Messy though Thrillingly Offbeat Socialist Polemic

Boots Riley is someone with a very distinct sense of style. This is evident just from looking at the man -with his often colourful, zoot suit-inspired clothing aesthetic, his intense sideburns, and signature large hat, he’s the kind of person who stands out in a particular way -and none of these choices are accidental. He has stated openly that much of this look has come about through his relationship with boosters, i.e: people who shoplift exclusive or expensive clothing from high-end retailers to resell at a discount to those of low-income status. He has a considerable degree of respect for boosters, whom he characterizes as latter-day Robin Hoods. It inspired a song by his hip-hop group The Coup twenty years ago, that he has now translated into a movie. I Love Boosters is partly a love letter to the people who do this, but it is mostly a diatribe against the politics of the fashion industry, its bizarre excesses, and its exploitation of workers and the public. The movie argues for a...
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A Twisted Curse of Selfish Obsession

It’s a bit amusing that Curry Barker, a director in his mid-twenties who has just made one of the relatively few good Monkey’s Paw movies in recent years came to the idea not from the classic horror story of that name by W.W. Jacobs but from the Simpsons segment in “Treehouse of Horror II”. At this stage most people of my generation and younger probably do know the reference more from The Simpsons than literature, but he might be the only one open about it. But honestly it’s fitting that the impetus for Barker’s Obsession would come from a comedy show given his movie is very aware of the twisted humour inherent to the premise. It is after all perhaps the quintessential variant of horror irony -you wish for something you think will be good, but because you haven’t considered all the angles and implications it winds up turning out horrifying. Every fantasy has a terrible dark side it posits, and there is something creepily funny to that. And Barker also has fun with the other absurdit...
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On a Mission from God

In the long history of revenge movies, not often has the prospect of taking revenge felt genuinely frightening. And not in the sense of the protagonists being caught and facing tangible consequence for what they consider a righteous goal but society at large will not; no, in a moral sense of doing harm and the horror of that, no matter what harmful act beget the whole idea entirely. It’s a very interesting theme that sets Aleshea Harris’s Is God Is apart from other movies of its type, and gives it a tension so many revenge thrillers don’t bother to address. I’m especially curious about how it comes across on stage, Harris’s filmmaking debut being an adaptation of her own off-Broadway play that won a handful of Obie Awards in 2018. Certainly through stretches of this movie you wouldn’t be able to tell it was crafted for a more visually limited medium -although other aspects certainly bear the hallmarks (a series of ESP exchanges that likely originate as asides). But the themes are clea...
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Fans vs. Critics

From the moment that critic Robert Daniels’s one-star review of the movie Michael was shared on Twitter, he was harangued by a tidal wave of backlash from both intense fans of Michael Jackson and ordinary users who merely liked the film he panned. His critiques were broadly comparable to other critics: aimed at the conflict-of-interest oversight of the Jackson family on the movie’s production, the bland characterization of the singer’s life and family, and the hagiographic attitude sapping away any dimension from Jackson along with his flaws. “A filmed playlist in search of a story” he characterizes it sharply. Against the furor, he stood his ground and engaged with some comments, most of which were in bad faith. It was blatantly obvious that a lot of them hadn’t actually read the review, assuming Daniels took issue with the movie’s omission of Jackson’s later controversies, legal issues, and pedophilia allegations -things he barely alludes to. Daniels was not alone in this -critics ...
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A Look at the Cannes Film Festival 2026

It's mid-May, the heart of the summer, and the weather is beautiful on the French Riviera for the 79th Cannes Film Festival. And once again I can only admire it from afar. One of these days I will see it in person, but for now I can only fawn on what is likely to be a critical preview of the movies to gradually come through the rest of the year. The big headline out of Cannes this year so far seems to be on the lack of Hollywood present. No major American studio films are in competition or premiering there, when typically there are at least a few. In past years, Furiosa and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny as well as the last several Mission: Impossible movies have featured in the festival a few weeks ahead of their broad domestic release. But this year and by its own choice, mainstream Hollywood has no presence at all, despite the official poster referencing Hollywood classic Thelma and Louise . But this isn't a bad thing. Cannes is an international festival with inte...
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