After Yang (2022) - Movie Review

A film that gets described as a “metaphysical science fiction drama” in its Wikipedia page is like a siren call to me. And the story attached to it certainly doesn’t disappoint from that perspective, exploring what happens to a family when their adopted son passes away. Well, not so much ‘passes away’ as he shuts down and won’t turn back on, as this is set in a near-future where a company exists that basically sells artificial siblings wholesale, and said child (the titular Yang, played by Justin H. Min) is a ‘technosapien’ that couple Jake (Colin Farrell) and Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) originally bought so that their other adopted child Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) had someone she could learn about Chinese culture from.

I'm Thinking Of Ending Things (2020) - Movie Review

Charlie Kaufman: The hopeless romantic. Emphasis on hopeless. In the midst of his invariably abstract looks at memory, self-loathing, and the capacity of media itself, his depiction of love always feels like it’s being viewed through a neurotic screen. Romantic leads who can’t allow themselves to experience love, and when they do, it only serves to rip the guts out of that feeling being real in the first place. His latest feature finds him well and truly in this mode of storytelling, going even further down the abstract path to deliver one of the single most pessimistic depictions of love I've ever sat through.