Tag Archives: Drama

Tokyo Pop (1988)

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Opens with a New 35th Anniversary 4K Restoration by Indie Collect in New York at BAM Rose Cinemas on August 4th and in Los Angeles at the American Cinematheque on August 11th, followed by national expansion.

Watching Fran Rubel Kuzui’s gave me a mysterious sense of déjà vu as her movie “Tokyo Pop” is very much about a misplaced American experiencing culture shock and alienation in an Asian country. Then I realize that Sofia Coppola pretty much conveyed almost the exact same narrative in her acclaimed “Lost in Translation.” Fran Rubel Kuzui’s “Tokyo Pop” from 1988 was an obvious influence that apparently never really was discussed very much. So much of “Tokyo Pop” is similar in tone, aesthetic and the idea of using media as a means of helping people to connect. With “Tokyo Pop” characters Wendy and Hiro use music as a means of connecting in a world where they’re separated by language and culture.

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Aporia (2023) [Fantasia Film Festival 2023]

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Often times time travel movies can get bogged down in particulars and more complicated ideas but “Aporia” is one of the few where there’s not so much of the focus on how, but as to the fallout. Writer-Director Jared Moshé prides himself in making “Aporia” a film that’s mainly about the consequences about time travel more than anything. “Aporia” is a fascinating and touching mix of films like “Primer,” and “Sliding Doors,” to where this version of time travel doesn’t so much reverse time, but alters the reality with it. “Aporia” offers a time travel movie that isn’t so much about altering time but about the ideas of destiny and death.

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Oppenheimer (2023)

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Christopher Nolan has an eye for spectacle and an eye for scale, and he evokes worlds that are massive and almost always on the brink of destruction. With “Oppenheimer” ambitiously ventures in to a more personal film that is a lot about power and a world almost always on the brink of destruction thanks to man delving deep in to the power that they are capable of. Nolan trades spectacle for a more personal albeit just as intense dramatic thriller about “Father of the Atomic Bomb” J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist that invariably opened up a Pandora’s Box with his hand in the Manhattan Project.

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Stay Online (2023) [Fantasia Film Festival 2023]

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Director Yeva Strielnikova’s “Stay Online” is literally a digital thriller for the modern age, and it’s never been more relevant a commentary on the importance of the internet than before. The digital thriller has become something of a niche sub-genre, and “Stay Online” practices that formula, but rather than a horror movie, implements the device as a means of exploring a modern war unfolding before our eyes. America has managed to stay embroiled in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia through various social outlets. One of the most important facets has been Tik Tok, which has dispensed unfiltered information before our eyes.

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Lovely, Dark, and Deep (2023) [Fantasia Film Festival 2023]

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According to David Paulides, the author of the Missing 411 books, he estimates that there are over 1,600 unexplained disappearances in North American National Parks. In “Lovely, Dark and Deep,” director Teresa Sutherland offers up one of the more complex and haunting supernatural thrillers of the year, all set within the confines of a national park. What makes “Lovely, Dark and Deep” so haunting is that director Sutherland sets the entirety of her film within a national forest, all of which seems so suffocating and all consuming from the moment character Lennon drives in to its threshold.

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