Repo Man (1984) directed by Alex Cox is a film about white suburban punks, aliens, the government, and being an asshole. Every character in it only looks out for themself. There’s no conventional antagonist or protagonist, everyone’s kind of just a bad guy in the film. Whether it’s Otto, Bud, Leila, or the Rodriguez brothers, everyone just has one goal— to find that Chevy Malibu car.

It doesn’t matter what it takes to find it, everyone’s just willingly okay with throwing everyone and anyone under the bus. The film is so hedonistic and so perfectly punk– because of how it doesn’t care about what the audience might think. It mixes absurd graphics with strange gags such as all grocery food having labels of what it is and having no brands. Repo Man has a world of its own and every person living in it is just an asshole.

Otto, the main character of the film doesn’t care about anyone, not even his parents, his friends, or his girlfriend. He’s just either angry or horny, there’s no in-between. There’s no sense of morality that surrounds the film.  Everyone kind of just lifts their middle finger at everyone as an automatic response to anything. When Otto’s friend was dying in the floor of the supermarket, his friend’s last words were about how he had no choice but be this way because society made him like that. Otto says “That’s bullshit! You’re just a white suburban punk like me.” That made me laugh and think that everyone in the film was pretty much white except maybe the Rodriguez brothers, Lite, and Marlene and yet, everyone chose to have this punk lifestyle of being fraudulent and ratchet. Otto could have lived a nice suburban white life but he chose to be the opposite of everything society upholds as respectable.

This entire film does kind of scream a big “fuck you!” to Hollywood conventions. While I never rooted for anyone, it was entertaining and fun to see everyone get what they deserved. I think the least hateable character was Miller. He was the only one who was able to start the Chevy Malibu to its descent into the sky when it had gone mad and started zapping everyone trying to get close to it. Miller was the only one who had pure intentions of getting to that car and maybe that’s why the aliens trusted him to start it without getting zapped into nothingness.

It’s true, the life of the repo man is always intense and it was really thrilling to watch the lives of these repo men do all sorts of stupid stunts and have no one really win. I’m starting to think that the people we call crazy on earth here are probably the one’s who just know things and the reason why aliens aren’t coming to earth is because everyone’s so stupid like everyone in Repo Man.

I heard a lot of people hated this film and I don’t blame them. We’re all so used to finding characters we want to relate to in films and television shows but for me, it’s also fun seeing everyone get what they deserve. It’s also fun to see green cars fly into space in the lowest possible efforts of trying to make it seem realistic. Repo Man was raunchy and couldn’t care less about what people thought about the film and I think that was one of its main charms that appealed most to me. It’s not for everyone and it didn’t have to be for everyone anyway.

Before I begin, I just want to say that River Phoenix was one of my first crushes ever as a child after watching Stand By Me (1986) that while watching My Own Private Idaho (1991), I felt like tearing up because of how I had to keep remembering that River Phoenix was actually dead and he died having a seizure due to drug overdose and his character, Mikey Waters was a narcoleptic.

My Own Private Idaho might be one of the saddest gay films I have ever seen. It follows the relationship of two prostitutes, Mikey Waters and Scott Favor. I’m not sure what they were, supposed lovers but apparently, it was only one sided. It’s not like Call Me By Your Name (2017) where it feels a bit more bittersweet but sad. This film was just sad. Mikey just wants to be loved and have someone look after him. There are flashbacks of a house and his mother. It’s old scrappy footage and its grainy and it seems even more distant and maybe even his only good memory that Mikey has before his narcoleptic attacks. Being a prostitute, Mikey lives on the streets, has no real friends, and every relationship he has with a person is temporary and for the sake of surviving. When he comes across Scott, that changes and Mikey actually gains attachments and might even be in love with Scott.

The film was a Shakespearean adaptation and sometimes there was switch from modern everyday language to the Shakespearean dialogue. I found this quite confusing and at some points of the film, it made it a bit draggy for me because I’m not a Shakespearean linguist but everything before and after the Shakespearean dialogues were nice to watch. I think it’s just hard to dissect it when you’re like me whose never really read Shakespeare for fun aside from school work.  

The editing is quite unconventional and sometimes, it’s out of this world. Everything kind of feels like a mix of reality and fantasy, we’re all caught up in between and at some point, we just give up on trying to figure out what’s real and accept the film as it is. There is one scene where we are in a magazine shop and on the covers are all topless men and each topless man just starts talking about their background of being a prostitute. It’s comical yet sad to hear those things. The world this film builds is strange and also, really depressing and the film does not hold back from making it the most depressing film on earth. Mikey, not only has a medical condition of getting seizures whenever he gets triggered by images of houses and his mother, the person he loves does not love him back and he’s poor.

There is a clear contrast between him and Scott. While Scott also sells his body on the street, he is also the son of a rich mayor and he can turn his back on this life any time and be welcomed back. This life of being a vagabond is a choice Scott can make but not a choice that Mikey can make because it is his life and he has no fallback. The film is a pure tragedy and we don’t really see any happy endings which left me really miserable by the end of it. In the end, it was just the story of how two boys passed each other in life. Mikey will forever be at the bottom of society because he was born that way and no one knowing what will happen next in his narcoleptic episodes while Scott will live a life of pretending to have never been associated with the people of the streets.

I always had a pang of fear every time Mikey had a seizure because I never knew what would happen to him. The nature of his job had to bring him to the scariest places of the city and he had to sell his body in order to live, what possible things could happen to his body while he was asleep. Mikey never had any control of anything even if he tried.

My Own Private Idaho was able to touch on the disparity between the rich and the poor as well as talk about the hardships of gay people. Maybe Scott did love Mikey but chose not to because it would be bad for his image? We will never really know Scott anymore after he chose not to recognize the face of his old friends and by turning his back on Bob towards the end of the film, he turned his back on everyone else from the community of outcasts.  

All in all, this entire film just made me sad and realized how people are born to be privileged enough to have choice on what to do with their lives and on the other hand, people are born not to have a choice at all.

I feel like this film is not for everyone because of how it is so different from the usual and conventional ways films are structured. It could be boring or interesting, depending on how the audience sees it. It took me a lot of time to process whether I liked it or not but I honestly have a lot more appreciation for it having to look a bit deeper into the imagery and seeing the relationship dynamic of Mikey and Scott. Or maybe, I just hate Shakespearean language.

I always appreciate a good film that talks about the daunting effects of capitalism and pokes at the inequality of the white hegemony of the imperialistic America. What makes it even funner is that it directed by an actual black man so we know this is genuine and not just another white old person directing it to make money off being “woke” as to they say in today’s lingo.

It was my second time viewing this film in class and the second time just made me love it all the more. There are so much things going on in Sorry To Bother You that it does require a second time viewing. There are many symbolisms that you will only be able to notice the second time viewing because the first time viewing, your head just spins around and you’re kind of left in some existential crisis about how horrible capitalism is and that we all live to serve it and there’s really no true escape because it all feels too late. The second time you view it, you can feel a sense of relief and realize that even if it’s hard to completely break the barriers created in society by capitalism in society, there is still hope as seen through Cassius Green also known as “Cash”.

Sorry To Bother You does not just critique capitalism from an economic standpoint but also from the perspective of the workers and what they go through being a part of this capitalistic society. We journey with Cassius Green going from being broke and needing money just to pay his rent and dues, and then to him climb the ladder and not being able to let go of the power and wealth that comes from being successful. It talks about the morality that one has to face when they are finally face to face with this opportunity that only few get offered. But this opportunity comes with a sacrifice which is mostly integrity, morality, values, and your conscience. As Cash advances to the top, he also loses everything else. His girlfriend, Detroit, is the complete opposite of him. She lives her life in protest and being true to herself. She does not care about money or success, she just wants to voice out what she believes in. We see the contrast in their way of thinking when Cash is in the position where he can either choose to join the rallies against Worry-Free and actually help worker unions rather than the the company that sells cheap labor and makes horse people but Cash chooses the latter.

In the film, we see that Cash never really realizes how he started to change after using his white voice. It just became a part of him and we see him try to convince everyone how he’s still the same guy. One of the major turning points in the film was when Cash went to visit the CEO of Worry-Free, Steve Lift’s house. Cash, only knowing he needed to use his white voice all the time, was told to rap based on a stereotype that white people put on black people. While having to put on the white mask all the time, this time he had to exoticize himself which made him have to screaming the N word which humiliated and basically degraded himself in front of white people. The racial dynamic is really seen throughout the film and while it is supposed to be taken as an exaggeration, we still feel the uneasiness that goes on with what Cash has to go through.

I never really found myself hating Cash. Despite him turning to a self-preserving asshole, I always still had a soft spot for him, always wanting to root for him that maybe he’ll do something about this whole mess. He’s not a bad guy, he just has to deal with this oppressive system.

It is a common struggle for man to come face to face with opportunity and losing their identity and integrity but Sorry To Bother You attacks it so well by bringing so much color and humor into it, making it a stressful but fun topic to watch. I did have an existential crisis but it also gave me a glimmer of hope that there is still a way to go back to who you were and maybe even become better.

Apart from all the hard hitting realities that it touches upon, I really enjoyed how this film was made. It made me feel like I was in a strange nightmare that was strangely, pleasant but also uneasy. The bright colors mixed with the dark haze, made it so intriguing to watch. It was dark but it was also, colorful and it looked pretty. It was a wonderful mess. The film wasn’t afraid of being unconventional. When Cash had to use his white voice, the film got literal white people to do the voice overs for the actors in need of white voices. They got David Cross who, undoubtedly is one of the whitest people on the planet.

Sorry To Bother You, with all its absurdity and its dark comedy magic realism, really made it eye opening to discuss the potential direction the world might be going. While it is a reflection of today’s society, it also shows how we might not be far from what might happen and how damaging it is for people to actually participate in this toxic culture but there’s also no clear cut escape. We just have to be aware for now and know that something could be done about it if we all realize it and make a collective effort to change it. Sorry To Bother You was not a bother at all but something that I hope everyone gets to watch one day. On the surface level, it’s so fun to watch but greater messages are rooted behind this narrative. Boots Riley warns us to use our white voice but at our own risk.

I was quite pleased to hear that the Endless was going to be a film about cults. Cults have strangely been such a fascination to me ever since middle school and having to watch a lot of those documentaries on the biopic channel made me so invested in learning why people would even decide to join them in the first place. My first thoughts would always be “man, I could never get into a cult, that’s crazy!” but then we have the Endless about these two really stupid brothers who decide to come back to the very cult that psychologically traumatized them for the rest of their lives.

If one escape was not enough, another escape had to convince them that cults were not a good thing. Justin and Aaron are both cult survivors who are trying to live their lives as normally as they can but the catch of the film is what if it was better to go back to the cult? A sign from a being or maybe God came to them when an old VHS tape is sent to their house and it is footage of their dear old cult, UFO Death Cult. Justin gets really worried about his brother’s mental health and gives in to Aaron’s whining about wanting to go back to the cult and guess what? They go back to the cult. The two brothers tended to have a lot of references to how “culty” their former cult was and even joked about it as if they are really self-aware about the dangers of it. They did not realize, the longer they stayed, how much they were actually not aware of how deep they had gotten into the cult again and just like the title, the film revolves around the endless, cycles and cycles of the same mistakes, same trap, and same weird beings trying to take control of them.

What I learned from documentaries about cults is that they always target people who want to have a sense of belonging and have no one else to go back to. Justin and Aaron do not have the best relationship and their mother passed away, while their father’s whereabouts are never talked about that. Due to all this, Aaron is really drawn to the cult. While Justin sees himself as a good brother for making him and his brother escape the first time, Aaron sees it as more of Justin trying to ruin his life. The film focuses a lot on the opposing views of the brothers and while it is dumb for Aaron to like cults, he has never been happier and Justin sees that which makes him think that maybe it’s okay for Aaron to stay a little longer. There is a lot of tension because Justin tries hard to play the father and mother role to Justin but Justin just wants to be an individual and make decisions for himself. Even towards the end of the film, we are lead to believe that Aaron will not leave the cult and Justin will and it is possible that they will live separate lives but in the end, brotherhood prevails and we see the two are able to resolve their differences by being equals. I think that Aaron just wanted equality that’s why he was so drawn to the cult in the first place because of how everyone was an equal there. It did not matter who you were, you were part of this “family” and there was a sense of belongingness.

There was a humanizing aspect to all these cult members being ordinary people, just helping each other out and having a good time but later on in the film, I started to notice how the characters just seemed lifeless and being full of a life. All of their actions felt like it was from some sort of home shopping network channel where they were trying really hard to sell these brothers something. Weed? Karaoke? Free-flowing food? Equal economy? UFO Death Cult seems like the perfect place to live. It is a utopia where everything also strangely feels familiar. I noticed in the cinematography, most of the shots are really wide. We rarely get close-ups and because of this distance, it always made me feel uneasy and as if there was something watching them.

This familiarity is later explained as how the people in the cult constantly relive a certain time frame and it happens over and over again. There are time loops and there is no escape unless you kill yourself but even if you do kill yourself, you just go back to the same time frame as you were. I guess the film never really explained how they were able to escape the first time and how they were so surprised that there were time loops. Unless, they were already in the time loop perhaps? And that’s why in their memories, that’s why they did escape. And also, why does Aaron only know one song ever which is House of the Rising Sun?

Each time loops had different intervals. One man had three seconds where he rammed himself into a tent, Kris and Mike had around a week, the UFO Death Cult had around 10 years, and shitty Carl had about 3 hours. Either way, they all had to die somehow or something else would take them but I didn’t really know that till the latter part of the film. The whole time I was just scared they would get murdered by the people in the cult but there were forces bigger than these crazed humans.

I think what made this film actually scary was how I didn’t know if there was going to be a monster or master mind controller of the cult who had a plan to abduct them. It was the fear of the unknown. It started when there was a rope pulling contest and the cult members were all trying to pull a rope from the sky and the rope was coming from nowhere and there was just this pulling source. There were hints of some greater force around them and it was so hard to explain what it was because the hints were so ambiguous and every cult member just seemed so drawn to it and worshipped it. The film was really able to build a frightening universe with all the people in it and the ambiguous spirits.

The Endless had a lot of horror elements as well as thriller elements. It was also a mix of sci-fi with the out of this world time loops. It was not a jump scare type of horror but it built up its ambiance with the very minimal sounds and emptiness in the location and silence of the woods. I feel like I’m never going to go out to the woods by myself again. The scene where Justin saw strange piled up rocks reminded me a lot of The Blair Witch Project where piles of rocks were always just laid out before something bad had happened and apart from the rocks, characters in the The Endless and The Blair Witch Project just kept going in circles in that forest. It makes me wonder that maybe there were time loops too in The Blair Witch Project.

I think at the end of the day, its safe to say that if Justin and Aaron were just better at communicating their emotions to each other, maybe none of this would have happened. Weird power dynamics always cause tension. Also, I learned that you should never return to the cult that psychologically traumatized you for eternity.

I had seen Velvet Goldmine at least once before Elements because I am a huge fan of David Bowie and other glam rock icons like Iggy Pop and Marc Bolan. I was a huge fan of 70’s to 80’s rock n’ roll and I remember being able to point out almost every reference in Velvet Goldmine. Brian Slade is supposed to be a loose representation of David Bowie and a bit of Marc Bolan while Curt Wild is supposed to be Iggy Pop.

Rewatching, I somehow had a better understanding of the main character, Arthur Stuart played by Christian Bale. I felt as though maybe Arthur Stuart was probably that kid, William from Almost Famous but all grown up. It was once upon a time when little Arthur had been a huge fan of pop icon Brian Slade and Curt Wild but he’d only knew them through their music and interviews. Becoming a journalist, this film explores his fantasies as being a part of the Brian Slade and Curt Wild’s narrative. When I was in high school, I used to also really have a huge crush on David Bowie and though, I am not as noisy about how much I love David Bowie, I still keep a poster of him somewhere in my room. The moment I hear any Bowie song anywhere, I can pinpoint which album and how the music video went. Somehow it’s still in my psyche no matter what. In Velvet Goldmine, apart from it being a biography of this Brian Slade, I think it really explores more the fanatics fans of a rockstar.

It was easy to kind of ignore Arthur the first time I watched it because I only wanted to see this caricature Bowie in Brian Slade but this second time, I developed a kind of endearment for Arthur. Him, being a journalist, gave him this chance to reconnect with his past passions which he was also terrorized for liking from his parents to the sales people in the vinyl record shop. This film explores a lot about homsexual awakening. Back in the 70’s, it was a very huge deal to come out as being gay and there was a lot of discrimination to gay people. Brian Slade represented that homosexual awakening to Arthur and what Arthur had to kind of leave behind as he grew up. While the film is also a biography of Brian Slade, we see how Arthur becomes involved in this historical retelling of Brian Slade and becomes a part of the narrative, much so, it gets intertwined sometimes with his past and Arthur relives his life the lives of these rockstars he’s always admired from afar. At some points, I get lost between wondering if Arthur recalls his memories or if it’s based on his actual experience. When you’re a fan, it is so easy to dream of your favorite stars but I guess, if you’re a fan and you’re investigating about them, you can get so immersed. There’s a part where Arthur becomes roommates with the drag queens that Brian Slade first watched when he was starting up his act. There is also a scene where Arthur and Kurt Wild kiss on a rooftop so when Arthur meets Kurt in this dingy cafeteria, it’s almost as if they have already met.

The film is able to blur the lines between imagination and reality so well that me as an audience can get lost as well. The editing is so nonlinear that it jumps from the past to the present but everything is seen through the perspective of Arthur. The whole world is a mix of reality and fantasy so it is easy to get lost in it and not be able to distinguish the different anymore. It also felt like the entire thing was one really long music video. Not simply because of the film being about music stars but because it was edited so well for each scene to fit the music and really integrate what was happening to the soundtrack. I really loved the build up of when Kurt Wild and Brian Slade had started to form a romance and Satellite of Love by David Bowie was playing as the soundtrack. Kurt and Brian were in a car and they were spinning in a  studio while it was intercut with them hanging out somewhere. I love how this film is also not afraid to put in some campy editing like when Brian Slade started to develop a crush on Kurt Wild, some hearts glimmered in his eyes like a cartoon.

The whole thing really felt like a homage to the 70’s because of the fantastical, no consequence, hedonistic kind of attitude and how everything eventually falls apart because of this. For fans of that era like Arthur, revisiting this obsession leads back into a spiral of obsessions, allowing him to actually meet his idols. I still don’t know if Arthur really kissed Kurt and if he really did live with the drag queens. I might need to rewatch it again to find out but if it is reality or fantasy, I think I would also rather live in the fantasy, like Arthur.  

Convenience stores are one of the best places to kind of just doze off and look at different human beings coming all at different times, total strangers come in and out. One time, I was in a convenience store somewhere deep in Manila. I had gotten lost and the most familiar thing in that area was the 7/11 in the corner street so while ordering a Grab to get home, I decided to chill around and eat something first. Beside me, a lady with one eye that had no pupil was talking to another a lady and told her that if she did not give her money by tonight, she would have her sent away. I got kind of scared and I imagined that the lady with the strange eyes was some kind of drug lord den kingpin. It was exciting but scary and despite just having to hear a snippet of their conversation, I had all these thoughts. Maybe I just heard things out of context but I felt as though I personally knew what was happening. This same feeling that I had in that ominous 7/11 convenience store I could compare to what I felt while watching the Futureless Things (2014) directed by Kim Kyung-Mook.

Futureless Things was set in one convenient stores showing different vignettes of each time in and time outs of every employee. I would think that it was the convenience store customer that would see the most to each’s trip to a convenience store but it is actually the employees who get to see everything. The film did make me think about how maybe the strangest people could come in at the deadest hours? Or perhaps every hour, as the film showed. It is interesting how with each employee, even if you hardly knew any background story about them, their interactions with the customers would bring out so much about their life. One particular scene that really brought this out was the woman from North Korea. A racist creep was trying to disturb her and insulted her about being from North Korea and it came to a point she was so angry and told the man off. I felt the stress in her eyes and how she was shaking as she put on her nail polish. It talked so much about how she was just trying to live a normal life in South Korea like everyone else but she had this horrible discriminative customer making it hard for her to live in peace as someone who got to escape. While it started off as a kind of casual scene, it turned out to be really political.

Aside from bringing out a lot of character in each employee, the film had a really lovely way of bringing out social issues in modern society. Since the structure was episodic, each episode had some kind of message to bring which all kind of always led back to some inconvenience. I feel it was intentional for the film to be set in a convenience store and show the irony of how actually inconvenient it is, especially for the people who manage a store to answer short inconveniences of each person that store served. I remember the actor who wanted to make it to his audition but he could not because of a religious man trying to pray for his lotto ticket to be the winning one. While the employee is tied down to his job, he has bigger dreams of making it big as an actor, following his passion but is held back because of having to attend to delusional customers. To me, it could be they were both delusional. The employee, having dreams but not being very responsible about it and setting his audition schedule during his work hours while a man uses prayer to win a lottery ticket. It is not faith or luck that bring out success in this world, we are told by the film.

As the clock strikes night time, it ends with a kind of sad picture of the owner of the convenience store committing suicide and business men or the government giving him sanctions for what he did. I think the whole movie kind of was a one big picture of the problems of the Korean society and what unjust systems there are.

The place itself felt like a character in itself because of how much had happened there and was only set in that one place. When the convenience store would not open, piles and piles of people just stood outside and it looked like a funeral for store. They were not mourning for the people inside that might have lost their jobs or the possible death of someone but just because they faced a minor inconvenience.

For what seems to be a really comedic play on what is in a convenience store, it came to be a really good satire piece and critique on the injustices in Korean society without pointing a finger directly on its audience for not paying attention to what is happening around us. I think it takes a lot to be able to pull off something political without being extremely up in your face about it and still somehow make it fun to watch. It is incredible how this film tricked us even at the beginning that it was going to be a cute little love story with the typical K-drama type music at the beginning and ended up to be something of a heavy critique on society. I applaud this film. The cinematography was so clean and it looked like a commercial with all of the clear as day lighting but in the end, it left me feeling dark after.

P.S. Not even that cute dance number at the end made me feel better.

Trainspotting was far from “shite” and exuded just enough elements to make it one of the most memorable films that I have ever seen. I keep the soundtrack on repeat since my second time seeing it. I think the firs time that I saw Trainspotting, I was watching it for the pure fun experience of knowing what it felt like to be on an actual psychedelic trip. I’d always been fascinated with the drug culture that happened during the 60’s to 70’s in Britain cause I was a big fun of musical acts such as Velvet Underground, the Beatles, David Bowie, and the Beatles and I’d always hear about their usage of drugs. I think watching Trainspotting could be one of the films that may have lead me close to experiencing what drugs could feel like and perhaps, even what drug addiction really is.

Aside from this addiction, I think this film speaks up a lot about social classes and how this could be the result of what people in the lower social classes tend to end up doing and its normal for them. We don’t really see a lot of history behind each character but bits and pieces of who they are show up. The film was generally all in the perspective of Brenton and how he saw things. Even the soundtrack was in view of what was happening in Brenton’s head. One scene that showcased this perspective was during Brenton’s return to using heroine. This “final hits” which were different from his “final final hits” wherein after getting sentenced to rehab instead of going to jail, he came back for this final hit. It was this melancholic reunion with heroine after being apart from his good friend for so long. As he collapsed to the floor and couldn’t get up, possibly on the verge of death, Lou Reed’s Perfect Day plays in the background. The lyrics “it’s such a perfect day / I’m glad I spent it with you”. A song perhaps for a lover but in this case, used for the old friend – heroine.

I think the beauty of this film is how its able to create such a chaotic and messy world while still being able to create such an impact message about addiction. It’s never really that easy to just leave a vice. If it makes you happy, why leave it? In Brenton’s case, heroine was not just some happy pill but an escape, an orgasm like no other. It took almost going to jail, a near death experience, and a death of a friend to convince him to stop. Stopping himself from heroine didn’t also make him any better as a person because he left his friends nothing (except Spud) for him to start a new life but we soon realize that Brenton now given the opportunity to have new beginnings is choosing to be a regular person just like us – the viewers.

The job, the family, the education, the taxes, the 9-5 job, dishwashing machine, dog, clothes, nice car, starbucks, who knows….. In the end, Brenton chooses life, the one thing he’s been trying to avoid facing with his usage of heroine. Did he go about it in a moralistic way? Probably not, but now he’s living a life that we all just take for granted having.

I was expecting an obnoxious large creature just destroying cities and killing people and one heroine jumping out of an airplane to save the day but instead I got a beautiful and poignant tale of a country rebuilding itself after havoc.

Out of respect for the characters in the film, I will be referring to this monster Godzilla as “Gojira” because I do agree that the United States did give it an ugly name. Shin Godzilla (2016) was the Asian franchise we needed. I believe it evoked some nationalistic message when Gojira arrived and dismantled Tokyo with every step it took and Japan still didn’t really want the United States to step in. There was this recurring problem of considering whether countries other than Japan itself should intervene but in the end, Japan was able to save itself. from the origami maps and the absurd strategizing, Japan was able to save themselves from a God-like destroyer who was bigger than life.

The cuts were so fast paced, I felt as though I were reading a graphic novel. The entire film made me mentally and (maybe even convinced me to be) physically tired because I had been so immersed in the world. It just felt as if I had actually been there the whole time. For each character that the camera panned to, I was watching intensely and seeing what they had to say. Not a lot was said by each character yet each thing they had to say seemed to be something urgent and important. It went on like this for almost half the film (if not most) and it was so frustrating because of how slow yet fast everything was to watch. It was frustrating in a sense that I felt the direction the film took got the reaction they were looking for in showcasing how inefficient the characters were in dealing with the situation. What I also noticed was how all the shots were really clean and the positioning of every character, nook, and cranny seemed planned. There was symmetry in every frame and that to me showed how the film was trying to portray how organized and systematic on the surface Japan’s government was trying to be. Most of the shots were very wide and had a really clean view. Sometimes there were perspective shots as well like some hidden spy might had been watching.

There was clearly no main character or heroine and it was truly a tale of the entire Japan bureaucracy and the government trying to figure things out by themselves. The majority of the film was the government going through drama in trying to make the best decision for its country and it was a life or death thing. Through the hierarchy seen in decision making in this Japanese government, it showed how destructive it was for Japan to be waiting. Even if Gojira walked at a ridiculously slow pace and there could have been time to prevent his destruction of Tokyo sooner, the processes of the government took too much time. It’s a very interesting critique that this film touches on that with this immensely careful Japanese government set-up it turned out to be more detrimental than helpful.

We could, however, see that in the end Japan was able to save itself and despite numerous lives lost and half the city in shambles, Japan allowed itself to grow by taking stances against international forces and the lesson learned is that maybe a nation’s own people should be the one’s to save themselves.

I won’t forget that scene when Gojira was destroying the city and everything felt so hopeless. It was in slow motion and the camera showed the face of all the terror and trembling in every Japanese person’s eyes. Gojira was bigger than life, Gojira was not from heaven or hell, it was just a creature finding a way out. It made me tear up a little and to see an entire nation get destroyed so easy with no way out made me feel so gloomy and hopeless with them. My heart jumped when towards the end, the Japanese people had found its way into hope and discovered a way to get rid of Gojira. I think just imagining how all these people banning together and trying to figure out how to save their own society kind of reminded me also of what I had here in the Philippines. I might not necessarily know everyone whose ever lived in the Philippines or even met those who once walked in the same place as I did but there is a sense of community and empowerment seeing people of the same place, area, and physical traits that make me think, we’re all kind of in this together. When calamities strike, may it be man or nature, everyone’s affected as one.

Godzilla was able to bring that kind of community and let the audience feel emphatic to an entire nation.

It’s easy to hate on a film you don’t understand but strangely, Schizopolis (1996) had the opposite effect on me. I’m not sure if it’s also because I do tend to like things regardless of whether I understand it or not but it was a good kind of not being able to understand it that humored me. I found myself entertained by its confusing absurdity. It felt as if it was a template for a generic sort of Western film and it managed to make sense of senseless dialogue. A scene in particular that stuck in my head was when Soderbergh coming home finds his neighbor mowing the lawn and in their conversation they happily converse about how Soderbergh is sleeping with the neighbor’s wife. This isn’t exactly the most acceptable thing to say to one another but since the film had already established itself as something far from normal, my suspension of disbelief was so high up, I started to accept everything happening in the film.

There wasn’t a very clear and focused narrative on one particular character. In fact, different characters were played by the same actor. Soderbergh played so many different roles, it left me to wonder whether he had a doppleganger or if they were out of budget to get any other actors but then even if a production were to be out of budget, they would just hire a b-movie kind of actor to play the other roles instead. This wasn’t the case with Schizopolis, I think the filmmaker just wanted to intentionally mess around with the audience.

Sometimes the film jumped to this exterminator who charmed bored, desperate housewives with his randomized selection of words. The exterminator would say something like “Beef turkey omega” and the housewives would response back like a cat in heat. These were English words that I understood and even if logically thinking about the formation of the words, I still understood what the characters were trying to communicate to one another. They were trying to seduce each other despite the odd selection of words. Despite how nonsensical the way that the words were arranged, I still responded as though I knew what they were talking about. It’s fascinating how Soderberg is still able to get a reaction and some understanding from the audience despite the clear intention to not sound intelligible.

I like the idea of how the film made fun of certain film formats and was not afraid to insert random characters even if it was just for five seconds. The old man who ran around pants-less never really contributed much to the storytelling but he was there. The most enjoyable part for me was how there wasn’t any unifying plot, it was just a combination of characters played sometimes by the same guy, Soderberg who also amazingly, directed it. Soderberg using his real name, makes it very meta, all the more. This film begs the question of whether media needs to mean anything or say anything for it to be consumed. I laughed in times where I did not even understand was going on. Sometimes there just isn’t any meaning and maybe it’s okay for media not to. I don’t know what Soerberg’s exact intentions were but Schizopolis was a bizarre adventure into a template format full of ridiculous dialogue that was hilariously brilliant. I admire filmmakers who make films not exactly to have some deep, political, pseudo-intellectual content but who are able to just experiment with different forms and break conventions. I think that’s what Soderbergh as a director tried to do just that with this film. He was just experimenting with the form and I think that’s what makes Schizopolis worth watching.