(by Alex Vera and Noel Vera)
Naoko Yamada’s A Silent Voice is about bullying the disabled, in this case a boy named Shoya bullying a deaf girl named Shoko, a practice few people have heard of outside Japan. Officially laws prohibit it, unofficially it’s an open secret; Yoshitoki Ooima’s original manga experienced immediate blowback--apparently this is dirty laundry people didn’t want aired.
Yeah yeah yeah
Sick of essays mourning the disaster that was last year? Same.
Let's get with it.
Antoinette Jadaone's Fan Girl is a sneaky little comedy that starts off with a storyline planted firmly within familiar Jadaone territory (the constantly permeable membrane between showbiz fantasy and everyday reality a la Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay; the sad-funny interchanges that motor romantic comedies a la This Thing Called Tadhana). Jane (Charlie Dizon), who describes herself as real-life celebrity Paulo Avelino's 'number one fan,' skips afternoon class to attend a mall event promoting the star's latest movie; she manages to climb into the back of Paulo's pickup truck just as he drives away.
Not here to bury Mank; I defer to Welles specialist Joseph McBride's demolition job which may be angry but also densely authoritatively detailed-- he knows of what he speaks. Me? Just here to put my two centavos in.
I thought Violator-- Dodo Dayao's debut feature-- to be one of the most intriguing of recent horrors; think Kurosawa Kiyoshi doing a punk remake of Rio Bravo, with Hawks' sticks of dynamite swapped out for the apocalypse. Midnight in a Perfect World sees Dayao stepping up his game, this time proposing a semi-utopian society afflicted with both drug use and police fascism.
