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The Orphanage: Good story, but that little plothole…
The Orphanage (El Orfanato, 2007): Laura returns to the orphanage where she grew up to reopen it as a home for disabled children. However, her son starts talking to “invisible friends,” and soon after, he vanishes, forcing Laura to confront the tragic history of the house. Thoughts The Others and The Sixth Sense are rare Westen’s Supernatural gems because of how they present internal horror. The Orphanage joins that list for me, although not on the same level as the two legends. It isn’t about fighting a monster; it’s about a mother’s grief and the ghosts of the past that…
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Exploring individualism and the burden of connections with Kurosawa’s Retribution
Retribution (Sakebi, 2006): A detective investigates a series of murders where the perpetrators have no memory of the crime, only to find the evidence pointing back to himself and a forgotten past. Thoughts Honestly, the moment I saw his girlfriend wear a red dress, I knew the detective didn’t kill the first victim. His seeing the victim and the woman in red signalled a subdued guilt of possibly killing his long-time girlfriend, Harue, and that she was no longer alive. What I didn’t know was the motive. Listening to what the third killer (the secretary) said about why she killed…
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Fading into loneliness with Kurosawa’s Pulse (Kairo)
Pulse (Kairo, 2001): In Tokyo, ghosts begin invading the world of the living through the internet, creating an epidemic of loneliness and disappearances. Thoughts While it was eerie at first, the film is highly conceptual—so much so that I think, over time, it became difficult for the actors to act within it, or even for the production to set up a realistic environment for it. One example is when Michi tried to capture her friend, Junko, who shattered into pieces. The way they moved or talked makes me feel like watching people acting on a theatrical stage rather than in…
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R-Point and starting Kurosawa’s with Cure: East vs. West supernatural horror movies
R-Point (2004): A South Korean base receives a radio transmission from a missing squad, presumed dead, and sends a platoon to rescue the lost squad from the R-Point. Cure (1997): A detective investigates a string of murders where the killers have no memory of the crime, eventually leading him to a mysterious drifter who seems to hypnotize people into acting on their darkest impulses. ___ First, a disclaimer, supernatural horror movies are not my cup of tea. I wouldn’t say the same when it comes to books, series or manga. When it comes to movies, I hate being bombarded with…
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Hello World — Back here again with the nerd
Writing poetry requires inspiration, and that’s a tough job when I am uninspired. So here I am back again with movie, book, manga, and TV series rants. Faster and shorter to write, and sometimes they inspire me with the willingness to create, these nerding logs help to unravel my mind. Unfortunately, thanks to the government banning Tumblr, accessing my old blog has become a hassle. In short, this is just my personal log and takes on pop (or not) culture. Can be very short, can be very long. They might read like commentaries, but I am not a critic nor…