Jirorian Reviews

Terry Tate, Office Linebacker (2002)

The dream office

[8/10 · 4 July 2018]

'Terry Tate: Office Linebacker' is structured like a documentary with the commentary of the office's inhabitants guiding us through the situation that has taken stronghold of their workplace. This situation is as ridiculous as it is appealing, comically exposing the binary mentalities that pervade the worlds of corporate America and elite sports. Productivity and efficiency are the goals toward which the office workers are setting themselves, and by taking the methods employed in the starkly different world of American football to push these workers, notions of professionalism are deconstructed as we realise that we have all, at some point, wanted to be Terry Tate. We are not allowed to be Terry Tate, however, because of the social codes by which we have to abide our conduct. As a result, we must find solace simply through the power that the screen holds in realising our deepest fantasies.

Otousan no tabako (2007)

Struggles with authority

[8/10 · 27 June 2018]

A girl caught in between the conflicting voices of her parents, as a result having to make decisions in adherence with her own individual judgments of what is right or wrong, even in spite of the potential backlash that might consequently ensue from either one of her two authoritative figures. It is a striking image that shocks many of the characters in the film, along with the audience, in the jumping up of a small, supposedly innocent girl reaching to press the high buttons of a tobacco vending machine; or even as she stares down the singular cigarette lying on the ground prior to making her move. The obvious implications one would assume as being the logical progression of this are made manifest in the characterisation of the older girl who smokes and offers the little girl a cigarette, and in doing so provides the entryway to yet another confusing, alternate system of authority to those of which the little girl is struggling with at home. The story thus follows the girl's efforts to make sense of the nonsensical world she perceives around her, as her absence of entirely respectable figures to look up to -- people without any regrets or vices to pervade their sensitive outlooks on life -- speaks for the reality to which life bears as being confusing, imperfect, and uncertain in nature. As suggested through the film's conclusion, the only remedy we have in our efforts to fit inside this chaos is through the structures of family, and the little moments we share where everything seems to make sense.

Born with It (2015)

Ignorance and difference

[10/10 · 20 June 2018]

A venture into the difficulties cultural homogeneity bears upon those who do not completely fit inside the social structures that define the common experience, in this case being that of the so-called peace and uniformity typically associated with the Japanese countryside, 'Born With It' tells of a boy with a racially mixed background struggling to comprehend the overwhelming social forces that push him into isolation, and prevent him from being accepted by his classmates as their equal in regards to his Japanese identity. The children's reactions being portrayed as a natural course of events highlights the degree to which notions of race are inherently embedded within the Japanese psyche and nation's sense of itself, which in this case differs from the history of segregation and suppression that Western viewers will be quick to identify with, because the Japanese children staring at the coloured boy are purely coming from a place of ignorance. Their realities are only understood in adherence with the world that they have been exposed to, which hinders their abilities to comprehend anything that they cannot immediately identify with. As a result, their understanding of what it means to be black is limited to the concept that colour must be a distinguishing feature of their preconceived notions of nationality, ethnicity, language, and identity. The issue here is that these notions are historically constructed notions purely for the sake of identifying difference, and as we come to realise that difference itself actually bears less presence in reality than the terminology and systems through which we are accustomed to seeing it, we realise the need for the terminology and systems to be adjusted. In the meantime, we must gradually overcome the direct effects had on those who are victimised by these falsified senses of reality, as candidly brought to screen in 'Born With It'.

Get Out (I) (2017)

Fall of the House of Rose

[10/10 · 13 June 2018]

A reimagination of the African American experience through the guise of a horror story, following all the traditions associated with the genre, that places, arguably for the first time in the history of popular film, the victim and dupe of the monsters as being distinguished by their marginalised status through race. The film takes no shame in its identification with tradition given that it needs the audience to have some sense of familiarity in order for its messages to get across. For example, we know just by seeing the daunting, panning-out scene of Rose's parents' house, isolated in the middle of the forest, what implications are held in store for Chris in regards to the various levels of sanity he will encounter, the role he will play in relation to the people he will encounter, and the foreboding moral decline that awaits him because we have read Edgar Allan Poe. What we don't know, however, is specifically what struggles await him, and what he will need to do to overcome them. It is through this anticipation, one which we have nurtured over the course of all the horror movies we have hitherto watched, that we become most surprised, given that what we expect as being unfamiliar is inevitably familiar to an overwhelmingly uncomfortable degree. This is because as fantastical as the film's premise is, it alludes to a repression that pervaded a large part of American history which we are ultimately forced to recognise within ourselves. The final scene of the film is so effective for this reason, and consequently draws us to think quite deeply about what it is that causes us to react the way we do.

Embers (2006)

An elegy to the individual

[9/10 · 13 June 2018]

A moving tale about isolation, time, and the devastating changes that can be brought upon us when we are exposed to situations beyond our rational scopes of understanding. Psychological decline is expressed through clever camerawork that challenges our perspectives on reality, crossing the line between the horrid dreams of the woman isolated at home, and her real, tangible experiences that she ultimately becomes unable to differentiate. The mirroring of this decline reflects in the change that the man undergoes, too, which through the differences revealed to be had between the man and the woman as they finally reunite exposes the fragile foundations to which our entire understandings of reality are built upon. Our capacity for change, and our capacity to distance ourselves from one another, even in spite of the solid grounds to which we assume our relationships root from, thus become core notions of the film that are common in their connection to the overarching evil that perpetuates the entire conflict of the story: war. We see the devastation that is brought upon even the people who aren't directly involved in war, and through this, the film can be seen as ultimately becoming an elegy to the individual.

Smoke (1995)

A textbook in contemporary writing

[10/10 · 11 June 2018]

A textbook in contemporary writing, 'Smoke' tells a simple tale that, much like the photographs of his Brooklyn corner cigar store taken daily by lead character Auggie, as played in a highly nuanced performance by Harvey Keitel, can only be properly understood when one slows down. It is a story about storytelling which breaks down the binaries assumed to be inherent to our understandings of the world, in turn challenging our understandings of truth. Structured like a jazz improvisation having found its freedom by denying a previously established set of rules, the film is about chance, family, race, time, fiction, knowledge, and deception; all of which are pervaded heavily by the overarching forces that characterise life in the city. The ensemble cast lead separate lives that intertwine through their experiences of the city, and the connections they share speak for the struggles we all undergo in our respective searches for identity, meaning, and answers, especially in times when nothing presents itself as being distinctly one way or another. Through this fuzziness, the filters of smoke through which our perceptions are realised, we are exposed to a highly plausible possibility of what could or could not be the true nature of the lenses through which we see, and the language through which we interpret what we see.

Lifted (2006)

Ode to the Daily Grind

[10/10 · 6 June 2018]

Telling of an apprentice alien in the craft of human abduction struggling with the overwhelming control panel in front of him, 'Lifted' is a goofy story that everyone can relate to in our attempts to overcome the pressures of work, the mountains of tasks that lay endlessly before us with no obvious means of easily being solved, and the indifferent looks from our bosses as we struggle to find redemption over our clearly insufficient efforts. It is an ode to the common man, the daily grind, and the efforts one makes to prove oneself. The stylistic visuals and comedy is as expected of Pixar, and everyone will surely get a laugh or two out of their viewing of the short film.

The Crush (I) (2010)

The problem with guns in modern culture

[1/10 · 6 June 2018]

'The Crush' plays with the notion of innocence in a highly romanticised light, clearly trying to bring back the lost bravado of the Western cowboy heroes from an older generation that the 8 year old protagonist - Ardal - idolises, looks up to for inspiration on his bedroom wall, admires through the veil of his father's dinner time stories (despite the ultimately futile warning from his mother), and eventually, to the anticipation of any viewer with a brain, goes on to mimic. This romanticisation is drastically dangerous territory that first-timer writer and director Michael Creagh was too ambitious in his entry into, because while the film feigns innocence in denying the convention that introducing a gun into a story will guarantee that someone will later die, the real victims of Ardal's toy gun are the children and teachers of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Florida; Marshall County High School, Kentucky; Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut; and the hundreds of school shootings by child perpetrators that have taken place since then. The reason is simply that films like 'The Crush' naively perpetuate the message that guns are the answer. Children will watch Ardal win over Pierce and mimic him, just as Ardal mimics his cowboy idols; and for Ardal to mimic cowboys and get away with it is to promote a telling of history that represses any plight for recognition and understanding that the Native Americans rightfully have claim to, exposing the deep extent to which violence and repression hold root to within modern culture. The problem is cultural, historical, and deeply rooted within the traditions that lead to the film's Oscar nomination. The moral responsibility artists have in providing snapshots of history that are not repressive in nature is for the sake of diminishing this problem, and in this light the innocence that 'The Crush' attempts to romanticise is ultimately its undoing.

Coco (I) (2017)

Divine

[10/10 · 4 June 2018]

Pixar delves deeper into the realm of difficult and hard to visually conceptualise subject areas with its family-friendly film about death, 'Coco', while setting the story in Mexico with the main character, a young boy striving to become a musician named Miguel, classifying as a minority under Trump's America. The Land of the Dead, the setting for a large portion of the film, is an interpretation of traditional Mexican beliefs that are realised in the film alongside a deliberate avoidance of any religious connotations or messages. The dog - a Xoloitzcuintli, native animals to Mesoamerica historically believed to guide dead souls to the underworld - is named Dante in reference to the Italian poet Dante Alighieri, whom travelled through the underworld and returned in his epic, 'The Divine Comedy', ultimately to the same objective as Miguel in informing the living of the greater truth that they have learnt in their travels. As much as Dante's Divine Comedy is structured around the religious values that shaped medieval understandings of the world, 'Coco' is about family, and its messages are equally about the bringing about of a more socially unified world. Especially in the current climate where social division has been prevailing more than ever in recent times, commonly reflected through the sentiment pervading border control policies, 'Coco' provides a vision of all the good that perhaps we have been forgetting, and a landscape where border control is not about division but about bringing families together.

J'attendrai le suivant... (2002)

An emotional ride

[7/10 · 4 June 2018]

Quite literally an emotional ride, "I'll Wait for the Next One" offers the promise of a fateful encounter only to be challenged abruptly by a surprise ending. The surprise works because our feelings are channeled through the eyes of the woman, whom in becoming the dupe of the male perpetrator forces viewers along to share in her struggle. The film thus raises many questions regarding the nature of the conflict it depicts: why is it not surprising that the man is the perpetrator and the woman is the dupe? Why are we drawn to believe the man's story, and what does his final action reveal about the nature of men as societal beings? Is the ending a fault of the woman or of the man? If the woman is at fault, do women need to just be more careful in an overtly oppressive society? Or if the man is at fault, does he need to be more considerate of the extent to which his actions inflict damage upon society? The depiction is that both the woman and the man are at the extreme ends of their respective depths of capacity for emotional sentiment, and it is a very crude depiction that does little to progress away from the repression inherent to patriarchal societies. However, the responsibility to answer the questions posed by the film lies in the viewer, and as a result so too does the responsibility to make any changes in the real world away from what we see on screen.

Three Days in Kamakura (2012)

Shallow characters out of their depth

[7 May 2018]

A British expat working in Japan as an English language teacher smiling fondly at his Japanese students as they are greeted by their parents and finish a day's worth of school in English only to return to their ultimate foreboding realities of living in Japan as Japanese citizens. The teacher sees them returning to their private yet collectively unified worlds, and such is the reality so that as much as he attempts to embody paternal values of care, respect, openness, and safety, his smile will always be coming from a distant system of reality isolated from the societal structures that bind the children's experiences together. He is trapped in his isolation - communicated through the symbol of the mistaken rubbish bags emphasising his status as the 'other' - so much so that he too becomes internally lost in a fanatasised limbo where he could adopt his student, move back to England, and all would supposedly return to normal. However, in a story where realities are placed in conflict with each other, normal becomes a fragile notion over which little counterpoise can be found. The timing of his student, a half Japanese half American boy, thus embodying the destruction of the definitions that realities hold of being normal, coming into the care of the English teacher and his Japanese wife only serves to forebode the dangers that await the couple as they had already affected the boy's parents. The film thus offers little in remedy of overcoming the cultural divides that separate people's systems of reality.

Whacked (II) (1998)

Surprisingly real

[9/10 · 7 May 2018]

Viewers are introduced immediately to a New York overcome by a mysterious force causing bodies to drop dead all around, a scene relished by the film with all the inherent associations pervaded within its urban metropolis landscape. We are used to being surprised by the things that happen in New York on screen, so we immediately question it because the film is forcing us to question it. This is cleverly achieved by the film's decision to open with the story's ending, gradually answering all our questions as the story progresses with an ultimate reveal at the end. With the use of this non-linear narrative, the film establishes a deliberate separation from realism, a notion which seems to be initially intrinsic to the film's entire structural concept being centered around bodies mysteriously and unexplainably falling to the ground. The final explanation, however, turns out to be as plausible as it is inconceivable. Consequently, the film shifts the focus from what is real to what is possible, thus functioning in solid exhibition of the role film plays in bridging the line separating imagination from reality.

Fish Out of Water (2005)

Refreshing

[7/10 · 7 May 2018]

A simple tale of a working man's unique way of dealing with his commute and the hoards that follow him. In face of routine, monotonous traffic jams, the man's solution of riding his boat to work is encountered by an issue that quickly demands his problem solving skills yet again, and viewers are brought along in his heroic struggle to overcome the prevailing hurdles of the real world. A bright, uplifting, positive story that shows without telling how like a fish out of water, one does not need to conform to the commodities of common existence, and all it takes to get away from the struggles of everyday life is a little original thinking. Bright colours, charismatic music, and simple faces shown in provocative repetition make way for a refreshing outlook on the world, and viewers are left a little more enlightened on how things need not always be taken for what they are initially seen as.

Father and Daughter (2000)

Raw emotion

[10/10 · 23 April 2018]

In a mere eight minutes, Father and Daughter evokes a lifetime of feelings through dealing with the rawest of emotions in a minimalist style sparse and vague enough to be recognised by any viewer. The facelessness and silhouetted figures of the characters could be any of us, and the ambiguity presented through the lack of context surrounding the father's initial abandonment of his daughter draws viewers into speculation - both peripherally and internally - only to come to the same conclusion that there is only one thing that remains constant and eternal: love. The changing seasons and different stages of life that the daughter goes through express the passage of time subtly and efficiently in a way which resonates with all viewers, and are visually subdued in their relatively loose brushstrokes in a similar manner to that of the modest chamber ensemble called for in the music score, featuring an eclectic combination of instruments including a piano, accordion, and bassoon. As a result, there is never any sense that the story is forcing you along; rather, the transitions are smooth, natural, and evoke a relatable experience that one cannot help but get carried away with. The question of eternity is brought up in a moving ending which challenges your perspective on time, how it influences us, and how much control we have over it.