Quandaries of Asian-American Representation Strike a Nerve in ‘Shortcomings’
Its not-so-subtle reference to ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ is much more than a mere dig.
By MARTIN TSAI
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Mr. Tsai is a film critic with bylines in The New York Sun, Los Angeles Times, and many others. He holds a master’s in Cinema Studies from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Its not-so-subtle reference to ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ is much more than a mere dig.
By MARTIN TSAI
||Arts+
In a sense, the film offers as much escapism as do the blockbuster franchises playing at multiplexes, albeit for an entirely different crowd: Scenic coastal views. Vintage fashions. Legendary actresses doing an accent. People burying the hatchet.
By MARTIN TSAI
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The film’s central mysteries center around who steals from whom and who teaches whom a lesson.
By MARTIN TSAI
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A tale of rekindled romance waxes poetic about providence and reincarnation.
By MARTIN TSAI
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While not nearly as cohesive or bold as ‘Everything Everywhere,’ the Disney Plus series ‘American Born Chinese’ does offer unique depictions and insights.
By MARTIN TSAI
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The French filmmaker’s sense of wide-eyed wonder in his whimsical adventures is missing in the tale of Latte Pronto in ‘Fool’s Paradise.’
By MARTIN TSAI
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Judging by the new adaptation of Blume’s cautionary tale about conformity, it’s easy to see why the author’s work has resonated with generations of girls and young women.
By MARTIN TSAI
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While it doesn’t go for broke like ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once,’ the film is worthy of the comparison.
By MARTIN TSAI
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He has adapted Georges Bizet’s storied opera into a movie, updating it to the present-day Chihuahuan Desert from 19th-century Spain.
By MARTIN TSAI
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Instead of deploying familiar hard-knock-life themes as dramatic shorthand, ‘A Thousand and One’ elevates them as down and dirty facts of life without a whiff of cliché.
By MARTIN TSAI
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The director, Sam Mendes, seems to feel something for these characters, but conveys little beside a figurative ‘sorry.’
By MARTIN TSAI
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This coming-of-age story is not exactly the generic horror flick the trailers and commercials lead one to expect, but it also doesn’t follow closely the young adult novel on which it’s based.
By MARTIN TSAI
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