Four Asian Film Recommendations for Poetry Lovers

In the Mood for Love (2000)

It’s no secret to anyone with a pulse and a Netflix subscription that the American film industry is in crisis right now. We as viewers have likely yet to feel the worst of the effects of the combined WGA and SAG strikes, and even before that, things have been… not great. But in our darkest hour, a hero has come to save us all from the endless slog of reboots, sequels, and cinematic universes — Emma Seligman’s sophomore directorial outing, Bottoms.

The translation of grief into language has been a site of frustration for generations of writers. As British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote in his poem In Memoriam, “I sometimes hold it half a sin / To put in words the grief I feel; / For words, like Nature half reveal / And half conceal the Soul within.”

Why is a woman no longer allowed to be seen as ambitious once she’s fallen in love? Must she be forced to decide between a career and marriage in order to find security? More often than not, modern-day feminism seems to suggest that women who choose romance over work are contributing to patriarchal ideals—but can one not exist alongside the other?

Brian Hiatt of Rolling Stone recently described Greta Gerwig as an auteur, a term I will be exploring when analysing cinema in the present day.

I’m neither a film connoisseur nor a brilliant poet, but there’s something beautiful about the merging of poetry and film. Both are intended to conjure emotion in their audience; in that way, when a film features a certain poem, the words and the visuals can impart a message together.

My favorite books have a larger-than-life character lurking in the background of every scene, influencing every plot point, every character arc: the physical setting.

First and foremost, let it be said that I didn't mean to watch all of Heartstopper Season 2. I’m a self-identified cynic who has a complex relationship with the rom-com genre and didn’t even finish the first season. Having heard the overwhelmingly positive reviews, though, I decided to check out the season premiere of the internet’s favorite queer teen drama—and much like falling down a flight of stairs, I couldn’t stop and ended the experience in tears.

Anyone my age or older will remember when Twister came to theaters and blew us all away with its cinematic visuals and cutting-edge computer graphics. It was hard not to be wowed back in those days; Jurassic Park, Titanic, True Lies --okay, maybe not True Lies. But seriously, even The Blair Witch Project had me thinking it was real footage for weeks of sleepless nights before I found out the truth.