Pepe the Frog needs no introduction by now. The laid back cartoon that took the farthest corners of the internet by storm has seen better days. One of the formerly harmless founders of modern meme culture was taken hostage behind enemy lines in 2016. Indie cartoonist Matt Furie's labor of love went from being a…
Continue reading ➞ ‘Feels Good Man’ Review – Pepe the Frog Pleads For Liberation
At 26, Yingying Zhang leaves China to study abroad in the United States at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A young ecologist filled with dreams, she aspired to one day be a married professor with children. Studying in the U.S. would provide her with greater opportunities, so her family back in Nanping, China did…
Continue reading ➞ ‘Finding Yingying’ Review – More than a True Crime Documentary
I’ll Meet You There is the type of film where characters say things like “we can't move forward until we face the past.” It is not that this sentiment is untrue, but rather that writer/director Iram Parveen Bilal is working with such interesting ideas that rigid following of soapy cliches and blandness feel frustrating. The…
Continue reading ➞ ‘I’ll Meet You There’ Review – Flawed, But Warm and Important
Lynn Chen's directorial debut, I Will Make You Mine, follows three women: Erika (Ayako Fujitani), Rachel (Lynn Chen herself), and Yea-Ming (Yea-Ming Chen) as they reconnect with their former lover Goh (Goh Nakamura) when he stumbles back into town. Despite the three women being drastically different, they all share the same struggle: moving on. Building…
Continue reading ➞ ‘I Will Make You Mine’ Review – Confronting the Past Rarely Feels this Real
Midway Games, oddly enough, could not have a more widespread yet niche following. On one hand, they were the home for what is still one of the most popular video game franchises of all time, Mortal Kombat. Their other titles that undoubtedly took a decade of youth by storm, unfortunately, lacked the legs to hurdle…
Continue reading ➞ ‘Insert Coin’ Review – Midway’s Legacy Refuses To Be Forgotten
Critical Thinking, the directorial debut of John Leguizamo (who boasts well over 200 credits on IMDb), falls into the subgenre of movies where inspiring teachers have to lift up underprivileged students. Coming after films like Freedom Writers and Stand and Deliver, which was infamously spoofed by South Park, "How do I reach these kids?", is certainly…
