I'm hardly reverential towards Star Wars though it is fitting how Lucas' own film was forged from cinematic tradition whereas Favreau's pathetic attempt to retool his streaming slop as a theatrical experience is entirely devoid of such integrity, haphazardly sequencing four consecutive filler episodes together as franchise continuity supplants any notion of writing or structure; why pursue thematic subtext when you can simply invoke IP metatext. Much of the puppetry and stop-motion is genuinely very good, nestled into a living…

When in Beijing one should endeavour to fulfil their civic duty by attending the China National Film Centre in order to see a free - and unsubtitled - screening of this moderately rousing exercise in state propaganda. In the aftermath of a fatal accident one man must determine whether to wallow in self-pity over the deceased, or instead extol their virtues through the self-demonstration of his own actions. The sense of occasion is evoked through staid sepia tones and the…

There's a suggestion early on in Rapado that a young man, who has just had his bike stolen, is about to have his entire life changed. After all, he used that bike to go everywhere. Except this isn't true. Life isn't going to change at all. Being able to go anywhere and everywhere means nothing when your presence is needless. Why loiter at the arcade when it's expensive and it burns your eyes? Why deal in currency when most of…

Embarrassing corporate Twitter account energy all over this, breaking the fourth wall - often to explain the physical gags as they lack the didactic quality of The Message - with snarky self-critique that doesn't actually wish to change anything but merely point it out as a means of continuing to inhabit it from an ironic distance. Gerwig posits that progress is when women actualise themselves by recreating a consumerist endgame of expensive homes and lucrative jobs, and being that this…